Mixed up words

I love the wonderful ways in which little kids can get their words mixed up.

For a long time Venus would say wetting instead of wedding. The words "Mummy, how many days until Libby and George's wetting?" uttered many many times leading up to the actual event, turned out to be somewhat prophetic as it poured rain for most of that day and the ceremony had to be held indoors rather than out in the garden as originally planned.

At the moment she keeps calling her dressing gown her dressing down. It makes me giggle every time.

Once we were in the fruit and vegetable section in the supermarket and she asked me whether we needed to buy georginas. It turned out she meant aubergines. We didn't.

We were on the bus tour at a wildlife safari park earlier in the year. We stopped in the enclosure where the bison live. Venus stood up in her chair, pointed at the bison and yelled "Look Mummy, hacks! Hacks Mummy, hacks!" It sounded like she was being awfully insulting, but she thought they were yaks.

Recently Ms Awesome jokingly threatened to feed my children ox tongue when they were misbehaving at her house. Venus told me later that Ms Awesome wanted to make them eat fox tongue.

But my all time favourite so far is this:

"Mummy, when are you going to do your ogres again?"

"Ogres?"

"Yes, your ogres. You haven't done your ogres for a long time."

"I don't know what you're talking about. What are my ogres?"

"Your ogres are your exercises Mummy, on the Wii."

"Do you mean yoga?"

"Oh, yes. Yoga."

Family tree

Sometimes Mars amazes me with his complete lack of consideration for others, but at other times he really impresses me with his thoughtfulness and kindness.

He brought home from school a drawing of a family tree which featured ovals labelled "Me", "Mum", "Dad", "Mum's Mum" and so on. We had a week to print some pictures of the family, glue them on and send it back to school.

But there was a problem.

As soon as Mars looked at this family tree, he noticed something. Something very important. Something was missing.

There was no space on the tree for Venus, and it really bothered him.

It bothered him so much that he insisted that we add her. So while Supernerd was downstairs painstakingly printing portraits at just the right size, I took out my black pens and went to work. 

It's a fairly dodgy effort, but I was pretty pleased with the result. I showed it to Mars, and I think he was almost as impressed with me as I was with him for insisting that his sister be added to his family tree.

I don't think every brother would do that for his little sister, but I sure am glad that Mars did.

Oh bugger

Not long ago Mars was settling in for some screen time with Supernerd's old laptop. He arranged the computer and a large cushion on the loungeroom floor, lay down, got comfortable and switched the computer on.

Then I heard an old-man groan issue from his lips as he realised he'd forgotten something and he was going to have to get up again.

I asked him what was wrong, and he told me that he'd forgotten to grab the mouse and plug it in. As the laptop comes equipped with a trackpad and buttons, I asked him whether he was doing something that particularly needed a mouse, or if he just preferred to use the mouse instead of the trackpad.

He pointed to the left mouse button on the laptop, which has been dodgy for a long time, and said "No, it's just that that mouse button is buggered....I mean stuffed! Sorry Mum, I meant to say stuffed!"

"Did you just say 'buggered'?"

"Yes, but I didn't mean it!"

It seemed like a genuine accident, so I didn't give him a hard time. I just reinforced that it's really not a nice word for a child to use, and that I shouldn't use it either.


Less than a week later...


I was trudging up the street to visit Ms Awesome, and as I made my way through their front yard I found myself shooing the local wandering dog. Let's call him Fozzie. 


Fozzie lives around the corner from Ms Awesome and Captain Spreadsheet, and his humans let him wander the streets leaving deposits on the neighbours' lawns. They don't think it's anything to worry about, but Ms Awesome has had enough of finding barker's eggs in her front yard. So the X-Man has learned to shout at the dog "Go home Fozzie!" from the front porch whenever he sees the dog in their yard.


So I was loudly telling this dog to go home, and just as I drew level with the front door the X-Man flung the door open and screamed at the top of his lungs:


"Bugger off Fozzie!"


I know what you're thinking. You're thinking I've taught the neighbours' child a wonderful new word, but it wasn't me. 


I got inside to discover his mother with her head in her hands, because all he'd done was repeat what she'd said.


She sat on the naughty mat while X-Man's father explained to him that that word is not a nice word for children to use, and Mummy really shouldn't use it either. Even to dogs.


Oh bugger.

Lemon meringue pie

Long ago I made a lemon meringue pie to share with friends, and it was a bit of a disaster. I think I burned the pastry, but the filling and the meringue were both okay.

I was determined to try again. I distinctly remember saying "I'm going to keep making lemon meringue pie every week until I get it right."

So the following week when I tried again the filling was so runny that as we drove to our friends' house it was flowing out of the pie from underneath the meringue.

I was grumpy about how I'd screwed it up, but at least I hadn't made the same mistake twice. To my friends' credit, they still ate the pie.

For the third week in a row, I baked the same lemon meringue pie. This time I burnt the pastry and the meringue.

They still ate the pie, and I gave up.

Until yesterday.

Yesterday I needed to bake a lemon meringue pie for a dinner party, and because of my history with this pie I made sure I gave myself plenty of time so I wouldn't be rushing and make a silly mistake.

I made the pastry from scratch. It was kind of lumpy but it seemed okay. I baked it and it shrank and looked kind of ugly. Not at all like the picture in the cookbook.

I made the filling. It was thick and gooey and yellow. It looked exactly like the picture in the cookbook.

I made the meringue. It was glossy and beautiful, but was way too soft and wouldn't make nice peaks. It looked kind of like the picture in the cookbook.

It went in the oven and when it came out it was kind of disappointing, but it wasn't bad.

It wasn't bad, until I put it in the car and drove ten minutes to where I needed to go.

When I got there I realised that the pie had leaked sticky fluid around the inside of the container it was in, and down the side of the wicker basket it was sitting on inside the car.

I said rude words to it and jammed it in the fridge, and when the time came to serve it the pastry was soft and didn't hold its shape, and the meringue collapsed around the sides. It tasted fine, but I was not happy.

I was even less happy when at the end of the night I went out to the car and found a sticky lemony mess all over the passenger seat behind and under where the wicker basket had been.

So what have I learned? I think I need a new recipe, and if I ever put a lemon meringue pie in the car again, it's going to be in something that absolutely won't leak.

Bloody lemon meringue pie.

Soup

Quiche Thursday took an interesting turn several weeks ago when Ms Awesome suggested I not make a quiche, because she was making soup the day before and would have enough for lunch on Thursday.

So I didn't make a quiche, and Ms Awesome made a beautiful pumpkin and vegie soup with risoni. 

When I got to her place I was in the next room playing with X-Man and I heard the fridge open and Ms Awesome shout.

When I got to the kitchen she was standing in front of the fridge with the door open and there was orange stuff all over the floor.

I said the only thing I could think of.

I said "please tell me that's the soup".

She laughed for a long time, and we cleaned up the mess on the floor. Then we opened the fridge and saw the soup all over the inside of the fridge, and we laughed some more.

So we cleaned that up as well and had leftover sausage rolls for lunch, and that was how Soup Thursday was born.

Since then there have been two Soup Thursdays, and I am delighted to report that on neither occasion has the soup resembled vomit. 

Last week Ms Awesome made a wonderful chicken soup with home made stock, and mine still had some bones in it.

We laughed about that too.

Grammar ninja

The misuse of punctuation irks me, and I am usually able to restrain myself from explaining to people that they are idiots, getting out a big black texta to fix things, or sending notices back to school with corrections marked in red pen.

But yesterday I saw something that I just couldn't let pass.

Supernerd and I were on our way to a local cafe for breakfast when we walked past another cafe with an A-frame blackboard outside, advertising the inclusion of tapas on their menu.

The trouble was, they'd written tapa's. Every single time. Three times on each side of the blackboard.

I saw it as we walked towards it, inwardly groaned, and was almost about to walk past it and keep going when I realised three important things.

Firstly, it was just chalk on a blackboard, so it was going to be really easy to fix.

Secondly, there was nobody sitting outside the cafe, so nobody but Supernerd would witness what I was about to do.

And thirdly, if I didn't fix it then every other person walking down that street would see the word tapa's and think that it was correct, and I just couldn't let that happen.

So I pulled on my grammar ninja outfit, crouched down and rubbed every single apostrophe off that blackboard with my finger. Then I went around to the other side and did it again.

Supernerd, always supportive, tried to get a picture of me in the act, but I was too fast.

Because that's what a grammar ninja does. 

We right grammatical wrongs and then vanish into the night. Or the cafe up the street. Either works for me.

Quiche Thursday

Sometimes things just work out. That's how Quiche Thursday started.

Captain Spreadsheet is allergic to eggs. He wasn't always allergic to them, but it makes him sad that now when he goes out for breakfast he has to order bacon and eggs without the eggs.

That means that Ms Awesome never makes quiche, because if she did she would be the only one in her house eating it. 

So I made her a quiche and she made a salad and we had lunch together one day at her house, and it was lovely.

But then it got better, because Ms Awesome mentioned the quiche to Mrs Z, who also loves quiche and never makes it because Mr Z doesn't like eggs.

So the Thursday after that became Quiche Thursday. That was about five or six weeks ago, and most Thursdays have been Quiche Thursday since then. It's a brilliant arrangement. I make the quiche, someone makes a salad and someone else makes a dessert. Our kids all play together and we get to catch up over quiche and cake.

If you have a need to eat quiche but nobody to eat it with, my advice is to find someone with an egg-intolerant spouse. So that you may find your own Quiche Thursday, I give you the easiest and quiche recipe ever.

4 eggs

1 chopped onion

375ml milk

250g chopped ham or bacon

1 cup grated tasty cheese

1/2 cup self-raising flour

salt and pepper to taste

Preheat your oven to 200c if fan-forced or 220c if not fan-forced. Place all the ingredients in a big bowl and mix until well combined. Pour into a greased quiche dish or baking dish and bake for 40 minutes.

You can add lots of different ingredients to this basic recipe. Swap the ham for smoked salmon, add corn, mushrooms, or capsicum if you like. You can also thinly slice a tomato and lay the slices on top of the quiche before you bake it, to make it look pretty. I like to add herbs from my little herb garden. Fresh basil is wonderful in this quiche.


Enjoy!