Spring might be here

How do I know? It’s not just that it’s the first day of September. It’s not just because spring flowers are out. It’s because ants have arrived. Yep. How annoying. I am not so much of a Buddhist that I let ants live. Sorry. They gotta go. Best way to get rid of them? Put a small piece of ‘post-it’ sticky note paper – just a small strip – close to where the ants are streaming in, but away from food prep areas and cat areas (a little crevice is ideal) and gently squeeze several dots of NO ANTS Nest Killer gel bait onto the paper and watch them come to feast. They then go back to their nest and it’s no more ants. Post-it paper is good because it will stick to a surface and ants will traverse it more easily than having to hop into a jam jar lid. They simply walk over it, smell the tucker and they’re in!
You’ve probably cleaned out your pantry, unplugged the freezer and sorted out the dead bodies in there and have been cooking your socks off – Social Media is alive with alls sorts of weird and wonderful creations! Keep it up, especially Aucklanders. We are more than halfway through!

Best In Class

It’s pretty obvious this is tank / GOAT / tops / mint / best-ever or whatever expression you use or have stolen off your kids to describe a best-ever. It’s simply way OTT, a rice pudding laden with apricots, golden sultanas, cinnamon and vanilla, and served with a pottle of cream. It takes 10 minutes max to make (although you need to soften the apricots first) and every bite is well worth the ever-after thigh padding. Lockdown issues? Use prunes instead of apricots, adding grated lemon zest and serve with yoghurt to give a tangy contrast. In place of cream, a dollop of vanilla ice cream will turn it into a dessert of such decadence there will be silence all around as you and your bubble-mates devour and savour. Apricot & Vanilla Rice Pudding

Smashing the Coloureds

Finally, peppers at a good price, so I was in. I paid through the nose for an eggplant, but I needed a rest from winter vege. I had no plan, so I roasted them off, with some tomatoes, cooked up a batch of pasta and had a colourful bowl of happiness. Rigatoni with Peppers & Eggplant

A note about pasta … yep, it’s another rigatoni recipe (I’ve done quite a few on Shared Kitchen) and that’s because my fave pasta is spaghetti and I always think, oh I can’t do spaghetti again, I better use another pasta, and so I reach for rigatoni. The spaghetti recipe count dwindles and the rigatoni recipe count increases. Weird isn’t it? BUT this will be extraordinarily good on spaghetti – just chop the vegetables a bit to ensure they can get caught up in the tangle of noodles. 

Roasted Spiced Butternut

Here’s a great way to turn butternut – that’s the long-necked buff coloured pumpkin – into a scrumptious vegetarian meal. Add a dollop of yoghurt sauce, a wee crown of baby leaf salad and a smattering of toasted pumpkin seeds and you’re good to go. Roasted Spiced Pumpkin

A Grizzle

It WOULD  happen during Lockdown – my kitchen scales died. No amount of trickery or promises would get them to operate. Apart from a one-off, brief, full-on-ready-to-go screen flash, they are dead. Drat. I’m annoyed because it is the THIRD set I have had in about 8 years. Apparently, I am not alone. Many other people are finding SALTER scales to be useless. It used to be such a good reliable brand. Now the scales are cheaply made, light, plasticy, and when they break, you can’t open them to have a tinker. They go to landfill. It’s shocking. I’ve created 3 sets of scales for landfill. What to do? Talk about it loudly. Complain. Contact the importers, and talk to Consumer magazine. Let me know if you have had a problem with these scales, and whether you have found a reliable brand to replace them. The older Salter scales that have the raised weighing platform seem to go the distance, so it’s just the sort pictured here which are causing concern.

New Running Mate

I’ve had to find a new bubble running-mate. Who knew that cute little hedgehogs committed such dastardly deeds as hunting out native baby birds’ eggs with their pointy little piggy snouts, hoovering up slinky skinks on the way?
Quelle horreur! I was fraternising with the enemy, especially treasonous here on Waiheke and I’m lucky I haven’t been lynched (hopefully Level 4 offers me some protection!).
While it’s true that hedgehogs love walking through the hedgerows and have piggy snouts (hence hedge + hog), and love snails and slugs, which is good, and that’s why the British love them, here, downunder, they’ve risen up the ladder of BGBs (Bad Garden Buggers) because of the aforementioned dietary preferences. If only they’d stuck to slugs and grass roots and the odd saucer of milk. Oh well, I’ll have to find a new friend.

Duck Duo

I’m considering my duck duo. They’re simply magnificent in the air, strong and majestic, and they don’t seem afraid of me and land quite close if I am outside. You can train ducks, a little, I read, and let them into your house. You’ll get good cuddles, people confide, but unless you want poop everywhere, you need to put them in diapers. That’s nappies, to us, so that means it’s likely an American who made that claim. I’m not saying anything, merely sharing my source of comment, but it all seems a bit of a fiddle, so I don’t think I’ll be going there. Still it’s nice to see them every day, and they enjoy being together. Apparently, ducks get depressed if they are alone, and need company, so I’m glad my Lockdown Duck Duo have each other. Dr Google told me that ducks have the ability to control each of their eyes independently. The information they take in with one eye is stored in the memory on the opposite side of the brain. Well, goodness me, that’s something to think about while you ‘while away’ another grey day. 

Pringz with Wingz

If you are fond of quizzes (I know, for many of you it’s one quiz, two quizzes, three z’zzzzzzzes = an afternoon nap), how many wings do you think a bee has? I knew the answer in a recent Zoom quiz only because I had photographed bees at close range. But what I saw in the pic below didn’t make sense. It was Mr Pringz with wingz! Thanks Luca (Luca’s my 34 year-old ‘child’ and Mr Pringz his ginger cat!). His bee-cat brought lots of much-needed Lockdown smiles to me yesterday. I hope it does to you, too. Oh, and one comment about kids, NEVER let them grow up.

Get the kids into gardening

Kids love growing things, especially when there is a fast result. Enter radish! Start some seeds in a small pot on a windowsill and take daily photos on your phone so you can look back at the progress. Once the radish are established, plant them in the garden.