Baked Lemon Pasta!

We had this last night.  A weird mixture, maybe - but boy does it work!  And I promise you, you don't want to skimp on the lemon in this recipe - the more lemony goodness, the better this dish tastes!  The absolute key to this dish, is to use the freshest and tastiest ingredients that you can get your hands on. 

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So here we go, bring a large pan of water to the boil, add the angel-hair spaghetti, cook until al-dente, drain, rinse with cold water, and then set aside. 

While the pasta is cooking, take a fresh lemon and using a micro grater, remove all the zest - you'll need this a bit later on.

Melt together the butter and oil in a skillet, and when melted, add the finely chopped garlic.  While that's all cooking together nicely, take the zest-less lemon, cut it into quarters, then squeeze the entire lemon into the buttery mixture. Smelling good, hey?

Then you add two cups of sour cream to the pan, slowly mixing it all up together...

Grab that lemon zest, that you prepared earlier, and add as much as you'd like to the pan...I used the whole lot, and I don't recommend skimping!

Stir together, adding plenty of salt, and then in an oven proof dish (I love Pampered Chefs ovenware) pour the mixture on top of the spaghetti and  mix in well.  You can pre-mix in a large bowl, if you'd prefer, to get a really good coating.

Cover with foil, bake for around 20 mins, (375 degrees), then remove foil and bake for a further 5-10 mins, until just beginning to brown.   Take another lemon (I know, it's lemon madness, but just trust me on this), and squeeze some of the juice onto the dish, about a quarter to a half of a lemon.  Then add the grated Parmesan cheese, fresh Parmesan if possible.  Top with the chopped parsley and serve.....

I like to grab the nearest, partially clad mini-monster that I can find, and just sit back and watch him devour every single scrap, and then ask for more! :)

I guess that's another thumbs up for this Mamma! :)

Ingredients

• 1 pound Thin Spaghetti
• 4 Tablespoons Salted Butter
• 2 Tablespoons Olive Oil
• 2 cloves Garlic, Minced
• 1 whole Lemon, Juiced And Zested
• 2 cups Sour Cream
• ½ teaspoons Kosher Salt, Or More To Taste
• Plenty Of Grated Parmesan Cheese
• Flat-leaf Parsley, Chopped
• Extra Lemon Juice

Also really good served with crusty bread and a simple green salad!

Elefun & Flutterbyes!

The latest and greatest obsession in the Wood household at the moment is blue, it has a plastic trunk and spurts out coloured paper butterflies all over the place.  Its been an on/off love for years but right now, it gets taken out of the box every single day.....

Hours of fun are spent, refilling the little blue body, replacing the trunk and then watching the butterflies spurt out of the top and flutter down, as they try to catch them with their nets....Poppy's serious little face, as she tries so hard to get them into the net, and her big grins when her efforts pay off, and Lucy looking like a little drunken elf, as she staggers around looking more like she's swatting flies...

And if my kids have taught me anything, it's that doing things the conventional way is vastly overrated, and sometimes (actually pretty often), it's much more fun to improvise.  

Who said elephants needed trunks anyway!!!

And it was a pretty good distraction, because today Daddy left our home again for another few days and as always, it was hard to say goodbye!

A Nice Cup o Joe!

I've been really feeling awful over the last few days.  This is the second bad stomach bug that I've had in as many weeks, and it's kicked the bejesus outa me, I don't mind telling you.   I have been lying on the sofa feeling sorry for myself and missing my love, (no sorry David, it's not you), my camera.  I just about managed a very quick 5 min reunion with her today, and of course as usual, I found another cute subject playing in the garden. 

 Such a cheeky one, this one! 

Ahhh yes, a nice Cup o Joe, was just what the doctor ordered! :)

My Dancing Queens

Nothing quite as special as watching my little girls twirl and spin to some great tunes.  They are two of the loves of my life, no doubt about that.  It makes me wonder....does life get better then this? I'm not sure it ever could.



And then, just when I think it couldn't get any cuter, I find Poppy in the kitchen, singing a beautiful song to the fridge...

Yes, definitely, hopelessly in love with my cuties...

Freedom.....

....and free stuff.  We all love free stuff, and quite frankly, this big family needs to find the free and the beautiful things in the world.  The things that are so simple, you don't think of them.  My kids don't need big holidays,  they don't need expensive presents.  They don't need anything too much.  Just a bit of time, energy and attention.  They would trade all they had for a few hours of board games in the evening with Mama and Daddy.  They would pass up all the theme parks in Australia for a day at the beach.  They would say 'no thanks' to McDonalds, for a family picnic in the garden.  They would take free every time, and thank goodness for it, because with our 'Waltons' sized family, we couldn't afford life any other way.

Last weekend we took ourselves off to a park that we had heard about.  There was a 'free' petting zoo there, we were told, and it sounded just up our street.  Unfortunately, it was my mistake for not understanding that it wasn't just a 'lone Zoo' amid a park.  When we arrived, to our horror, there was a huge Fair, with rides and stalls, lots of things to buy and do.  We traipsed our kids through the middle of it, $6 a ride and only about $5 in our pockets - nightmare!  We couldn't find the petting Zoo amidst all the activity and  David was all for hot-footing it as fast as he could out of there... we almost did.  But then it occurred to us, the park!  The whole reason that we had decided to come, was still here, and it was free.  So we stayed, the kids played I think they had more fun then they would have had for the 1.5 minute ride that cost $6 each.

I'd like to say that we all went home, satisfied with our 'free' - but in actual fact, David couldn't quite shake the 'guilt' and ended up treating them to a Daddy date night at the cinema too.  Once in a while is fine though, and Shrek 4 is really cool! :)