What to do with a real lot of bananas

Thanks to Bushy Park, the fruit and vegie shop I love to visit, I had a real lot of bananas to use quickly. And I hate waste.

I had a banana smoothie while I thought about it. Cake is so obvious, everyone likes cake. But for some reason, I decided to go a different way.

Here's a banana meringue pie! Practically sugar free. Except if you count the meringue, which actually has quite a lot.

It has been quite nice - not a new favourite or anything, but it was nice to have a go at meringue.

And here's all the rest, turning into delicious banana chips, for office snacking over the rest of the week!

Driving us mad ... to Chocolate

We have a learner driver in the family. Not only that, we are aware we will have two more next year. Catriona's been slow to get her hours up - after well over a year, she's nearly at the halfway mark. We mean for her to make it to 120 hours by January or so, so we can start teaching the boys.

Now, how do you fit in driving practice on the weekends? Well, nobody had anything special on today, so we went out to Yarra Valley Chocolaterie and Ice Creamery for a visit. An hour's nice varied drive, then chocolate when you get there! Then another hour home. Sure, it's time wasting, but its for a reason.

We bought some gorgeous bars, with bush food ingredients, like the fabulous Lemon Myrtle (yum!). And we had better-than-average hot chocolates.

Next month is their Hot Chocolate Festival - a different posh flavour every day.









Here's our driver, about to hit the 60 hour mark. Hooray!

Thomas made brownies!

Thomas put his hood up, turned his back to me, and wouldn't let me take a photo of him cooking. But we have a hatch in the kitchen...


By the way, the Ghirardelli Brownie Mix you can get at Costco (6 packets in a box, works out to about $2 a packet) is really good.

Sticky Date Macarons!

Look what's on the table tonight!

A Harold Lloyd Birthday Card

Chris is having a birthday, and luckily, our friends at the Astor Cinema knew exactly what to treat her to ... a night of silent movies, one of her favourite things in the world! This particular program was a Harold Lloyd double, "Safety Last" and "Speedy". "Safety Last" is the one with that fabulous scene of Lloyd climbing up a building and hanging off the clock (yes, the film sets up an excellent reason for him to be doing all that).

So, having established that we'd go to the movies as a birthday treat, all I had to do was make a birthday card. What do you think?