Life of plenty

Right now I'm holidaying at my Mother-in-law's home in Te Puke. It was a pretty spontaneous decision to come up here.

What happened was I got a hideous tummy bug and then caught a horrible cold on top of it. Still sick, I had to farewell my husband to San Francisco for three weeks.

I came back from the airport and realised that I did not have the energy to properly care for my energetic 3.5-year-old and my even more energetic almost 2-year-old. I barely had the energy to care for my pregnant self.

(Oh yes, did I mention the fact that I'm also 4 months pregnant?)

Realising I couldn't carry on, I did what all smart people do and rang my sister-in-law, Kim. My intention was to ask her if it we could invade Te Puke for a while and then book the family bach for a few weeks.

But after explaining my situation, Kim took things up a notch and said, "Right, well how about I fly down to Wellington and help you get packed up and then drive you and the girls back up to Te Puke so you can rest."

How could I refuse an offer like that? (I didn't.)

I had a day and a half to get things sorted in Wellington - letting neighbours, church, Playcentre and Kindy know we wouldn't be around for the rest of term. And then Kim flew down on her white Air NZ horse to rescue us.

We stayed a couple of nights at Kim's house and then moved to my mother-in-law's house where I've been going to bed early and taking lots of naps. I still feel about a 3 on the energy scale.

I'm so glad we're here though. My girls are having a lovely time with their Te Puke cousins, and will be joined by some Auckland cousins over Easter, which is too exciting for words.

My girls and their cousins making play-doh hot cross buns. 

S had started dropping her naps before we came on holiday. I think we weren't doing enough in the day to tire her out while I was sick, but she's back napping like a star now that there's so much going on.

Garden-wise I think we picked the perfect time of year to come to my mother-in-law's house. We've been eating fresh grapes, feijoas, passionfruit, pears, apples and cherry tomatoes from Judy's garden by the fistful.

L takes great delight in going out daily to check for feijoas in the "jungle" as she calls it.

She then pretends she's a chicken who lays feijoas eggs. She sits down in little nests around the garden clucking and flapping until an egg is laid, which is when she gets a big look of surprise on her face and stands up to uncover the egg. (L has made me the farmer whose job it is to collect the eggs.)

On the cooking front, I got all inspired by a new blog I found - Detoxinista - and made cauliflower crust pizza for lunch today.

Cauliflower crust pizza.

It was divine! I'm definitely going to make it again. What a fabulous and tasty way to get more vegetables into our diet, especially since both girls enjoyed it too.

I've been trying to consciously eat more vegetables after reading about Frugal Kiwi's journey to better health eating nine cups of vegetables a day. On her recommendation I also tried making cauliflower popcorn (yummo!) and kale chips (I can imagine they would be delicious, but I made them way too salty and vinegary by accident so they were virtually inedible.)

While I was sick in bed last week, I spent a lot of time reading blogs with my iPhone. Being sick, I wanted to try to make some healthy food for the girls so I made soaked whole-wheat bread for the first time. I used this recipe from The Elliot Homestead and it turned out great, even if my mixture had to be poured into the bread tins rather than shaped like hers. The girls loved it - even eating the fresh crusts. Paul loved it. I loved it. Win!

I also attempted to make my own healthy baked beans, since they're one of L's favourite breakfast foods. Not such a win. I made a lot of baked beans for the worms in our worm farm, but nothing edible for our family.

And that's about all going on in my world of late.

Have you come across any great recipes I should try?