Brazil (more)

Mum's birthday, or, mission impossible

Today was Mum's birthday.

So we started out by cooking a cake. This may not sound a big deal, but mum is allergic to gluten, wheat, sugar, dairy, eggs, iodine, yeast... suffice to say, that building a cake which looks like a cake, and tastes not like a metal sponge is verging on mission impossible stuff. difficult.

But we have found a solution: There are a couple of new brands available at the local supermarket

• Easy Bakers yeast, dairy & wheat free flour. From Lauke Flour. Which is actually flour that looks and feels like real wheat flour, and not (to randomly choose something) re-fried dirt.
• Orgran, gluten free, No Egg - which is an egg replacement.

We sort of followed the "basic cake" recipe on the flour box. Flavia inevitably asks me why we can't at least follow the actual recipe once before deciding that it won't work without substantial creative input. I don't know why recipes are written that way, but the answer is we just can't.

So. Into 250g of the nifty flour (correct to recipe) sieved, we added 5 heaped teaspoons of No-Egg should have been 4 whole eggs. We also added 150mL fresh-squeezed orange juice that should have been 100mL water and some water because it wasn't looking wet enough and about 20 drops of Sugarine should have been 75g of sugar. I also accidentally added 1/2 a teaspoon of the vanilla essence we have in the cupboard in a moment of non-concentration. We then cut a super-ripe banana and dropped the slices into an concentric-round cooking dish (it was supposed to be a flat square tray) covered the banana in nutmeg and cinnamon the recipe is just looking at me shaking it's head with a why-oh-why do I even bother type look and poured in the (rather small looking) batter. It was starting to rise and bubble in the mixing bowl.

Oven at 150C correct to recipe and the whole thing cooked in about 10 minutes which I take to be reasonable when the recipe said 30 minutes or when golden. The batter was golden when I put it in, so no help there, and after all, they hadn't accounted for half the stuff I did o their recipe..... We just did the classic toothpick test a few times.

Mum loved the cake, it actually tasted like banana bread, and we started the day with a completely out of time and tune happy birthday song in English and Portuguese. Lilly helped blow the candles out, delivered the present, opened the present, stuck her head in the bag and shouted There's chocolate! and after handing Mum the chocolate, shouted And a scarf! So the surprise element of the present may have been lost.

Astute readers may wonder, with all those allergies, what we're thinking giving Mum chocolate for her birthday, but it's (again a recent find) Sweet William chocolate which I have to say is one of the best foods we've found for Mum ever. It is milk, sugar free, but still tastes close to real chocolate.

We've previously bought mum membership to the National Gallery of Australia, and so we took Mum for the first time to the "members lounge". She was impressed with the view and the service. Lilly loved looking at the forest from above, and watching the people walking around the trees. I carried Gabriel in the Baby Bjourn, facing outwards this time, and he had a great time. Never complained once.

In the lounge Flavia noticed some lilies in water - and pointed them out to Lilly. Lilly was fascinated that flowers have names. So after returning home, she noticed that we had some flowers in vases on the table. These are Lillies! No, they are camellias. Oh. All flowers have different names. We looked around the house and pointed to some pansies Lilly had planted a while ago. Pantsees? Pansies. Ah. And did Lilly remember the little tiny blue flowers that grew in the grass outside? Mum asked her What do you think they are called? Harry.

So we now have some tiny blue grass flowers which are named Harry.

We've ended the day with watching the first Mission Impossible movie, it seems appropriate.

Cakes and fun

It's my birthday today.

Flavia bought an excellent mud cake which had (honest) a 5mm thick chocolate coating - not icing, chocolate, and not compound chocolate. Miss three has been extremely excited, telling me for the last day or so Your birthday is in the fridge! [meaning birthday cake] She whispered this to me, because it's a secret.

The cake is from a little bakery in Kippax, called Baker's Best at 8 Hardwick Cres. I don't know if they do all their own stuff, but the food there is always excellent, it's not expensive and the staff are super friendly. I've often walked past at the end of the day, and the manager will give Lilly a few free croissants - it's that sort of place.

An excellent day, and thanks to all.

Party

Little Miss 3 has arrived.

We wrapped the presents last night, and placed them out in the room for Lilly to find this morning when she woke up. Which she did, at 8am, to squeals of "Santa brought presents!" after all, who else shows up in the dark to deliver presents?

We had our usual pancakes for breakfast, followed by watching two Barbie DVD's and a Disney princesses movie. As part of the preparation, Flavia made brigadeiros - Milo + Condensed milk rolled in chocolate sprinkles. We tried a recipe she'd found which was skim milk and sugar with some coconut, but too much coconut milk sent it into soup world. We modified the recipe, and I record it here for posterity.

Coconut balls 1 cup (skim) milk powder; 3/4 cup sugar; 1 tin coconut cream; milk (to make it like a soup); icing sugar; 2 to 3 cups desiccated coconut; zest of 1 lemon. Put in liquid ingredients with sugar, make a soup. Add solids until mix becomes thick enough to roll balls. Roll in desiccated coconut.

Flavia felt it was one of the worst concoctions made, but I enjoyed them a lot.

The hall that was rented for the party was in Melba - an old pre-school apparently, that had become a community hall. One whole wall of the building was mirrored - which resulted in lots of running in circles by 3 year olds -- with slow stretches as they observed themselves careening past in the mirror.

The fairies were excellent - providing cupcakes, pink lemonade and a birthday cake, as well as pass-the-parcel, treasure hunt and various other activities. Lilly loved it, and the other kids seemed to enjoy themselves immensely.

So little Miss 3 returned home, and since 7:45pm has been sound asleep after her party.

Birthdays & busy-ness

This Sunday (5th July) is Lilly's 3rd birthday.

We've gone for the do-it-by-someone-else option this year. Mostly because with a ten-week old in residence; setting up the house for guests and then de-setting up the house for us living in it again is just too much like hard work. They say money can't buy happiness, but I say it sure does buy plenty of laziness, and that's almost as good.

Lilly's first party was under-the-sea: Flavia and Mum mostly set everything up while I was at work, and then the night before we decorated the entire lounge-room with fishing nets over the ceiling and jangly fishes everywhere. Second party was in Brazil with the other half of the family, and that was mostly done by others. A bunch of people showed up with crepe streamers, boxes of stuff and turned the ground-floor of Vovo's (grandma's) house into a jungle. I am advised it was a garden actually. Big garden, trees and vines....

This year, it's fairies and pirates. We are quietly eating all those pre-parenting slogans such as "We're not going to do all that pink and Barbie stuff, she's unique" Well, she's unique, but she likes pink, princesses, Barbie, fairies and frilly dresses. She likes boots, mud, painting, and running around the house semi-clothed shouting "I'm not naked", jumping (on the wooden floor) whilst holding a finger to her lips to indicate that she's well aware that the small-dude is asleep and is only jumping, rather than jumping-and-shouting and therefore, doing everyone an immense favour at great cost to herself.

Makes me realise how completely naive I was when I thought some sort of coloured clothing might limit her.

We're looking forward to seeing the results of sugar, cordial, an adult fairy and a dozen other 2-4 year olds placed in a room. And then, at the allotted time, we're also looking forward to coming back home with Nanna, Mum, Mr Small & Little Miss 3.