Hi again.

I'm so glad today is almost over.  It's certainly been a long one.
Just about everyone is full of the flu, coughing and spluttering, pounding head, sneezing,  runny eyes and nose and I still have to cook and baby sit.

So because my day started early, and I was feeling crappy, I thought a slow cooker  meal was the go today. I swallowed down my coffee,  browned some beef, cut up some vegetables and threw them in the slow cooker and walked away from that for a while.

Lucky me then gets to seperate a few kids that are rolling around on the floor and yelling at the top of their lungs.  Geez, go outside for a while I know its like freezing out there but on a good note the sun's out.. throw on 3 or 4 coats and leave me alone in my misery.

Didn't happen.

Back to the kitchen I go,  little people following me but I have a new baby gate ( the man fell over the last one and made it unrecognizable and useless).  This one has a good lock so I'm on my own.

I'm not making pudding tonight, just a cake and some muffins and using the leftover slices I made earlier in the week..  I got clever on one of my sleepless nights...what do you do when it's 3.00 in the morning and you can't sleep...you invent recipes in your head and then of course you have to get up and write them down so you don't forget them.
So here  are pictures of the finished products

I called this very orange jelly slice with chocolate. very orange,  very yummy.

and my ferrero rocher style slice...I call it sharrero lol.  Omg tastes just like the real thing.

Back to my cooking.

Lemon solo slab cake which is made with solo lemon flavoured soft drink.  Not much mucking around and goes a long way.

And then there were the muffins.. What a disaster.  Tried a new recipe I found called pumpkin pie cupcakes.
Won't be using that again.  Could have sent the kids out to play with them, they could have bounced them up and down the street....lovely little rubber balls.

I don't like a recipe getting the better of me, so back to the drawing board and ta da..spicy pumpkin muffins

much better.

I made that sound easy didn't I. Somewhere in between all of that I fed the kids, cooked and skinned pumpkin, blended pumpkin, cleaned pumpkin off every surface, had a cuppa with the daughter in law who came for a quick visit with bubby, found a bit more pumpkin to clean up and then cleaned the rest of the mess.  I am with out a doubt, the worlds messiest cook.

Any way the rest of the afternoon went pretty smoothly and I made a chicken satay to go with the beef,  cos some like it "hot hot hot" and some don't.

So everyone arrived, we ate, they left.  I'm sat here looking at the mess that's left as usual but I'm going to have a cuppa before I clean it, after all it's only 12.15 a.m.  I don't have to be up to babysit again until 9.15 a.m.  Plenty of time.

Oh almost forgot to tell you,  I put some of my recipes on allrecipes.com.au and they featured my "very orange jelly slice" on their facebook  page.  I was really chuffed.

And of course I can't go with out the last word from the mini food critic, who was stuffing her muffin in 2 handed..".mmmmmm"

same time next week.  see you.

ps.  if anyone reading this is on facebook,  and you like my recipes, could you go to shazzies cookbook (on facebook) and like my page please....pretty please LOL.