Well that was a pretty shit day + a healthy CHOCOLATE breakfast

Yes that’s right, I used the words HEALTHY + CHOCOLATE + BREAKFAST in the same sentence. Whoever said chocolate isn’t a breakfast food is just plain WRONG. I don’t know how I have never thought of this before to be honest but I have now so everything is right with the world.

Ummm before I share the details with you for my little breakfast miracle I’m going to make you hear all about my shitty day.

(ok ok, so you can scroll down for the recipe if you so desire but you are missing OUT)

So I got out of bed yesterday (Thursday) and it seemed pretty much like a normal day. I felt pregnant (hurrah) so was pretty calm and happy about the state of affairs at Camp Crazy.

After having quite the massive internal debate about what to have for breakfast I settled on this 5 minute quinoa porridge. It is healthy and nutritious but actually tastes good and wasn’t either toast or a smoothie, both of which I was really feeling ambivalent about.

Anyway so cooking away. I usually add maple syrup to mine as a sweetner which is a bit of a variation to the recipe. Right as I was happily pouring that bit of maple in the hot saucepan I noticed that the fucker had a floaty in it. MOULD. Issue no 1 of the day. I haven’t had that particular bottle of expensive Canadian maple for long but I don’t keep it in the fridge so maybe I need to change that. Lesson learned. Ditched the entire saucepan of food + the remainder of the maple AND as we are also out of honey am down a natural sweetener option for the porridge. Faaaaaar out.

Oh and breakfast has now gone from a 5 minute sprint to a cross country adventure.

I start rummaging through the cupboards to find alternatives for my porridge so it doesn’t taste plain and shit and well, my pantry is precariously organised at the best of times. Flipping bottles of shit (that is food shit, not shit shit) start tumbling out at me everywhere and I’m all Are you fucking kidding me??!?! under my breath. It was at this point that I realised it really was going to be on of those days. The dropping stuff is the clue. Whenever that happens I know it’s a day where things will take place that seem to defy gravity and the laws of physics.

So I decided to just try my hardest to be cool about it and make the best of the day that I could. Whatever.

Well, whatever my arse. A few hours later I was walking into my house after hanging clothes onto my line and for some reason turned to look over my shoulder as I stepped from the loungeroom to the kitchen. And what do I see? A little brown tail slithering off. My immediate thought was brown snake (which is bad bad bad – 2nd most poisonous snake in the world and super vicious) so I snuck back to look around the corner and check. This isn’t my first snake in house rodeo you see and I knew that the snake catcher would want me to

a) check and tell him what the snake was like AND

b) know where the snake is at all times

So I checked. Yup, brown. Looks kinda small so I assume it is a baby but that makes no difference to venom (in case you didn’t know). Snakes are born with their venom and are as venomous as babies as they are as adults. Fun fact for you.

The EVIDENCE. Sorry for the blurriness but I have a shit phone camera at the moment so the pic doesn’t zoom well and there was no way I was actually getting closer to Bobby the brown snake just for a quality shot.

I have the snake catcher dude programmed into my phone and although he isn’t THAT far away he is far enough. Enough so that it is going to be 45mins to an hour until he gets here.  Cue me spending the next hour hopping from one foot to the other in the kitchen while observing the snake’s slithering path and hoping it doesn’t spot me and go crazy.To be fair to the snake he mostly spent the time cruising around the perimeter of the loungeroom headbutting the sliding screen door trying to get back outside. I wasn’t helping this quest as didn’t fancy him in my yard either. After about 40 mins of this I noticed it looked like there were 2 heads butting the back door. Surely there can’t be two snakes. Eeerrrr well surely whatever, THERE ARE TWO SNAKES.

I text the snake dude who tells me he is 14 minutes away. He must have hit the gas at that point though as he got here in about 10.

He caught the suckers in about 5 minutes (which was greatly helped by the fact that I knew exactly where they were when he got here so as painful as it is, sit and observe snakes when they are in your house if you can bring yourself to do it) and he confirmed that they were indeed eastern brown snakes, about 3 years old. He was greatly perplexed about how I got two in my house as they are usually a solitary breed. They weren’t babies so didn’t come from a nest and also shouldn’t be breeding yet. The only thing he could think of is that they might have followed a food source into my house. Apparently at this age they do eat a lot of lizards and I actually removed a lizard from my house the other day so maybe this is it. As long as it isn’t that I am sporting some fancy snake beacon I know nothing about because that would really suck.

I am pretty anal about closing doors all the time but the kids aren’t that great at remembering so they may have come in that way OR they may have squeezed through a space in the garage door which I have now attempted to plug up. Regardless of how they got in I simply cannot believe it fucking happened. And that I didn’t completely lose my shit over it. I thought I might spend the next few months terrified of my house but I actually don’t feel too bad and it’s only been one day.

The Chinese love a bit of snake mythology and seem to think they are a sign of luck in most cases and “they” say poisonous varieties are more lucky than the rest. I am.assuming that as I had two of the suckers that I should buy a lotto ticket. I’ll settle for it meaning that I’m going to have a successful pregnancy.

So I’m calling it an OMEN because that makes me feel better and less targeted by the killer snakes. And really, while it wasn’t THE BEST experience in the world, at least I didn’t have to run for my life. That would have been hideous. Oh and I’m still pregnant so the day could have been SO MUCH WORSE. See how I’m working on my perspective? I think the pregnancy hormones are doing weird things to my brain.

Lucky I had that yummy chocolate for breakfast. Here’s that recipe for those interested.

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5 minute chocolate quinoa porridge ~ a superfood shitstorm

• Bring 1 cup of milk (I use Coco-Quench but whatever you like) to the boil.
• Turn off heat. Add 1/3 cup quinoa flakes, a heaped quarter teaspoon of coconut sugar or preferred amount of sweetener or your choice, 1 heaped half teaspoon of vanilla bean paste of vanilla powder (I used paste on the day of creation) and roughly a tablespoon of raw cacao (the chocolate!). Stir together.
• Let sit in hot saucepan on the hot plate you just turned off for 3 mins. DO NOT TURN HOT PLATE BACK ON.
• While that is sitting put a cup or so of frozen berries in the microwave for defrosting.
• Once your 3 mins are up, pour the porridge into your bowl. Top with the now thawed berries and add some chopped up almonds and toasted coconut flakes/chips to the top for some crunch.

**Note: I always have some pre-toasted coconut chips in a jar in the cupboard. To toast I just spread them over an oven tray in a single layer and put them in a moderate oven for around 5 mins or until golden brown. Let them cool and pop them in a jar and voila, you have toasted coconut on hand for mornings like this.

Also, my almonds were raw and I wanted them with a bit crunch so I chopped them and toasted them lightly in a baby fry pan on the stove top. WARM + CRUNCHY = WINNING.

Sorry forgot to take a picture. Will come back and add it next week when I make it again.

Yours in snakieness and shit days.

~Ems~