Be brave

A beautiful quote I just read:

Courage doesn't always roar, sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying " I will try again tomorrow "

Mary Ann Radmaker

I love that. As I was looking at the clock counting down the minutes to bed time, making our breakfast and lunch for the next day, I got that all familiar feeling in the pit of my stomach - the anxiety of what the next day might bring... then I read this quote.

It helped calm my nerves and remind me that everythings gonna be ok - in fact, it might even be the best day ever. Stay tuned...

Oscar the octopus

Yesterday, while Christmas shopping for my dear sweet niece I found a gift for myself. Meet Oscar, the octopus. Mr Bigs not so keen on it but I'm in love. Thoughts?

Sausage roll recipe for TJ

On a day when I really needed it an old friend told me he read my blog. I was thrilled when he told me this and then to also ask for my sausage roll recipe - well that was hard proof he REALLY had looked at it. Thanks TJ !

Now comes the embarrassing culinary truth, TJ... World ... Sausage rolls are crazy simple.... Take the ingredient list for example :

Pepperidge farm puff pastry sheets
Jimmy dean sausage

Yeek. I know - 2 items. The hardest part comes next. Assembly:

Unwrap package of pastry.

Rest a while. You deserve a break after all that unwrapping angst

Next flour a hard surface and roll out the pastry sheet so it's about 1/2 as thick as it comes out of the package. Cut in half length ways.

On the first piece put a generous line of sausage (:-) ) in the middle of the pastry length ways. Roll it up, crimp the edges together and slice into chunks. Bake until golden.

These are so delicious. Everyone loves them and I am definatley making then for thanksgiving.

In NZ a lot of people make them more fancy than I.. You can add herbs and onion to the meat - I've even known people that have put chopped apple into the mix. But I like it to be simple.

Thanks TJ for reading. Let me know how the sausage rolls turn out.

Howdy

First thing first sorry. Sorry ive been AWOL. It's been, let's say, a challenging month or so. Deep breath. Haaaaaaaaaaaaa

Now that I'm back lets start with this past weekend. Regular guest stars on our weekend adventures are Tadpole and Ronnie. You know them so I won't bother with a long winded intro. This weekend we got to hang out with them on Sarurday. I'd really re-he-ally been looking forward to Saturday. Of course because I would see two of my favorite people's but also... It was forecast (drumroll) for SNOW.

As is normal this kinda transpired in some areas but not in Everett where we live. Sad.... On the flip side though, Saturday was a glorious blue sky sunny day and the mountains were just gorgeous all snow covered.

First things first I baked some sausage rolls

These are fan favorites. Next stop was for liquid refreshments at Starbucks. Luckily Tadpole had the perfect accompaniment

Then it was time to load up the car... With guns and ammo and head for the country. Yes. Guns. Ammo. GAH!

And before we knew it we had arrived. .. And the boys seemed excited

I was excited too. At the snow! Do we unloaded the guns, the sausage rolls, the ammo and the targets

It was weird to this little kiwi seeing all the guns and ammo but what was even weirder was

Lil Elliott was an awesome shot

I even tried my hand at it. As you can see, I don't really have the stance of a real shooter

It was a fun time. But its the weirdest feeling in the world shooting a gun.