sticky chicken with bacon and leek

Something I used to make my family growing up we called sticky tuna. It remains one of my dad's favourite things to eat when he visits. Basically it is tuna and noodles with some peas, sauted onions and cheese all blended together. I don't make it much any more as neither of my guys will eat tuna but the other week I had some leftover chicken from a slow roasted bird and thought of making a sticky version with chicken. Et voila. My husband loved it. The boy still hasn't warmed up to the idea of noodles yet so he had just chicken and cheese. Meanwhile I'm kicking myself that this never occurred to me before so we could have been eating this all along.

Sticky Chicken with Bacon and Leek
1/2 medium onion, diced
1 medium leek, halved and sliced into half moons, washed well
2 rashers bacons, sliced
3 tbsp butter
10 mushrooms, sliced
3 tbsp flour
1 3/4 c milk
1/2 tsp mustard powder
2 c of leftover chicken, diced
1 package egg noodles
1 c frozen peas
1 c medium cheddar, grated

Saute the onion, leek and bacon in the butter in a largish saucepan over medium heat until the onion is translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the mushrooms and cook another 5 minutes. Add the flour and milk and stir until blended. Add the mustard powder and chicken and heat for a couple of minutes. Add the noodles and cover. Stir every couple of minutes or so, adding more milk or some water if the mixture starts to stick to the bottom of the pan. As the noodles approach al dente, add in the peas and the cheese, stirring to mix.

 Keep cooking until the noodles are completely cooked and the mixture starts to brown on the bottom (that's the sticky part). Serve warm.

english easter treats

We spent Easter Sunday at my brother's house in England. Our boy was a bit worried that the Easter bunny would have trouble finding him but all turned out well. The bunny delivered chocolate to our boy's borrowed bedside and there was a lot of other chocolate during the day, including an easter egg (chick, bunny pop, etc) hunt outside in the garden and a couple of easter desserts or puddings as they are called in England to celebrate the day. Both were the brain child of my lovely sister-in-law.

These are chocolate nests filled with mini eggs and smarties - the nests were made from a mixture of light syrup and chocolate mixed with shredded cereal (Weetabix, cornflakes and oatmeal). I would use my chocolate haystack cookie recipe to make these again.

This is a pavlova decorated with halved Kinder eggs, mini eggs and smarties. Cute!

I hope you all had a lovely chocolatey Easter.

contrary

Today, being Sunday, the boy and I were on our own during the day (husband works). So today's adventure was going to the garden store and buying a birdhouse kit for the boy and lots (and lots) of seeds and bulbs (me). I need to come up with a plan for the garden rather than wing it, I suppose.

After the boy ran around the seed section and begged for everything from the super deluxe birdhouse ($129) to a plastic hawk (bird deterent), getting cups of water from the water fountain, with me playing bad cop (|"no, come here, behave, etc") I was a bit on edge. So I decided we would stop on the way home, weather permitting (ie no snow or hail or driving rain) and we would go for a walk on a trail I read about a while ago but still haven't ventured on. The boy bargained hard for a stop for ice cream on the way home but in the end we settled on walking in the woods until he was tired and then a trip for ice cream. We set off up the path, the boy running ahead. When we were about half way up the hill the boy decided he'd had enough. So we played dodge-em up the hill - he would stand in front of me to stop me from continuing, I would dodge around him and so forth. We could hear rushing water from the trail and had glimpses of rushing water through the trees. We came to a fork in the trail and one side led to a lookout. And a view of the falls.

And then we set off back home, at which point the boy was upset as I hadn't let him take a picture of the falls with my phone.

We stopped for ice cream and all was better again. The boy even did the happy boy ice cream dance. So I wasn't surprised when ice cream made the list as one of the two best things* that happened today. But I was surprised by the second - the falls. And nothing made the one bad thing that happened today list - not even stepping on his lego warship and destroying the guns.

Cypress Falls

*I took to asking this question occasionally after I read about it on Tea and Cookies. You ask each member of your family to identify two good things and one bad thing that happened that day. Try it and it might give you insight into your family too. I'm usually surprised by some of the answers.

postcards from home

A couple of weeks ago, on a solitary evening walk, I came across a gem of a view.

It’s close to our house, about 6 blocks, as the crow flies. A tiny signpost pointed the way through the woods or I never would have found it.

It’s a special place to our family because it’s where my husband’s siblings spent some of their childhood, in the days when there was a marina in the bay. I’ll take our boy there for a picnic soon so he’ll know it too.

us

A little bit ago, I read David’s post about how to be a better blogger. And I’m taking some of the advice to heart so you’ll be seeing some changes here at mummydinosaur.

As I’ve had comments from some lovely people I don’t know personally but only through the blog world, I’m changing the way I refer to my family. My husband’s new moniker for blogging purposes is Skinny Man (SM). And I’ll refer to our son as either our boy, or our son. Because people who don’t know us won’t know who D or T refers to. (D is my husband, T is our boy for those of you reading older posts).

You might wonder how I came up with Skinny Man as a persona for my husband. Well, he’s been my Skinny Man since we met nearly 9 years ago. He’s long and lanky and much taller than I am. The nickname became official when I drew a comic of us entitled “Skinny Man and Sweater Girl go off on another adventure”. And the same comic was transformed to become part of our wedding invitation and some (lucky) friends and family got the caption – “Skinny Man and Sweater Girl are getting married”.

We had three captions for the invitations just to mix things up. You can do that when you are such a Bridezilla that you make your own invitations.

So now that I’ve admitted to the nickname Sweater Girl you might wonder why this blog is called mummy dinosaur. Well, around the time I started this blog, I would play dinosaurs with our boy and he was boy dinosaur and I was mummy dinosaur. I didn’t think it would be a blog name that was already taken and I was right. So I became mummy dinosaur. (It is also a reference that I’m an older mummy and sometimes feel like a dinosaur when among other mummies).

So that is us, our little family.

white chocolate cranberry shortbread

I usually bake shortbread for Christmas. It is something I used to do for Christmas with mum. When I was younger we had a sheltie named Ariel who had a passion for shortbread – he used to get terribly excited when we put the pounds of butter on the counter to warm before making it at Christmas. (He also loved raisins and had to have a few before bedtime.) And I’ve been through other shortbread traditions as well. When I lived in Montreal, my friend Leslie and I would make huge numbers of shortbread cookies one day every December when we both lived there – bells, santas, holly, stars, angels and dinosaurs. This year I’ve done two versions – a cheater version which was I baked up a bunch I had in the freezer that I bought for a fund raising event (frozen cookies that you bake) – the other based on a friend of a friend’s recipe that I got a sample of at work. These are really cookie bars and easy to make. The first batch I made is almost gone so I will have to do another batch this week.


White chocolate cranberry shortbread
1 1/2 c flour
1/2 c corn starch
1/2 tsp salt
1 c butter
3/4 c icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 c dried canberries, chopped
1/2 c white chocolate chips
icing sugar for dusting (optional)

Preheat your oven to 300 degrees. Line a 9 x 13 baking pan with parchment paper so that the paper overhangs the ends.

In a large bowl, combine flour with corn starch and salt. In a separate bowl, beat the butter with the icing sugar and vanilla until very creamy. Stir in the flour mixture, cranberries and chocolate chips. Pat evenly into the baking pan, using floured fingers or a spoon. Prick the surface all over, using a fork (Note – I couldn’t do this with my batch – it was too flaky but the shortbread still worked)

Bake in at 300 deg F for 40 - 50 minutes or until golden around edges. Leave to cool in the pan on a wire rack for 30 minutes before lifting out of the pan. Slice into bars while still warm. Dust with icing sugar (optional).

mummy guilt

Got a call from T's preschool just after lunch to say that he'd thrown up this morning but was acting his usual self. Did I want to come and get him? After about a half hour I could no longer take the overwhelming guilt and left work to pick up my little guy.

Of course, he was running around the playground, pink cheeks, happy, busy and no sign of any bug anywhere. But one of his classmates was off sick and that's why they called me. It wasn't such a bad thing to be standing in the playground, in the sunshine, watching a group of busy, 3 and 4 year olds running around, sliding down slides, etc. After a while we came home and my little lad played with trucks and puzzles and didn't feel ill until bedtime. But after some medicine and cuddles and something to eat, he took his truck to bed for his animals to see and fell asleep on the floor. I don't know why but periodically he likes to sleep on the floor. Definitely something he doesn't get from me - I love my bed. Can't imagine choosing to sleep on a floor!

D was home late tonight so late supper of mixed rice with vegetables and chicken in peanut sauce. Yum! I think that was the first thing I ever made for D.

The recipe for the peanut sauce is adapted from the Rebar Cookbook:
1/4 c peanut butter
2 minced cloves garlic
1 tbsp minced ginger
1 tbsp sweet thai chili sauce
1/4 c soy sauce
2 tbsps red wine vinegar
2 tbsps brown sugar
2 tbsps lime juice
a splash of veggie stock to thin out

sunshine at last

Spring at last. And daffodils on the kitchen counter, courtesy of the Bradner Daffodil Festival last Sunday. The camelia and the star magnolia are blooming in the front yard. All is good.

T gets to play outside so much more now and is a tired little guy when it rolls around to bedtime - what a blessing! Of course, he's usually covered in dirt but all good!

I made the mistake of telling him about his playdate for next Sunday and of course, he wanted to go to the park and meet D right now. All the way home he kept saying, "D is really close now!". But by the time we got home, he seemed to understand my explanations about Sunday being 4 days away (but mummy it's sunny now). I think the sight of the "rogader" (road grader) distracted him a bit - he loves trucks.