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MyGirl requested that I trim her hair.  

After lunch, she got the kitchen stool and brought it to the upstairs bathroom.  She donned our protective cape, secured it with our Donald Duck clip then sat on the stool.  "Ready," she called out.  I stood behind her and combed her hair;  I asked her how much she wanted me to cut.  She indicated how long she wanted her hair to be after the haircut.   (She wanted about two inches cut off.) 

I couldn't help but think of the many times I had stood behind one of my siblings, as they sat on the tall golden yellow stool in the kitchen back home, asking how many inches they wanted me to cut off from their long locks.   Mostly it was Eldest Sis sitting on the stool because she has always kept her hair nice and long.  She would normally tie it up and we wouldn't realise how long her hair was until she requested a haircut.   By then she would ask for three or four inches to be cut off but still have long hair when we were done.  Typically after I cut her hair, we would swap positions and she, in turn, would trim mine.  

London Eye would probably not have trusted me to do justice to her short hair.   I don't recall ever cutting her hair.  Sister Deer, Sunshine, Jersey Girl, Mindy and Z all had long hair while we were growing up.  They were regular occupants of that golden yellow stool in the kitchen or the ones giving me a haircut. 

Z was my favourite 'customer' because even in adulthood and sporting a bob cut, she would still be willing to have me cut her hair.  She would say, "Chop it off!  Chop it all off!"  And she'd be quite forgiving if the haircut was not salon quality and reassure me that it was just hair, it would surely grow back.

MyGirl isn't in the 'chop it all off' stage yet so I made sure to be careful about how long I cut away.  When I had cut off some of her hair, I mentioned to her that we should take a picture.  She was all for the photo op and this would probably be in her Instagram page by now with  #haircut (whatever hashtag means).  

Domino Effect

It's CUSTOMER APPRECIATION WEEKEND at Domino's this weekend.

There was a mascot outside the nearby branch.

Naturally, I had to take his picture.

Seeing Domino's Pizza on sale has made me think of making some pizza.

Hhmmm.... I know a (not so) little boy that will be happy

if that mascot has that Domino Effect on me.

  

You'll Know When You Knead It

MyGirl asked if we could make stromboli for lunch. Stromboli is essentially a rolled up pizza.  Make the pizza dough, shape into a rectangle, put some meat and cheese [and whatever other filling you want to put inside] along the length of the dough, roll the dough up like a swiss roll, then bake.  Unbeknownst to Mai, I agreed because I had wanted to retry the sweet roll recipe and figured we would be able to use the oven heat for lunch AND dessert

I had the pizza dough recipe written down in one of my notebooks, the sweet roll recipe was in one of the tabs in my notebook (laptop), while the real stromboli recipe was in one my cookbooks.

I started off the pizza dough recipe.  I heated the water then sprinkled the yeast over it and added the sugar.   I measured out the required amount of flour and salt into a bowl while waiting for the yeast mixture to bubble.  

I proceeded to turn on the oven.  Since it is winter time and the dough will not rise at room temperature, I learned that if I heat up the oven then turned it off, it will be hot enough inside the oven for the dough to rise. 

As this was happening, I heard the washing machine beep to signal the end of my first load.  Since I was in between stromboli tasks, I hung the clothes and decided to start a second load of laundry. The laundry task took longer than expected so the oven was quite hot when I returned to the kitchen.  The oven was already ready but the dough had not yet been kneaded.

I turned the oven off and quickly made a well in the flour, poured in the yeast then proceeded to knead.  The dough seemed a tad tougher than normal and I wondered whether I had used the wrong measurement of the flour.    I just brushed the thought aside, confident that I had measured the right amount of flour and continued with my kneading.   When it seemed nice and pliable, I put it back in the bowl then placed the bowl in the oven.

With the pizza dough in the oven just waiting to rise, I figured it would be a good time to mix up the dough for the sweet roll.  I asked MyGirl if she wanted to be the one to do the rolls.  When she said yes, I rattled off instructions and let her do the work.  As I was calling out the sweet roll recipe, I realised what was missing in the pizza dough.  I had forgotten to add the oil when I put the yeast mixture into the flour!  No wonder the dough was tough.

I quickly pulled the dough out of the oven, kneaded some oil into it, then stuck it back inside the oven.  (Whew!  Stromboli disaster averted.)

I checked on MyGirl and her sweet roll dough.  I had done this recipe last weekend letting the the dough hooks on our mixer do most of the work and finishing off with manual kneading so I knew that this was a good recipe that gave a nice easy-to-knead dough.

MyGirl knew the drill.  After mixing the dough using the electric mixer, she transferred it to a floured surface and began to knead by hand.

I was talking to her in the background about how important it is to know how the dough is supposed to feel.  I told her that I should have known something was wrong with the pizza dough because it hadn't felt right, and added, "Next time, I will let you see ..." I was going to say, "how it feels," but she completed my sentence with, "the recipe?"

[OK.  I deserved that.]

She seemed to be struggling with the sweet roll dough so although I was about to go off to the butcher to buy the meat to go into the stromboli, I decided to check out her dough myself. I kneaded it a couple of times and found it a bit tough.   I concluded something was definitely wrong.  I knew we'd added the melted butter so it couldn't have been that.  I reviewed the recipe and ... lo and behold ... I had forgotten to add the eggs in the brew.  Yikes!

Back into the bowl went the dough along with two beaten eggs.  MyGirl started over again and by the time she got to the kneading part, she agreed that this batch of dough was a lot easier to handle than the original version.

Thank goodness we caught that problem in time because the main reason I wanted to redo this recipe was because I wanted to get a good batch of sweet rolls going.  Last week, I used most of the dough to make cinnamon rolls but left about a fourth of the dough to make rolls which I divided into twelve, rolled into balls and placed individually into muffin cups.  Wrong call as I ended up with a dozens sweet rocks or at least definitely not the sweet rolls I had imagined.

I wanted to redeem myself this weekend and do it right.  And thankfully, they turned out wonderfully.

 This is just to show you how beautifully the dough had risen inside the oven.

  Here are the sweet rolls fresh out of the oven.

 Obviously these were on the top rack,

And these were on the bottom one.

  

Toast to Toast

I grew up in a country where there was a bakery within walking distance of practically every household and sliced bread was called 'Tasty'.  (Can someone please tell me why.  Is that a brand from the 1950's?)   Anyway, we made sandwiches with these slices of bread; and if we toasted the bread, we called it toast.   Imagine my surprise when I went to the grocery's bread section here in Australia and discovered that there is WHITE SANDWICH bread and WHITE TOAST bread.  In other words, in the Land Down Under, all toast is bread but not all bread is toast.   

(Toast bread slices are slightly thicker than ordinary sandwich bread slices.   If you think about it, it is perfectly logical because you would typically put butter and jam on ONE slice of toast but you will need TWO slices of bread to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.)

Back home, one of the more common wedding gift items would be a toaster oven commonly known as a "toaster".  Almost every household would have one to toast their bread  (and heat other snacks or even cook hotdogs or sausages).  These toasters would come in a range of sizes from small ones that could fit two slices of bread side by side, all the way to big ones that could bake a whole cake.    Fast forward to Australia where most households have 'real' toasters, the kinds where the bread slices go in vertically rather than horizontally.  Toaster ovens are not too common. 

But old habits die hard.  In our household, bread is bread and you can make sandwich or toast with either kind of bread.  And though someone handed down a toaster for us to use, there was that nagging feeling of a missing appliance called the toaster oven.   

One day, I was surprised to come home to a "new" toaster oven!  

Hurrah!   MacGyver had found a second hand one being sold on Gumtree. Just like that, we now had an appliance to heat our muffins or pizza slices, to make grilled cheese and cinnamon toast, etc.  What a joy!

The kids are pretty creative and self-sufficient when it comes to finding and making their own snacks.  Prior to the arrival of this toaster oven, they would microwave some cheese on top of crackers.  Now, they are able to make cinnamon toast and the like.

Last Saturday, I decided to make try a new cinnamon rolls recipe.  There was some cinnamon sugar left so MyGirl decided to make some cinnamon toast.  I heard the toaster oven timer go off and watched MyGirl retrieve her cinnamon toast.  I took one look at the bread on her plate and asked, "Are you sure those are done?"   (When you have toasted as many slices of bread with butter and sugar as I have, you can tell if the toaster has done its job or not.  Done properly, the butter melts into the sugar and there is a nice crusty top.)   

She took a bite and concluded that something WAS wrong. Her toast was cold. Eventually she figured out that the outlet was switched off.  In her defense, she said he had set it for five minutes and had heard the timer ring.  She promptly flipped the switch on and proceeded to redo her cinnamon toast.  

The next day, we picked GI up from work.  He had brought home several slices of pizza from work and wanted to heat them.  Although the microwave would heat the pizza slices faster, the toaster would give the crispy texture. He placed his pizza in the toaster then set the timer for five minutes. He quickly headed for the outlet and flipped the switch on and announced, "I almost forgot."

RD was on the couch and witnessed the unfolding events.  When he saw GI flip the outlet switch on, he exclaimed, "Oh that's why my cinnamon toast didn't quite taste right!"

I couldn't resist teasing him, I just found it so funny that he would realise several hours after he had eaten, that he didn't actually have had cinnamon toast; what he had was cinnamon "toast".

"How many pieces did you have?"  (Two.)  "Didn't you notice that your bread was cold? (sheepish smile)   

He said he had wondered whether five minutes was not enough time to toast the bread properly and that in hindsight, no wonder the tray was cold.

Dinner Poll Result : Pizza

This was the conversation we had the other week.

"What's for dinner, Mom?"

"Pizza."

"Really?  Why?" 

Can you sense the surprise?  And did you see that follow up question?

Yes, that is a good question, 'WHY?'  

Well, if you ask me why I decided to make pizza for dinner that night, I would have to answer 'because that is what the boys requested.' (It is true.  I had asked the kids at lunchtime what they wanted for dinner and both boys replied, "Pizza.")

If you were to ask the kids why they wanted pizza for dinner,  they would probably look at you as if I were asking them if they wanted to breathe and say something like, 'Do you need to ask WHY we want to have pizza for dinner.  Don't you know?  You don't NEED a reason to have pizza for dinner!' (And that would seem the perfectly logical answer as far as they were concerned.)

In fairness to them, they were surprised because I actually MADE pizza.   I honestly can't count the number of times I have asked them what they wanted to have for a meal and they have answered 'pizza.'  

I suppose they figure that I would eventually get the message and realise that given a choice, they would always go for pizza.  (I now realise the question should be 'why do I even ask?')

Just this afternoon, RD was on the keyboards when I went downstairs.  I asked him what he wanted for lunch and without missing a beat he replied, "Pizza."  

I had to quickly rephrase my question to include the parameters.   "What do you want for lunch that is in the refrigerator?"

Below is another pizza dough recipe I use.   Although it is easy enough to buy pizza bases or even Lebanese bread in the grocery to make pizza, there is a certain satisfaction to making it from scratch.  You just knead it.  

Pizza Dough  
Makes 2 medium pizzas

2 t  dry yeast
1 t  sugar

¾ c warm water

½ teaspoon of salt
2 cups flour
2 T oil

1.  Mix the warm water, yeast and sugar. (I usually do this in the glass measuring cup where I heated the water.) Stir well with a fork.  Set aside for about 5 minutes, until mixture starts to bubble.   

2.  Sift flour into a bowl. Add salt and stir together to combine.

3.   Make a well in the flour and pour in yeast mixture.  Add oil.  Draw in flour with a fork and and mix well to form a ball of dough. Knead the dough on a floured surface for 7 – 10 minutes until 

4.  Place the ball of dough into an oiled bowl (I normally just oil the same bowl). Cover with plastic wrap or a tea towel. Put the bowl in a warm place and leave for 30 minutes until double in size.

5.  Punch down the dough and knead on a lightly floured surface.

6.  Halve the ball of dough, and roll out to make 2 pizza bases.

To use:  Spread tomato paste and toppings.  Bake in pre-heated oven for 10-15 minutes at  200°C. 

Name That Car

I saw this parked along the road when I was walking last week. 

It reminded me of my grade school days when I had to make a name tag

to identify myself during the start of the schoolyear.

Kitchen Sink Not Included

How do I know that my brother-in-law LOVES (not just loves) Eldest Sis?

He got her a vest with not just 2 pockets, not just 4 pockets, not even just 16 pockets, but a whopping 22 (yes, twenty-two) pockets!

Yes indeed, that's true love.

I don't know exactly what model she's got but she showed me that her vest had assigned pockets for various items such as one's wallet, cellphone, iPad/tablet, passport, water bottle with elastic loop to keep it upright, keys with long cord like that of the telephone to keep them secure, sunglasses with the bonus lens cleaner that is connected with a string so that it doesn't get lost, etc., etc., etc. (The numerous etceteras are to emphasise how many extra pockets there are.)  

Truly the perfect fashion clothing addition for my sister's wardrobe.

Eldest Sis normally brings what we call her 'two-tonner' aka her handbag that has everything but the kitchen sink.  So when she showed off her new vest last night during our brief Skype session, aside from stating the obvious which was that her husband really loves her and knows her for getting her the fabulous functional vest, and teasing her that there was no pocket for the kitchen sink, I reminded her to leave her two-tonner at home whenever she wears the vest.  

Lighting the Sails

I got to see a bit of the light show the other day while I was along the Harbour Bridge on my way home.  

Oh so pretty!