Subway or Dad's way (by Craig)

Last night our family hosted and catered for our church home group. There are four regular families, and we have a roster in place moving to each others homes each fortnight. The host for each night also caters. At the last four gatherings we've had either KFC or pizzas delivered, so Renee thought we'd go for a healthier change. Subway, who only delivery to Hong Kong Island, became an option because of the Beach Day outing. We were able to arrange free delivery to the Repulse Bay beach as it was close enough to the restaurant for delivery, and the coach which the school hired had enough spare seats for the one hour return trip to Tai Po.

As Renee was out all day yesterday at an Autism Asia Conference it was my day with the kids. Not long after breakfast Jemilla was reading a kids' cook book and came up with the great idea to cook some biscuits. I thought that the Subway cookies (see pic below) we'd had last night were very nice, and this would be a great way for me to have some quality time with the kids and "teach" them something at the same time.

We made a quick trip to the convenience store to grab a few missing ingredients. This is what the book said they'd look like.

I must admit that it was hard to focus solely on the cooking as the Australia v. Pakistan 2010 Twenty20 World Cup Semi-Final was being replayed on TV at the same time. Keegan also found it hard to concentrate on the cooking when the Aussies appealed for a wicket.

After mixing the ingredients together (and Pakistan cruising towards a dangerously high score), I had the three kids lined up at the kitchen table  all with flour on their hands ready to "roll the dough into a sausage, flatten it, and then delicately slice one end and shape the sliced parts as octopus legs". Thankfully I started with Jemilla and the plan to make octopuses quickly got shelved when the sticky gooey substance (even after adding more and more flour to Jemilla's hands) was unable to be rolled let alone have sliced legs.

So Plan B was soon created where the mixture was plopped on the oven tray in roundish sort of shapes. Instead of octopuses, we made faces with peanut M&M eyes and a mouth.

We put the cookie familiy into the oven to bake. Things seemed to start well. Then I read the instructions again and realised the eyes were supposed to go on after the cookies were cooked.

It's pretty amazing stuff watching cookies bake in an oven... Keegan only stuck around because it was the innings break.

"My cookie has the yellow eyes, Dad."

A few minutes later when I saw the cookie faces were encroaching on each other's personal space I remembered that when my Mum cooks chocolate afghans she spreads them out a bit more than I did on the cooking tray. Whoops!

After some minor surgery and a reconstructed green right eye I concluded that they didn't look nearly as good as the Subway cookies.

However, the kids still liked them for dessert!

And for those of you who might have been wondering... after being on their death bed for most of the innings, Australia won the semi final  thanks to Michael Hussey's 60 not out off 28 balls and an amazing 23 from the the last over!  (I hope you're still with me, Lauren.)

P.S. Renee made it home just in time to see Jemilla win 'Trouble' on our family games night.