Wipe Out....

Hello there!

I thought I had better pop my head in to show that we are still alive!

It all started last week when Hubby came home feeling rough, he did make it into work but felt so ill he came home again, stopping at the doctors on the way, only to find he had.... influenza A. Great!

Next day, Ebi-kun goes off to school as usual, I'm feeling rough so instead of getting stuck into my work, I decide to lie down for a few minutes... 3 hours later I'm running a fever and feeling like a dogs old chew stick.

Off to the Dr I go and yes, the same and whilst I am at the clinic, school call to say Ebi-kun has a fever too so hubby went to pick him up. Needless to say we were all in bed by 6pm and there we basically stayed for 48 hours!

Not much fun being the nursemaid when you feel like a death warmed up zombie yourself.

We pretty much spent the whole week either in bed or on the sofa, feeling very sorry for ourselves. Ebi-kun managed to finish Never Ending Story which has been a monster book for him to read, so at least came out of the week with a smile of his face.

So, we are all back at work/school. And I have a pile of blogging to catch up on! 

Japans Butter Crisis and being off sick...

As you may or may not know, Japan has a butter crisis. This usually happens at the run up to Christmas, the supermarkets run out of butter, the prices sky rocket and often you are only allowed to buy one pack at a time! I'm not really sure what it is all about, some say there is a milk shortage but that doesn't explain why there is an abundant supply of milk, cheese, yoghurt or ice-cream. 

Anyway, we decided to try our hand at making our own. Ebi-kun had the day off since he wasn't feeling well. After he had had some extra sleep he was feeling up to a bit of experimenting! He put 150ml of 47% cream in a jar and shook it like crazy. Nothing happened, so we added a small cookie cutter and that seemed to do the trick, the fat and the whey separated.

We know that it doesn't always need something inside the jar for this to work, because at the local organic cafe, we make our own butter by just using the jar. I have bought 35% cream this week so we will try with that and see if the results are different.

Next, he drained off the whey (which I used in the soup) and dumped the butter onto the plate.

Cleaning the butter off the cookie cutter was a bit of a pain, a marble would have been much easier! Then he added some salt and mixed it together. Taa-daa butter!

Went really well with the cauliflower cheese soup and freshly baked bread! This is one of my favourite soups, like a hug in a bowl.

Sick Days

Being an entrepreneur rocks, well most of the time. Of course I don't have the predictability of a regular monthly income but I do get to work when I like and where I like. Now I have a laptop I can pretty much just up and go whenever the mood takes me.

It also means that I can fit my hours around Ebi-kuns schedule, if he has a holiday or half day from school, I don't need to worry about finding child care, I can just work around it. But, I have to admit, this week has been rather tough. Ebi-kun has had 3 days off school because of a fever, well it started as a fever and ended up with a sore throat. The fever was easier to deal with because he was happy just crashed out on the sofa, watching TV or reading a book. Once the fever had gone, then it gets tricky because he wants to play, do stuff, witter in  my ear for hours on end!

In the school holidays, I can send him outside to play but not when he is off sick! He can't swallow very well so he won't manage a school dinner so I have him under-foot. Of course, I still have a certain amount of work to do, so in the morning I have set him some puzzles and maths quizzes to do,  I will have to take some time off in the afternoon to play games, read books and maybe watch some Bear Gyrlls: Man vs Wild - we are addicted to his shows!

Whenever Ebi-kun is sick he always asks for chow-chow and soldiers, bread soldiers in this case, toast is too difficult to swallow. The other favourite is soup, must be homemade! Chow-chow is actually boiled egg chopped up with tomatoes and mayo, quite partial to it myself!