One of my best buds had her 21st birthday party on Saturday and what an event it was. I met Sam during my first year at uni when we were in the same Indonesian classes. She is doing B of Arts/B of Education which means that in a bit over a year she will be teaching kids Indo, history and the like. In the past couple of years we have had plenty of fun filled times from concerts to nights out and just chilling.
Her party was a pretty laid back affair held at a local hall with both family and friends. The party did have a casino theme but I think we ended up playing more games of “Go Fish” then we did 21 🙂 Lots of little and not so little kids running round playing with balloons, making hand print memory pages, eating and drinking, singing and dancing, just all in general fun.
Sam is the queen of the jelly shot, I don’t think she has ever had a party which did not involve jelly and vodka. I didn’t have any of these as I was driving but they looked quite nice especially with the two layers of jelly, very tricky!
Today marks the end of week 3 at uni. 10 weeks left of teaching and 8 pieces of assessment to be completed by then. I spent time in the library last night after my class finished whilst I was waiting for Matthew to finish so we could drive home together, picking out books to start preparing for my first essay.
This is a photo that I took at uni yesterday as I walked up out of the free all day parking section towards the bush path leading up to uni. Just before the uni land starts but on the road that only goes to Uni there is a section of probably 40 or 50 free all day car parking spaces which are highly sought after. I have driven to uni both times I have gone this week as I have been recovering from a nasty flu that knocked me for dead on Monday. Both times I have driven I have been lucky to get one of these parks instead of needing to drive round to the free parking that is located further away from uni. Because, we all know that free parking is much nicer than paying $5 for a day pass.
The map below shows where my uni is located, smack bang in Toohey Forest. I quite enjoy going to a uni that was built round the forest and from many rooms, if you look out the windows all you will see is trees as between most of the buildings there are patches of bush. When it has rained (what is rain?) or when the wind is blowing right, you can stand still and breathe in the air that is perfumed with the scents of the various Eucalyptus and Acacia that grow round the place.
The best thing is that since uni is right beside the SE freeway it only takes 8 minutes or so to drive there from the city (15mins during peak time). Then from the city to home is about 15-20mins (25-30 mins during peak time). If I catch the bus though it is 1hr 20mins to uni and 1hr from uni because the bus timetables don’t always work in your favour. I quite enjoy getting the buses to uni but it is so handy to be able to drive when you are going to the library with a big stack of books or are only going to uni for an hour or two.
I first went to type this post the other day but just before I pressed “publishâ€? we had an itsy bitsy power surge which quickly erased my post. I can’t even really remember what most of the filler noise was that I had typed so it mustn’t have been important.
As often happens when I am making something I will wander to wherever Mum is at that time and start offering her my different flavour suggestions. This time it was a string of Blueberry and X muffins. Blueberry and Chocolate? Blueberry Poppy Seed? Blueberry with Sunflower Seed topping? Blueberry and Sultana? Blueberry and insert your own idea? Mum liked the idea of either chocolate or sultana but my mind was going for poppy seed or chocolate, after looking in the cupboard and seeing that there was no chocolate I decided to make half a batch with poppy seeds and half a batch with sultanas.
1.5C plain flour
1.5C wholemeal plain flour
0.75C raw sugar
1.5tsp baking powder
1.5tsp salt
0.5C honey
1.5C milk
4 eggs
vanilla
zest of a lemon or an orange
115g butter (melted)
200-300gish blueberries
poppy seeds, sultanas
Preheat oven to 180ºC, grease muffin pans.
Sift together the dry ingredients in a bowl and put to the side.
Mix the honey, milk, eggs, vanilla and zest together. Pour in the dry ingredients and mix till they are just incorporated. Whilst slowly mixing the mixture pour in the butter till it is mixed in.
Now you can have fun mixing in other things. I placed half the mixture back into the bowl which I had mixed the dry ingredients in and divided the berries between the two bowls. I added probably two tablespoons of poppy seeds to one half and two handfuls of chopped sultanas to the other half.
Cook for 25mins or until a skewer comes out clean. Cool in the pans for a while (5 mins) and then turn out onto wire racks to cool.
I am a firm believer in both using what you find in the cupboard when cooking even when the recipe may call for something else and mixing things up to create new things.
I hadn’t planned on posting these biscuits because they are similar to the Helen’s Best Ever Biscuits, you just change the ingredients depending on what you have. However I was eating these Chocolate and Blueberry in Sunflower Seeds Biscuits yesterday in a lecture break when two my uni girls commented on them. After chatting about them for a while I wrote www.helenthura.com on a scrap of paper and told them that I would post the idea. So here it is.
I have a biscuit recipe that came to us as Apricot Wheat Germs and over the years I faithfully made the recipe as it was listed though occasionally it would be Fruit Medley Wheat Germs if we had no apricots in the house.
Fan-forced oven at 160°C.
Cream butter and sugar, add eggs.
Mix in the rest.
Roll into balls and flatten lightly and cook in oven till when a finger pressed lightly into a biscuit does not leave a mark. Makes plenty.
These are very yummy and in the last 10 mths or so I have started playing with the recipe, changing the quantities of the cornflakes, coconut, rolled oats, wheat germ and apricots or replacing them all together with what ever I find in the cupboard.
These changes led to Helen’s Best Ever Biscuits back in February. Then in May there was Sultanas and Dried Strawberries and in July there is Chocolate and Blueberry in Sunflower Seeds. Whilst the same basic recipe provides the base each time, changing the “fillings” provides a totally new biscuit experience each time.
The ideas behind the Chocolate and Blueberry in Sunflower Seeds came in many parts. I was inspired to roll the biscuits in sunflower seeds after thinking of biscuits I had made with Renata (my host mother) when I was in Germany for Christmas in 2002 as well as biscuits I had a little while ago at my friend Leanne’s house. The blueberries came about because I happened to have quite a few packets left in the freezer and the chocolate was because if I left the pack of 85% cocoa in my drawer for much longer it would have been going straight down my throat.
From the basic recipe the Chocolate and Blueberry in Sunflower Seeds did not have the rolled oats or apricots or wheat germ. I increased the coconut and flour, added 80grams of Lindt 85% chocolate, 200gish of frozen blueberries and the sunflower seeds of course. The mixture was quite gooey so I just kept on adding some more of the dry ingredients till it became more user friendly.
Yesterday marked the start of the 2nd week back at uni for me and I am getting used to new lecturers, doing my readings, going over notes and starting to plan my assesment pieces. I am a bit ticked off with one of my classes as the lecturer said at the first lecture last week, that he should have the reading brick put together in the next couple of weeks! Dude, based on the fact that reading bricks are designed to have the readings that accompany each weeks lecture, they should be ready for week 1, week 2 at the latest. grr.
These are three things that I am loving at the moment.
Strawberries. Fresh, sweet and flavoursome Queensland Strawberries. Strawberry season also means that the Ekka is fast approaching and that means strawberry sundaes and fireworks.
Hayseed Dixie. I am a big fan of the cover version and these guys with their “rockgrass” versions of classic rock songs produce some of the best covers I have heard in a while.
The Mountain Goats. Well I have loved these two guys for over a year now and in a mere 20 days their new album Get Lonely is released. I can’t wait to hear the other songs after listening to Wild Sage on NPR’s All Songs Considered.
And this is one thing that makes me so incredibly happy.
West Papuan David Wainggai is finally set to receive a TPV (Temporary Protection Visa) after the Refugee Review Tribunal overturned the original Department of Immigration ruling that granted visa’s to the 42 other West Papuan’s who landed on Cape York in January. I can’t describe how happy I was when I first heard it on the news and later read it in the paper. Justice Comes Ashore. Govt weighs appeal against Papuan visa decision.
After I had done my school work yesterday I sat down and had a little play.
