The Week That Was :: Paddington Bear + Pesto + Mountain lions + Sweet potato muffins

This week,

We drove back from Sydney, listening to Stephen Fry read us Paddington Bear stories on audiobook. It was just about the greatest thing ever.

the New England Highway, through NSW

Nelle lost both her front teeth, purely naturally {but she's still so little!!}, and I did a bit of research and writing on nanoparticles, telomeres and sex addiction. And no, it wasn't that kind of research. 

I had a dream about a mountain lion attacking a cow, and woke up feeling like it must mean something. But what? Honestly, I question my brain sometimes.


pesto + eggs on toast

The garden was bushy and overgrown from all the rain lately, so I gave it a trim and made basil and amaranth pesto from all the leaves. We've used it all week for pasta, potato salad and eggs on toast. {Recipe coming soon!}

I finished - and loved - The Casual Vacancy, and had to start another Steinbeck to keep my heart happy.

I also read the article 'How to Cure Cancer' in the latest TIME magazine, and wondered if they'd get about doing it sometime soon {please}. I wondered if the dream-team style of research might inspire creative thinking and progress in almost any field, and whether I should invite a bunch of seemingly-random scientists to dinner sometime ...

working + coffeeing

I booked my {solo!} flights to San Francisco for this conference, which will get me home precisely 5 days before we all fly to Thailand + Sri Lanka for holidays. Whew.

I made Heidi's labneh recipe and Deb's hummus recipe {peeled chickpeas and all} and this zucchini cake - which featured in Nelle's lunch twice. {I also froze a bit, for when school starts}.

My sister in law made us baked strawberry cheesecake, which we doused in marcapone and washed down with gin and tonic.

Suz's awesome cheesecake

My sweet potato muffins won Muffin Recipe of the Year over on Foodlets, and the blurb Babble.com wrote about my blog made my heart sing.
 
Nelle singing along to Pink's Just Give Me a Reason in the car also made my heart sing. I may have joined in, once I stopped crying.

And that was my week - I hope you had a great one, too!
More to come, soon.
Amanda xx

Comments

  1. Beautiful! We have also been having an ongoing pesto party at our house. And i need to get some stephen fry reading paddington bear pronto!

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  2. Yes! We all love the stories, they're so sweet and astute, and you can't beat Stephen Fry's voice for audiobooks. (His readings of Harry Potter are also faves around here :) )

    Happy basilling! xx

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  3. can you share your baked strawberry cheesecake recipe to me? I wanna make it too. This is perfect for this spring.

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  4. @Otay The particular cheesecake shown was my sister in law's - but I think she used this one by Donna Hay: http://www.donnahay.com.au/recipes/classic-baked-cheesecake + distributed a punnet of sliced strawberries across the top.

    My go-to cheesecake is a little simpler, though, so I'll try to get my act together and post that soon :)

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  5. I love everything you've got going on at the moment. Congrats on the winning muffin recipe and blog write-up. Sri Lanka is on my Bucket List. I'm booked to travel to Bhutan later this year but am tossing up between Japan and Sri Lanka next year. I know two OS trips in two years. Makes up for a long time raising children and not being able to afford it. That and there's a 50th and a 40th to celebrate. Woo hoo!

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  6. @katiecrackernuts Bhutan! Sounds incredible! Do it. There's no time like NOW. I'll let you know how SL goes mid-year, but I'm pretty sure it's going to be great and you'll want to go ...

    And happy birthday, whenever this year it happens! We should always celebrate birthdays with awesome OS trips, I think :) xx

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Thanks for commenting! Amandaxx