Hot Cross Cinnamon Buns!

One a penny, two a penny....hot cross buns!

Hot cross buns are the edible symbol of Easter for me. 

Having not eaten chocolate since I was 9, the good old Easter egg doesn't hold much hope for an exciting Easter in my kitchen. It came as quite a shock to me that none of my American friends were familiar with the warm and fruity spiced buns that have always marked the month of Easter in Australia. I did a little reading and discovered that it is a British tradition (which of course means Australia follows suit) and is thought to have started becoming a Lentern tradition in the 1600's in which the crossed buns were produced and eaten on Good Friday. There are some superstitions surrounding Hot Cross Buns which suggest that if they are baked on Good Friday, they will not go mouldy over the subsequent year. There are even some stories going around that a couple in Essex, UK, have a bun that is over 200 years old!! 

Having only just started out on my gluten free journey, I knew it was going to be a challenge to find a way to consume Hot Cross Buns this Easter! I wanted to create it with a little twist though, and so combined the flavours of Hot Cross Buns into a tried and trusted cinnamon bun recipe. I made the batch 2/3 regular wheat flour and 1/3 gluten free. The GF version were actually pretty good, considering I'm not yet skilled at getting the perfect flour mix, so it still had that distinct flour taste. But the glutenous (?) version, well, it was almost worth getting sick for! They were crunchy on the outside, doughy and soft on the inside, with the sugary spice and fruit combination that resonates with traditional Hot Cross Buns. This is my in-depth analysis, based on one mouthful, but my husband has happily confirmed these findings over the course of the day and 7 or 8 buns! Because the regular version were so much better, I will focus on that recipe, with a little note on how to make them GF at the bottom. 

This recipe is an adaptation of Nigella Lawson's Norwegian Cinnamon Buns, from How to be a Domestic Goddess recipe book; with my addition of fruit and spices, and the GF tweaking of a third of the batch. 

Ingredients - dough

600g flour

100g sugar

1/2 t salt

21g of easy blend yeast

100g butter

400ml milk

2 eggs

Ingredients - Filling

150g soft butter

150g sugar

2t cinnamon

2t mixed spice

1 handful each of sultanas, dried apricots and dates, all sliced thinly. You can use whichever fruits you like, and orange/mixed peel is often popular, but I'm allergic to citrus so chose not to use these flavours. 

Method

1. Combine the flour, sugar, salt and yeast in a large bowl. 

2. Melt the butter and whisk it into the milk and eggs, then stir into the flour mixture.

3. Mix to combine and then knead the dough until it is smooth and springy.

4. Form a ball and cover with clingfilm until it has risen and doubled in size, which only takes about half an hour.

5. Take 1/3 of the dough and roll it to fit the base of your tin, this will form the bottom of each bun when it has cooked.

6. Roll out the rest of the dough, aiming to get a rectangle.

7. Mix together all the ingredients for the filling and spread over the dough.

8. Roll up the dough until you have a long sausage.

9. Cut the roll into 3cm slices and sit the rounds on top of the dough in the tin, swirly cut-side up.

10. Pipe the cross onto the buns, which is a mix of flour and water, and set aside to rise again for another ten minutes.

11. Bake in a hot oven (230C/445F) for 25 minutes or until golden brown and glorious.

These are best eaten hot, straight from the oven, but, I have the feeling they would also make an incredible bread and butter pudding the next day too, that's if there's any left. 

For anyone who doesn't really adore traditional fruit bread, this is a really gentle side-step into the fruit-bread world, via cinnamon and butter! 

GF Adaptation

I used a store-bought GF Self Raising flour mix in place of the regular flour, and added 1 teaspoon of xantham gum and 1 teaspoon of baking powder. It never did raise before baking, but was quite light and fluffy after baking. I much preferred these when they were cooler, as it gave the flavours a chance to really settle into the dough and take over from that typical GF taste. All in all, they were very tasty, but, its hard to beat the real deal! 

Happy Easter everyone! I hope you've had a relaxing and sweet break with your loved ones!!

Salted Caramel Popcorn

I usually don't lick aluminium foil. But, there are always exceptions to every rule.

Oh my goodness, how have we never made this before. How, I ask you, how?! It isn't really worth pointing fingers or placing blame, so long as it is remedied from this point forward.

I found this incredible recipe from Pineapple and Coconut and was drawn to it because it did not contain corn syrup. Being Australian, we don't typically use corn syrup and would lean towards more real ingredients, and well, less corn substitutes! So when I came across this recipe on Pinterest and had every ingredient already in my cupboard, I pinned away and waited for an excuse to try it out, and if Easter isn't the best excuse to eat excessive amounts of sugar well I don't know what is.

I did make a few mistakes with this batch though. The first was halving the recipe. Big mistake, huge. The second mistake was in cooking time, so we lost half the batch to being overcooked. So, instead of one full batch, it feels like we've ended up with a quarter batch. Which, makes it a little better in that its almost finished... between the two of us...in one afternoon! Oh shame, guess we'll have to make another batch tomorrow to take to our friends' house. Shame.

Ingredients

1 cup of unsalted butter

2 cups of brown sugar

1/2 cup honey

1 T vanilla extract

1/2 t baking soda

6 quarts of popped popcorn (which is 29.8 cups apparently! Or... in layman's terms, two bags of microwave popcorn!)

1 1/2 t sea salt flakes

Method

1. Heat butter, sugar and honey in a pot until melted, stirring constantly. 

2. Increase the heat and let the buttery sugar boil for 4 minutes. Remove from heat and immediately add the vanilla, baking soda and salt, whilst stirring furiously. The vanilla makes it smell incredible and the baking soda makes it very bubbly, so be sure to use a pot that is deep enough.  

3. Halve the popcorn and pour half the caramel mixture over the popcorn and mix through. Add the rest of the popcorn and caramel and mix thoroughly to coat all the popcorn. 

4. Spread on baking trays and place in a moderately slow oven (150C/250F). The original recipe said to bake for an hour, turning the popcorn every 15 minutes. But, after the first 15 minutes, the top tray had started burning (I had the temp too high too), so I would recommend checking it after 10 minutes, tossing it with tongs, and if it still needs a little more, maybe give it another 5-10. 

Tasting the finished product was a revelation! It took us both straight back to the lolly shop at UQ in which a cup of Caramel Popcorn was a treat we'd get to get through an otherwise mindless Stats lecture. This was better, there was no Stats to sit through!! 

Oh my word, stop reading blogs, go and make some!

Liebster me!

Have you heard of the Liebster Award, nope, I hadn't either! Until Alice over at The Cup and Saucer kindly nominated me to take part! Its not so much as an award as it is a chain-letter for blogs, but I feel like one of the popular kids on the playground for being chosen to take part, and love knowing that there is someone out there reading my blog!

The rules of the Liebster Awards are the following:

1. Write 11 things about yourself that someone might want to know....

2. Answer the 11 things that the nominator has set for you...

3. Choose 3-5 bloggers to nominate who have less than 200 followers....

4. Designate a new set of 11 questions for these bloggers of your choosing....

5. And that's all....

I know it wasn't all that long ago that I did the Five Things post, and you may be wondering how much more would you want to know about me, but, I'll keep it brief and will try not to ramble on about milk this time!

1. I think my baby might become a foodie. She's showing some preliminary signs with her meal selections, but rather than worry, I am proud of her when she won't eat something that tastes questionable!

2. Byron Bay is my favourite place in the world. It is where I am most home.

3. I learnt everything I know about the USA from Friends and Sex and the City! Oklahoma, the sooner state!

4. Until very recently I never owned a red piece of clothing. Until I realised pink and red CAN go together, now there's no limits on dressing each morning!

5. I cheat and use poach pods whenever I'm poaching eggs....just could never get the swirl to work!

6. Another egg fact, I can crack an egg with one hand, and am probably a little too proud of this!

7. I woke up during heart surgery a few years back! I think the surgeon was as surprised to see me as I was to see him! 

8. I never finish a cup of tea. I leave the tea to brew until it's luke-warm by which time the desire for a cuppa has worn off, and I'll always leave just a little in the bottom.

9. I can't eat chocolate. Easter has evolved into a whole lot more than just a chocolate bunny to feast on.... there's fudge making, fudge tasting, fudge watching and fudge eating....

10. I think there is nothing more adorable than hearing little kiddies with foreign accents!

11. I am really sick of hearing people saying "literally" all the time! I feel like they literally do not know what the word means and only ever use it to add dramatic tension to a sentence. Did you literally die when you saw that handbag, literally....

Home. Byron Bay, sunset 29/06/2009 (the afternoon Pete wanted to propose, not a bad sunset!)

Okay, so here are the answers to the questions Alice has asked...

1. What did you want to be when you grew up? A dentist! It wasn't until completing a year of Science at University that I discovered it wasn't for me! I ended up as an accountant...hmmm....perhaps I should have kept looking around!

2. What is your signature dish? Oh my goodness, this changes monthly! But, the most consistent dish that I make is pesto fish! (Apologies for the shameless plug, but I did do the recipe recently!!)

3.What is your biggest regret? Probably not a terribly life-altering decision, but I really wish I hadn't chosen brown for my bridesmaids! They still looked incredibly beautiful, but I wish I had of gone with something more "me" and taken the mockery for putting them in mushroom pink....gasp!

4. Who is your favourite fictional character? Anne of Green Gables. Because she's wonderful. And because the actress who plays Anne is called Megan too! Oh and Mary Poppins. Because, well, she's practically perfect in every way. Duh.

5. Who are your dream dinner party guests? Prince William and Kate, Princess Mary and Fred (Australian/Danish kronprissen), My husband and daughter, and well I would really love to gather all of our friends and family from all over the world together again... second wedding Pete???

6. Which would you rather do, skydive or bungee jump? Oh gosh, neither, I could never.I think my heart would just stop beating if I were to step off a bridge!

7. If you could only eat fruit or vegetables for the rest of your life which would you choose? Easy, vegetables. I have far too many conditions around what constitutes perfect fruit, but am far more relaxed with veggies!

8. Where is at the top of your to-visit list? Corfu in Greece, we're going there next month. And then the list reads: Vienna, Prague, Salzburg, South of Spain, The Caribbean, Oslo, and so on and so on....

9. Which do you prefer, being too hot or too cold? Usually I enjoy the cold, but its definitely getting old now and time for London to see some sunshine!

10. Do you believe in fate? I believe in fairies and angels.

11. What is your favourite treat? Couldn't possibly choose just one sorry - Sticky Date pudding, cupcakes, melting moments, hot chips with ketchup, salt and pepper calamari, freshly cooked bread with lashings of butter, hot chips ON freshly cooked bread with lashings of butter, Jersey Caramels....Oh I'm hungry!

Okay, so now it is my turn to pass the award along to a few other bloggers! Amanda, Jas, Bella and Rachel, I would love to nominate you for a Liebster Award! Liebster in German means "Dearest", so I have decided to tailor my questions towards things that are dear to you.

1. What is your favourite meal of the day to eat out?

2. What was your favourite book as a child?

3. Cheese plate or cake?

4. If you could learn another language, which would it be?

5. Where do you most want to travel to and why?

6. Which Downton Abbey sister are you most like? (OR.... which gentleman I suppose...)

7. What is your favourite flavour of fudge?

8. What was the inspiration behind the name of your blog?

9. Spots or stripes?

10. What is your favourite recipe book and favourite recipe within?

11. The Bachelor....Yes or No?

Thanks so much for the Liebster nomination Alice, I enjoyed getting to know a bit about you and look forward to learning a little more about each of you lovely bloggers who I've tagged now too! Or, if you just want to join in and you haven't been tagged, hop on in! 

I hope you all have a lovely Easter weekend. My husband and I have some pretty serious conversations ahead of us about what flavours of fudge we're making!!

Date night cookies

Did you see what I did there....? Haha, well its our Third Wedding Anniversary today, and so the notion of "date night" is on my brain! One day, all the stars will align for the two of us to go out for dinner...we will have the baby with a friend, I will be well and healthy, and there will be no work to be done, on any timezone. Until then, I bake. 

So as I mentioned at the end of our cleanse, I am now doing a month Gluten Free (GF). It is incredible how much better I feel having eliminated gluten from my diet. I have had all the tests done years ago, and apparently I am not coeliac, but there definitely is an intolerance there, for when I brought back all the normal foods back into our diet after just one week, I was very unwell after each serve of glutenous food! And since the day I took it out of my diet, I have been symptom free again! Married to the man descended from Comus, Italian God of drinking and feasting (no, not really), I knew I wasn't going to be able to convince Pete to give up pasta and bread for a month, so this one I'm doing solo. 

I stocked up on GF everything (although I'm having a hard time finding certain flours in the UK, is it too much to import flour just so I can bake me a cake???) and set about making GF work. And that means, making baking work. 

I found this recipe on Nourished and Nurtured for Chewy Cinnamon and Almond Cookies, and heard it whispering to me through my iPad, beckoning me to try it out. So I did. I made the addition of chopped dates though, and I really feel like it elevated the cookie to another level. The dates added some texture, some extra chewyness and the right amount of sweetness to balance the salt.  

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter, melted

5T honey

1T vanilla extract

2 1/2 cups almond flour/ground almonds

1/2t ground sea salt (I used whole....and wouldn't recommend it...)

1/4t baking soda

1t cinnamon

1/2 cup chopped pitted dates

Method

1. Melt the butter and honey in a small pan on the stove top.

2. Turn off the heat and add the vanilla.

3. In a separate bowl, combine almond flour, salt, baking soda and cinnamon and mix well.

4. Combine wet and dry ingredients and mix well.

5. Fold in the chopped dates.

6. Drop spoonfuls of mixture onto a lined baking tray and bake in a moderate oven for 7-12 minutes, or until the edges start browning. 

These are delicious straight out of the oven, but keep well and still taste good as a snack on the go in a day or two's time, if there are any left! 

So far GF way of life isn't looking so bad!! Next step, desserts!!!

Spring Giveaway Winners!!!

I was actually awake last night when the giveaway finished and the winners were selected! But then today, I managed to get not one, but two horrible migraines to battle with (along with a very whingy 9 month old!). 

So my apologies for not letting the lucky winners know earlier.....but......

.....Bess, Nancy, Shannon and Julie, you are the lucky four! I will be emailing you shortly to get your postal address and confirm which colour headband you would prefer for the special little lady in your life!

Thank you to everyone for entering via the blog and emails, it was fun making a little something to give to the lovely folk who read my blog!

And now I'm off to have a soak in the tub with a cool-pack over my eyes and a heatpack on my neck!

Almond-crumbed seafood

This is my final posting about the cleanse that we did a few weeks ago!! To finish off our week, we decided to indulge a little lot!!! We went down to our local fishmonger and bought some prawns, squid tubes and scallops. We thought about grilling them, adding them to a salad, or baking them. Which I'm sure would have been lovely. BUT, then we came up with a crumbing idea and it was revolutionary! How has nobody done this before!!! (That I know of...). 

Because we couldn't do a regular crumbing of flour-egg-breadcrumb, we got out the trusty almond meal and set to work! All we combined were the ground almonds and salt and pepper. We dipped each piece of seafood in egg and let the excess fall off. We then coated each piece in the seasoned ground almonds and placed it carefully in a pan with hot oil. We shallow fried the seafood, which isn't the healthiest cooking method (but better than deep frying), and we tried not to use too much oil, patted the excess off with paper towel, and just enjoyed the heck out it!!!! 

Pete was responsible for the calamari...and its fair to say that he is a little less careful than I am when it comes to turning the seafood, and subsequently lost half of the crumbing!!! But it tasted every bit as good as it looks!!

The prawns were delicious and the crumbing helped keep them tender and juicy too!

I had never seen scallops as big as the ones we bought, and as you can see, they were so juicy too!! (That's not oil don't worry!). I had no idea how long to cook these for as they were so large and unlike prawns which turn a different colour when they cook, scallops are a little more tricky to get right. I just went on texture, and when they gave a good bounce back under my finger, I deemed them ready! It was probably about 4 minutes on either side (little scallops are approximately 2 minutes either side so I thought that would make sense). 

What a perfect way to end our week! I'm not sure that I will bother with regular breadcrumbing again, as the almonds added a sweetness that you don't get from breadcrumbs, and all those nuts helped in making us feel fuller for longer too. Winning!

Since the end of our cleanse week, I have launched straight into a month of gluten free eating, so, recipes will start trickling onto my blog as I navigate my way around GF life!!!

Just a little reminder to enter the Spring Giveaway if you haven't already done so?? Winners will be drawn on Sunday night so if you think that you know a little someone who would like a sweet flower headband, be sure to enter as many times as you can!!!!

I hope you have a wonderful weekend! 

Spring GIVEAWAY!

Spring has arrived!!!!!

When the 1st of March arrived, we did a little spring dance in our house (no, not really) and were so happy for winter to be officially over. But, apparently not. Aside from the multiple snow falls we had since then, they do things a little differently in the North. In the Southern Hemisphere, the seasons are straightforward: new seasons begin on the 1st of December, March, June and September.

But, in the North, the exact timing for the start of Spring for example, varies according to local climate, cultures and customs. There is a March equinox in which the days have close to 12 hours daylight and 12 hours night time, which varies between the 19-21 March, so Spring officially begins during this time. In Sweden, spring is defined as the first occasion on which the average daytime temperature exceeds zero for 7 days in a row. The Farmers Almanac deems today, the 20th of March, as the official first day of Spring, beginning with the vernal equinox (at 7:02EDT if you want to be exact).

Whichever way you look at it, winter is FINALLY over (officially anyway, its still mighty cold out!). And when I started looking for signs on Spring on my walk today, they were everywhere! There were blossoms and buds and signs of new life all around, and it was so uplifting!

To celebrate the official start to Spring, I have an exciting little giveaway for readers of meg-made. I have been making these sweet little felt flower headbands for my friends' babies and they loved them so much, I thought perhaps you would too!

Made with stretch velvet ribbon, turned inside out so the soft fur is on your baby's head and helps to keep the band from slipping, and made in two different sizes, 0-6 months and 6-12 months. I just so happen to know a few adorable babies who were only too happy to be my models for our afternoon playdate!

 Sweet Cristina modelling the pink and grey!

Miss Millie modelling the hot pink on grey

And my Madeleine, really and truly modelling the blue on pink

The three girls playing away, oblivious to how adorable they all look!!!

If you would like a meg-made Spring headband, all you need to do is enter the draw, as many times as you like! Leave me a comment with which of these four you would prefer and in what size (I have a few larger too, so toddlers aren't left out!).

There are four to win and will be posted anywhere in the world that has a postbox!

Winners will be drawn at random on Sunday night at 11pm (UK time)!

a Rafflecopter giveaway Enter as much as you want for more chances to win!

Good luck!

Basil pesto chicken rainbow!

When I made the pesto the other day, I made enough for a few meals. Good move Meg!! 

This meal was actually lunch, twice, and dinner once. 

Ingredients

Chicken breasts, diced into cubes

Pesto

Vegetables of your choosing - onion, tomato, red/yellow peppers and courgette were my choice (partly mostly because I love the colour combination)

Method

There really isn't much to this recipe, and my husbands favourite part, its a one pan meal!! (I cooked all 21 meals over the cleanse, but he had to do all the washing up in the evenings, and I'll tell you, there were a lot of dishes to be cleaned!!). 

In a pan, cook the chicken in a dash of oil or butter. When the chicken has cooked through but not yet browned, throw in all of the chopped vegetables. 

Increase the heat a little and turn the vegetables and chicken regularly. As they start to char a little, add in a generous tablespoon of pesto and stir. As the pesto coats all the vegetables and chicken, continue turning for another minute or two. 

Serve and enjoy piping hot! 

OR... Spoon this mixture onto a flat bread/pita bread, sprinkle with cheese and bake for ten minutes! But, not if you are avoiding wheat or dairy!!! But, mini flat bread pizzas are tasty too!!

Like'n Bloglovin'

I'm not sure if you've heard the word on the street, but Google Reader is being retired as of the 1st of July 2013.

I have loved Google Reader for how easy it was to get updates on what's been going on in my blog world in one tidy place each day without needing to remember web addresses and go to each blog individually. But now it is time to find a replacement!

Bloglovin has seemingly taken the place of Reader quite nicely. The format is similar and you can even do a simple export/import into Bloglovin in about two minutes (it was so easy) and it even enables you to sort your blogs by categories, which is kind of cool. There's no way I am going to visit each and every blog I follow every day without an easy place to find them and see a summary of posts, and I think Bloglovin might be the solution, for now anyway!

So, want an easy way to keep up to date with any updates at meg-made......

If you have found a replacement that you think is better than Bloglovin, let me know too!!!

My thoughts exactly!

I came across this quote which perfectly summarises how I feel about the world!

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well. ~ Virginia Woolf

Agreed.

Cleansing Pesto Fish with Courgette fritters

Pesto. Is. Amazing. It can transform a simple pasta into something delicious. It can give chicken a new lease on life. And it can provide nourishment and excitement to otherwise neglected taste-buds during a cleanse. 

I love making pesto from scratch because it is actually far more simple that you would imagine, and has such a burst of freshness that is hard to find in the store-bought kind. 

Making Pesto

To make a pesto suitable for the cleanse we completed, or for a paleo diet, there are only four ingredients needed. Into a blender combine 1 and a half bunches of fresh basil, 3 cloves of garlic, a handful of raw unsalted cashews and a splash of oil. Pulse until well chopped and the garlic is in tiny fragments. Continue adding as much oil as you would like until it has reached the desired consistency. For example, as I was using this pesto as a crumbing I needed it to be quite thick, however if you are using it for a pasta sauce, you would need to add more oil.  If you aren't on a restrictive diet at all, throw in a good chunk of fresh Parmesan cheese as well, but it actually was incredible without it, so don't fret if you can't include the cheese. 

Once you have made your pesto, you simply spoon it onto whichever white fish you have (I used Haddock for this meal, but have used Cod in the past) and press firmly onto the fish. 

Place the fish on an oven tray and it will need to bake for about 20-30 minutes, depending on your oven temperature. The pesto will help keep the fish extremely tender, so you won't need to worry as much about it being dry and rubbery (not that that ever happens of course...).

While the fish is cooking, I like to throw some tomatoes in the oven as well at the same time, as roast tomatoes go beautifully with baked fish. For this dinner I also made roasted sweet potato. I found that if you pre-cook the sweet potatoes in the microwave a bit first, they will crisp up far quicker and somehow taste a thousand times sweeter than if you were to simply roast them. 

Making courgette fritters (really, really simply)

Two ingredients - grated courgettes and ground almonds. One ingredient removed - water! It makes all the difference. Grate the courgettes (I used two for the two of us) and then squeeze out all the excess water. Once they are quite dry, add about half a cup of ground almonds, or really, any ground nut would work well, hazelnuts would be delicious! Mix together well and form into small rounds and carefully place in a pan with a little oil.

The secret to making fritters that doesn't have any binding ingredients (like egg and cheese), is that you leave them alone! The oil should be hot enough so that they are sizzling away, but not so hot that you are constantly needing to turn them. Pretend they are a good steak, you only want to turn it the one time. This will help it form a bit of a crust on the side being cooked and will help them stay together. They take about 10 minutes to cook. Drain them quickly on a piece of paper towel if there was a lot of oil in the pan, otherwise serve immediately.

As an aside, how good do these Courgette Fritters of Jamie Oliver's look?! Just a few more than two ingredients, but they look yummy too!!

I don't often comment on my own food in a positive way. Usually I keep any complimentary opinions to myself at the dinner table, but my husband couldn't shut me up whilst eating this meal! I'm not sure if it was all that, or perhaps just so much better than the previous two dinners (funnily enough they aren't appearing on meg-made), but I could have eaten this for the entire cleanse. The flavour of the pesto was so fresh and vibrant. The sweet potatoes were crunchy on the outside and sweet and fluffy on the inside. The courgette fritters were crispy and the best way to eat courgettes. And the tomato, well unless you want to drench it in butter and cook it in a pan, it was as good as a tomato is going to get! Okay, I'll stop there. Try it for yourself and see!

Door jam cushion

As you  may have read, I really don't like noise! The trouble is, my dislike of noise is only getting stronger, because now it impacts the joy that is naptime and bedtime too! If I have battled for an hour with my 9 month old to get her to have a nap and then my husband the wind slams a door shut and wakes her up....oh boy do I see all shades of red!

There are battles to fight and battles to give in to, and I discovered long ago that trying to get my house to be a silent zone, is actually not a fight worth fighting for. I want my kids to always be able to sleep through anything, and I don't want anyone to ever feel like they can't laugh in my house, ever. But, doors slamming, well that's something that can be fixed (without nagging!).

I found this Tutorial on Pinterest and so made a few door jam cushions for some of the doors in our apartment that are opened and closed regularly.

It was possibly the easiest little project, took all of 5 minutes to do each one, and guess what, THEY WORK!!!! If only there were such simple solutions to all of the other little battles too!!