bush delight

I went bush the other weekend to the Goomburra Section of Main Range National Park. We were sitting round the kitchen table on Thursday night after dinner and Mum was planning what she needed for her weekend away. I suddenly realised there was nothing stopping me from going, and I really needed to get out Brisbane. 5 seconds later I was going and we were planning the new logistics. We nipped over to the shops to get some extra groceries and I packed my bag ready to depart shortly after I arrived home from work on Friday. It was also the first time my car got to go a little big trip, all up doing about 400km and going up and down some steep hills 🙂

I can’t describe how absolutely happy I felt on Sunday morning as I was walking up to the toilet block, the sun was shining on the eucalyptus, the air was filled with the scent of those gums. Then there was this wanderer butterfly that always seemed to appear as I walked up to the toilet block. Yep I’m the sort of girl who decides that one of her highlights for the weekend is a wanderer butterfly that always appears when I go to the toilet block but never when I was exploring with my camera.

I got to give my ankle quite a work out too and bar a bit of minor “yes I do remember hurting this ankle on Saturday evening” I was brace free and happy scrambling up/down/over/under all weekend, well for the most part. I couldn’t physically bring myself to rock hop up the creek though so I took off my shoes and waded.

I spent the weekend, reading, a bit of walking and generally just lazing around. Quite nice 🙂 Ohh and one of the highlights was hearing Lyrebirds x 100 times, ok maybe more like 40 but it was soo cool, I just wish I had seen one!

Some photos 🙂
swoon Yellow thistle and bee, bee and thistle Mount Castle Clouds over Main Range lichen and moss The crew, wel most of us Mt Barney/Mt Ballow Massif dry seed podsTwisted Water Vine
and more photos here

The weekend was topped off with a present that a carload of Italian papas gave me on the way home, which will be featured in a blog post shortly 🙂

Custom Kings

Last week I was listening to the Zed son the bus to work, and the lovely announcer said she had a double pass to Custom Kings the following Thursday for sale. Yours truly was the first to ring up. I mentioned it at the kitchen table a few nights later and Matthew mentioned that one of the girls at Uni wanted to go. Come Thursday night there was five of us, two with free pass and three people faced with a sign on the door of the Troubie that said sold out. Due to seeing the right person at the right time, we managed to get three tickets off a girl who had bought the tickets for her entire group only to have some people pike at the last minute. We were happy 🙂

When we eventually went up the steps, the support act were playing their last song and it would only be a matter of time before Custom Kings took over the stage and had the floor of the Troubie bouncing like I have never seen it bounce before. It was a great night with good tunes and a happy crowd.

Kings 1
Kings 2
Kings 3

Custom Kings, The Troubadour, 10/04/08 Gig Gallery

Pomegranate Love

Pomegranate Love

I have long been intrigued by these jewelled fruits. I have pomegranate molasses which I often use in cooking (makes a mean roast chicken). The price of fresh ones though and that they always seemed to be USA imports had put me off actually buying one. Last Saturday though whilst at the fruitshop I noticed they were selling Australian pomegranates and at $2.49 each they were not too bad in price. I racked my brain trying to remember what I had read on the net about picking one. Not been able to to remember much I went for the normally fail safe of picking fruit that is heavier than it looks.

It sat in the fridge for a week before I was game enough to decide break it open. I was in the middle of baking a yoghurt cake to take to meet a prospective flatmate and thought mmm I could add some Pomegranate to this. I cracked it open and carefully picked out one little jewel to taste. That first little jewel knocked me over and I instantly declared my love. Instant Love.p

I think I might be buying more of these in the future. I tried talking Mum into planting a tree in the back yard. She said no before I even finished the sentence. One day I will have a garden with a pomegranate tree. One day.

And in other news (said in my best news reader voice).
Since coming home from work on Friday I have not worn my ankle brace at all. Which is good. I know my ankle is healing as I find my self doing things that I wasn’t able to do before. Like sitting on my ankle when I tuck one leg up or walking down steps almost normally. All about going forward.

Wedding Morning Tea Cakes

Wedding Morning Tea Cakes

One of the ladies in Mum’s staffroom is getting married this weekend, so I made some suitably simply elegant cupcakes for the staffroom morning tea.

The chocolate cake recipe is from The Australian Woman’s Weekly cupcakes book

Double Chocolate Mud Cake
60g dark chocolate coarsely chopped
160ml water
90g butter, softened
220g soft brown sugar
2 eggs
100g SR flour
2 tbsp cocoa
40g almond meal

Preheat oven to 170°C (150°C fan forced). Line a standard 12 hole muffin tin with patty pans.
In a double boiler melt the chocolate in the water, stirring till smooth. Cream the butter and sugar, beat in the eggs. Sift in the remaining dry ingredients and the chocolate mixture, stirring till smooth. That is it. Then it is just a matter of dividing the mixture evenly between the 12 pans (I used a pastry bag as the mixture is quite runny) and cook for about 20 minutes.

Once they are cooled it is time to decorate.
I warmed some blackberry jam to use as the “glue” and coloured the white fondant to a very pale pink. On a well dusted silicone mat, I rolled the fondant out nice and thin, then pressed a Fiskars Texture Plate into the fondant to make it “all pretty” on top.

Place in a container and every so often open the lid a fraction and inhale the chocolate. Or you could just eat one 🙂

Easter Cooking

no not hot cross buns but just good food. I had plans of going away this glorious four day weekend, going bush and exploring. Sadly though that has not been the case as it is nearly two months from when I wrecked my ankle and it is still causing me havoc. Most recently from me thinking it was better than it was and overdoing it, so much that I spent a fair bit of Friday in bed recovering.

Yesterday we had not one but three phone calls from Iceland!!!! That does not happen very often even less than once in a blue moon, more like once is a red moon. It was one of my brother’s birthdays so he rang to say hello and then he passed the phone to one of our other brothers. Then one of my sisters rang to have a chat. Then to top it off Karl the next eldest in age brother from me rang from Ísafjörður the town of his birth where he and a big handful of mates were at Aldrei fór ég suður or I Never Went South a music festival that is exactly how I think a festival should be and so looking forward to going to one year soon. One of the first things Karl mentioned was that he had seen Svavar play with his band Hraun earlier on and commented on his polaroid picture taking which I had to laugh at as last year when Svavar was here I think he quite possibly took more poloraids than he drank beers and that is saying something. A little while later Karl asked if I wanted to speak to Svavar as he had just walked outside, I said of course why not and that was then the most amusing thing. Karl handing a phone to someone who does not know him and saying there is a girl on the phone from Australia for you. Very hilarious. So that was quite a fun thing.

When I woke up Sunday morning I didn’t expect to speak to any family in Iceland and much less Svavar.

Back to the food.

Easter Friday I made a a big whopping batch of pesto (we are talking 1kg plus here). Don’t underestimate my love for pesto or the fact that my pesto could rival that of the best Nonna made pesto from Genoa well I haven’t tested it against a Nonna from Genoa but I think it could. I made a pesto loaf using a slightly different bread recipe to what I normally used and well moral of that story, when making a plain white loaf, use the recipe you know! It is edible but that is about it, the Mum analysis is that I probably altered the water content too much when adding the pesto.

Dinner on Saturday and lunch on Sunday.
lunch and dinner
Four slices of bread toasted on/under the grill, rubbed with a little bit of garlic, topped with some more pesto, then some toasted prosciutto, some semi-dried tomatoes, a sprinkle of salt/pepper/oil and a fine grating of pecorino. It was quite delightful, my only wish would if we had had some salad greens in the fridge to add as well.

Lunch for Mum and I today as well as lunch for the next two days.
lunch today for Mum and I
Little egg and bacon tarts.
Puff pastry shell pre-baked for a few minutes to crisp the bottom up, spread with some pesto, filled with sautéed onion, garlic, shallots and bacon, topped with egg, pecorino, seasoning and cream fraiche with a semi-dried tomato on top, baked for a handful of minutes and served with a quick grate of pecorino and served with a good handful of fresh beans.

Then in the freezer I have some lime granita and I made a pretty tasty dinner tonight which was cannelloni stuffed with mince, pesto, ricotta, parmigiano, bread crumbs, seasoning, parsley, semi-dried tomatoes, onion and an egg to help bind it all together in a sauce of tomatoes, spinach, ricotta, onion, garlic. Pretty nice, no photos of either though because the lime granita is just that and well the cannelloni as good as it tasted didn’t exactly look good and most of it disappeared pretty quickly.

Tomorrow it is Tuesday which means the end of the four day weekend and back to work.

line of eggs

Despite promises by Mum that we wouldn’t be getting any Easter Eggs this year, Pabbi just couldn’t resist and since Mum is walking the border line at the moment somewhere between the Mt Lindsay border gate and the Boonah border gate (hopefully much much closer to the Boonah gate since she started at the Mt Lindsay gate on Friday morning), Pabbi could do as he wanted.

I woke up this morning to find a carton of eggs on my desk. Never mind the fact that I still have my three Lindt Bunnies from last year on my desk and we only finished the other eggs in September. I did only buy them though to take photos of though and I didn’t eat them last year after taking photos of them so I could take photos of them again this year!

First thing I did was to go outside and have a play. This was one of the photos I took. Pabbi asked me what I was doing. I said taking photos because what else am I meant to do with them? Eat them?
line of eggs