sago and stewed prunes + bats in my belfry

By my calculations it’s been 8 days, 2 hours, 14 minutes and 3 seconds since I was alone, even for one waking minute.

The Big Sister has a cough which draws uncomfortable stares and inspires old people to cross the street.  We’ve been laying low at Casa de Cooker, not leaving the house except to buy groceries and drop the Little Sister to her day care mother.

The Big Sister loves school, so every morning this week, when the realisation hit that she was too crook to go, there were floods of tears.  She cried a bit as well.

She’s a tenacious tyke who, despite barking like a seal when she exerts herself, will not cuddle up under a blanket and watch back to back episodes of Disney Junior.  She needs to be interacted with, she needs to be entertained, she needs to craft.  Ugh.
I suspect it’s probably the crafting that was the tipping point.  It was while we were constructing an insect mobile that she declared it absolutely necessary that we both stick red glittery beetles to our foreheads.  I submitted.  The fight in me is gone.

The constant chatter, songs from Frozen and insistence that I learn the hand signals for Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree have done me in.  There are bats in my belfry.  Why else would I write a recipe using the food world’s least sexy ingredients?

sago and stewed prunes

This is a recipe my Mother in Law makes.  It’s warm, comforting and just the thing for winter.

Ingredients:
½ cup sago
4 cups milk
½ cup sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste

Method:  
Combine sago and milk in a small saucepan and cook until clear.  Whisk the eggs, sugar and vanilla in a bowl and add to the cooked sago mix, stirring constantly.  Boil for three minutes.  Serve warm with stewed prunes.
To stew the prunes combine 1 cup prunes with 1 ½ cups water and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice.  Bring to the boil and simmer covered, for thirty minutes.  The prunes will absorb most of the water.  At the end of the thirty minutes, hook the prunes out and reduce the remaining water to a syrupy consistency.  

ever get cabin fever?
do you love sago?