Friday's Nature Table: fungi friday

A lovely blogger I know has started a great join in friday feature that is right up my garden path, or down in the back paddock as the case may be. She calls it For the love of fungus friday. So I am double dipping that and Nature Table Friday which is a meme from another beautiful blog.

So, I knew I was mushroom hunting this week - and our lane - which last year yielded many a 'shroom, was holding out on us this week.

And I was thinking I would be posting a very sad ole fungi instead of an inspired and inspiring one.

.

And then...

.

We went down the back paddock to visit Frankie and Jackson...

.

.

Who really were only interested in us as mobile food stations and when they realised we weren't very useful in that way, they wandered off.

.

And that was when we spotted a fairy town...
.

.

Which needed to be carefully and quietly visited.

And sat in.

.

.

Time passed.

How much time is really the right amount of time to spend in a fairy town?

All the folk were out or sleeping, so we spent our time quietly inspecting and wondering.

.

.

W tended to a few necessary jobs such as removing stray pine needles from an odd roof and moving twigs away from the wondrous growing new houses.

A gentle caretaker giant in a tiny town.

.

.

If only we could move in.

.
Don't you wish you could?

.

This recipe gets hammered

Since I have very limited time to cook these days, I have been hammering a few favourite recipes (even more than I did before my second beautiful boy was born)!
.
And this 'ere post is just an excuse to pick every one out there in blogland's brain for great and easy recipes so I can expand my hammered recipe horizon and also to share my favourites...
Join in please - most of my best were someones elses' best first!
.
Here is mine for today...
.
From Nourishing Traditions . (for info on soaking grains and why it is good for you - this blog gives you a bit of info in an easy to read way...)
.
Lactofermented wholemeal spelt pancakes (my adaptation)
Put two cups of wholemeal spelt flour in a bowl with two cups of plain yogurt (preferably home made!)
Cover with a wet tea towel (or glad wrap) and soak over night or till you next get to it.
Add eggs - between one and oh, I dunno - I like 3 or 4
Add a bit of salt - at least a good pinch of sea salt
Add a tea spoon of bicarb soda
Add melted butter - about two table spoons - ish
Add water to make thin-ish.
Mix well
.
Heat fry pan well. Pour a bit in the pan and then roll around the mixture. If it is too stodgy then you either need more water in the mix or less mix in the pan. They cook much more slowly than normal pancakes as they have soaked grains so be patient. I cook them as I do other things around the kitchen. I make a heap and store them in a container to eat over a few days. We put raw honey or jam on them and roll them up generally. They are amazing and well worth the overnight soak and the slow cooking.
.
So all you need to do (apart from cook and eat my pancakes if you like the sound of them...) is write a post with your most hammered recipe in it (with that title if you like) and then add your info into Linky bit at the bottom and link back to this post.
Please do - I am desperate for your tasty treats... Oh and if this works I will randomly do it again some time!
.

then again.

So I have been mulling over the summing up of our trip away. To say that we are home is obviously too simplistic. So I considered witty poems about gastro in each leg of our family. The interesting ways I would slowly come around to describing vomiting on the loo at four in the morning as W stands in front of me saying 'Mum, what ARE you doing?".
.
I bandied around now amusing anecdotes about drink bottles bouncing firmly from the top of my head to my wee son's head as we lay convalescing and the ensuing 'days of our lives'-ish intervention that resulted.
.
I ran through amusing and engaging details of incidents such as waiting an hour and a half for a hire car - then being given a black Audi with a sun roof. Clever word use making the minutiae of daily life in retelling cause me to sigh, giggle or snort as I remember this person or that and this incident or that image. As I washed dishes today I thought about how I can tweak each event in the retelling to taunt or titillate.
.
I remember the final night when I baby sat for the folk I stayed with so they could go to a movie. For the first time in the many nights we had all sat around together there, of course it was this night alone that all four children woke up - three at one time - leaving me sat on my friends' bed in my undies with three crying children in my lap, saying 'shhhh shhhh shhhh'.
.
I even listed the terrible, awful, no good moments of illness, tiredness, travel, stress and hard work in my head. There were many. I reflected on how most of the trip had been single parented as my partner was on family or work business. The crazy bits, the silly bits, the sad bits and the reflective bits. The eczema getting better, worse, better, worse. The sleep changing. And changing again. The reflecting on a home moved away from. A placenta left - it's tree dead. A miscarried child left - it's tree ripped up.
.
But the risk is of course, that in the tweaking, the sad bits become funny and the long thoughts and reflections become trite and the hard parts that were actually warming or beautiful or funny don't present as they felt at all. Perhaps that is because I don't have enough time to write this all as I would like. Perhaps it is because I don't know how.
.
Or perhaps, just perhaps it is because despite having some great difficulties, lows, vomits, coughs, sleeplessness, craziness, emotional intensity and all the rest, I just can't let go of two things. One is that actually, despite the list of mad, bad and ugly, I really had a lovely time for the vast majority of the time.
.
And secondly, how lucky were we to spend such time with some of our favourite people in the world. How spectacular that W's favourite person in the world belongs to the same family as the one that my partner and I electively love without reserve. Such goodness, such honest, crazy goodness that feels like family.
.
I'm sure I never bribed my son to love their daughter above all others, nor to play better, longer and happier with her than with any other on the earth. If I could have I might have considered it but he and she found the head, heart and hands of the other child the most delightful of all without the influence of anyone but each other.
.
Thank you for taking us in, infecting us with gastro and making us part of the life you lead and some of the life we left behind two years ago. We felt loved, welcomed and relished belonging to your home as long as we did. We learned a lot and grew a lot while we were there. We hope we left you with something more than dirty washing and exhaustion.
.
I still can't believe that four of the people my family like most in the world actually all belong in the one family!
Lucky lucky lucky.
.

we are home.

.
.a
..a
...a
....a
.....a
......a
.......a
........a
.........a
..........a
...........a
............a
.............a
..............a
...............a
................a
.................a
..................a
...................a
.....................h
......................h
.......................h
..........................
.
.

and off we go...

.

We are off to Fremantle for a family gathering and to see friends. To visit our old town and W's birth town and birth pals. We are also going to see how the change of environment effects K's eczema.

.

A much needed change.

.

Of late we have been hosting our Steiner Playgroup in our home as the Kindy where it usually is held has been experiencing a huge upgrade. It has been lovely to be 'encouraged' to keep the big, beautiful front room in aesthetic order and to enjoy it even more than usual.

It has always been our room for play but our bits and pieces were mostly put away and exchanged for the playgroup materials (almost identical so that was a bit funny!)

Our family has enjoyed the change in the room - a few additions - a playstand to make a wee kitchen and a soft corner for the babies which have both been much used inside and outside of playgroup time.

.

We leave it all today - hopefully tidy - for the playgroup to continue in our absence.

.

Aaah, the bottle neck of a going on a plane trip. Pack, clean, organise, think, prepare, blog, eat chocolate, stare out the window, wash clothes, dry clothes, pack food, think about contingencies, etc etc.

.

Despite all the environmental damage that flying in an enormous fuel sucking plane causes,

I can't help love flying on a plane.

A little isolated bubble in time.

On the way to some where, some thing, some people...

.

Have fun while we are away....

.

my creative space...

is oh so tired....
.
I am thinking creatively every minute of the day and more of the night than I care to work out, to try and come up with some way to help my itchy, coldy, sleepless baby. It is all consuming. I wish some magic answer would appear but creative and critical thought with luck and relentless effort will hopefully yield some improvement in time...
.

.
I have had a few lovely creative present wrapping moments inspired by our imminent trip back to Fremantle to visit lovely pals. oh yes they are Haigh's bags. Feel jealous, very jealous. And the receivers better hope I don't break down and break in before we get there...
.

.
Sadly no presents contain any of my creativity but some (for others further north) do contain lovely creative work by friends...

.

.

We are loving pocket friends in our house right now...

.
My main REAL creative work is thinking over the series that I am really enjoying writing on this blog - my every child series. I love thinking about all the bits and pieces I can write about here and it always reinvigorates my parenting and our life. Which is good give the horror nights we are having! I really loved writing the slow series I did a while back. I just find that with the crazy busy life I do have moments in my head to ponder future posts in a particular train of thought - so the series do provide a quiet creative corner in my mind every now and then!

.

For more creating go here!

.

(4) every child needs at least one parent who has had enough sleep to be rational or at least semi-rational most of the time

The effect on the whole family of a sleep deprived child is significant.

.

.

(note. not my child!)

.

However, a chronically sleep deprived 'main' parent will not be doing their best parenting in my experience! And in certain circumstances can make a lot of people quite miserable without meaning to at all...

.

So much advice gets given when people know you are lacking sleep.

.

.

Do less, just put your feet up, sleep when the baby or child sleeps, lower your standards, get help, be more like so-on-so...

.

However you really have to work out what will help your sanity most.

.

For instance - if you can cope with mess and living on baked beans on toast for weeks on end then yes by all means sleep and rest - I wish I had the ability to do this.

.

If you have an army of support nanas and grandfathers then get out there and make them useful. If you have a sugar daddy or a fat wallet make them work too. A grumpy parent is less grumpy when yummy takeaway graces the table or when they have had a few moments alone in the daytime whilst the children are happily off with other loving caregivers.

.

What helps your sanity most?

.

For me, however, it is a balancing act between:

.

a minimum of one clean and tidy room in the house

some nutritious meals

some indulgent one on one time spent with the older child

a few conversations with an adult without children present

some time without children to do something other than clean or tidy or cook

oh and of course some rest

.

I find that a tidy house and a happy four year old who feels like he had a good time with me today is more restful than rest.

.

Some people may find that a nutritious meal once a day is more restful than rest.

Others may find that outsourcing everything or doing none of it and just sleeping is the most restful for them

.

I guess we all balance but balancing when long term sleep deprivation is around is hard work.

.

I try and be mindful of my parenting. Consciously try and keep the mood positive in the house when all I would like to do sometimes is lie on the floor in a damp heap of chocolate and tea and ululate.

.

It's hard work.

But keeping trying new approaches and finding new inspiration and new ways to reinvigorate the days and the nights is so vital.

But of course there are millions and millions of us doing it - a great community sending good thoughts out to others.

.

Go well all you sleep deprived main parents.

Your work is important.

Every time you do something just a wee microscopically tiny bit better than the last time you did it - you change the world.

.

.

a question...

Does anyone else out there spend Sunday ironing shirts?

.

or am I locked in a space time continuum where it is actually the 50's in my house every Sunday evening?!

.