bugs, zuccini and water slides

T has become the bug police. Yesterday T made me phone D on his way home to report a bug in the house. Whenever I leave the back door open, T rushes to slam it shut - "no bugs in the house". At night time he now reports he is scared. When I asked him what he was scared of, he told me "mosquitos". A couple of nights in a row last week, he got a mosquito bite. I had to dole out superman bandaids to make them better and now T is afraid they are going to bite him again at night. Last night he wore his dinosaur pj's so the dinosaurs could eat the mosquitos for him. I guess the trucks on his other pj's will have to be trained to do the same thing.

Apart from that, home grown zuccini have arrived. First from a guy at work who showed up with two giant ones on Friday and our own first two which I picked on Sunday. So dinner lately has been somewhat zuccini loaded.

Friday - zuccini and goat cheese/sundried tomato pizza - good but a bit disappointing. Likely cause was T helping me with the pizza dough by adding almost half a bottle of oregano to the dough. I tried to get it out of the bowl but the dough had a distinctly green cast to it and I think the oregano overwhelmed the rest of the flavours. The pizza dough recipe is a family one - 2 cups flour, 4 tsps baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/3 c oil and 3/4 c of milk - mix and roll out into pizza shapes - makes 2 thinnish pizza crusts (12") - bake at 350 for 25 minutes after you have added your toppings.

Saturday - dinner out with D (!!!!!!) - thanks to Auntie K

Sunday - roasted potatoes, onions and zuccini served with organic beef and blueberry sausage with a blue cheese sauce (1.5 oz of butter, 1.5 oz of flour and 500 ml of milk - whisk together over medium heat until combined and butter melted - heat for 5 minutes and season. Add cheese to taste - this is from Delia Smith's Basic's Book 1)

Monday - dinner creek side at L's with the kids - we had grilled black cod with lemon butter caper sauce, grilled asparagus, rice and greek salad - the kids had giant turkey dogs. Then the kids played on the water slide until they were exhausted, grassy and soaking wet - fun! It was funny watching an 8 year old trying to boss two 3 year olds.

Tuesday - chicken strips, roasted potatoes and spinach, onion and mushrooms with balsamic vinegar and feta cheese.

Tonight - potato salad (adapted from a Tomato Fresh recipe - made with sour cream, grainy mustard and mayonaise), greek salad (D loves this!) and what was supposed to be zuccini fritters. It was more like a hashy frittata - maybe I added to many variations to it - corn and ham so maybe next time I'll try with just zuccini and do a thicker, pancakier batter. It was still yummy so no harm done.

Lately T has been into eating contests. When we sit down at dinner, he announces the contest and for the past couple of nights, tells us who is to win that night. He got very annoyed with D tonight as he cleaned his plate first and I was supposed to win. D was to be the "afterwinner" tonight. So we ate more salad and I won the second time around.

Glorious summer weather continues. The tomatoes are coming on - have a batch of orange cherry tomatoes ready to pick - I'm thinking of trying Nigella's Moonblush recipe with those (drying in the oven at night..) I've picked a few peas over the past week and T has obligingly eaten most of them - when he beats D to the punch.

Last weekend was lovely. Saturday morning in the garden, followed by a small boy's birthday party with trucks, water guns, cake and ice cream,





then T went swimming with Auntie K while D and I went shopping for lighting (long story!) and then had an early dinner before picking up an exhausted boy. Sunday T and I slept in (!!) and then went off to the market, followed by playing in the park with trucks for T while I visited with a friend, then home to the garden and playing with the hose and playing with trucks when D got home from work and family supper.