Tabitha Schultz is a Twit.

Ok, so after telling Andrew last night that I should never join twitter on account of being likely to become obsessive, I did it anyway. I'm clearly not a woman of my word.

Andrew asked me what I was planning to do the other day, and my reply was "check my Facebook status". He then asked me "what are you reading now?" and I replied, "check my blog". Poor guy. Should my husband have to use the internet to find out what I'm doing or what I think? No. But it'd be easier for me if he did. It'd be more convenient for me if he updated more often actually.

We are what we eat

Apparently to be "australian" means eating wheatbix, spag bol, and 63 kgs of potatoes per year, according to a recent AC Nelson report, published by the Fairfax blog "Who We Are". According to this then, I'm less unaustralian than I thought.

Rite of passage

With 10 weeks left until my due date, and my friend Sam giving birth this week, I have found myself in a new stage of this pregnancy. I have an overwhelming urge to be "prepared" both in my house [commonly called nesting] and emotionally/spiritually as well.

Our local library yielded several books specifically about labour, two of which I borrowed. For then next few weeks, my study will be these:

Birth Skills by Juju Sundin

Birth by Catherine Price & Sandra Robinson

Jewels has also lent me an older book called Mornings of Joy by Pennie Kidd, that she said helped her through all three of her labours.

Much of my motivation in reading and preparing now, is so that I can have a sense of control in labour. Quite clearly it is the biggest thing that I've yet had to face, but it is becoming very important to me that I do what I can, to make it the best experience possible.

I was contemplating labour as a Rite of Passage for a woman. It seems to me, without disparaging those who use painkilling drugs and opt for Caesarian deliveries, that experiencing the labour in all it's pain and glory is hugely important to us as feeling like whole women. Even those I know who do use epidurals [and who knows, I may join their ranks] give it their best shot before that time and endure hours on end of excruciating pain.

Why would we do this? If it were not a child that I was delivering, there is no way that I would chose to go through potentially days of pain, without the drugs! Better yet, if a surgical option could quickly remove the problem, I'd sign up for it.

Looking at Sam this week, as I visited her in the hospital, I thought about how the mother who has just given birth is honoured as a champion, we come to see the baby but we also come to pay homage to the one who endured and won. Champion she is! Sitting proudly with her child, having only 4 hours sleep in the 48 hours since birth, and looking exhausted while clearly content - she is more than a hero. Unfortunately no medal is presented, and the ordeal quite quickly forgotten by everyone, until next time.

11 weeks and counting down.

I have 75 days until my due date [+/- 10 days either way]. Thats about 11 weeks until we meet my giant intestinal worms. 11 weeks until I can have a pepperoni pizza. 11 weeks until everything changes permanently. 11 weeks til our washing machine finds out what its really made of. 11 weeks til we find out how good our sonographer was at gender prediction. Anything else I've forgotten?

Coconut Ice Auditions

Usually to chose which version of a recipe to use, I look through my books, and chose the one that sounds the best, is most economical on ingredients, or has the most 'appeal'.

For my Coconut Ice though, I've decided to make a batch of each, and taste test.

PWMU cookbook [1980] has 2 recipes.

#1 Ingredients are milk, sugar and coconut. Mixture is boiled for 10 min and then set.

#2 Ingredients are icing sugar, coconut, egg white, copha and food colouring. Recipe is mixed and set but not cooked.

Stephanie Alexander's Cook's Companion uses #2 with identical ingredients and processes. This is a good omen, if my two favourites agree.

Family Circle Cooking - a commonsense guide.

#3 Ingredients are icing sugar, cream of tartar, condensed milk, coconut, food colour.

The last recipe is certainly the most "fool-proof" and one that I've made many times before. As such, I know I will have at least one batch of successful ice.

#2 sounds promising, because I tend to hold Stephanie Alexander as the authority on all things cooking. She's rarely wrong.

#1 is a challenge. I tried it once a few years back before I'd had any experience making confectionary. It never set. I'm sure that it must have a chance of working though, and I like that it follows the middle-eastern style of reducing milk. Its a fresh condensed milk and coconut slice really. Hopefully this time it works, and I have an idea that it will be wonderfully moist, which is how I want my coconut.

List 3

chicken necks

roast chook

yoghurt

milk 4 d/c

fruit pieces

cold meat

bread

fruit

water

dog treats

Dummies

Today's list was found in a puddle at the Plaza on a foggy wet night. If it were on waterproof paper [like list 1] it would be in better shape!

I swear that if the 'dog treats' was changed to 'cat food' this could be my own shopping list.

Lambcakes [what to do when you stuff up the meat!]

Yesterday I had planned to make a lovely slowcooked lamb and sweet potato dish. Being organised, I popped the frozen lamb chops into the casserole pot and onto the oven early in the afternoon. Being an idiot, I went to the Dr's office, and left the lamb in the oven for 3 hours. Thankfully, the house was still standng when I got home. The meat was almost burned, and drier than Lake Learmonth. Andrew came to the rescue and bought home pizza.

Today I thought I'd try to resurrect the meat so it wasn't a dead loss. I remembered mum used to make us pikelets which included leftover meat, so I gave it a go. Here's how to do it.




Blend the meat [4 lamb chops], 2/3 cup cooked vegies [green peas], 2 cups self raising flour, 2 eggs, 1 teaspoon [5ml] baking powder and liquid in food processor until it resembles a pancake batter.


Cook as usual. 1/4 cup measure made a good size pikelet.



Serve with a good tomato sauce. I used my Red Sauce. Follow the link to find the recipe. I reckon some sour cream and or sweet chutney wouldn't go astray either, especially as this is lamb!

Andrew wasn't as impressed as I was at the outcome, he said he's not used to that kind of food. To me it tasted just like I remembered as a kid. I think its a great Saturday lunch type meal, specially for kids! Made me happy.

I'd also like to say that while it not a MasterChef winning recipe, tonight, after I'd finished eating, they did savoury pancakes on MasterChef, so I feel quite clever!

Baby Countdown

My abdomen is expanding still, it feels like I have giant intestinal worms that like to do the Hokey Pokey, and I have less than 3 months left of being pregnant! This time anyway :)

It feels like I've been "with child" forever, with an eternity left to go. At the same time I've realised that time is slipping away and so very soon I'll have a real live baby here! 

To cope with the time, this week I made myself a daily tear-off calendar.

In case you can't tell, the picture at the top is the 17 week ultrasound, showing our baby's head, spinal cord and gooey bits. It has grown a lot since then, but its the only picture that we have to date. 

On the right is a big wad of paper. Each piece has the date down the bottom, in small print, while the big numbers tell us how many days remain until our due date. The numbers count down to zero, and then continue to minus 13. God willing we can stop tearing off sheets before then!

For some people this would increase the feeling of 'waiting', especially as the numbers approach zero. Those of you who know me though, will remember how much I love a countdown!! Even if the numbers go down past zero, it will still give me the feeling that I'm doing something, and make the waiting more fun. Plus, its cool to rip something off every day!!!

For the record, as of today there are 85 days remaining until the 5t Sept.