Food matters

Yesterday we felt like the queen and king of homemade food!

For breakfast we ate homemade fruit muffins, made that morning by David. 

For afternoon tea we ate homemade slice and banana muffins made that day by me. 

For dinner we ate homemade pizza topped by homemade leftovers plus other things. (Base by Wendy, toppings by David). Dessert was homemade

Spaghetti Casserole Pizza on a homemade
 wholemeal base. Pizza bases aren't easily
available here and take away pizza not great
value for money, so we usually make
our own.

chocolate ice-cream made by Wendy on Monday.

Dinner was a huge success. The new recipe we're using for a pizza base is easy and light. Dessert was greeted by incredulous cries of, "Wow, you made this? It tastes like Hagen Daaz!"

So satisfying! I love feeding my family (most of the time). And they're now at an age where they really show appreciation for food they're enjoying. Boys are great like that! 

With only six weeks till we leave I've moved into "clear the pantry and freezers out" mode. Not easy. Particularly when I've worked under a mode of having extra food in case of emergency since the March 2011 disasters. It feels a bit scary to be scaling down our stores. 

Thankfully this time we're not packing up the whole house—that is even trickier. Non-perishable leftover supplies can be left for our house sitters. But at the same time I don't want to leave a stack of food that they might not want. So I'm aiming to use up as much as we can: a fine balancing act when we're still providing food for us all every day. 

Strangely enough, as things have gotten more hectic with my jobs (planning for handover plus the regular day-to-day work is a bit crazy), I've gotten more urges to cook. Not procrastination, perhaps a suppressed desire to run away from all this transition? But at the same time, I've had more spills and mistakes than usual, I'm usually a pretty tidy cook, so this is unusual. I think the pretence that I'm holding it all together can't stay intact for too much longer.