Sweet & sticky pork with rice
2cm piece grated ginger
2tbs kecap manis
1 tbs soy sauce
1 tbs brown sugar
1 teaspoon Gourmet Garlic Chunky garlic Paste
1 teaspoon Gourmet Garlic Hot chilli Paste
2 tbs oil
500g pork tossed in flour
6 spring onions, finely sliced
asian greens & jasmine rice

Combine grated ginger, kecap manis, soy sauce, sugar, garlic and chilli paste in a bowl.

Lightly flour the pork and fry in batches in the hot oil, remove from the pan.

Add the sauce to the pan and half a cup of water and bring to the simmer.

Reduce sauce then add back the pork and juices and the spring onions.

Simmer for a few minutes until the sauce is thickened.

Serve with steamed rice and pakchoi.

Spicy Thai style Butternut and coconut soup.
1 large butternut pumpkin skinned and chopped into chunks
1 tin of coconut milk
2 cups of chicken stock
2 medium onions
3 tablespoons Gourmet Garden Thai paste
1/2 teaspoon Gourmet Garden chunky garlic paste
1/2 teaspoon Gourmet Garden Hot chilli pasta
the juice of a lime
1 tbsp brown sugar (could use palm sugar)
a couple of generous dashes of fish sauce
1 handful of finely chopped fresh coriander

Gently fry the onion in vegetable oil until translucent and then add the spices.

Cook until fragrant and soft (a few minutes) and then add the butternut and cover with chicken stock. (use more or less until the pumpkin is just covered)

Simmer with a lid on until the butternut is soft. About 30 minutes.
Use a stick blender to process in the pot until the soup is smooth.

Add the coconut milk, sugar, fish sauce and coriander and stir until silky and warmed through.

Serve with a lime cheek and a few sprigs of coriander.  Or if you are me, serve with toasted french stick and butter and LOTS of finely chopped coriander!

Chicken Livers – Figados de Galinha
500 Grams Chicken Livers
2 Tablespoons Olive Oil
2 Tablespoons Butter
1 Large Onion Chopped
1/2 teaspoon Gourmet Garden Chunky Garlic Paste
1 teaspoon Gourmet Garden Hot Chilli Paste
1 Pinch Cumin
1 Teaspoon Salt
1 Pinch Pepper
2 Teaspoons Paprika
1 Whole Bay Leaf
8 Tablespoons White Wine
To Taste Nando’s Peri Peri Sauce

Instructions :
1. Trim and wash livers.
2. Place butter and olive oil in a frying pan.

3. Add livers and spices and fry until just brown.
4. Add onions and Gourmet Garden pastes and cook for a few minutes.

5. Add bay leaves and wine, and simmer over low heat for 5-8 minutes.
6. Adjust seasoning and add Nando`s Hot or Medium Peri-Peri sauce if required.

Serve with crusty white bread and butter.

Meatballs in gravy with mash

Ingredients: Gravy
1 small grated onion
1/3 teaspoon Gourmet Garden chunky garlic paste
3 teaspoons soy sauce
4 tablespoons plain flour
1 cup beef stock

I use my magimix food processor to turn two bits of stale bread, minus the crusts, into breabcrumbs.

Then I peel and quarter the onions and use the food processor to finely slice the onions.

Mix all meatball ingredients in a bowl with your hands and shape the meatballs into palm size.

Brown meatballs in batches in a little olive oil in a pan, remove from the pan.

Start the sauce by deglazing the pan with a little beef stock and pour drippings onto meatballs.

Make the sauce by gently frying 1 small grated onion with 1/3 of a teaspoon of Gourmet Garden chunky garlic paste. When the onion and garlic has softened, add 3 teaspoons of soy sauce.

Whisk 4 tablespoons of flour into the warmed up cup of beef stock and then slowly add to and mix continuously to thicken and bring to the boil.

Place meatballs in sauce and put in the oven for 45 mins on 180 to 200°C or if you live in a house with no oven, gently simmer on the stove-top without a lid for about 45 minutes until the meatballs are cooked through and the gravy has thickened up.

Serve with mashed potato and steamed greens.

Inside were six little tubes of herby goodness delivered courtesey of Gourmet Garden in order for me to take part in their Blog off/cook off. The aim is for me to cook meals for my family like I would do normally, but using these herbs and spices to make our regular meals just that little bit more special. This was a challenge I was ready to take on, you know how much I enjoy meal planning and now that the budget is a bit tight with all the renovation work, it was an opportunity to get my planning book out!

Inside my pack were large tubes of Basil, Coriander, Chunky garlic and Hot Chilli paste and two smaller tubes, one of Thyme and one of Thai seasoning containing lemongrass, ginger, coriander and chilli. I popped them into the fridge and got busy planning the menu for this week. Stay tuned for my first recipe, coming tomorrow featuring Thyme, Basil and Chunky Garlic.

Moving out of our old house was smooth and relatively stress free. I spent the majority of the morning with the girls up at the shopping centre having coffee and the rest of the morning at the library choosing books with the girls while Ron helped the guys move all our furniture and belongings into a container.

Moving in on the other hand was the most stressful event of my recent life. I honestly can’t think of another day like it. We were booked to move in on the Wednesday and on Monday they started predicting an extreme weather event in Sydney that week. Our removal company told us that they were planning to go ahead with the move, rain be damned and so I borrowed as many old towels as I could from my mother-in-law and prepared for the worst.

What we got was worse than any worst-case-scenario in my mind. We had pushed back the move in order to push back the carpet fitting in order to give the skirtings one more night to dry after the painters ran over. Standard issues when renovating I am lead to believe. So the carpets were going in that morning and the rain was coming down. But by 11am when the carpet guy was finishing up, the rain got heavier and heavier and heavier.

The girls were still at the house playing while Ron and his Dad tried to set up a system of tarpaulins outside the front door in a desperate attempt to stop our stuff from getting wet when the removals guys brought it in. They were due at the house at lunchtime. This was when Amy came upstairs to tell us that there was a puddle downstairs in the rumpus room.

At the same time we realised the back shed was flooded and this was where we had been planning on storing a lot of the stuff that had been living in the garage room at our old house. The amount of water coming down from the sky was completely unbelievable and it was at this point that we started to think there was no way ever we would be moving into our new house that day. Ron’s dad took the girls back to their house and we waited for our removal guys to turn up.

When they parked the truck on the street it was raining so heavily that we actually couldn’t see the truck from the front doorstep. By this point it was clear that the storm-water drain under the deck was blocked because the water was about a foot deep and all the gutters that lead to the drain were overflowing. Water was spilling out everywhere, flowing off our neighbour’s carport and pouring down our driveway. The leak downstairs was actually groundwater seeping through the bottom layer of bricks in the wall. Its an exposed brick wall with a tile floor and a drain in the corner, thank goodness for small mercies, if you are going to have a leak in any room, that is the kind of room you want it in!

The lovely owner of the removal company was standing on the front doorstep with us as we tried to talk over the sound of the thunderous rain. He told us his company had only cancelled four jobs in over 16 years due to extreme weather but to our relief he said there was no way we could go ahead with the move today. Thank goodness we had paid for a professional company and all our stuff was neatly packed into two containers that could be turned around and driven straight back to their warehouse.

The move was cancelled. The trucks went back, Ron and I called our plumber and mopped up the water in the rumpus room. I went round the corner to our neighbours across the fence, my dear friend comforted me with cups of tea and hugs and words of support and somehow that dreadful day slowly drew to a close.

Our magical plumber took a good look around and made some immediate suggestions, Ron dug a drainage ditch along the far side of the house and a lot of ground water started to drain away quite quickly. He also said he would be back on the weekend with a mate and a jet blaster to clear the storm water drains. He was endlessly reassuring and said that all the issues were fixable which went a long way to relieving my fears. However that said there was still water leaking out of the bottom of the wall downstairs and we had to leave the house and go back to Ron’s parents place for the night with the rain still pouring down, wondering what we were going to go back and find the following morning.

It was a sleepless night. The good news was that the puddle of water was no more than it had been the day before and having a few extra days before we moved back in helped us work on the electrics and the cleaning and the plumbing problems. Ron’s parents were amazing and welcomed us back for an extra week without blinking. The girls were disappointed but endlessly adaptable, its been such a lesson for me this year, how remarkably resilient children can be when faced with huge changes!

When the following Tuesday came around the paint was dry, the carpets were hoovered, the new ceiling fans installed and the bathroom heat lamps and extractor fan all connected. The electrician had replaced the old electrics box with a new board and fuses and the drains were cleared and working. The puddle downstairs had dried up and we were ready to go!

On Friday Amy made her stage debut presenting assembly at school. It has been long anticipated because the Year Ones in her composite class got to present quite early in Term 1 and Amy and her friends have been waiting their turn ever since!

Not only was Amy first up but she had to present the trickiest part of the assembly, the welcome and acknowledgement of Country where Amy had to pay respects to the elders, both past and present who hold the hopes of Aboriginal Australia.

Ron had the afternoon off work and we were both so proud of her for standing up so bravely and speaking so clearly. The process of practicing for her speaking role was much easier than I anticipated! Amy started off reading the words she recognised but she was definitely familiar with the words having heard them every week at assembly.

Still, when she kept mixing up ‘custodians’ with ‘cultures’ I reminded her that she can stop to sound the word out in her mind and she will be able to tell the difference. By the end of the week she was repeating the paragraphs from memory but I was still amazed at the process from reading to learning.

Amazing! Also amazing was watching the various moods of Amy up on stage as she sat through the rest of assembly! Brilliant!

How are the girls you ask? How did they feel about leaving our old house, do they love the new house? Has the transition been fraught with emotional distress or has it all been a big adventure? Well, firstly thanks for asking and secondly, the girls are doing really well. Remarkably well. In fact I think this whole process has brought out the absolute best in our girls.

Stella in particular has changed so much over the last few months, weeks even that the little person she is now is hardly recognisable from the baby she was before. There are so many big things that have changed, no more dummies, she has her own room and sleeps in a big girl bed, she is talking much more and able to communicate clearly with everyone and anyone! She has gone from being a toddler to being a big three year old preschooler and just this weekend she decided that there was going to be no more delays, she refused to let Ron put a nappy on her and she has been wearing big girl pants all the way. Unreal, seriously, I heard her calling for me today and went looking for her, I called out to see where she was and she called back: “in the toilet Mummy, I do poo” and sure enough she had taken herself off to the loo and done her business. Incredible.

She is independent but cuddly, brave but sensitive and the move seems to have done her no harm at all. She loves having her own bedroom and sleeps mostly well although there have been the occasional nights where there is the gentle pitter patter of little feet down our hallway and a little body climbs into bed next to me and snuggles into me. Pure heaven.

Amy is going from strength to strength and thriving at school. She loves her desk and her new bed and happily sits down to do her homework when she gets home from school. She loves school and her teacher and has no complaints although she is still tired and grumpy and hungry some afternoons and we are working on getting back into regular eating and exercise habits, healthy afternoon teas and riding bikes to the park. I am so proud of Amy for being such an adaptable and balanced child and I love that she is settling so well into all the changes in her life this year.

This move was tied up in all sorts of emotional strings. This was the first home that Ron and I bought together, our first family home.

We moved in just a few weeks before Amy turned one and then grew our family there adding Stella and making our mark in so many ways.

We nurtured the garden, replaced the deck, painted walls and hung photographs.

This was the home that we bought our new baby back to, these were the rooms that we nursed our children through illness and celebrated milestones like birthdays, Christmas, first steps.

Honestly so many of my memories of the last five years are centered around that house.

Which meant leaving was hard. Leaving was complicated. Leaving was done in a rush and a panic and with a slow, drawn out breath.

Leaving was done on our terms and after all the stress it was actually a relatively painless process, designed that way to minimise the impact on the girls who thought it was all rather good fun actually!

We spent Easter packing, it’s easy when everything has to go and then on Tuesday morning four big guys arrived with a large shipping container and packed the contents of our house in the space of a few hours.

While we waited for final settlement on both the houses, we moved in with Grandma and Grandad. That phone call from our solicitor was almost an anticlimax. For so long I had lived with huge big negative thoughts in my head and suddenly a simple phone conversation, “The house is yours, you can pick up the keys” it was hard to believe it was actually true, our forever home.

Right now we could talk about this…..

Or we could focus on this instead. This being one of the biggest reasons why we took a huge risk on this house……

The quiet culdesac, the lovely neighbours, the better postcode, the 200m walk up the road to an awesome park…..

The change in our living space that gives us all the room we need to spread our wings and grow, together as a family and separately, as individuals…..

These are the things we are concentrating on right now even though we have holes in our ceiling and no doors on our kitchen cupboards….

These are the moments our children will remember long after the holes are patched and the kitchen is shining and new….This is the childhood we want to create for our children……