Wordless Wednesday: Faster Than The Speed of Sound

Part of My Little Drummer Boys Aussie Wordless Wednesday

Burnt Cake Friday

Well first I waited around FOREVER for one of the chooks to lay an egg, but after much sitting around on the nest by everyone except my two poor moulty Australorps, no egg was forthcoming.

THEN, after careful measuring and stirring (the recipe gave measurements as, eg, 3/4 cup, and then gave the gram measurement of a whole cup in brackets afterwards. It took me a while to figure this out.  So when it said 3 tablespoons of butter at 20g each, I thought it meant 3 tbs butter equalled 20g and not the correct 60g).

Still, I battled on, with one egg, no butter and a LOT of sugar in the recipe.

And Taa Daa... Slightly Charred Pecan Cinnamon Cake

It looks less burnt than it is

As I got it out of its tin I noticed a shiny blob on the surface, being a mammal of higher intelligence I stuck my finger in the blob and quickly discovered it was MOLTEN SUGAR from the topping.  Still fricking hurts.

Yup, the kids are just going to loooooove this one.

sigh.

Garden Harvest

Was fossicking around in garden this morning and gathered the following in my pockets...

Two eggs (yay), carrots, sweet potato, desiree potato, erm some other little potatos, and tomatoes.

War on Clutter continues.  Kitchen now cleared out, today will tackle pantry - or maybe just go hunting for more Tim Tams, how much incentive is THAT??

War on Clutter - Day Seven + A Big Surprise

Well, War on Clutter kind-of moving forward.  Cleared out dresser filled with china, teacups, pizza stones and about a ton of random electrical wires, old mobile phones and batteries in all sizes.  Then moved on to the pantry... where I came across a packet of double choc Tim Tams... and it was Oprah on telly... and I had a cup of tea...and it was peaceful and sunny... and... well, you get the idea.

The War sat down and had a lovely rest before rushing off to pick up the children and figure out what to cook for dinner (tacos; very nice).

But, being the non-stop, high adrenaline, house in the burbs that this is, of course that's not the only news...

We have our first egg.  Hurray :)

Weighing in at 43g it has been admired by the entire family and has been the subject of phone calls, group emails and facebook status updates, all day.  We're waiting until we have one each before we eat them.

New Muse

Was writing outside this afternoon...

Frankly the way this book is going I need all the help I can get.

:)

Not going to plan

Bad day yesterday.  Woke up crabby - well it'd been a vile week, with massive stress due to our current lack of funds and the very painful decision that we're going to have to sell one of our cars - and yes I know you can survive with one car but living as far from public transport as we do, its going to mean life is just that little bit more difficult.

We've had another sudden hot spell, the last three days have been above 35 degrees.  The chickens had already decimated my leafy greens bed (beetroot, carrots, asian greens, turnips). So, feeling really pissed off about it all, I replanted the lot and put some chard and a few other odds and end around the outside of the bed to distract the chickens.  Six hours later the temperature had hit 37, all the new plantings were beyond dead and the chickens had got through my anti-chicken defences and laid waste to all that hard work.

Hot and crabby I decided to hide inside and read Jackie French, she always inspires me to keep going and keep trying. But not yesterday.

"March is a time of harvest," she said. Oh really, I thought.

• The sun isn't as fierce - oh yes it is
• The weather is cooling - oh no its not
• Tomatos will be glutting - I have a handful of green cherry tomatos to show for my glut
• Melon's will be ripening - I have about seven melon vines they are all dying of mildew (despite spraying with milk) and so far I have one melon about the size of an egg and two water melons about the size of peas
• Pumpkins - not a one, not a single sodding one, they've all rotted off, well the two that even started anyway
• Summer vegetables will be mature - no they won't they'll all be burnt off by the relentless sodding sun and no sodding rain that's dried out all your raised beds to the point where they can't hold water even if they want too

Yesterday I was quite prepared to cover the entire garden in concrete and paint it green.

Today the chickens have been banished to their new (nearly finished) coop.  Something has chewed through all the shadecloth I put around the bottom - already, after less than a week.  YAY.  The leafy green bed has been replanted AGAIN and is covered in wire and booby trapped with hand grenades.  Hubs and I have put in my lattice to provide a bit of privacy and grow something up (grape? kiwi? peas?).

I went around the garden and picked things to prove to myself that this is all worthwhile and I can get food out of my garden - and ended up with a small bowl of chilis and a handful of beans.  It hasn't  helped.

So I retired to the kitchen and made plum sauce, with the leftover plums frozen from spring

And got some sourdough starter started.  Which I'm thinking is going to be a very interesting experiment, in breeding new life forms in the kitchen at least.

Sigh.