Hey good lookin' what ya got cookin'?

APPOLOGIES, this was started on monday... it's taken a while...

To most people this would look like a messy bedroom....

To me it was bliss. After hurling my guts up over the weekend I was not looking forward to a day on my own with the boys. I love having them to myself most of the time but they are high energy little things, and energy is not something I am high on at the moment. I had them both off to Lion's swimming lesson this morning (something I try not to do since Dragon just wants to dive in with him) and then home. Thankfully when grandma was free she came round to help for a bit and then left us for nap time. After nap I popped the boys in the playroom and wandered off to do some things. Lion informed me "we are playing in my room now" and they happily migrated to his bedroom. I went in and found this mess all over the floor and realised that they had grabbed the "kitchen" basket from the playroom to take with them. "We are making you a cake mummy" Says Lion "yeah, cake" Dragon adds for emphasis. "It's a birthday cake, it's just for you. But we didnt have any pickles to put in it" Mummy wonders who has been teaching these kids to cook. The cake consisted of a lettuce leaf, two chillies, and a spoon.

And as for the clean up... every good kitchen needs a dishwasher, so we improvised. For one cake they put about 5 loads through the dishwasher.
Lion told me that he made the cake and Dragon made me some jumping jelly beans (what his swimming teacher says he must eat for breakfast, boy did I need some of those) and something else I cant remember.

After they put lettuce and chillies in my birthday cake I figured we should do some real cooking and I just happened to be making something kid friendly for dinner so I got them up to the bench to help me top and tail beans and dice tomato. This is one of our favourite ways to do beans. A plate of steamed or boiled beans is not my idea of yummo but cook them like this and I could eat the dish full!!! I didnt have a lemon or pine nuts but I think it is just as yummy with peppitas (pumpkin seeds) and lemon juice from a bottle with do if i need to, one thing I really do prefer though is baby roma tomatoes or grape tomatoes, something small, halved and tossed in instead of chunks of tomato that fall apart as they are cooked. It's a slightly modified Jamie Oliver recipe.

The Bean and Tomato thing

(everyone in my family knows what we are making if I say that)

Beans

Tomatoes (see recommendations above)

GOOD olive oil (it's for flavour as much as the other ingredients in this one)

Lemon

Pine nuts

all the quantites are entirely up to the chef.

Top and tail the beans and cut them into bite sized pieces. I usually just cut them in half unless they are a really long bean, Lion cut each bean into 15 tiny pieces just because mummy let him use a sharp(ish) knife, Dragon threw the beans in whole because mummy gave him a bread and butter knife, but look at the look on his face, HE HAS A KNIFE!!!!

Chop up the tomato into bite sized pieces. Dragon was still hacking away at beans so Lion did one tomato and I did the other, I went very slowly because I was very nervous about Lion cutting up a tomato. They were VERY BIG TOMATOES.

Toss it all into an oven proof dish, squeeze over the lemon juice and a REALLY good slug of olive oil and a good handful of pine nuts/peppitas (they need to go crunchy). You can leave it in the layers so it looks like this but I prefer it all tossed through. then if you used a whole lemon, chop it up a bit and wedge those pieces down into it for some extra flavour (and they are really yummy when they stick tothe bottom and caramelise)

Chuck it all in a hot oven till it looks like this (about 40 minutes)

I made it to go with what were supposed to be crumbed lamb cuttlets but I think they were the proverbial "...dressed up as...".

Just remember, just because they make it doesnt mean they'll eat it. Dragon got no dessert and Lion was fighting to get it down to get some dessert.

And as for dessert, Lion found a can of condensed milk on the bench and wanted to cook with it. I tried to distract him with a packet mix until I realised I had no normal milk so i googled a recipe ofr condensed milk with no real milk and i found macarrons with just coconut and condensed milk. sounds great I have aobut 4 packets of coconut in the cupboard. Well, in goes the condensed milk, and the coconut that was left in the container and i went to get another bag of coconut out... oh dear... I have used up (finally) all my coconut. I thought we might have had just enough in the mix but aparently not... I dont think they are supposed to look like this... you probably shouldnt forget about them in the oven either...

I am going to just break them into chips and use them like wafers in icecream (yes we are eating icecream in the middle of winter and sleeping with the fans on too!!)