The munchkin didn’t want to get out of the bath, and he was so cute about it I had to snap his picture.

How are those connected? Well, a while ago I bought some thigh high boots from a friend because they were really cool and I needed to replace my boots which had split along the zipper.
The only problem is that these boots won’t zip up!

Yet another motivation for me to get some weight off my bod. Hopefully this will help me stick to it. I have to confess I have been EXTREMELY bad about sticking to my diet plan. I haven’t even recorded any more information to make sure I’m sticking properly to the points system, I’ve just been giving myself a general idea and figuring that it’s okay. This is very bad of me because it leaves me much more open to slacking and figuring that it’s okay to have a can of full soda, instead of diet or water or snack on a cookie or piece of chocolate.

The next course of action is to stop stalling and get replacement batteries for my weighing scale and then I will really be able to see how bad I’ve been being and get properly motivated.

It’s that time again, time for Four Foods on Friday!

Here are my answers to the questions.

#1. Do you ever use scissors to cut any foods? Which? Raw or cooked?
I use scissors a lot in the kitchen, because it’s a lot easier for me to be able to chop things up without having hand spasms from the FMS which makes me very temp sensitive, especially to cold things. I have three pairs of kitchen scissors now because a friend got us a pair as part of a wedding present then we got another pair with our kitchen knives, and then my Mum just got us some really good kitchen knives as a housewarming present and they came with yet another pair of scissors, but it’s great because I use them *all* them time. I just used them at breakfast time because I was chopping french fries and left over hotdogs to make an egg concoction.

#2. Popcorn. Homemade, microwave, bagged, hot, cold. How do you like it?
I’m really not keen on popcorn. If we do make it here it’s more likely to be microwaved, but I really only like caramel popcorn.

#3. Sushi. Love it or hate it?
I LOVE sushi! I just made a couple of batches last week, and I’m due to make some more. I just have to get some more fish to make it with, although I’ll probably need to get some more wraps after I do that.

#4. Share a dessert recipe.
By far my favorite dessert has to be Helen’s Layer, which I learned from my Gran. She used to make it a lot especially around the Christmas holiday time, as well as this wonderful Chocolate Meringue but I’m not even going to attempt Meringue especially when Helen’s Layer is SO good and so much easier to make. For Helen’s Layer you need:

1/2 pint Whipped Cream
4 oz Brown Sugar
4 rounded tablespoons of drinking chocolate
1 level tablespoon Instant Coffee
4 oz fresh white bread crumbs.
Chocolate to decorate.

That’s the ratio’s anyway. I often wind up making it in triple quantity so it will fill a huge trifle bowl and there’s plenty for everyone because it usually disappears REALLY quickly.

Mix drinking chocolate, coffee, bread crumbs and sugar together in a bowl.
Whip up the cream in a separate bowl, until it’s doing the thick, soft peaks and is somewhat stiff.

Spread alternate layers of the chocolate mix and cream in a new bowl finishing with cream.

Refrigerate for about 8-10 hours or overnight.
Before serving decorate with chocolate flakes,  chocolate chips or something else like that.

Voila!

Simple but GORGEOUS!

In this case it’s a thank you to Val at BusyMomma for sharing her Thank Yous with me after I posted mine yesterday.

Thank you, Val.

I’ve been pretty busy the past few days because I’ve been helping my Mum to move again. I still need to catch up with my Photo a Day blog and do some tarot readings for people. I have some earrings and jewelry to make as well.

It’s also bill-paying day, which really sucks. Things are going to be tight for a little while. We really have to watch our spending until we can balance things out.

Here the munchkin tries to get his Gran to wear the biker hat.

This has been a pretty stressful week because hubbie’s been on another class and feeling really sick and I’ve been helping Mum move, yesterday.  So, it’s very important to me that I write out some thank you’s to try to remain positive.

1. Thank you to the people in line at Walmart who didn’t get mad or angry that my son was throwing a huge tantrum but helped keep me calm and positive that I was doing the right thing not giving in to his demands for a ball when he’d been misbehaving and shared funny anecdotes about their own kids with me to help me out.

2. Thank you to the staff at the Publix Deli for always being nice to us and chatting, and joking with us, especially this week because before I went in there the munchkin got stung by a hornet right before we went in there and they gave him a chicken tender to help cheer him up.

3. Last but definitely not least thank you to my husband who despite being sick and having had no sleep yesterday helped Mum and I get a heavy thing out of the UHaul to store in our garage.

What do you have to be thankful about this week?

This is a family joke. We’re trying to teach the munchkin the various parts of his face and even though he knows when you ask him “Where is your nose?” to point to his nose. If you ask him what it is he says, “Eye!” and then he’ll point to his ears and say, “Eye!” and point to his mouth and say, “Eye!” he’s always so proud of himself and chuckles up a storm when you go, “No, that’s your nose/ear/mouth/tongue,” instead.

So, a week or two I’d mentioned that I was going to write out how I make curry, but that weekend we ate curry out of the house three days in a row so I decided NOT to make curry. Yesterday I finally made the curry and snapped a few pictures of my process.

I posted the actual curry recipe there. In this particular curry my main ingredients are as follows.

1. A pack of chicken, chopped.
2. Potatoes, pre-boiled and diced.
3. Coconut milk.
4. Various spices.

Here are the main spices I used.

I also put in a smidge of minced onion, but that comes later.
The first thing to do is brown the chopped chicken in the pan, while you open the coconut milk, and chop the potatoes. (You can add other veggies to the mix once the chicken is cooked, but in this case all I had was potatoes).
After the chicken is cooked through add the potatoes to the mix and stir it up, then add the coconut milk, then blend again because sometimes the coconut milk will start to separate and be a little chunky.

Next comes the fun part adding the spices:

I don’t measure the spices. I just put a bit in and mix it until it looks good. The key thing with curry is tasting it and making sure it’s not too spicy. The chili and cayenne are what govern the spiciness not the curry powder.

Once it’s at the appropriate taste for you, you can serve it over steamed rice. Voila!

In the spirit of my new found cooking bug I made curry! This is only a chicken and potato curry but it was made from scratch, even the curry powder. I’m going to write out how I did this on my ami-chan.net blog.