and the last of the leaves of autumn.

Aren’t triangles fascinating?  Who knew that they can be two different types at once?  Who still remembers what those types are?

It’s a geometry unit for school maths at the moment.  There isn’t enough coffee and tea in all the land to give me the focus to relearn and then teach it to someone else…

What I have learned, though, is a nifty trick for removing kernels of corn from fresh cobs.

If you slice the kernels off into a large bowl, you’ll hardly lose a single one to the kitchen floor!

Why the sudden need for fresh corn kernels?  A batch of slow cooker Mexican chilli, of course.

My recipe was a hybrid of a few Google lead me to.  The key ingredients whatever the recipe were: sweet potato, capsicum, red onion, black beans and the corn (of course).  Seasoning wise I went with a packet (!!) of Old El Paso chilli mix, a few teaspoons of Mexican chill powder, cumin and paprika.  I also added a large tin of crushed tomatoes and a half jar of Jalapenos.  Instead of pre sauteeing the onions etc, I roasted all the veg in the oven.

PSA – Woolworths sell a Mexican Inspired cheese mix that I simply stirred through my chilli after it cooked.

In other kitchen adventures, we made playdough using this recipe.

It’s a stovetop recipe using readily available, cheap ingredients.  All of which can be found at the supermarket (now that stocks are better and hoarding is but a mostly distant memory).  It only takes a minute or two to get the mixture to a doughy consistency.

It’s then only a matter of adding your desired food colouring to the dough and mixing it in thoroughly.  We used standard liquid food colouring and the colours were pretty impressive with regards to colour pay off in the dough.  We made three different colours from one batch of dough – each colour being about one and a half times the weight of your average PlayDo tub.