inner pickle

perspective

 

Sometimes it's just about how you look at things. Your choice. See what you see. You choose your response. 

We've got a bit of shaking up going on down here and it's all exciting and unnerving and our brains are jangling a bit. You know that feeling? 

Take the one year old. How we love her. The way she makes our hearts stop when she dives off the kitchen table (miraculously uninjured.) The habit she has of speed-unrolling a roll of toilet paper and stuffing it down the leg of my jeans while I'm on the loo. Her new words: "let's go!" and "now!"

Without her we'd be less. (And there really is nothing a bowl of custard cannot improve.)

 

Perpective.

A single friend of mine referred to a friend of hers as a 'friend with benefits'. I am so naive I wondered if she meant he had an abundant garden that she got produce from. Maybe a hen? (Am I my Grandma yet?)

I have a few awesome friends with gardens and the benefit of wit. 

This guy dropped in yesterday, bringing produce.

 

 

 

Purple beans, ducks eggs, dehydrated and fresh-picked zukes. Now there's some benefits! Plus wit. He's a favourite in this house. 

While not here in this space I have unfortunately not been on a beach reading a novel. Or even better, in a forest writing a novel. Or even lying out in a paddock staring at my navel (or that of a small child.) I've been working. 

 

 

 

 

 

And cooking kilograms of tomatoes into pizza sauce.

 

(Seriously coveting Milkwood's new toy.)

 

We've been extending chicken pasture, moving pigs (successfully and drama-free!) and watching broiler chickens grow. 

We've been in the trailer and up the paddock. 

 

 

 

Looking at things from a different perspective.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And loving it. 

 

 

(And her, the wee rascal.)

xxx

baking day

After I've hand rolled and cut about a thousand biscuits, which I have today, not only can I hardly type, but I find myself wandering around youtube looking at automated biscuit factory equipment. 

I don't actually want a biscuit factory, and I think the moment you go from handmade to automated you can taste the difference, I just find massive biscuit engineering totally fascinating. 

Check out the way they make the girl scout cookies in the US. (Skip ahead to about 1.30 to miss the unnecessary introduction and get to the biscuit making.)

 

 

 

Late this afternoon, Henry Bean, a smart seven year old, came into the kitchen with a card. It read:

Yes he got a warm biscuit. 

Yes I am quite sure his father put him up to it. (He got one too.)

xxx

 

 

 

Slice of Wednesday: no-bake Hedgehog recipe

 

 

 

Oh my goodness, this slice. *Respectful silence*

My mouth is watering just flicking through the photos. My fingers are itching to go get a piece out of the fridge. And you know what, I CAN'T. Because I had the foresight to give the entire thing away after sampling one (OK, two) pieces, (yes OK maybe two and an edgy bit) and knowing that unless it was in someone else's fridge I was bound to nibble at least another three pieces while writing a rhapsodising post about it. 

I made it up, so this sounds totally egotistical, really.

Am so besotted with my own slice I might give it it's own webpage. 

It's the combination of roasted, salted peanuts, dark chocolate and chocolate digestive biscuits. It's just a hedgehog-y thing, you've seen them before. 

But you HAVE to try this. Then seriously, give it to the canteen ladies or something, because if you have the self control to just nibble a tiny peice at a time, you deserve to be canonised.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hedgehog

(You may notice that from a girl constantly banging on about 'from scratch' that there's a lot of not from-scratch ingredients here. Bought bikkies. Condensed milk. Pre-salted and roasted nuts. It just means it takes approximately four minutes to make this way.)

 

100g butter

100g dark chocolate

1 tin (395g) condensed milk

⅓ cup cocoa

200g packet chocolate digestive biscuits, chopped

1 cup salted and roasted peanuts

 

Ganache for the top:

50g butter

100g dark chocolate

 

In a saucepan melt the butter, chocolate and the condensed milk together until they are smooth and amalgamated. Add the cocoa, the chopped up biscuits and the nuts. Combine well then press into a greased and lined slice tin (I think mine is 13cm x 27cm). Stick in fridge for 1-2 hours or until firm.

To make the ganache just stir the butter and chocolate over a low heatfor a couple of minutes until melted then spread over the cold slice. Set (again) in fridge for 1-2 hours until hard.

Sprinkle with cocoa to serve.

Cuts into about 12 or in my case two and an edgy bit then into a container and out the door before I find myself eating the whole thing. 

 

 

 

Oh chocolatey biscuity peanuty slice.

How I love you. I miss you. And without you I am a lesser person (hopefully, say, two to three kilograms lesser.)

xxx

Making vanilla extract

 

 

It would be completely fair to call me puritanical when it comes to vanilla. Vanilla "essence" makes me a little bit angry. It's like maple "flavoured" syrup. Why, I beg you, why?

If you're like me and you flinch at the $10 for the bottle of the real stuff of either one, we could try planting maple trees in our Australian backyards, or really, just buy maple syrup occasionally (and make sure you get your turn before Matilda Daisy does, who'll drown a pancake in it.)

And how about we make our own vanilla extract.

Turns out there's nothing to it. 

You need:

* About 6 good quality vanilla beans, I bought mine online from here.

* About a cup of vodka, or enough to fill your bottle.

Just split the beans almost to the end, put them in the bottle and fill with vodka. Shake well, every day if you can remember to, for about two months. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The one on the left, above, is the one I just made. The other one has been brewing for about three weeks.

I made a few of these to give away at Christmas. 

Queen Vanilla Extract which is the commercial one I usually use, has invert sugar and glucose in it, which makes it a lot sweeter and stickier than the homemade.

I made one at Christmas time with glucose and honey in it (to mimic the invert sugar) and I'll have to report back on whether it's better with those additives in a month or so. 

 

Does it sound like an unneccessary faff? 

I tell you, I just sleep better at night knowing I made it myself. It's become a personality disorder. It started with butter and yoghurt and I'm gearing up for chocolate and properly crisp rice crackers. 

You gotta have a dream.

xxx

 

party like a five year old

 

 

Over here we've always maintained that for a fun party you just need people you like, not so many that you can't find them in a crowd, some good food and some table top dancing. 

 

 

 

 

 

Rainbow theme, can you tell? I was going to make the jelly in individual glasses and five levels of colour but discovered the night before that all but one of our smaller drinking glasses had been smashed this week, and that jelly takes up to three hours to set. Three colours then. In a big bowl. 

We did some rainbow bead-threading.

 

 

 

 

 

And we did a treasure hunt that perhaps would have benefitted from a little more thought.

The clues were all wrapped in clingwrap as the weather was unpromising. I ran around and hid them during the bead threading. I revved the kids up and gave them the first clue with eager anticipation, 'what is something you do TRICKS on?!' and they all looked at me blankly. I thought the fact we were standing next to the trampoline made it an easy starter. Played that wrong. 

But after an uncertain start they came good. There were some tears when not everyone had a turn finding the next clue (and the tiny bag of rainbow jellybeans enclosed - each had a name to make sure everyone got one but the last couple were looking watery eyed). I don't know, that's what I hate about pass the parcel and why I refuse to do it. Do we really want to teach our kids that everyone wins all the time? Way to set them up for disappointment. Jeez.

Anyway, the whole exercise entertained the parents present and I reminded myself that in ten short years these girls will all be fifteen. Hip hip hooray.

 

 

 

 

There was some 'musical statues' to some vaguely inappropriate rap music provided by my five year old neighbour which was terrific.

And I don't really go in for lolly bags. There were the jelly beans in cellophane which got added to these little brown bags. Plus my sister-in-law Rachel and I made up rainbow ribbons the night before and everyone got two.

 

 

 

And of course there was cake. 

What I really wanted to make was this cake which I first saw over at Maxabella's (whose version I reckon is better than the original!) But I ran out of time, and I didn't have enough cake pans to cook more than two layers at once, so I divided a double butter cake between five bowls, added food colour, then poured them all back into the pans. Did a bit of a swirl. Hello rainbow cake! Tilly loved it. Maybe we'll try the layers next year.

 

 

You have to love a party that doesn't take very much work but is a barrel of laughs. And ESPECIALLY one where your friends do the piles of washing up afterwards. So awesome.

Hope your weekend had a rainbow or two too.

xxx

 

 

this moment

 

Ah darn it, how about these moments?

Joining in with Soulemama (and stretching the rules just this once.)

Happy Friday, lovely folk. 

xxx

hanging out

 

Yesterday, in amongst many hours of Bikkie baking for a twilight market tonight, Tilly asked whether she could hang out with me. 

I said, yes of course, and continued doing what I was doing. She said: no Mum, I mean just you and me. You always say yes and then we never do anything. Ne-ver.

I stopped what I was doing. 

It was a critical blow. 

We had an emergency family meeting to figure out who was going where and with whom and Tilly and I went and got icecream.

We sat on the bench at our favourite spot in the cemetery. 

 

 

It happens to overlook our family farm.

I've always loved seeing it from way over here. 

 

We say hello to the family. They're pretty much all here, the ones no longer here. You know. If you're lucky and you happen to be in the cemetary with my Dad he'll tend to lie down in "his" plot just to remind you where it is in case you can't find the paperwork when the time comes. He's very helpful. Yes, thank you Dad.

It was windy and we were getting our heads blown off so we went to a park we've never been to (in this tiny town, how is that possible?!)

We had it to ourselves. (In the summer holidays. No one else knows it's there either.)

 

That's gorgeous, baby. It's called lantana and if you see it on the farm you go get Dad and the tractor and you rip it all out, ok? But thanks, that's lovely.

 

 

And you know, taking the time off didn't really hurt the market stall. At all. We still got it all done. It was such a joy hanging out with my suddenly five year old. And the market was a sell out. Hooray! I got to meet a totally lovely person called Susan who introduced herself as a blog reader and who I wish I could have talked to for longer (ideally with a cup of tea!) I love meeting friends in unexpected places. 

I got home and discovered I had my dress on inside out. 

All day. Inside out. 

I am the coolest. 

Here's to five year olds who want to hang out with their disasterous mothers. I'm hanging onto it.

xxx

 

 

simple life

 

I live in the country. I grow food, make stuff, strive for self sufficiency and a small ecological footprint. Sounds like a simple life (or some nauseating eco-puritan you probably wouldn't take to the pub.)

You know, I like the idea of it. Slow down. Pare away the unnecessaries. Live simply. 

It's a lovely idea. 

But you know what I love? 

I love a friend sitting on my couch (which is in my kitchen) chatting while I throw flour around and we'll stop every now and then to direct children walking through looking for musical instruments and medical dictionaries (in that order.) I'm cobbling together a Bikkie order, thinking about Tilly's birthday party on Saturday and trying to figure out when to host the visitors who we'd like to have stay. 

There's calls about a meat chicken feed order and the vet about the pig's castration on Thursday. I'm shaking my homemade vanilla extract (more on this soon), feeding my sourdough starter and stirring the fermenting pear vinegar while googling how to get rid of the tiny flies settling all over the top of the cheesecloth. It really doesn't look good when you pick up the jar and a cloud of bugs wafts off to somewhere else in the kitchen. You know, it's a fermenting process, I respect that, but Adam has a bit of a thing about drain flies. They've got to go. 

It's all so simple.

Stage one Pear Vinegar:

Cover slighty old and inedible chopped up pears with filtered water. Cover with cheesecloth and leave on a bench, stirring daily, for about four weeks. Or until your drain fly problem is so dire you have to put the jar in the fridge - which obviously halts the fermenting process - until you figure it out. 

Anyone for the pub?

xxx 

 

 

celebrating five

This morning I woke up to the sound of Tilly walking down the hall happily singing to herself, "happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me..." I got up laughing. 

This girl of ours is full of joy and sunlight and I'm so so happy to be celebrating five years with her today. 

I stayed up last night and sewed her a tent.

 

I didn't have a pattern or even a plan, I'd just seen one made of gingham selling locally for $160 that was pretty and crazy priced, so when I saw gingham on sale a while back I bought some. 

I had an old hula hoop which the last tenants left behind and there we have it. 

Basically it's a long rectangle with a sleeve at the top which I threaded cotton tape through and gathered up tightly. The top bit, the different fabric, is there because when I held it up it didn't look long enough. It happens that when the hoop is tied in at the join it all looks very deliberate. I'm not actually that clever.

 

I sewed on pieces of tape that tie up and hold up the hoop.

In the photo above I demonstrate my incredible skillful sewing, so skillful that I managed to accidentally sew the ends of the tapes holding the hoop in, while tacking on the outside lace. I am that talented. And given it was quite late, was also too lazy to unpick the tape out and re-sew the seam. Just snipped it off. As you can see. 

 

Ah, whatever.

She loves it.

It was a fun day of special visitors, craft, cake and homemade pizza for dinner in front of a movie. 

 

 

This five year old is an awesome kid, a little bit deaf, incredibly noisy, best friends with her big brother, dedicated to all her friends, besotted with expressive dance, and frighteningly adventurous. She is apparently engaged to be married to the next door neighbour (he's 5) and when she grows up she wants to be a ballet teacher, a firefighter and a farmer. 

Happy birthday beautiful girl. I hope all your wishes come true.

xxx

 

 

farmgirl

I hope you've squeezed in doing something you wanted to do too, this weekend. 

Here's to farmgirls.

xxx