The Most Delicious Cookbook In The World

Remember last week when I was talking about the fab new cookbook I found in the store that I was going to go back and buy? Well I went back and bought it. I haven't even made any of the recipes yet and I love it already, LOL.

It's most definitely a dessert book (no practical meals here!) but the recipes are exactly as the title says: Old Fashioned. Of course, Aussie 'old fashioned' and US 'old fashioned' are probably quite different (smile). And therefore probably not all that useful to my American readers (especially with that nasty metric system and all!) However I'm sure you will revel in my joy at the discovery of this cookbook just the same. When I get around to making something I'll review it and post the recipe (and even do the conversions for you...because I'm that kind of blog host).

For all those overseas, the Women's Weekly is, ironically, the matriach of all monthly women's mags down here. It's been around for about a kajillion years and you'd be hard pressed to find an Australian housewife who doesn't own one of their (very extensive range of) cookbooks, of which this title is one. I've probably got about ten, LOL.

Some of the recipes I'm dying to make:

Anzac Biscuits (cookies, as far as I can tell, this is where my MIL gleamed 'her' recipe from! They're identical!)
Chocolate Caramel Slice
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Hedgehog Slice (chocolate slice with cookie pieces)
Honey Jumbles (like a gingerbread cookie with icing on top)
Melting Moments
Raspberry Coconut Slice
Gingernuts
Traditional Shortbread
Vanilla Slice (vanilla custard sandwiched between two pastry layers and covered in passionfruit icing)
Gingerbread Cake
Basic Scones (like American biscuits)
Basic Butter Cake
Marble Cake
Patty Cakes (cupcakes)
Chocolate Cake
Coconut Cake
Dark Chocolate Mudcake
Caramel Mudcake
White Mudcake
Apple Streusel Cake
Lamingtons (an Aussie icon)
Berry Muffins
Orange Cake
Rock Cakes (a recipe synonymous with my mother..and btw, rock cakes don't look or taste like rocks!)
Banana Cake with Passionfruit Icing
Golden Syrup Dumplings (one of those great 'made from thin air' pantry recipes)
Apple Pie
Banoffee Pie
Apple Crumble
Lemon Delicious Pudding
Self-Saucing Chocolate Pudding
Self-Saucing Caramel Pudding
Vanilla Bean Icecream

Okay, so that's like two thirds of the index, LOL, but it should give you an indication of how much I've been salivating since I brought it home!

For Australians, these are the recipes we were most likely raised on. Most of them use ordinary ingredients, the kind of thing you can just whip up on a lazy Sunday afternoon. I'm dying to get cracking on this list but I can't! From Friday we're away so posts might be a bit scarce again for a bit. Apologies for that (and for absence the last few days - houseguests!) but with any luck the crazy few months I've had will begin to settle down around about the time we get back and I get dip my toes a little deeper into the bloggityville pool again. I've gone AWOL on all my blog carnivals lately and I've got loads to say, especially on the May Day Weight Loss Challenge front. However, that will have to wait for another post as I'm off to wipe the drool off my chin and plan a big cook-fest for a couple of weeks from now...

P.S. Can someone please help me figure out what's going on with not being able to put up a post title? I can't even click in the Title field on the 'create post' page in Blogger...

Cheers,
Lizzie

Busy, Busy, Busy...

Oh my lord. Have I got a busy day on my hands!

The house is my primary concern today, rather than study (for a change!) I managed to post away two more assignments yesterday so I have some time up my sleeve today to give everything a once-over. That, and we have visitors arriving tomorrow ;P

For the first time in a loooooong while I got in eight hours sleep last night so already I feel more able to get cracking on the housework. First thing this morning (as the kettle was boiling) I threw on a load of washing and will reboot laundry all day long (yes, it will take at least that long). Now I'm finishing up my cup of tea and bloggin' a little before assigning the kids some 'quiet chores' - Daddy is sleeping (he worked late last night) and as soon as he's up its full steam ahead.

I totally have the organising bug at the moment, but am having to pull on the reins a bit. I know from experience that starting a 'project' right now would be more than a little detrimental to these last few assignments so 95% of what I have the urge to do I have to add to my list for after we get back from our holiday.

Sometime tomorrow I have to bake a butter cake or two for Boofah's decorated birthday cake. I am seriously contemplating buying a ready made plain cake rather than baking from scratch, just to save myself a little time. One year I used this principle to turn mini jam rollettes into a 'snake' cake...it was perfect and the kids loved it. You know how sometimes when you agree to a decorated cake you forget that the 'extra' stuff used to decorate it basically equals what a good store-bought cake would have cost? That's probably what this one will end up like. Boofah's having a treasure chest so lots of chocolate coins and candy necklaces, LOL. I might cheat a little and reduce the size of the treasure chest! We were eating 'snake' for a week last time!

You might have noticed that I've been absent from blog carnivals this week. I'm cutting back on those for the time being out of necessity - just can't keep up with those and everything else. Also, from this Friday I'll probably be out of blog-shot for a week, so I hope you'll all come back after that!

Here's an interesting piece of news - my Dad is remarrying. It's weird - there, I said it. I'm happy for him and at 27 I am the youngest of his four children (the eldest is 37) but still....its strange. He and Mum were separated for a few years before Mum died last year and divorced a month before she passed on (she's been gone around 14mo now) but I never in a million years pictured my father married to someone else. I've met the lady a couple of times and she seems really nice but because we all live so far apart its hard to build up any kind of relationship with her so I still feel as though she's a stranger of sorts. She has a pre-teen daughter (good luck with that one Dad!) and an early-twenties son that Dad will officially step-father although I know Dad well enough to know that all parenting decisions concerning the kids (especially the daughter) will remain with their mother. They've had the benefit of getting to know Dad as they all live in the same town, but because my siblings and I live from one side of the country to another, its harder to develop that relationship with either the lady or her children. There's no rush on the wedding, but when it occurs I'll officially have a stepmother, a stepbrother and a stepsister. That's just too weird, LOL.

Well I'm off to reboot the laundry and wake my very sleepy daughter (she would sleep till noon if we let her - bodes well for the future, huh? LOL)

**Well, that's weird... it won't let me enter a title for this post. What's up with that?**

Cheers,
Lizzie

Randomness

Howdy all! Yep, still here, still madly scrambling to finish assignments. I should have another two done by the time I go to bed tonight which leaves just 4. With a moderate amount of luck (and many chocolate biscuits/cups of hot tea) I am hoping to have them all done by next Friday. I may have to take that last one with us on holiday but it shoudn't be too painful - we have two nights in a beachside cabin before our stay with relatives and I doubt there'll be much else to do once the kids are in bed. Of course we would have to be planning this trip right in the middle of winter (when swimming is out of the question), LOL.

I have so much I want to get stuck into as soon as these dang assignments are out of the way!

* I obviously need to revisit the whole 'time management issue' so will go over Candy's Home Management Binder University posts (see her left sidebar for other posts in the series). Clear out the unecessary papers from my HMB and so on.

* A big project on the cards is to clean out the fourth bedroom so that Boofah can finally have his own room. He's been sharing with his sister for the last few years and really needs some space of his own. We've been using that bedroom for a home gym/junk room and I kid you not when I say it is wall to wall JUNK. I'm going to have to do a 'before' and 'after' series of photos I think.

* Hubs and I were in Ikea the other day looking for frames for his photographic exhibition next year. We saw some neat bunks that have a desk underneath and are considering something similar for the boys. Our kids' rooms are quite small and a bed, desk and maybe a small shelf is about all that will fit in there, so we were thinking of doing something to save space. Failing that idea, some very simple cheap desks will suffice for now.

* I want to really knuckle down and get my Routines stuck as habits.

* Speaking of habits, I haven't walked in over a week and you may have noticed I didn't do a May Day Challenge weigh in this week either. I've been thinking about this. The walking is something I'll pick up as soon as I'm over this crazy slump of mine, but I just don't think I have the energy to be actively engaged in weight loss at the moment. I keep saying each week on Tuesday weigh-in that I'll 'do the diet thing' this week and so on, and I never get around to it. I've come to the conclusion that at the very least I won't be in a position to devote extra time to that sort of thing until at least when we return from our holiday in a couple of weeks. By that stage I'll have finished the crazy studying schedule and can start to think about other things. I may not immediately switch to 'diet mode' right then either...I may give myself a few weeks to concentrate on the home front, which is hanging on by a very thin thread at the moment. The whole house needs serious attention so as soon as I can stop thinking about storylines and advertising jingles (ie, my course!) I know I'm going to feel energised enough to jump in and go nuts with the (mid-winter) cleaning.

* I found an awesome cookbook in the store the other day. I almost bought it - and probably would have if Hubs wasn't there saying "Another recipe book? Can't you find those recipes online?" (well yes I can Hon, but that's not the point, LOL). It's called Old-Fashioned Favourites and for my Aussie readers, its a Women's Weekly cookbook. You know how normally when you pick up a cookbook you flick through it and find three, four, maybe five recipes you know you'll make over and over? Well in the entire book I only found two or three recipes I wouldn't make. Those are fantastic odds! It's a baking book rather than a dinner meals book but it has the good ol' favourites like basic cakes, cookies, slices, apple pie, and so on. I could find those recipes online but this cookbook puts it all together for me, LOL. I almost never buy cookbooks (can't remember the last time actually) but I'm probably going to pick this one up.

* I DESPERATELY need to put Lizzie's Inaugural Chick Flick Festival into motion, LOL. One of my favourite things to do is curl up with a hot cup of tea or hot chocolate and watch a film that Hubs wouldn't sit down and watch with me. I wait for a night when he's working, swing by Blockbuster and stock up on romantic comedies. Then I snuggle under a quilt and watch away :) I haven't had one of those in ages. Somewhere in amongst all that I'm also going to throw in a MDO (Mum's Day Off) and see a brand new film in the cinema, something else I really enjoy but don't get to do very often. Yes, I quite enjoy watching movies, LOL.

P.S. Today is Boofah's 7th birthday. Of all the things he could have had, he requested Tacos ("with the hard shells Mummy") and chocolate pudding with icecream for dessert, LOL (we've got a family day planned for next Monday with his cousins which will include bowling and McDonald's for lunch). He is such a little boy. From us he got a Leapfrog talking globe whatsit - they've been around for a while but we could never in a million years justify the $200 price tag. Then a couple of weeks ago we saw a couple on a markdown table for $50. That was in our price range so lucky boy got one. Plus a couple of smaller presents (books and dominos). He's had a great day :)

Cheers,
Lizzie

The Header Question

I have a quick bloggy-favour to ask of anyone with HTML knowledge. I want to centre the blog header so that it lies directly above this (middle) column and for the life of me I can't find out how to do it, even with the online tutorials. I don't know if this makes it more difficult, but this template was changed to a 3-column format near to the beginning of Lizzie's Home and perhaps that affects how things align with the header? I haven't found any tutorials online to deal with headers on a (changed from original template) 3-column thing. I think I'm just going to have to ask someone directly.

So, if you can help, give me a quick email. And I'll have to think of some way to repay you!

Cheers,
Lizzie

Menu Plan Monday - July 2

Happy Menu Plan Monday everyone!

I feel like I'm doing this late - it's Monday evening here :P

Tuesday ~ Chicken Kiev (chips, vegies)
Wednesday ~ Soup & Sandwiches (Tomato & Vegetable/Toasted Ham & Cheese)
Thursday ~ Tacos (Boofah's choice for his birthday dinner!)
Friday ~ Chunky Shepherd's Pie (vegies)
Saturday ~ Chicken Parmigiana (Vegetable Bake, microwaved baby potatoes)
Sunday ~ Roast Beef/Lamb (roast potatoes, vegies, gravy)
Monday ~ Spaghetti Bolognaise (garlic bread)

Bonus Recipe To Try This Week ~ Apple Pie (scratch)

I almost didn't put in a MPM post because with the weird week we've got coming up I didn't expect to be planning meals at all - simply eating on the fly, LOL. It does feel better to know I have a plan though!

Cheers,
Lizzie