Sweetcorn Fritters, Meanwhile School's Back

So, first day back at work after 3 terms off. It felt weird being back, actually. All the memories came flooding back.

To tell you the truth, it wasn't that bad. Absolutely gorgeous class (I had year 1's today, Pre-primary on Wednesday). I LOVE junior primary. The class was an open double classroom (exactly like I had last year) so two teachers, one double room, 2x18 kids. 18 kids!! Wow! Not often you have small class numbers like that! The team teacher was nice, but as usual when you work in a team, the other teacher usually takes the lead from the CRT and I felt really bad for him doing most of the work. After my experience of team teaching last year I have to say I MUCH prefer my own four walls.
So, really good first day back. Oh, I forgot, most of the teachers go by their first names! Never had that before!! So all day I had kids calling out 'Tahnea, can I go to the toilet?', 'Tahnea, how do you write...?'. So very weird!!! I'm used to having a title ..Ms. etc. They (the staff) said I could be called anything I liked but I thought I would follow the rest of the school. I'm sure I'll get used to it but it was a little odd.

I got home and I was REALLY sore! Leg sore, head sore! After such a long break it'll take me a few days to get back into the swing of things. Teaching is such a physical and mental job. Especially for the little ones, they are demanding all of the time. I had a long bath and the headache was gone and some of the leg pain was reduced, but I certainly DID NOT feel like cooking. And neither did anyone else! So I
made some sweetcorn fritters from here but I had to put more flour in and I needed to double it to get a decent amount of them.

I shared a few with the kids, but then they made their own quick throw together food. Slack huh? We really have had one of the worst food weeks for a long time!!
I have no work planned tomorrow so I will cook and bake during the day. I have also decided that I will not buy any food for a few weeks (except bread, milk, fruit and veges). I have got SOOO much food in my cupboard it is not funny!! I even have a heap of frozen meals to eat! Time to clean it up and eat it up.

I really would love a website that you enter the food you have in your cupboard and it spits out recipes that you can do. I'm sure I have come across it before.

Any ideas?

Tahn

Flowers and Rice

Look at the beautiful flowers Popeye sent me today!

I wish this was smell-o-blog as they smell sooo good! And I miss him sooo much :(  76 days to go.
I've got them sitting on my dressing table so I can see them when I wake in the mornings.

Anyway, back to food. I tried to make a few things today from the same website, although not all were spectacular. The website is jeenaskitchen.blogspot.com. She has quite a list of vegan recipes and each one has fantastic step-by-step photo instructions. I firstly tried the vegan vegetable fritters recipe and they were ok, but took so long to cook. Luckily I had a visitor over so that helped to take my mind off standing in front of the stove. Next I tried Jeena's coconut ice recipe which was all going well but when I  was cooking the coconut with the sugar syrup it went way too dry and it ended up being 'sweet, fruity coconut'. Which we all still ate, but it wasn't coconut ice.

For dinner tonight I tried the vegan sweetcorn rice recipe which was DELICIOUS!

It wasn't quite fried rice because the rice was still soft and tender and it barely had any flavour added into it, just garlic and ginger. I used fresh corn on the cob as suggested and I just LOVE fresh sweetcorn! I cut up some tofu and just fried it in a pan, but it occurred to me that I maybe could have crumbled it in with the veges before adding the rice. Anyways, it was very yummy and the kids are taking left overs for school lunch tomorrow. Beats a boring sandwich!

She (Jeena) also has a Mango and Coconut Cake recipe that uses polenta that I would love to try. I have some fresh (well they are frozen now, but not in a tin) mango that I would like to use but I could only find advice (on Google) on how to score and cut a mango into small cubes (which I knew anyway). Anyone know the best way to get slices (like peach slices)? The recipe calls for tinned mango, but I would like to try using fresh (ish). Imagine the flavour!

Today after the kids got home from school we all went for a ride to the velodrome. We nearly didn't go because as we walked home from school it started to spit and it was freezing cold. We went anyway, but I decided to ride as I didn't feel like jogging in the cold, fresh wind. So we all rode there, zoomed around the track for a while and then came home. We had barely been home for 5 minutes when is piss-isted down and hailed! It only lasted a few minutes but we were lucky to get home dry!

I'm posting early tonight as I have a tax appointment tomorrow (finally!) and I need to sort out the piles of paperwork I have sitting right next to me. I hate doing my tax - I am always scared I will have to owe some back (I never have, so the fear is unjustified!). I am hoping to get a bit back to be able to fix my bathroom up. At the moment there are two options. Option 1 - Replace the tiles in shower and maybe the window and wooden frame (that gets wet every time you shower) with some of those glass bricks and rent out my house. Option two is to do it up for me to enjoy and continue living in. Option 1 is winning 80% to 20%. Although I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT HERE, moving would mean living with Popeye and being able to see & be with him most nights of the week instead of just the weekend. Yup, you read it correctly, moving in with the boyfriend! oooooo!
More discussion on this topic needs to occur first though!

Ponderland...


Tahn