You Gotta Love This Girl

Tracy is well I don’t really know what words to use to describe her other than she is an incredible person. We met on 2peas a couple of years ago, I was a wee girl a couple months shy of my 18th birthday, she was a Garden Girl (one of those women on 2peas who you aww over) and well the rest is history, we’ve emailed each other, cheered each other on and given no barriers held advice when needed, she is a pretty cool lady and I am glad to know her πŸ™‚

So, imagine my delight this afternoon when I came back from celebrating my Grandfather’s 86th Birthday to an email showing me this πŸ™‚ Then to add to all my proudness of what she is achieving, she has a paper line coming out with A2Z Essentials which is about to be released at a trade show that starts today/tomorrow πŸ™‚ Called Harmony πŸ™‚ – Go Tracy πŸ™‚
Helen by tracy

Berry Sour Cream Patty Cakes

Some time back in November I guess, I picked up some frozen Blueberries and Raspberries to make Berry Ice-Cream from Celebrate issue of the Donna Hay magazine (just swirling frozen berries into softened ice-cream and then re-freezing in a pudding cloth).

Then the other day at work I picked up some sour cream from the reduced to clear section, having seen somewhere in the back of mind sour cream muffins.

A google search yesterday gave me these recipes Blueberry Cream Muffins, Sour Cream Blueberry Muffins and Blueberry Sour Cream Muffins, which I used for the basis of my recipe as well as drawing on a Baking Sheet blog post from the other week called Bakery Style Muffins.

Berry Sour Cream Patty Cakes

Ingredients
2 & 1/2 cups plain flour
2 tsp Baking Powder
2 tsp Baking Soda
pinch of salt
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg
1/2 butter (melted)
dash of Vanilla essence
200ml sour cream
dollops of Milk and Buttermilk if needed for achieving consistency
2 cups or so of berries (I used Blueberries and Raspberries)

Method
Preheat oven to 160°C and place patty or muffin papers into patty pan or muffin pans. Combine dry ingredients in a bowl, in a separate bowl combine the egg, sour cream, vanilla and melted butter. Make a well in the dry ingredients bowl and pour in the sour cream mixture and mix together, if mixture is not wet enough add dollops of milk and or butter milk till it is gooey enough to spoon into patty pans. Stir in berries, be sure to do this well so that the berries are evenly distributed through the mixture. Spoon mixture into patty pans so that the mixture is just about at the top of the pan. Cook in oven for 15 minutes or so until skewer comes out clean (muffins will need longer to cook than patty cakes). Makes 40 patty cakes.

Berry Sour Cream Patty Cakes

Now for some notes.

  • Since this recipe makes quite a few patty cakes be sure to either freeze them in small batches or store in the fridge to prevent mould growing in them (cakes etc with fruit especially berries are quite prone to mould if stored at room temp, so eat quick or store in the fridge/freezer.
  • These will be quite airy patty cakes due to the amount of baking powder and baking soda used if you don’t like airy cakes, halve the baking powder and soda amounts.
  • Enjoy with a nice glass of milk πŸ™‚

In other news:

  • On my hook at the moment is this Crochet Cupcake Pincushion.
  • I want one of these – Flame-worked All Glass Crochet Hooks in ruby or opal please (Mum, ideal 21st birthday gift, you have 232 days to purchase one).
  • Mum is just about finished her crocheted bag.
  • This arvo Mum and I went through her old wool to see what I could use to create with and found some knitted goodies which will be fun to felt.

Lastly, this coming Thursday, January 26th is Australia Day so Be Australian, Eat More Lamb (you have to click on that link, though if you aren’t Australian you probably won’t get half the stuff said but still click on it).

wave back :)

So apparently it is National (does that mean only in the USA? If so when is the Australian one?) scratch that, let us just call it International Delurking Week. I know some of the people who like to poke around here you know those people who possibly know more about you than you know about yourself (family and buds), yeah but back on track, just imagine, you can see me waving at you and saying hello.

What do you do?

  1. Say to yourself is she waving at me? must be that person behind me but I’ll wave back anyway.
  2. Wave back and say Hi Helen.
  3. Ignore the wave and go about your merry way.

What did you answer? Option 2 is the cool one but if you go the others, I will cope, after all I can only wave my hand so many times in one week πŸ™‚

Back to more content driven posting sometime soon.

Crocheted Bag

Erins' bag

Well to the right, you can see the completed bag, my first real functional piece of Crochet, done on a 3mm hook using Anchor Magicline Cotton, the pattern comes from Judith Swartz’s book Hip to Crochet. Mum is currently also making this bag again from Magicline but a different colourway and a 3.5mm hook.

This bag is going to the daughter of a family friend, well the main present are the dolls you see below (click on either picture to see them larger), which we purchased at the Salamanaca Markets and the bag is just serving as a tote for them. :):)

Now I just have to decide what my next project will be…..
dolls

most of my loot

Tassie Loot (click the image to see it larger)
1. 1970’s and earlier Wool Kimono Fabrics from a must see store in Tasmania called Wafu Works at Kinsgton Beach (20mins south of Hobart). It is harf to believe these are wool, they are so light πŸ™‚
2. Modern Japanese Quilting Cottons
3. Ultra Funky and Bright Wollen throw/snugle/picnic rug from the Waverly Woolen Mills outlet store in Launceston
4. Knitted blanket from the Glen Orchy Tip Shop/Recyling Centre – Perfect to felt
5. Little roll of Japanese wrapping paper from the 50’s or 60’s
6. Modern Japanese quilting cotton FQ picked up from the Salamanca Markets
7. Patons Alpaca Yarn – for a beanie of my very own
8. Panda Myth Mohair Blend, an utterly gorgeous colourway and weight which was reduced to clear at $2 was $8-10ish, I have… 14 rolls of the stuff to make a cardigan
9. Vintage Kimono Cotton, with the most gorgeous print on it πŸ™‚
Other Loots
10. A bottle of South Country Cyder
11. The new Interweave Knits Crochet magazine
12. A copy of Yarns, a brand new Australain mainly knitting magazine but it does have a nice smattering of Crochet in πŸ™‚

I think that is about all I picked up along the way, well other than all the gorgeous cherries that we were gorging on πŸ™‚

home

Mum and I are now home, four days earlier than expected and minus Grandad who flew home from Melbourne on the 10th.

Short Story is:
Grandad knocked a piece of skin off his leg, which resulted in us trekking our way through, under and round Melbourne, visiting a mainly Russian medical centre in South St Kilda, two hospitals in Heidelberg, Tullamarine airport, Spotlight in Box Hill and the house of a dear friend in Glen Waverly who wasn’t home.

It was decided that the best thing for Grandad was that he go home to his own doctor who knows exactly how well and how long GranddadÒ€ℒs skin takes to heal, so he flew home something like 8hrs after we had driven off the ferry from Tasmania that morning. As life goes my aunt who lives across the turf from Grandad also has some family health issues of her own which meant that she may not be able to look after him if he did indeed need a skin graft. With all this under wings, Mum and I embarked on the trip home spending the first night just out of Melbourne in Seymour before driving 1045km yesterday to spend last night in Narrabri and then driving the final 592km home today, arriving home in the early afternoon. We found out halfway through our 1045km jaunt that GranddadÒ€ℒs doctor had said that the wound was fine but would take a couple of weeks to heal, so if we wanted to we could take our time to get home, however we were already way past the Sydney turn-off on the Newell Highway and it would be nice to have some extra time at home before Mum goes back to school next week.

So here we are, at home, sleeping in our own beds again, unpacking our luggage and our treasures, which I will post about in the morning when I get a good photo of my trove πŸ™‚ and preparing to wade through the photos…..

And the for the grand total, 6127km driven in our car between 25/12/2005 at 7:48am and 12/1/2006 at 1:30pm.