Policies for working families

I've written something for my learned colleagues at The Tunnel Presents, and amusing satirical blog that I may have mentioned before.

CLICK HERE TO READ

I forgot about my big Guest Post moment.

In the drama of the last fortnight I forgot that today I have a guest post on one of my favourite special clever successful blogging ladies. Sonia from Life Love n Hiccups is in Bali and she's got some peeps filling in for her. Today is my day. Please go and have a read it would cheer me the hell up.

http://lifeloveandhiccups.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/women-who-dare-to-dream-7-sarah-from.html

Thank you Sonia for having me. I hope you get over your Bali belly asap.

x

Katie 180 Recipe. And a song!

One of my absolutely favourite blogs is Katie Rainbird's Katie 180. I LOVE IT SICK! Katie is a nutritionist and writes about the ins and outs of healthy food, and is not averse to a bit of scatalogical humour. She is as funny a blogger as ever there was - but when I read her, not only do I laugh, but I am edu-ma-cated!

Her recipes are eminently cook-able and TASTY. 

Katie's blog has been shortlisted in the Top 100 for the Kidspot Voices 2013 - you should all go and check it out.

I begged her to do a guest post recipe type thing on my blog because I am SHAMELESS. And even though she is very busy and so forth she made a recipe available to me.

I had made another recipe of hers a little while ago, and naturally Instagrammed photos of it. It was a zucchini pasta sauce. Except using my mother's philosophy that all vegetarian dishes taste better with bacon (or similar), I added chorizo. This was met with SCORN by Katie herself, however I think I have infiltrated her psyche because LOOK WHAT RECIPE SHE SENT ME!

CHORIZO PASTA! EVERYONE LOVES CHORIZO!

So, I actually got around to making it for din-dins the other night.

Here is photographic evidence.

Ingredients

Chorizo. What? It IS chorizo. You guys are SICK. KEEP IT CLEAN OK?

Child sized portion

Here's the recipe itself in the inimitable words of the lady herself...

From the esteemed desk of Katie180…

Dear Mrs Slapdash,

Please find one easy dinner recipe for your noshing pleasure.

Ingredients: (To serve two so multiply as needed.)

1 x good quality chorizo (please try to buy from a good deli rather than say, a supermarket one), finely sliced ~ as many thin slices as you can get.

1 x tin of organic diced tomatoes.

1 x Spanish onion, diced.

1 x teaspoon of raw sugar.

Baby spinach leaves, washed and shredded.

¼ cup of frozen peas ~ optional.

S&P to season.

Olive oil.

Pasta, whichever you prefer but I like to use long pasta.

Method:

Sweat onions in olive oil.

Add chorizo and crisp up a little then turn down heat. 

Stir through tomatoes and add the sugar, bring to a gentle simmer.

Reduce heat then pop lid on.

Cook pasta.

Once pasta is cooked, stir through spinach leaves and peas if using.

Season to taste.

Divide pasta between bowls and spoon over chorizo mixture.

This dish is one of my fall-back favourites, not for regular eating due to the use of processed meat, but I DO enjoy it when I make it and it is super quick and easy.

Chorizo keeps for ages in the fridge, so if you buy a couple in the groceries knowing you’re in for a busy week, they’ll be there in a few days ready to rock’n’roll.

Be sure to use lots of baby spinach as it reduces down considerably and it can kind of offset the naughtiness of the sausage!

If you’ve got kids who use their fingers not their forks probably best to use spirals or bowties.

Muchos love, Katie J

This was a great success, despite my usual slapdash approach, which meant that - 

a) I didn't buy nice chorizo from a nice deli and used some in a packet from Woolies, and
b) At the last minute I realised I had no spinach so I used extra peas and grated a zucchini in.

As I've said before to my critics, if I was more organised I'd have to change the name of the blog and we CANNOT HAVE THAT, now, can we?

In closure, I decided to write  adapt a song for Katie to express my feelings about this recipe. It is to be sung to the music of "Oh Mandy" by Barry Manilow. Or "Oh Margie" by well know songbird Homer Simpson.

Oh Katie,

Well, you came and you gave me a recipe,

For my little bloggie.

Oh Katie,

Well, you said to use spinach, I didn't

I hope you don't hate me!

Oh Katie.

Thank you so much Katie180. I wish you all of the good things! MWAH!

Guest post from me.

Hello friends,
This week I am embracing slow blogging cos I am sick and the baby is sick. You know how it goes.

He and I are home again today. My throat is as raw as a raw throat.

But luckily here's one I prepared earlier! I done a guest post on my bloggie friend Mez's blog Listen Sookie.

She's doing a series called The Mama Files and asked me to bring my VERY SPECIAL AMAZING expertise to the topic of motherhood*.

I'm getting braver about putting my mug up on the internet too. I don't know if this is foolish or wise. I suspect foolish.

Anyway, click here to read the post

 

*I know! I have everyone fooled.

GUEST POST! Return of the Mac.

OK let's get this stupid OOTD palaver over first.

Wore these shoes with these pants. You'll be pleased to know they were a matching pair this time. Refer previous post. Also, these are JEGGINGS guys.

A better angle of said jeggings. I got bored of all the usual poses and decided to come up with my own. I call this the "Steve Irwin" selfie pose. Also, Tegan from Musings of the Misguided said she wanted to see my "camel toe". Whatever that is. Didn't she? Oh sorry my mistake. Avert your eyes then Tegan.

In this crazy mixed up place we call the World Wide Web, sometimes you meet someone.  Someone who GETS you.  Who KNOWS WHERE YOU ARE COMING FROM.  A cyber soulmate.  Friends at first Tweet. Or whatever.

And sometimes, just sometimes, that person has exactly the same name as you.

Look, I'm not going to go into too many details here people but suffice to say there is ANOTHER Sarah Mac out there.  She lives in the Northern Hemisphere, I live in the Southern Hemisphere. She hates her Android phone, I hate my Android phone.  She is hilarious, I am moderately amusing.

And guess what? I have been lucky enough to win a giveaway on her blog People Don't Eat Enough Fudge! I know, the stars are aligned for me indeed.

The prize for this giveaway was nothing less than the opportunity to host her as a Guest Blogger on my very own blog!

Yay!

Take it away Sarah Mac!

Clipboards And Cat Shit 

A couple of days ago I received a letter that surprised and worried me a little.  It was from Master Macs School and it said that they were concerned about his attendance record and would like to see me.

I rang the school immediately to see if there had been a mistake.  No, they assured me, no mistake.  It seems that with his recent accident and resulting appointments at the hospital Master Mac had hit a trigger point.

The visit was arranged for Friday morning at 10am.

After waving the children off to school I looked around. 

It’s been a while since anyone other than friends and family had been to the house and having someone who is basically there to question your capabilities as a parent sure makes you look at things with fresh eyes.

A quick wiz round with the hoover, wash the breakfast dishes, clean out the litter tray, shower and dress.

That WAS the plan!

Out came Henry, a flick of the switch and …..  WHOOOMPH!!

A great cloud of dust and dog hair, tissue and fluff erupted like a mini volcano covering me and half the room as effectively as Vesuvius buried Pompeii.

FUUUUUCK!!!

Complete panic, the damn woman was due in 45 minutes, my house was filthy, I had 5 cats running around, a dog shedding yet more hair and a full litter tray.

 I was also braless in a baggy tee-shirt and cropped legging.  I didn’t have a clue what to tackle first.

A quick slug of Merlot from the open bottle on the kitchen counter (yes, it was only 9:00am but needs must!) and I assessed the damage.

Ok, litter tray first.  As ever, a queue of full bladdered kitties waited for the moment the clean litter hit the tray before parking their furry bottoms in the gravel to fill it up again.

Out to the wheelie bin at the front of the house only to find that it was, as always FULL!! 

The bin wasn’t  due to be emptied until Monday and only a foolish person leave a bag of used cat litter around for all the other cats in the neighbourhood to rip apart and spread the content (if you are lucky they might even leave an offering of their own!)  So, back in, wellies on and into the bin I hopped. Jumping up and down trying to compact a weeks worth of cat shit and other household rubbish

HELLO, YOOHOO, Mrs Mac???  I swung around to see a woman holding a clipboard tottering towards me in the most extraordinary pair of shoes.  They were those wedge ones with a hole cut out for some bizarre reason, it looked like she was walking in ice skates.  But the main things was,

THE BLOODY WOMAN WAS MORE THAN HALF AN HOUR EARLY!!       

Ok, I thought, if you can wear ice-skates, I can stand in wheelie bins carrying shit and coved in filth.

I decided to brazen it out.  Calmly I climbed out of the bin on to the wall and hopped down onto the pavement.

‘That would be me’ I said with a smile holding out my hand to shake hers.  She recoiled slightly and waved her clipboard in an attempt to suggest that it wasn’t that she was reluctant to clasp my hand but rather that her hands were full.

Coffee?  Tea?  Slug of wine?  I queried with a slight laugh as though I was joking while both of us hungrily eyed the half full bottle.

Perhaps we could just sit down and have a chat she suggested whilst her gaze swept my house and myself with complete horror.

I smiled again, again she recoiled, what was the matter with the woman? I got that she didn’t want to touch me and ok, I guess I could empathise with that, but I was only trying to be friendly for gods sake.

‘You have ……. Errm ……..’ she said gesturing to my face.  What? WHAT???

I dashed into the bathroom to look in the mirror. Oh great!  I’d obviously inhaled a quantity of dust and dirt and my nostrils were ringed with black, I could have cried except that would only have left streaks down my filthy cheeks.  I cleaned up as best I could and feeling very subdued went and sat down.

Things couldn’t and should have really got any worse and in truth, I’m not sure they did but by that time my judgement was shot along with the chance of winning any parenting awards!

Tilly, mum to three kittens has suffered a little from what I call ‘lactating mummy tummy’, it’s not funny and it’s not nice.  It IS noisy and it does stink however so when I saw her purposefully making her way to the tray I knew all was lost.  After much digging about she proceeded to excavate her bowels with a sound like a toddler let loose with a trumpet and sure enough, like a mist creeping over the sea the stench pervaded the room.

The poor lady decided enough was enough and brought our meeting to an end with assurances from me that I would never again let Master Mac be shot in the eye and thus miss valuable schooling.

If only one of us had realised that Florence, the smallest of the kittens who had taken great interest in this ladies footwear had somehow manages to wedge herself through the hole in her damn shoe.

She stood to leave gathering her clipboard and her wits and took a step towards the door. The weight of Florence caused the shoe to shoot off her foot across the room.  Florence yowled, the lady let out a strangled scream and I dissolved into hysterical laughter.

There probably is a moral to this story but to be honest, I haven’t got a clue what it would be and frankly, after I’d finished the bottle of wine I didn’t really care.

(nb Florence was completely unharmed J)

So there you have it! Thank you Sarah Mac. You are a funny lady indeed and you have a great name, and like me you enjoy blogging about cat poo.

Go and send her your love, my pretties!  I command you!

Toodle pip!

Slapdash Mama aka "Sarah Mac the Plumper"