Baking day

It had to be done, baking to feed the hungry hoards.

 A dozen blueberry muffins.

Fifty two Anzac biscuits.

 

Two boiled fruit cakes.

 One loaf of wholemeal bread.

Anne  xx

Corn Relish

Hello again.  Before I launch into a post about the delights of homemade corn relish,  I just want to say that I'm thinking of those of you living in the U.K. who are going through a time of instability right now.  It must be very hard seeing the violence and destruction happening in your beautiful country and I hope that a peaceful resolution is found soon.

We love corn relish in our house especially in toasted cheese sandwiches with the cheese oozing out the sides.  It's pretty darn good with corned beef too.  A couple of years ago I figured there must be a recipe out there for homemade corn relish and sure enough I found one.  I've made a few adjustments to the original recipe and this is what works for me.

CORN RELISH

1kg corn kernels, (I use frozen)

1 red capsicum (pepper), de-seeded and chopped finely

2 onions, peeled and chopped finely

3 celery sticks (ribs), chopped finely

1/4 cup salt

2 cups white sugar (I use castor sugar, it's what's in my pantry)

2 cups white or apple cider vinegar (I prefer apple cider vinegar)

2 teaspoons mustard powder

2 teaspoons turmeric

2 teaspoons cornflour

extra vinegar

1.  In a large bowl, mix the corn, capsicum, celery and salt and leave for at least two hours.  Drain in a colander.

2.  Place the sugar, vinegar, drained vegetables, mustard and turmeric in a large saucepan.  Bing to the boil and cook over a medium heat for 25 to 30 minutes.  Stir regularly.

3.  If the mixture is still a little runny (mine always is), thicken with a paste of 2 teaspoons of cornflour and about a tablespoon of extra vinegar.  Stir well into relish and cook for another few minutes.

4.  While the relish is still warm, spoon into hot sterilised jars and seal.

I made 5 jars from the above recipe.

Enjoy!!

Look at all those corn kernels in there.  Commercial bought corn relishes are really stingy with their corn and you are lucky if you find 10 in a jar. As for the red capsicum, hardly a piece of red to be seen.   I exaggerate of course, but you know what I mean.  If you are going to eat corn relish, you want to eat corn relish, not a flavoured and yellow coloured slop.

One last photo for you today.  Here is Sophie waiting hopefully in the kitchen for a tit bit or crumb.  Labradors are insatiable when it comes to food.  She even got into the chook house the other day and ate their wheat.  Naughty dog!

Have a lovely day everyone,

Anne  xx

PIF parcel from the U.K.

When the postman/lady delivers the mail 5 days a week, he/she usually brings nasty little pieces of paper in window envelopes.  They normally go into my cute toast rack mail holder  for hubby to take care of.  Today while I was out pruning the triffids, the postman/lady came by on the motorbike as usual and instead of the quick stop at the mailbox, there was an extended visit which had me running down the driveway to see what was happening.  Extended visits to the mailbox usually means someone is struggling to get something in the small space allocated for mail.  There were two items for me, squeal!!!!  One was a postcard from a postcard swap, I will blog about them when I receive all 12.  The other item was a parcel all the way from the U.K., a PIF gift from lovely Donna from the blog Love Hope Craft.


Inside were these packages wrapped in the prettiest pale mauve tissue paper.  I'm afraid the little Easter chicks also included didn't fair very well.  They look jet lagged, don't you think?  :)

Donna sent me a cute little crochet bunny just in time for Easter.  A crochet and button flower brooch for me to wear in winter to brighten up a cold, miserable day.  A gorgeous fabric bird with the most amazing feet, a pretty flower key ring.  Some lovely little tags, with my favourite being the owl.  And a gorgeous calendar with scenes from the U.K. with recipes as well.  Donna wrote her lovely message to me in the prettiest flower card, so bright and cheery.

The bunny is keeping the grey bird company.

The sweet little bird with the awesome feet is brightening up a window frame in the family room.

Isn't this little owl soooo cute?!!

Look at these gorgeous calendar photos.
  I had fun using some of the items Donna sent me to add a little more zing to my photos.

Thank you Donna for these lovely gifts.

Have a lovely day everyone,

Anne  xx

Progress, achievements and a little luxury

Hi everyone, I have  progress to report.  Firstly, my right hand that was stung by a European wasp on Sunday no longer looks like this.  It was red, swollen and hot to the touch, yucky.

After realising it was not going to improve without an antihistamine, I made a quick trip to the chemist Monday morning and came home with some non drowsy antihistamine tablets (I didn't want to fall asleep in art class that afternoon), and a cream to help with the itchiness and the heat the sting was generating.  Almost back to normal now with only a little itchiness.

The second area of progress is this.  More crochet triangles for bunting.

This seems like meagre amount to have made considering when I started.  How do you ladies who crochet get so much done?

My achievement today is gardening.  I now have one section of garden that resembles a garden rather than a scene from The Day of the Triffids. For those who are not familiar with triffids,  "a triffid is a tall, mobile, carnivorous, prolific and highly venomous fictional plant species—the titular antagonist in John Wyndham's 1951 novel The Day of the Triffids."  I had plenty of triffids in the wheelbarrow and used almost every gardening tool I could find in the garage to attack them.

 In between carting barrow loads of weeds, leaves and overgrown plants to the big garden rubbish bag that gets collected once a month, I sustained myself with this.  Hard work gives me an appetite.

This may be considered a good breakfast for some,  but for me it was a good lunch.  An egg from our own chooks with a few cherry tomatoes I found just ripened in the vege garden, on toasted homemade bread.  With a full belly, I was ready to get stuck in again.

 The reward for my 5 hours of gardening is this.

An area of garden almost free of weeds where I can now see the plants that are supposed to be there.  I grubbed out plants that had overtaken others and trimmed back those a bit too greedy for the sun to make room for those plants not quite so pushy.  It is so much better than it was.  Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo before I got stuck in.  Just use your imagination.  JUNGLE!

Little lost garden fairy/angel has been found again.

And can now see what he/she is doing.

Mr frog has discovered there is a world beyond the periwinkle that was obscuring his view and now has clear, fresh water to admire his reflection.

Can you guess what my little luxury is going to be after a hard day working in the garden?

Yes.  A nice BIG cold iced coffee!

Miss C. made dinner tonight so I have had the luxury of a big sit down.  I think it might be time for a shower and then doing something fun like make more crochet triangles for bunting.

See you soon.

Anne  xx

Creative frenzy

What's a girl to do when she's fresh back from a mini break?  It's Saturday night, she needs to tackle the laundry, the housework, the cooking etc.  She goes into a creative frenzy instead and makes things for pleasure and Christmas presents.

The kilt pin brooch is destined for a niece as are the pair of black and silver earrings.  I had a bit of a sore neck after working at this for several hours last night, but I sure did have fun.

Hope everyone is well, happy and calm.

Anne  xx

Keeping the wrinkles at bay

I've reached a certain age where the wrinkles are starting to do their thing and I've become more conscious of trying to keeping my face well moisturised.  The Australian sun can be a bit brutal on my fair freckly skin so I decided a few years ago to make my own facial moisturiser.

There were a number of reasons for doing this.  The commercially made, inexpensive light moisturiser I had been using just wasn't cutting it anymore and I didn't want to pay the outrageous prices for the products that would supposedly help my aging skin.  I also wanted to know what exactly I was putting on my face.  Solution, make my own.

I then had the task of finding a suitable recipe and sourcing the raw ingredients to make my moisturiser.  The recipe I am sharing with you below is a work in progress.  This is the fourth variation and I hope (fingers crossed), I might have a winner.  This moisturiser is quite rich, but with this latest tweaking of the recipe, it is more creamy in texture rather than being stiff and oily.  So this is what I got up to today.

RICH CREAMY FACIAL MOISTURISER

Ingredients

3 tablespoons apricot kernel oil
2 tablespoons sweet almond oil
2 tablespoons avocado oil
8 tablespoons rose infused water
1 1/2 - 1 3/4 tablespoons bees wax
2 tablespoons aloe vera gel
15 drops grapefruit seed extract (preserver)
15 drops pure rose oil

Place the oils (except rose oil) and wax in a bowl.  Gently heat over a saucepan of water stirring until melted.  Take off heat.

Meanwhile put rose water and aloe vera gel in a microwaveable bowl or jug and stir well.  Heat in microwave until very warm.  This took about 1 minute in my microwave.
 Slowly pour rose water mixture into oil mixture and using a whisk, stir continually.  As you continue to stir and the mixture cools, it will start to turn creamy.  Keep stirring until cool.  The moisturiser should end up being the consistency of mayonnaise. 
Unfortunately my camera started playing up at this point so I couldn't take a photo of this stage in the process.
 When the moisturiser has cooled, add grapefruit seed extract and rose oil and stir thoroughly until combined.  The colour of the moisturiser will be a very pale green due to the avocado oil.
Pour into storage container.  It's now ready to use. 

  The finished product.

Bye for now,
Anne

Homemade laundry powder

While looking at Sue's lovely blog The Quince Tree and seeing the mountains of laundry she had to do, I was reminded how glad I am that I make my own laundry powder.  I dislike commercial laundry powders which are usually over scented, very harsh and in my opinion over priced.  I had the idea of making my own laundry powder, something that would be a little bit kinder to the environment and the pocket.  After looking at some ideas at Green Living Australia, I came up with a variation of their recipe which works for me.                                                                                    

 Homemade Laundry Powder

1 x 1kg bag of Lectric Washing Soda

1 x 1kg bag of Lectric Soda Crystals

2 x 500g boxes of McKenzie's Bi-carb Soda

1 x 100g bar of Velvet Pure Soap grated

Place some newspaper down on the laundry bench or table (it gets messy) and grate soap into a bowl.  Place all ingredients into a large bowl and mix thoroughly.  

 It will look something look like this.

Store in an air tight plastic container. 

Makes 3kg of laundry powder. 

I use less than a tablespoon of powder per wash (I have a front load washing machine) and instead of a commercial fabric softener which just puts a coating on your clothes and towels, I put about 1 tablespoon of white vinegar and a few drops of water soluble lavender oil in the rinse compartment.  The clothes come out clean and smelling beautiful.

Click on the above photos to read about the benefits of using Lectric Soda Crystals (I use for water softening properties) and Lectric Washing Soda.

As I make quite a few of my own cleaning products and facial/body moisturisers, I've bought inexpensive separate equipment to use for these purposes.  In the laundry cupboard are:

2 plastic measuring jugs, small and large

wooden spoons, a selection

spatulas, a selection

plastic measuring cups

plastic measuring spoons

a grater

1 glass pyrex measuring jug

1 medium plastic bowl

1 large stainless steel bowl

If you are doing laundry today, I hope the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing so you can hang your clothes out in the fresh air to dry.

Have a great day,

Anne  :-)