I shall call them super, awesome, almond biscuits!

While I love making biscuits from scratch, the temptation was too strong for me to resist the easiness of pre-made cookie dough and a tub of sugary, almond paste. With Christmas coming closer at an alarming rate, the supermarkets are being stocked with tasty things to prepare every housewife with the necessities to make every Christmas sweet. While the packaging of the cookie dough shows pictures of boomerang shaped biscuits, I thought of an idea to make these cookies even better. I am a HUGE fan of marzipan and all things almondy so it was only appropriate to create a super, awesome, almond biscuit.

Queue some music, preheat the oven and prepare the kitchen bench for some serious dough rolling. Armed with my rolling pin I set to work on the pliable dough and rolled it out to about 5mm thin. It was almost too tempting to eat the dough raw but I kept telling myself that the finished product will be even better. I scooped spoonfuls of almond paste out of the tub, rolled it into a ball and carefully crafted the dough around the ball making sure not to leave any gabs so the almond paste could ooze out once it was in the heat of the oven. Once the dough was formed into a nice, little ball I dipped the top in some super fine sugar, popped it on the oven tray and pressed it down with a fork which left a nice pattern in the top of a very tasty looking biscuit.

After the tray was full of these beauties, I popped it in the oven and eagerly waited while they baked away to create almondy bliss for my mouth. Hopefully for Roy's sake I can refrain from eating the whole lot before he gets home from work.

A new career perhaps???

Lately I've come to realise that I may have missed my calling - as a handy man. In a little over 4 weeks, our dishwasher died, almost brand new vacuum cleaner broke, hot water system continually crashed, washing machine stopped working and yesterday it was all topped off with our hot water cupboard flooding. It's times like these that I'm so pleased that we are only renting our lovely apartment and don't own it - otherwise I think I'd be increasingly frustrated with all these things dying at once.

Back in Aussie-land, Mitch and I both worked full time and so I always left fixing these types of practical things up to him seeing as both of us were lacking spare time. Nowadays, I'm a proud to be a housewife - a busy busy housewife mind you, I'm forever cooking, cleaning, entertaining and chauffeuring but seeing as I don't work, I've taken on things I would never have considering breaking a nail over in Australia - and so 'handy Lu' has emerged.

Now rid yourself of all stereotypical handy man visions here - this handy lady does not sport a charming plumbers behind or wear a sawdust covered toolbelt. No, this handy lady is usually seen in a dress, tights and boots, armed with fabric scissors, sticky tape and a knitting needle. Although, I do wish I had a trendy hammer - like one my fellow housewife and I spotted last week while shopping during our housewives conference - it was pink and flowery and oh-so-pretty...

Anyway - I've become a bit of a pro lately at dealing with repairmen, landlords and learning how to fix things. The vacuum cleaner is now securely sticky taped together (it works a treat!) while awaiting replacement parts... I've also perfected the art of grabbing a towel and running out to the hot water cupboard (situated in our kitchen beside a typically Dutch HUGE curtain-less window, no less) and re-setting the hot water system (after it died 2 minutes into every shower - only showers had when I was home alone and had no Mitch to go fix it for me of course) in record time before any of the traffic on our busy street noticed the soggy cranky Aussie girl in the window...

I also attempted to translate the washing machine manual (which although it was in Dutch, I probably would still have required a translation if it was in English -  me and manuals just don't mix) when it suddenly died and made a terrifying humming noise - ended up having Mitch google chat me through searching for the problem, which I'm ashamed to admit was just that our landlady's boyfriend had disconnected the water supply when removing our old dishwasher the previous day - I had a red face when I figured that one out..

Yesterday morning I got up and discovered the hot water cupboard - also our supply cupboard for plastic bags (I now keep all reasonable plastic bags seeing as you have to PAY for them here!!!!), toilet rolls and the like - was extremely soggy. It started with a drip out of one pipe and within an hour was steadily dripping from all sorts of random places that didn't look like water should ever drip out of. After attacking it with paper towel and wondering if sticky tape would also be a suitable solution for this problem, I had to hang up my imaginary tool belt and contact our landlady. Within hours, a real life handy man from the energy company was here (who was grumpy and didn't speak a word of English unlike the rest of the country, except for the word 'yellow' - when his gesturing angrily towards the yellow sponge in the sink didn't work on me, he muttered yellow until I handed it to him) and hopefully fixed the problem - so far, the cupboard is bone dry. Here's hoping it stays that way...

After the past weeks of releasing my inner handyman, I'm pleased to say I finally have a real result on one of my broken appliances - A BRAND NEW DISHWASHER!!!!!!!!!!! It's amazing what makes my day nowadays. I'm a bit in love with my new dishwasher - it's shiny, smells new and has all sorts of exciting compartments for carefully stacking my dishes in. I'm also pleased to say it has a timer so I can now set it to go off during off-peak electricity hours - ah, the 'cheap' Dutch are rubbing off on me (in the best possible way of course)...

So, with my hands now being freed of dirty dishwater, a verdict has been reached on the To Paint vs Not To Paint case - I think an afternoon with some hot pink nail polish is in store for me :-)

If the men get to go to conferences, why can't we?

We are fast approaching the 2nd ever Housewives conference for the Two Trailing Spouses which is being held in the tiny town of Saint-Maurice in Not-so-flatland. The conference will commence on the night of the 6th November and it's looking to shape up as a rather fine evening indeed. With a boot-load of speculoos paste, stroopwafels and girly, pink, Belgian beer the housewives will kick off a fantastic week of cooking, giggling, drinking, eating, giggling, scaring husbands and a bit more of that giggling that tends to go on at these types of events. There is lots to prepare before this event can take place. Lots of laundry to be washed, dishes to be cleaned, groceries to be bought....