Meatloaf and Me Me Me!!!

Well like everything in my life, once I get off the proverbial butt and get started I can't stop, so after a break of 9 months I now have 2 blog posts in 2 days.

I'll start off with THE best meatloaf recipe ever....this recipe changed my life, fail to believe me if you will, but trust me make it and you'll be a convert

Credit to my cooking idol Tessa Kiros, it's from the worlds best cookbook Apples for Jam(excuse the picture, I couldn't find the last picture I took of the meatloaf so I took a photo of the cookbook pic).


Meatloaf with Roasted Vegetables

80g White bread crusts removed
1/2 cup of milk
2 large carrots peeled
1 large potato peeled
1 red capsicum
500g Beef mince (she uses lean, I use pov mince because I think it makes a better tastier meatloaf)
2 tbs of finely chopped parsley(I use basil)
1 garlic clove finely chopped
1 heaped tbsp grated parmasan
1 lightly beaten egg
4 tbsp olive oil
100g thinly sliced pancetta
2 sage sprigs(I never have sage so just double the rosemary)
2 rosemary sprigs
2 unpeeled garlic cloves
1 tbsp plain flour
1/2 cup of white wine or stock

Preheat the oven to 180C. Soak the bread in milk for about 15 minutes, squashing it up with your hands so it collapses.
Cut the carrots in half lengthways then into four. Repeat with the Zuccini.Cut the potato into more or less the same size wedges and the capsicum into strips.
Put aside
Put mince into bowl with parsley(or basil),garlic,parmasan,egg and squashed up bread and a flat tsp of salt. Combine until smooth then form a large loaf shaped like a giant egg.
Drizzle half the olive oil into a large flameproof baking dish and put the meatloaf on top.Cover with overlapping slices of pancetta tucking them in at the bottom.
Scatter the veggies around, drizzle them with the rest of the oil and toss with some salt. Tuck the herbs and garlic cloves under the veggies.
Bake for about 1 1/4 hours turning the veggies halfway through. They should be crusty and golden and the pancetta crispy. Turn oven off. Remove the veg and meatloaf to a platter, cover with foil and return to the oven to keep warm.
Put the baking dish on the stovetop over high heat and sprinkle in the flour.
Cook, stirring constantly to scrape up all the bits. Pour in wine/stock and stir until evaporated. Add 250ml of hot water season with salt and cook until smooth and thick.
Serve with thick slices of meatloaf and veggies.

Enjoy!

Now just for some random pictures of my Oh So interesting life.

We've recently had the misfortune( I kid I kid) of having Beau's sister Bree and her husband EJ come visit from the backwater they call Perth. It's lovely seeing the kids, especially Bruno interact with their cousins and I'll be very sad to see them go...well the boys anyway haha



They actually have my big kids and have taken them camping once again proving without doubt to me that they are not the brightest sparks...leaving me with just the unruly child, Miss Teddy. So to take advantage of our new found freedom Beau and I pretended we were a one child family yesterday and took Her Ladyship The Esteemed Theodora to Muddies for some chips and a splash around.
She's obnoxious but rather lovely to look at.









And lastly mucho thanko's to the lovely Tina who reminded me of two precious objects I had "put away somewhere safe" and now have pride of place on the girls bedroom walls.



I don't like to blog about Ava, because I don't believe anything I say can do her justice,I sound too clumsy, too sentimental. But she is still very very much remembered in this household.
XoSuper PrincessoX

They say it's like riding a bike

And for a start stop being filthy you lot, I'm talking about blogging!

Secondly it's all lies, it's not at all like riding a bike, I can't remember
a damn thing...where is the thingamie button to post pics? How do I do this?
how do I do that? I have the memory of a goldfish so it's like learning to ride
said bike all over again.

Well I'm back ;)
I thought I'd be back because Domestic Goddess I am, I made my truly superb
Tess Kiros Meatloaf the other night for dinner and I wanted to share with the world
what a clever clever chook I am.
Then I realised I didn't take a picture.
Then I realised I'm as unmotivated as hell.
Then I forgot.

Then I decided that I'm going to die in childbirth with this pregnancy from an amniotic embolism (reason #7585 why Dr Google is NOT your friend ) and in the search for information about my future manner of death came across this foul piece of blogging trash.

http://skepticalob.blogspot.com/ I tried to insert her Blog as a clickable link
but it was an epic fail.

I'm not particularly passionate about Home birth, not that I don't think it's a wonderful idea, but I just KNOW I'd be racing around afterwards wanting to mop up blood and home births and white bedlinen is so not a match made in heaven ( plus I'm a sicko that loves hospitals and even *gasp* hospital food).
But Dearest long suffering and now probably non existent Constant Reader, her views on homebirth are just vicious, she's meant to be an Ob Gyn but the language she uses to describe home births, the midwives that attend them and the woman who have them are just, well , petty?
She sounds like a 14 year old who's boycrush decided to take her uglier nicer friend to the movies instead of her.
Soooooooo of course I went poking about in her Blog and what was her latest post about...Down Syndrome of course *sigh* . And because I have all the self preservation and control of a gnat I stayed and read it...and let my panties wedge further up my bum crack, then commented , then got my panties further twisted.

Result, now I'm here Blogging about it.

My first disclaimer is that I am not religious at all and I am not Pro Life.
My views about termination and Down Syndrome derive from neither of the above things, in fact if anything the fact I'm not religious means effects to an extent the way I feel about D.S and termination for medical reasons.
We get one shot at this life kiddo's and Down Syndrome is not a bloody good enough reason to let that chance go.
I read recently on Essential Baby someone parrot the view that there are some "Fates worse than death" too justify terminating a fetus with Down Syndrome.
Fucking.Bullshit.
I dare, I effing double dare, anyone with that view to come live with me and observe Raphaela's life and tell me that her fate , her very existence is worse that being dead. The very concept is so far removed from the truth it's difficult to even dignify it with a response. Yet the sad thing is that it's quite a common view, especially( a view made from my very unreliable experience online in the past 6 years) in American culture and nowhere do you see this view parroted more than in the U.S blogging community and in U.S parenting forums.

What I think bothers me more than anything is the lack of honesty and posturing behind it all. Say you don't want a child with Down Syndrome, say it's to hard or hurts too bad or they look funny....hell medical inducement will make it all go away.
But do not patronise me and pretend that being born with Down Syndrome is hell on earth, that that extra 21st chromosome guarantee's a short lifetime of medical problems and pain,a worthless life, of being a burden on their families.
If we were going to bargain away the lives of our children on odds, we'd be better off only having children with Down Syndrome, anyone ever googled everything that can go wrong with a chromosomally "normal" child?

What people like the esteemed Dr Amy Tuteur MD and like minded colleagues fail to grasp in the nasty little cesspit they call a mind, is that parents like me, parents of children with Down Syndrome, advocate and get caught up in these extremely painful discussion not through some sadist need or because "quote" of the guilt of bearing a defective offspring.

Down.Syndrome.Is.Just.Not.That.Bad.

We, not Dr Amy Tuteur MD, not any of the other Dr's or genetic counsellors LIVE with a child with Down Syndrome every day. Not a "high functioning" child as my friend Dr Amy Tuteur MD would like to claim. But a child whos quality of life is as good as any of her siblings. Who deserves to LIVE. Just like any of her unborn peers.

So take that Dr Amy Tuteur MD and shove it up your pipehole.

P.s Melissa, will be back with said meatloaf recipe when I've finished making playdoh voodoo dolls of my favourite blogger :)