Lazy, Rainy Sunday

This is the view from my bed, it's hard to see through the blinds, the farmlands past the town, in the distance, with the steeple of the Catholic church just in front.

Well I didn't do much yesterday either.  But today I've spent in bed watching tv, reading and trying to find a recipe online.  Our Christmas cake has always been just a boiled fruit cake recipe out of my old Commonsense Cookery book.  It was a school text of course, but I never kept mine.  Mum bought me one in Melbourne for some reason when Katy was a baby.  It was just a soft cover and fell apart over the years.  The only recipes I really made out of it were goulash, and I know that recipe by heart, and the cake.  When we moved in here I threw out a lot of my cookbooks, only keeping a few favourites.  I'm wishing now I hadn't but that's another story.  I know I wouldn't have thrown out the Commonsense book but I can't find it anywhere.  I tried searching online all afternoon yesterday to no avail, even asked my friends on Facebook but they only had another version of it sans the recipe.  I joined a recipe forum today and still had no luck, but man can strangers be helpful when you ask for something like that.  Kind of restored my faith a bit after meeting a lot of nasties online over the years.
Anyway I have resigned myself to finding another recipe to use.  I like the old one because it was simple and could be tweaked in various ways and also because it is tradition, I've made that as our Christmas cake for over 20 years now.  So much for thinking when I threw away the cookbooks that I could find any recipe I wanted online.

Chapter Forty asked if I could post recipes and I certainly can.  Here is the recipe for the Crunchy Nut Chicken that I made the other night.  I don't have a photo but I will take one next time I make it.

2 cups corn flakes
1/3 cup macadamia nuts finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon chicken stock powder
1 egg white
1/4 cup skim milk
4 x 125g flattened skinless chicken breasts
cooking spray

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Method

Preheat oven 180 C fan forced.

Place corn flakes in a plastic bag then using a rolling pin crush finely. Add nuts and stock powder into bag and shake, tip onto a flat plate. Using a fork beat egg white and milk. Dip flattened breasts in egg mixture, then coat each side of chicken with crumbs. Place on a flat baking tray that has been coated with cooking spray, spray over top of chicken and bake 25-30 minutes or until cooked and coating is golden brown.

I chopped the nuts in my new whiz bang stab blender's bowl then put the cornflakes in and crushed them, very easy.

I found a satay chicken recipe online, a proper one not just chicken with peanut butter on it.  I had some offcuts of chicken breast fillet in the freezer and as we decided to have an easy bbq tonight, got them out and made the marinade.  The recipe serves 15 and I only had about 400g of chicken so I guestimated the amounts of ingredients and whizzed it up again in the bowl of the new stab blender (I love that machine!)  It smelled wonderful.  I didn't even thread the chicken onto skewers, they were fairly big chunks so I just threw them into the marinade and we'll do them loose like that on the bbq.  We have turkey sausages, some odd looking beef and garlic ones that Phill got, and some crusty rolls and I'll make a Greek salad, my latest favourite.  I'll post the recipe here tomorrow if it tastes as good as it smells.  I suppose you could make a peanutty sauce to go over it.  I have neither coconut milk or evaporated milk so I probably won't make one.
I got my hair coloured and cut on Thursday.  It was so nice to sit for two hours without anyone wanting anything!  I love what they did, they just put the dark blonde base colour all over and then put the cap on and put light tips all over.  I also love how they know me there now, they know our family, how I like my hair done and all of that.  With moving around so much all our married life I have never had that.
I did some Christmas shopping this morning, in bed in my pjs!  Got three of the games that Josh wants for the new X Box that they are getting, plus something for Emily that she will not be expecting and will LOVE. 
Due to a few things we're really watching our pennies right now, we have always lived payday to payday but Phill is earning good money now and things are normally a bit easier.  But I love having to be frugal.  It challenges me, and probably reminds me of the "hungry years" when we really struggled some weeks but were so, so happy.  It's our 18th wedding anniversary on Tuesday and I am enjoying putting together a tasty menu that won't cost too much, so much like many other years when we just didn't have a lot to spend.  We've never gone out for our anniversary, in the early years it was because we had small children and babies and couldn't really afford to, but now we prefer it.  We plan our dinner, and often the children eat with us, and it's fun.  I truly didn't think we'd ever make it this far, certainly not in the past year.  I honestly can't say that if I'd had somewhere to go and a way of supporting me and the kids that I'd even still be here. 
Josh will go back to school tomorrow hopefully, his toe is much better, and he needs to get his maths exam done.  We are dying to take the boat out now that the weather is warm, we bought it in Winter, so as soon as Phill gets some days off we'll be out on the water somewhere, not just fishing, but swimming as well.
I am trying to organise a family get together with my sisters and our kids and grandkids for February, I'm just trying to find somewhere that will suit us all and enable us to get Mum there.  She will be 85 on the 17th of that month and who can say how many opportunities we will have to get together and have her there.
So plotting and planning and looking forward and keeping happy secrets is what it's all about right now and I'm loving it.