November 2017 – MakeCookGrow.com

Moving to the Country

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We spent Sunday in the country where my brother and sister in law have bought a property. Beverley was one of the early areas to be settled by Europeans in Western Australia and is 140 km east of Perth. It took less than two hours to drive there. I’ve been imaging a couple of donkeys in the paddock behind the house, my brother thinks a unicorn would be better.

There’s an impressive range of goods and services, sporting opportunities, medical and aged care and a District High School available in Beverley.

The local airfield is home to the Beverley Soaring Society, the second biggest gliding club in Australia. Really interesting to watch and looks like great fun.

Delicious marinated beef salad for lunch. My sister in law has a great chook ( chicken) run and has already planned the vegetable garden. There’s a very old fig tree, an apple tree and grape vines. They have a big concrete rainwater tank to water the garden. Lucky!

Great street art in the main street of Beverley which is in the area known as the Wheatbelt, so surrounded by wheat and sheep farms.

The Kookaburra, an iconic Australian bird with a laugh-like call is related to kingfishers. Looks so good on the side of this building.

A red brick building in the main street of Beverley with an ubiquitous jacaranda tree. Country towns exhibit a wide range of building styles, including colonial, Art Deco and modern. Many of the older buildings, such as banks, post offices, town halls and churches are restored and maintained.

These towns also feature wide main streets, old buildings, strip shopping and many sporting opportunities.

Buildings in York, a nearby town.

Magnolia season. This is a Magnolia Grandifloria, a large very attractive tree which blooms from early November. It has a lemon scent and smells very nice. We took six with us to Beverley so they can plant an avenue of magnolias along the drive.

Also jacaranda season, so clouds of purple blooms with matching carpets of fallen petals underneath. These trees are very common and very pretty.

Today is Systems Engineer Day. They make an enormous contribution to the world every day, working on numerous complex projects such as spaceship design, computer chip development, robotics, software integration and even bridge design.

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So Singapore

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A fish fillet arranged on a sliced, roasted potato. Pretty, delicious. Like so many modern Asian cities, it is very easy to eat well in Singapore, from Hawker stalls to five star restaurants. This one had a view over Marina Bay, now the financial centre of Singapore. In the 19th century it was where the British and Chinese settlers established their businesses.

Singapore is a thriving, bustling city. If you’ve already done the night zoo, the bird park, breakfast with the animals, Gardens by the Bay and Sentosa, there’s many gardens to visit, art galleries and museums, historical buildings and breathtaking new ones, plus masses of shopping opportunities and, of course, eating! We like the bum boat trip from Clarke Quay because you really can see how things have evolved in older areas.

The buildings go up, up, up.

Restored shop houses.

It’s hot and humid in Singapore. Cooling down treats.

Loved the parquetry in our hotel and the room full of balloons. It was my birthday!

My husband ate his own weight in satay sticks at Lau Pa Sat Festival Pavilion across the road from our hotel.

Corridor, old Supreme Court, now the National Gallery.

This is the new National Gallery of Singapore, opened in 2015. It houses the largest collection of South East Asian art, consisting of over 8 000 artworks. The building is fabulous. There is a modern, central section amalgamating the original Supreme Court and the Town Hall. Clever, interesting and eye catching, the gallery offers guided tours of the building, featuring the history, the public selection of the French architect who designed the connection of the two buildings and many other points of interest. Allow two hours plus time to look at each gallery.

From the roof terrace of the gallery showing the very old, St Andrew’s Cathedral, and the new towers of Singapore.

Abalone, prawn and fish balls on spicy noodles, served with a bowl of clear soup.

A Paris moment in Singapore: coffee and passionfruit macaroons.

I was scared stiff by the prices here, too.

Some interesting furniture in our hotel. Quite funny watching people sit on the settee. Mainly appealed to children.

Amazing carpaccio of Hokkaido Sea Scallops, tarama (fish roe), chive oil and grated yuzu ( a tart citrus).

This tiramisu had banana bread, creme de cacao, mascarpone and cocoa nibs, plus fresh raspberries on top.

Hotel flowers. Very beautiful.

These babushka dolls in our hotel room represent the major ethnic groups in Singapore. Purple represents Indian, 9.1%, the green represent Malay, 13.3% and red represents Chinese, 74.2%.

Street art explaining Singapore’s history.

To the roof top bar for grapefruit martinis, well, because we’d never had them before!

I had dim sum for breakfast every day and this night, dim sum for dinner, too. Freshly made and steamed, it is irresistible! Food hall cuisine.

Tomorrow is World Petroleum Day. Petroleum is not just used in our cars, but is also the key ingredient in plastics, detergents, rubber, fertilizers, pesticides, paint, photographic processes, make-up, candles and many medicines. The supply of petroleum is finite, so Petroleum Day gives us the opportunity to consider alternatives.

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In The Southern Hemisphere …..Spring Means Open Gardens

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Open Gardens allow entrance to some of the finest private gardens and occurs only once or twice a year. The entrance fee is usually directed to the owner’s preferred charity. Each is a wonderful opportunity to see gardens that are often behind houses you’d never get to visit. Generally the owners have spent months getting their garden ready for inspection. Often they are in the garden when it is open to the public and can identify plants and ideal growing conditions and talk about the evolution of their garden. The city garden above was calm and green and peaceful. Beautiful.

The rest of the gardens featured were on the Ferguson Valley Open Garden Trail through Boyanup, Lowden and the Ferguson Valley. We were blessed with lovely weather, good pub food and interesting gardens.

The gardens are in rural areas and were various sizes but all bigger than a suburban block in the city. Several fronted lakes or river beds . They were all great to visit.

The gardens varied in age, with one evolving over the past ten years and others being much older and added onto at various times.

The older gardens grew mostly European plants, some were a blend of both European and native Australian plants, like this bottle brush flower.

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Roses grow so well in this region. Not photographed but all the gardens had vegetable gardens, mostly in raised beds. There is very good soil in this locale and the gardens are green and lush.

Some of these gardens were on a grand scale, some were gardens which had just grown to fill the available space. Scent and colour everywhere. Most of the gardens had plants for sale, many had Devonshire teas. (Coffee and tea, scones with jam and cream) All enjoy gorgeous vistas across rural countryside.

There’s a mix of native West Australian plants and traditional imported garden plants.

Beautiful banksia, related to proteas.

It was really interesting to see what other people had planted, especially in shaded or windy areas and to see how they made the most of available water supplies.

Today is Sesame Street Day, established in 2009 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the beginning of the program. Sesame Street was devised to promote literacy in the USA and has been declared amazingly successful.

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The Kitchen Renovation

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Eleven years ago when we built our house we chose vinyl wrap doors. They were sturdy and clean in appearance for about five or six years when occasionally the edge of the wrap started to flick up. One drawer top edge actually tore. One cupboard door was discoloured. We had a problem.

We contacted the builder who gave us the original cabinet maker’s contact information and replacement cabinet doors and drawer fronts were measured up and installed, including soft close hinges. Character Cabinets have done a marvellous job. The workmen were tidy and thorough and very pleasant.

We re-used the carcasses as the layout worked well. Three adults can work in the kitchen at one time.

At the same time our range hood exhaust fan developed a dreadful noise when it was turned off. Trying to reduce waste and landfill, we had the motor replaced. A new one would have cost about the same!

The laundry cupboard doors and drawer fronts were also replaced. Again, we kept the same design as the space dictated where units were placed to best use the room. Soft close hinges and we reused the drawer pulls.

Really like these soft grey porcelain knobs so we reused them, too. They are comfortable to grip and pull and wipe clean. They are a traditional design which suits the profile on the the drawers and cupboards.

The en suite has new drawer fronts and cupboard doors plus soft close hinges. Again, no change in the layout as it was dictated by the size of the room. I deliberately didn’t “style” the photos so it’s easy to focus on the cabinetry.

Our experience replacing the cupboards and drawers was so easy due to the quality of Character Cabinets who are in Armadale, Western Australia. The replacements totally seal the doors and drawer fronts so they can’t lift or chip. They look just like the old ones, which was our goal. We avoided a massive job!

www.charactercabinets.com.au

Today is Sandwich Day, which is pretty easy to celebrate! The word itself is attributed to John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich. A keen card player, he didn’t want to stop playing to eat and apparently directed his cook to put his meat between two pieces of bread. It was a great success and the sandwich was born. Well, that’s one theory. Eat up!

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