All you really need to buy at Dan’s really.  Didn’t even need to write it down but it felt good doing it.

My strategy involved this hastily cobbled together series of handwritten lists with checkboxes next to each item which I had brilliantly grouped by store.

Feeling the serenity on level P2 of ye olde Westfield.

It also involved getting to the shops early.  Like 0745 early.

So that I could do important stuff before the gift shopping.  Like finding the perfect 10am banana from the artful hanging display at Harris Farm.

And doing some weights to the Flex Zone playlist on Spring Moves.  So much colourful language…  The founding fathers of hip-hop would be mortified if they could see the kind of fortysomething women bopping along to their work as they pumped iron (in the lower range 5 – 6 kilogram weight range as well…).

Target was a similarly gracious host with 20% off all the big names in toys.  So I crossed off pretty much all the month’s birthday and Christmas gifts right then and there.

I’ve also been casting a beady eye over any battery requirements for Preschooler SSG’s share of my target haul.  So that there’ll be no unpleasant surprises on the day.

Buying Bonds for pending new arrivals among my friends is always a joyous and misty-eyed experience for me but there’s something extra special about summer babies.  My memories of having a summer baby are selective, I know but gee the clothes were objectively good.  Colour, prints, short sleeves or none.  The lack of multiple layers and jackets made dressing baby so easy.  Even for clueless first-time mothers like me.

On a day that was full of ‘winner winner chicken dinner’ moments, we pretty much had to have a winning chicken dish for dinner.  The dish I speak of is the fabulous Nagi (aka Recipe Tin Eats) ‘Ultra Lazy Healthy Chicken and Broccoli Pasta Bake’.  It’s a one dish wonder that cooks entirely in the oven.

Cheese wise I went with two polar opposites of the supermarket cheese world.  Half a round of Margaret River Club Cheddar and some of that plastickly low fat grated tasty cheese.

The broccolini cooked to a slightly crunchy texture which I like.  I imagine broccoli would have softened completely.  Following Nagi’s tips, I used non tubular pasta so the flour didn’t glug up during the cooking process.  My sauce thickened up nicely and the pasta was perfectly cooked too.

This is another 11/10 dish from Nagi for me.  It’s going to be on high rotation around here. I can’t bring myself to use chicken pasta bake sauce again anytime soon.  This recipe was just too easy.