Cal and Cake!

Finally I am catching up with my Mini Rings of Change Cal that Kate is hosting.  Above is last week’s rounds 15 – 19.

This week’s rounds were very simple and enabled me to catch up quickly.  However it is starting to get quite sizeable and heavy to handle.  I can now see it as a rug for my bathroom.  I am very pleased with it.  It is really interesting to see how colour affects how the design looks.  Even though we are all using the same pattern they all look so different because if our colour choices.  Head over to Kate and see!

It was a national holiday yesterday – Waitangi Day.  I was going to the park to watch the celebrations but I wimped out as it was stormy strong gale force winds, eek! I felt bad for the people that organized things, especially as by middle afternoon the weather had cleared and blue skies prevailed.

So, instead I spent time in the kitchen and prepared vegetables for pickles and did a big batch of freezing beans and tomatoes.  To celebrate my housewifely skills I treated myself to some baking, one of my favourites  -  Muesli Slice.

It is an old Edmonds cookbook recipe (for those outside NZ the book is a national treasure and I wouldn't be surprised if every home had one!)  Originally published by Edmonds in 1907 to promote their Baking products.  For many years I think till the 1960s every newly married couple was given a copy by the company.  It is being constantly revised and recipes change as trends in food change.  My first one I got from my grandmother when I married is very fragile and falling to pieces, but I keep it as there are some old favourites that are not in my current copy err pub in 1994! I will need a new one again soon as pages are starting to come out and are rather brown! I wonder what recipes are in the current edition.

There that is my input for celebrating NZ!

Anyways I spent the afternoon doing my patchwork, sipping tea from my favourite china, really girly pink afternoon and all!  The patchwork is nearly finished and I have decided on the crochet panel but will tell all next time.

The Muesli Slice was yummy, I changed the recipe a bit,  its meant to have chocolate icing but I don’t like icing (yeah really).  But I needed my chocolate fix so I added chocolate buttons to the mix, divine!  Here’s the recipe if you are interested.

Muesli Slice

50g butter

½ cup brown sugar

2 eggs

¾ cup s/r flour or use plain and add Baking Powder 1tsp

1 cup muesli

2 tsp grated lemon rind

½ cup chopped mixed peel (I don’t add this as my muesli has flavours that would clash!)

¼ to ½ cup of chocolate buttons or chips.

(I make up my own muesli by adding dried fruit, such as figs, currants, raisins, apricots, cranberries, nuts such as almonds walnuts and coconut flakes to rolled oats)

Cream butter and sugar, Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each one.  Sift flour and add BP if using.  Fold in the rest of ingredients to mix.  Spread into tin and bake at 180 C for 25 minutes or till golden.  Add icing if you want.

Enjoy!

Thanks for visiting and I will see you next time.

My Week

It has been a typical spring week, one day a taste of summer and the next a reminder of winter.  One thing I love about spring is the elderflower trees in blossom.  Elderflower cordial making is the top of list.  I love it with its musky flavour.  I have never made elderberry cordial, I mean to but the birds get the berries before I do.  May be I will have to camp beside the tree!

This week I have been busy with the blanket for my niece it has to be finished before Thursday!!!  I am busy sewing it up, hopefully tomorrow I can start on the border.  However I have done some other crochet to lighten the load.  One was a little cowl, as it still can be cold in the early morning when I leave the house and I wanted something to keep my neck warm.

I used V stitch it was super quick to do an hour or so.  I have worn it most mornings, and soon as it is warm enough I slip it off and put it in my bag.

Pretty colours!

I have also done some work on my Painted Rose cushion and it is now ready to sew to the back

I am using the curtain material leftover from when I made new ones earlier in the year.  I just love this pattern from Cherry Heart.  I cant wait to get started on the blanket.  But it will have to wait as I have other projects that require my attention.

For a change I decided to try my hand at making embroidered brooches.  I had seen some on Pinterest and thought they would make great gifts.

So here is my first attempt.

Think I will keep this one for myself as it has a few errors in it!  But I love it anyway.

So that has been my week, I will leave you with my recipe for Elderberry cordial.

Elderflower Cordial

Ingredients

25 - 30 elderflower heads

1.7litres/3 pints boiling water

900g/2lb caster sugar

50g/2oz citric acid

3 lemons, sliced

Preparation method

Gently rinse over the elderflowers to remove any dirt or little creatures.

Pour the boiling water over the sugar in a very large mixing bowl. Stir well and leave to cool.

Add the citric acid, the orange and lemon slices, and then the flowers.

Leave in a cool place for 24 hours, stirring occasionally.

Strain through some muslin and transfer to sterilised bottles.

Thanks for visiting and have a great week.

Mandalas and Shortbread

I haven’t had much time to crochet this week, but all my plans for what time I had went out the window when I saw Zooty Owls new mandala- starflower.  Oh my word it is glorious, of course I had to get going…..straight away!  She is so generous with her designs.

Perhaps it is fortunate that I didn’t have enough colours in cotton to do the pattern as I was forced to use what I had.  In doing so I have a wonderful new use for a Mandala – yep the mandala shawl!

left to right
firebird, rhapsody,  and magic

I went to my trusty variegated 4 ply wool (Patons Fantasias range) and used 3 colour ways – magic, firebird and rhapsody).

To create this beautiful mandala!  (I did have to break off the wool in places to avoid some colours I didn't want creeping in.)  I haven’t done the last few rows as I am not yet sure I want them in the shawl.

While I was crocheting away I kept thinking this would make a wonderful centre point for a shawl, thus the idea was born.

So out came the colour pencils and I have sketched out I want it to look.  2 – 4 more mandalas, two probably up to row 6 or 7 and 2 up to row 4.  With the surrounds a lacy stitch in the ‘magic’ colour way.  I don't know how to do the joining and lacy bits, but I am sure I will figure it out!

I am linking this post to Cosmos and Cottons Monthly Mand-a-Long  I will probably link the finished shawl to next month’s Mand- a- Long.

I have just realized that I have been blogging for 3 months and crocheting for 6 months, doesn’t time fly.   I had started this blog to talk about my crochet and crafts along with my other passions cooking and gardening.  Um… crochet seems to be taking the upper hand, and the cooking and gardening have been neglected.

So without further ado here is a recipe for yummy lemon shortbread.

Lemon Shortbread

Ingredients

200 gm (7oz) butter,

½ cup (4oz) castor sugar,

grated rind of 1 lemon (NB lime is nice too, or a mix.)

2 cups (8oz) plain flour sifted,

½ cup desiccated coconut.

Method

Beat butter and castor sugar and rind till light, Work in flour and coconut, but not over work!  Roll out to 1cm (¼ inch) thick and cut into shapes of your fancy.  Bake 20 minutes at 160 degrees Celsius , cool on tray. (the coconut gives it a lovely taste and is not quite the same without it)

I love Shortbread, in all its forms.  I started to bake it when  I was about 13 for my father as he loved it so much, then it was plain shortbread, now I have a tendency to add other flavours, such as this lemon  one or sometimes in summer I like to add English lavender flower seeds, or sometimes I like to add ground coffee.

The gardening bit, Lemons are one of my favourite flavours and would choose it over chocolate any day!  So of course I have to have lemon trees, I have two a Meyer and a Lemonade which you can eat as is!  They are starting to ripen up nicely and this year I planted a lime and I noticed that it has a dozen limes, Yay!

To finish this rather long post (I must try and blog twice a week so posts are not so long!)I have a photo of a flower that is by my front door, it has been blooming all summer and autumn, I have no idea of its name but I just love the green and wine colour of the flowers.

Thanks for visiting and I wish you all a wonderful week!

The Anzacs

This is a gouache sketch of poppies from a photograph I took in the summer. The poppy is a symbol of an important day of remembrance here in NZ and Australia.

Today is Anzac Day a sacred national holiday in New Zealand and Australia. Everything is closed by law. Both countries commemorate the battle of Gallipoli in Turkey during the 1^st World War.  Both countries lost so many young men that there was a generation of women who never married or were left widows with young children.  In modern times it has come to represent the futility of all wars.  Every town in New Zealand land has a dawn ceremony where the last post is played at the war memorial.  It is also a rite of passage for New Zealanders and Australians to go to Anzac Cove in Turkey and take part in the dawn ceremony there.  I have done it and it wasn’t really until then standing in the place where so many young men were slaughtered that it hit me how wasteful war is.

So, this post and collage of old photos is is commemorate those young men, and a generation that never happened.  In particular, my grandfather (he was fortunate that he was too young to go to war) lost four brothers and my grandmother lost all of her brothers – five.

You are never forgotten.

On a lighter note,  Gallipoli produced a national icon, Anzac biscuits! The soldiers were sent tins of these biscuits from their families during the war.

Here is the recipe:

(Feel free to download the pictures)

Today is a National holiday so I will be baking a couple of batches of these biscuits to supply a couple of confined to barracks elderly souls in in my neighbourhood.  Maybe I will get some crochet in, I have a long to do list of scarfs that my family are waiting for!

The Story of Gallipoli

For nine months in 1915, British and French forces battled the Ottoman Empire - modern Turkey - for control of the Gallipoli peninsula, a small finger of Europe jutting into the Aegean Sea that dominates a strategic waterway, the Dardanelles. By opening the Dardanelles to their fleets, the Allies hoped to threaten the Ottoman capital, Constantinople (now Istanbul) and knock the Turks out of the war.

Among the British forces were the Anzacs - the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps - who landed on the peninsula on 25 April. The landing, like the Gallipoli campaign itself, was ambitious and ultimately unsuccessful: the peninsula remained in its defenders' hands.

The campaign was a costly failure for the Allies: 44,000 British and French soldiers died, including over 8700 Australians. Among the dead were 2721 New Zealanders nearly 5000 wounded out of a force of approx. 8500 – while that may not sound a lot compared to other nations, NZ pop was less than a million.  Victory came at a high price for the Turks: 87,000 men died in the campaign which became a defining moment in Turkish history.

It was also a defining moment in New Zealand’s and Australian history, we started to draw away from Britain and become nations in our own right.  For the three nations Anzac Cove where the Anzacs landed has been made a Peace Park by the Turks and the three Nations every year send government members to the remembrance service at the cove.

Enjoy they are scrummy and healthy!  Great for lunch boxes.

The last bit of Summer

Summer is over!  Last week I cleared the last of the pumpkins and zucchinis from the garden.  There were enough zucchinis to make my last batch of pickles.

What is it about home-made preserves and pickles that bring out the warm fuzzy feelings?  For me it is a sense of satisfaction of a good crop, nostalgia plays a part, and of course the yummy factor.

Pickles, chutneys and relishes are firmly entrenched in my memory banks.  One of my most treasured memories of my father involves the two of us making relishes to sell at the local store every summer holidays.  I would do the chopping while he brooded over the mixture.  Then we would taste and make adjustments.  It is a precious memory.  Another precious memory is my first year away from home I boarded with my grandparents, every night at 9 the crackers, cheese and pickles would come out and we would sit around the fire munching away talking over the day.  Our digestion must have been sturdier in those days; I don't think I could handle that now!

Nowadays, I love pickles with cold meats and in Cheese sandwiches and rolls.  That is a habit I picked up in Britain when I was doing my OE (Overseas Experience a rite of passage for young Kiwis). Mine lasted 17 years!  When I was working in London I had to leave home at 6:30 as I had a lot of traveling to do to get to work by 8:30.  When I got off the tube at Kings Cross I had a 15 minute walk to the office and on the way there was a hole in the wall sandwich shop where I would stop and get a crispy roll stuffed with cheese and Branston Pickle that was my breakfast for a number of years.  It is strange I have brought imported Branston Pickle here, the same brand, and it is vile!

In the last few years I have revived the ritual of preserve making; it is a wonderful way of dealing with the glut of summer produce. And of course it makes me feel like I have been a good Proverbs 31 woman!  The glut that all gardeners have every summer is Zucchinis.  Last year I discovered a wonderful recipe for them as a sandwich pickle, and they make wonderful gifts.  Best of all leave in the cupboard till the middle of winter and bring them out and have on crackers with cheese or have the archetypal Ploughman’s Platter, something else I grew to love when I was in England.  As you sink your teeth into them you will be glad of the flood of zucchinis that made you tear with hair out in that effort to keep up with the abundance.  Best of all, you will have the taste of summer in your mouth!

 Zucchini Pickle

3 ½ cups white vinegar,

1 cup sugar,

4 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon dill seed or fennel seeds

1 teaspoon mustard seeds

1 teaspoon turmeric powder

3 whole cloves

1 kg (2.2 lbs) Zucchinis

6 small onions

1 large red capsicum, or whatever colour you have to hand.

Place vinegar, sugar salt and herbs and spices  in a pan and bring to boil.  Cool.  Wash zucchinni and cut into thickish slices or chunks (I like chunks.) Slice onions and capsicums.  Place the vegetables in plastic or glass bowl and pour over the cooled vinegar mix. Leave 1 hour.  Put all mixture into a pan and bring to boil and simmer for three minutes.  Pack into bottles and seal. Enjoy.

I usually find I have surplus liquid, so I keep it and use in my next batch, for sure as eggs you will have more zucchinis to deal with, or the demand of friends and family for more!  I find that you can start eating them more or less straight away.  But they do taste better if left a week or two.

So my friends do have a go, if you have a huge surplus of zucchinis (I have found that scaloppini are wonderful treated this way, and have even used marrows (zucchinis that have got away on me.)

Today is nice and fine with a good breeze so I will be doing loads of washing, getting the winter bedding out - I am strange even though it is clean I like to give it a wash and let it get some fresh air before using after it has been stored away!  After that I just might have some pickles and crackers for tea!

Have a great day.

Garden catch up and a bit of cooking.

Autumn is in full force here down under!  The trees are changing colour with the colder nights and the nights are starting to draw in.  Almost time to cosy up in front of the fire.  But first there is the garden to put to bed!  I normally have a winter garden, but this winter I decided to let it rest as the vegetable patch has been cropping constantly for 2 years.  I will keep the silver beet (Chard) and sorrel, and will plant some kale and purple sprouting broccoli to tide me over.

I decided to take a leaf out of the permaculture circles and put down layers of leaf litter, grass clippings and compost so that the rain doesn't leach away what goodness is left in the soil and by next spring hopefully it will have rotted down to create a rich soil.  So over the last two weeks I have been out there beavering away.  It is now ready to layer from the collected piles of garden waste.  I have a big trailer load of mushroom compost being delivered next week from the local mushroom farm.

Nice and tidy!

While I have been hard at it my cats have watched intently, probably thinking oh she has made us a giant litter box!  Can you see Ambrose peeping out in  the above photo.

Mostly they have been taking great naps; all my activity makes them tired!

Enough Mum!  Ambrose and Peggy Sue take over the garden refuse sack.

Lucy prefers to rest indoors, near the fridge in case I might throw her a snack whenever I go to it!

With all this gardening I haven’t had much time for baking.  However yesterday I made some Welsh scones, they were a family favourite along with pikelets when I was growing up.  Don’t you find sometimes you hanker for the things of your childhood?  Must be a sign of advancing years!

These are quick to make and you don’t need to use the oven.  Traditionally they were done on a griddle or hotplate.  I used a fry pan and decided to add some chocolate chips along with the currants. The blog  Little Welsh House      suggested that you can do so and the idea appealed, so finally I got around to it.  However I used my family’s recipe.

Welsh Scones

8oz (225 g) flour

2 tsp baking powder

Pinch of salt

½ tsp ground nutmeg

2oz (50g) butter or margarine

2oz (50g) sugar

2oz (50 g) currants

Chocolate chips (I used a handful)

1 beaten egg

Milk to mix

Preheat girdle or heavy based fry pan.  Sift  flour, baking powder, salt and nutmeg.  Rub in fat till it resemble breadcrumbs, Stir in sugar, fruit and chocolate chips.  Mix with the egg and milk to form a firm dough but not too dry, like normal scone mix.  Roll out to 1 cm or ½ thick and cut into rounds or triangles.  Cook on a moderate hot surface till brown on both sides.  About ten minutes.

That is it they were delicious both hot and cold.  I like the chocolate in them, but I think it would be too much if they were just chocolate and no fruit.

That’s it for today, the forecast is for rain for the nest few days so I will be able get lots of crochet done!

Have a great day.

A hat, an apple cosy and a rhubarb and custard crumble tart!

I am very pleased with the hat I crocheted this week.  I got the pattern from a library book called Hooked Hats.  This is a cloche style; I like the slight brim as I don’t suit beanies.  What is cool about this one is that you can crochet different colour trims to suit what you are wearing.

It uses two stands of double wool so I decided to use different colours giving it a tweedy look.

There are a couple of hats that I like the look of and I have a request to do a beanie for a young friend.

Another library book I got out on Monday was very inspiring

The author is a blogger from Dorset – Sara Sinaguglia. I was very taken with the apple cozies, they make me smile and have a very useful purpose – protecting the apple from bruises etc. when you want to put one in your bag when you are on the go.  I had to have a go.

Sara has make very pretty apple blossoms in fine crochet cotton to attach – don’t think I am up to that yet

Another project that I have started is this gorgeous bunny, will suit my grandniece Kendal!   She is three and very much into fairies and princesses and this bunny is certainly a princess with her beautiful dress.

Now a recipe, that I made up yesterday.  I had seen a recipe for rhubarb and custard cake, but it looked very complicated.  I have a lot of rhubarb to use up as it will start to die down soon.

I picked a bunch and was going to give them a blast in the oven but suddenly thought why not the microwave, so I sprinkled sugar on the chopped up rhubarb covered with cling film (used no water) and cooked for 8 minutes at 50 per cent power.  I t was good as the oven and used less power.

Next I made some custard up, but you could use readymade, it needs to be fairly thick.

Then I made some short crust pastry but quite short so that I could reserve some for the crumble topping.  I baked the pastry blind as I didn’t want the bottom to be soggy as I was going to serve it up to some dinner guests.

Then I put spoonful’s of rhubarb and custard in the crust.  I wanted there to be distinct patches of custard and rhubarb.  Then I scrunched up the reserved pastry added 2 sppons of brown sugar and I half tsp. ginger to the crumble.  Then I baked it in oven till the crumble was brown,  I also used up the rest of the custard and rhubarb and crumble mix in little dishes.

It was delicious and my guests all wanted the recipe!

So as you can see a busy few days.  Tomorrow will be busy too as my grapes are ready and I have to pick them before the birds get them!  I will make grape cordial for the winter.

Have a great day everyone see you soon.

Linking today with Chrissies Crafts

Store Cupboard Yuminess - Vegetarian Moussaka

Eating alone tonight, just the two of you or no time for fiddling with lots of ingredients.  There is no need to have toast and beans!  With just a tin of that and a jar of this and a vegetable that needs to be used up you can prepare very quickly a lovely meal.

I was very tired a few nights ago and didn’t feel like cooking; on the bench was an eggplant that was screaming at me to be used.  I had brought it at the local car boot market a well over a week ago!  I am a sucker for their lovely purple hues. I love eating them any which way.  Perhaps my favourite way of all is Moussaka.

I looked at it felt it, I couldn’t leave it any longer!  I opened my cupboard and looked.  Ah ha!  Vegetarian moussaka flashed into my consciousness, I discovered this a little while ago, very quick and sumptuous. With a tasty side salad from the garden, just what the doctor ordered.

Vegetarian Moussaka

1 tin beans (any type, I used cannelloni, I have used all sorts, a tin of mixed is very good).

Third jar of ready-made pasta sauce (one with chunky vegetables is ideal but not essential, I used plain above).

1 eggplant

1 egg

Cup plain yoghurt

Cup grated cheese

Heaped tbsp. s/r flour

Drain Beans put in casserole dish, Add pasta sauce , may need more but don’t make it too soupy.

Slice eggplant and fry in oil, use the oil very hot so it doesn’t get suck up by the eggplant. (I don’t salt eggplants as the varieties we grow today are not bitter.  It may differ in various countries)

Layer the eggplants on top of bean mix.

Beat egg in a bowl, add flour and mix well.  Pour in yoghurt and add cheese reserving some to sprinkle on top of casserole.  Mix well and pour over the eggplant layer.

Bake at 180C. for ½ hour or till golden and bubbly.  Take out of oven and let sit for 10 minutes.  Just time to make the salad!  Serve with salad and crusty bread.

Note: I have used slices of cooked potato when eggplants are expensive in Winter

My Salad

Toss together:

Buttercrunch (Tom Thumb) lettuce,

Leaves of rocket, sorrel and coriander

Chopped yellow or red capsicum

Segments of mandarins (I find if I use fruit in salads, a dressing is not missed)

Freshly ground salt and pepper

Enjoy.

Recent photos – magenta love

 The above is the start of a jumper I am crocheting , the stitch pattern based on the cal blanket I am doing. (see last post) .  Today I finished my hat from the library book, it is very nice, I kept up with my theme of magent and crochet the trim in hot pink.  The hat uses two strands, one navy and the other purple.I might do another from the book before I return it.  Will show photo next post.  

Got a couple of more books on crochet out of the library this morning and found a rabbit pattern that I will do for my grand niece, Kendal who lives in Perth WA.  Also some other lovelies that I will no doubt start in the coming weeks!!!

It has been rather humid and hot here today the after effects of the cyclone Lucy.  Luckily it missed my region but Northland and Auckland got hit quite bad.  

Have a great day!