Why Should We Use Less Plastic and Re-Covering a Pouffé/Foot Stool/Ottoman

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WHY SHOULD WE USE LESS PLASTIC?

Are you aware of the amount of plastic infiltrating our food?

I don’t usually buy fashion magazines. The clothes featured are not really suitable for my post-paid work lifestyle, the make-up is mostly directed at younger or working women, the issues of dating and relationships don’t apply to me and the features are so often about film stars or sports stars and that’s not part of my life.

This month’s Marie Claire magazine was a big surprise, packed with information about plastics in the environment and features about women working towards cleaner oceans and waterways. It made interesting reading.

Just consider:

* more than 8 million tonnes of plastic enter the world’s oceans every year

* a rubbish truck load of plastic is dumped into our seas every minute

* by 2050 plastic will outweigh fish in our oceans

Thanks to Marie Claire for drawing attention to these frightening statistics. The article about women trying to address this looming disaster and their passion and determination made interesting reading.

There are easy changes we can all make to reduce our use of plastics. Make or buy lightweight bags for putting your fruit and vegetables in at the shop, use your own non-plastic shopping bags, buy your skincare products in glass jars which are easily recycled, return all your contact lenses materials to your optometrist who sends them off to be recycled and only buy bread wrapped in tissue or paper. Look for other ideas online; there are so many you can slowly implement.

I’ve found one of the hardest plastics to replace in the home is cling wrap. I’ve actually given up on beeswax wrappers and rely on containers with their own lids or use silicone stretchy lids. These are very good but a bit of a fiddle to stretch taut over some cups, bowls and containers but I’ll persist.

Yesterday I was really pleased to receive this month’s issue of Country Living, an English magazine, sealed in a paper envelope. It arrived safely with no damage. One less piece of plastic. Well done Country Living!

RECOVERING MY MOTHER’S POUFFÉ

Do you call it a pouffe, an ottoman or a footstool? Whatever you call it, it’s for resting your feet on or an extra seat.

My mother has had this pouffé for many years and the cover was brittle and cracking. We went to several shops looking for a replacement but she’s not a very tall person and all the foot stools/foot rests/ottomans available were too high for her to use comfortably.

The lining had also worn off the base and it was starting to fall apart. I offered to recover it.

Cleaned up the base and glued the remaining lining down and left it two days to cure. Tested all around the glued edges and it was quite secure.

My mother chose a fabric with a slight stretch in it which made it easier to fit the rounded edges.

Glued some advertising brochures together to make a sheet big enough for a template. Traced around the pouffe and cut out the circle.

Folded the template in half and placed it along the fold of the fabric, pinned and cut out the top piece.

Cut a length of fabric to wrap around the pouffé, leaving a hem allowance at the top and enough to fold under at the bottom. Stitched up the short edge to make a circle. Pinned and sewed the top to the side piece, clipped and trimmed the join.

Added a casing on the bottom edge to thread with elastic for a drawstring.

This will allow the cover to be tightened if it stretches or removed and washed if necessary.

The finished pouffé!

Sunday 20th October was

World Osteoporosis Day is observed annually on October 20th, and launches a year-long campaign dedicated to raising global awareness of the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of osteoporosis and metabolic bone disease. Wikipedia

October 26th is PUMPKIN DAY. Is it Pumpkin Day just because of Halloween? I wont be carving a pumpkin, but I’ve already cut some up with other vegetables to roast for dinner tonight.

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Cooking, Fixing Leaks and Preparing the Fruit for Christmas Cakes

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COOKING

Sorting things in the pantry and looked at the USE BY date on a tin of condensed milk. It had expired. Looked at the other tin of condensed milk and realised I needed to use it soon, so a few days later I made 100 BISCUIT DOUGH biscuits/cookies. I actually only made 94 as I must make them bigger than the originals, but it’s still a lot of biscuits and they’ll be great for a few events this week. This is such an easy recipe and requires only four ingredients plus decorations and flavours. It makes enough dough to store some in the freezer for when you could use almost instant biscuits.

This recipe was all over the internet some years ago and I can’t remember where I found it. I copied it into a diary and have added notes in the intervening years. If this is your recipe, thankyou, it’s a favourite. Please let me know and I will acknowledge the source.

100 BISCUIT DOUGH RECIPE

INGREDIENTS

* 500gm butter at room temperature

* 170gm caster sugar

* 395gm condensed milk

* 700gm self raising flour

Flavourings I have used at different times are choc chips, raisins, finely chopped crystallised ginger, cinnamon powder mixed in with brown sugar sprinkled on top, Smarties, 100s and 1000s, Milo and lemon zest.

Left to Right: Smarties, 100s and 1000s, crystallised ginger, cinnamon and brown sugar

1. Pre-heat fan forced oven to 180 degrees C fan-forced, place baking paper on as many baking trays as you have.

2. Using a stand mixer or hand held electric beaters, cream the butter and sugar until it is pale and frothy. Use a big bowl as this recipe makes a lot of dough.

3. Add the tin of condensed milk and stir in well before adding the flour, a cup at a time. Mix until well amalgamated.

4. Scoop up generous teaspoons of dough, slightly round it in your hands and place on the baking tray. For the ginger biscuits, I put about a fifth of the dough in another bowl, mixed in four finely diced pieces of crystallised ginger, then continued as above. I also added the cinnamon to another fifth of the dough in a separate bowl. Later I added brown sugar on top.

5. Place in a pre-heated oven, cook for about 10 minutes, watching closely towards the end as all ovens are different. The biscuits will be soft when they come out, but will crisp up as they cool.

After I’d made four trays of biscuits I still had dough leftover. I rolled it into a sausage, wrapped it in baking paper, labeled it then put it in a recycled plastic bag in the freezer. I actually do this each time I make these biscuits, so I have a roll of dough I can lightly thaw, slice, decorate and then have ready to cook by the time the oven has pre-heated. Handy for unexpected visitors or hungry family.

FIXING LEAKS

CELADON VASE

Saw this vase on an online site and ordered it. Took ages to come and eventually arrived while we were away. Then it was about 10 days later before I put flowers (and water) in it.

Came out the next morning to find it sitting in a puddle. The vase leaked. The base seemed to be unglazed, so I emptied it and dried it out. Then I tried sealing the unglazed base with a clear glue.

Left it a few days and then filled it with water. Later that afternoon it was sitting in a much smaller puddle, but still not fit for use. By now at least six weeks had passed since I’d ordered it and tried sealing it so I felt I couldn’t return it. Besides, I really like the celadon colour and the design.

Next plan was to pour melted wax into the base.(It is hard to see the wax being poured in this photo) We poured about one centimetre of melted candle wax into the vase and left it two days to dry. Viola! Usable vase.

We chopped up and melted the candle in a glass jar in the microwave. We heated it in 60 second bursts until it was ready to use.

According to Wikipedia,

”Celadon is a term for pottery denoting both wares glazed in the jade green celadon color, also known as greenware (the term specialists now tend to use) and a type of transparent glaze, often with small cracks, that was first used on greenware, but later used on other porcelains.’

PREPARING THE FRUIT FOR CHRISTMAS CAKES

I make at least two Christmas Cakes every year, following a recipe I got from my aunt years ago. We put the mixed fruit with added cherries to soak in brandy around the beginning of October. My husband inverts the jars of fruit every morning. I try to make the cakes by the beginning of November. I also have extra peel soaking in brandy to add to some other Christmas cooking.

October is BRANDIED FRUIT DAY. Apparently you need to leave the dried fruit in brandy for three weeks but I’m sure longer is no problem, well, I hope so, anyway! Originally, dried fruit was steeped in brandy as a preservative, but continued as it tastes so good!

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Repairing, Reading, Eating and Growing

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REPAIRING

The downstairs rooms are being painted so everything had to be moved, covered and stored. Discovered the plasterwork and gilding on one of our mirrors was broken on a corner.

The break.

The repair, prior to sanding and shaping

The finished repair.

I repaired the missing piece using Polyfilla, moulding and shaping it as it dried. Wiped it free of dust. Left it four days to cure, smoothed and shaped it again then painted it with gold paint. Very pleased as it is impossible to see the repair.

READING

Enjoyed reading time as we couldn’t really go downstairs while the painter was working.

Kate Atkinson’s Big Sky has one of her favourite characters, Jackson Brodie, no longer working as a Detective but now working as a Private Investigator. Set in a small seaside town, there is nothing sleepy here! Atkinson’s thrillers are fast moving, complex and compelling reading. Really enjoyed it and I’d recommend any of her other books, too.

Doris Brett and Kerry Cue’s The Sunday Story Club, described as ” like a bookclub without books, real-life tales of love, loss, trauma and resilience” was fascinating. A group of women meet at their Sunday soiree to address topics introduced by the hosts and some of theie responses make up the text of this book. All heartfelt, many are experiences common to all women, all enthralling. The appendix has suggestions for starting and running similar groups as well as many provocative and thoughtful story “starters” for discussions. You’ll think about these stories long after you’ve finished the book.

The Sunday Story Club By Doris Brett

This is debut novel by Suzanne Daniel. Allegra in Three Parts is a story set in the 70’s during the second wave of feminism in Australia. Allegra is a child living between a feminist grandmother, an extremely hard working, immigrant, no nonsense grandmother and a mainly absent father. Her mother is dead and she wants to unite the remaining members of her family. An interesting book and rather nostalgic with well researched brand names and products from the 70’s mentioned throughout.

( The book refers to cuisenaire rods for teaching mathematics. In use for over 50 years, this reference took me back to my first teaching job. I’d used these rods extensively during teacher training, but soon discovered they didn’t help some children. In fact, they seemed to confuse rather than help some children master basic operations. I realised I needed to employ a number of strategies to teach new concepts as learners could be visual, tactile, auditory or a mix of all these types. Lesson learnt!)

Allegra in Three Parts by Suzanne Daniel (9781760781712) - PaperBack - Modern & Contemporary Fiction General Fiction

EATING

Bowl with zest which packs a lot of flavour, the oranges and the syrup.

Blood Orange Sorbet

In Western Australia we are nearing the end of the citrus season so this is probably the last lot of blood orange sorbet for this year. The fruit is slightly tart and is mixed into a water and sugar syrup before it goes into the icecream making bowl to ‘paddle’ for 10 minutes. Result? Delicious, pretty, sorbet!

GROWING

The spring garden is full of hippiastra, roses, lilies and alstromerias. The “sticks” of hydrangeas I’ve planted are thriving as is the spearmint scented lavender. I’ve planted tomatoes and put in seeds for lettuce, chives, spinach and coriander, plus some multi-coloured petunias. I have never grown petunias from seed before, so, fingers crossed.

Alstromerias are a long lasting cut flower.

Optimistically large supports for the tomato plants.

Lush, healthy hydrangeas grown from “sticks” harvested from last year’s plants.

Spearmint lavender always covered in bees.

Cream clivias. I have grown some from seed but don’t think they’ll flower for several years. I have orange clivias, too.

October is the month many countries celebrate Octoberfest with drinking and feasting. Do this sound like you?

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Making A Mosaic Ball

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The third ball in this trio of spheres, the one at the front, is a new one. Once faded and grubby, it is now covered in mosaics and looks lovely with the others and balances the arrangement. I made the grey sphere on the left from concrete here. The one on the right is a trough float, one of several I collected over the years.

This is a retired lawn bowling ball. It was painted silver and looked lovely in the garden, but slowly the colour faded and washed off. Time for rejuvenation!

I am going to decorate it with mosaics. The colours will be stable and the texture created by the pieces of tile will add interest. It is a small piece and I will use small pieces of broken tiles and china to cover it.

It will be placed with these spheres when it is finished.

EQUIPMENT

ball
glue
broken tiles or china
safety glasses
a hammer
a plastic bag
grout
rubber/latex gloves
rags for cleaning

I started by washing the ball. When I’d chosen the pieces of china I wanted to use I put them into two containers. Some pieces were too big. I slid them in a plastic bag and hit them gently with a hammer and they cracked easily. I wore safety glasses.

Next I glued them onto the ball, leaving a small circle on the bottom so it sits securely on the ground. I chose two colours to mix well with the other two spheres already in position. One container has plain white tiles, broken into useful pieces and the other had a green and white broken plate.

I used a multipurpose household glue. There are specialist glues intended for use with ceramics but this was a small job so I used a glue I had and it worked well. Working on a sphere meant the pieces would slide down the sides if I put too many pieces on at a time. The glue needs time to cure.

When the glue was cured I mixed up the grout. Wearing rubber gloves, I pushed the grout into the gaps until they were all filled. I also sealed around the base. Using a rag, I wiped the excess grout off the tiles, then used a damp rag to finish cleaning them. I left the finished mosaic sphere for two days to dry properly before putting it outside.

So while we’re in the garden, lets think about honey. September is HONEY MONTH, which celebrates and promotes everything to do with honey. Beginning with honey bees, pollen and beekeepers an amazing, sticky sweet product emerges.

Think about suitable bee habits this month and enjoy eating honey.

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Planning For Travel and Eating Mussels

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PLANNING TO TRAVEL

Planning an interstate holiday, so we’ve begun preparations. The first thing is some books. We buy second hand paperbacks which we can both share and then hand on to other travelers. When we’re going to non-English speaking countries we take lots of books but this time we’re traveling within Australia, so magazines and books will be available everywhere. Lighter packing!

We will fly to Melbourne then apart from visiting art galleries, museums and some friends in the city, we’ll take train trips each day. Then we will take the train to Sydney and also go to galleries, see friends and take daily train trips, before taking the train to Brisbane. Here we will enjoy a few days with friends who live in Queensland and be driven both north and south of Brisbane. So packing for cold, wet, windy with sunny days down south and warm, humid days in Queensland.

The author of one of these books we’ve bought is Lisa Jewell and we’re both looking forward to reading that one! We have just finished reading three of her thrillers; The Girls In The Garden, I Found You and Watching You. Great reading!

We’ve booked lunch at a few restaurants, mostly for the reputation of the food or recommendations, but also in the Blue Mountains for the view. We are looking forward to train, tram and ferry trips, each moving slowly enough for us to enjoy the views.

Also needed a trip to the hairdresser, a fairly regular event now days. I consider going grey but haven’t made the decision. My hair seems to grow very fast, too.

I made two loaves of sourdough, one to eat until we go and one to freeze for when we get back. I like to leave something for dinner as we return late in the day and airline food doesn’t always appeal.

And finally, down the coast to have lunch with my Mother. A beautiful day and lovely to just sit and chat for a while.

So, write a calendar for our son who will be responsible for walking and feeding the dog and putting out the bins and making sure the plants are watered and we’re ready to go!

MUSSEL SEASON

Mussels are fresh and readily available, so off to the fish shop at The Boatshed for 1 kilo for lunch.

Mussels can be cooked in a tomato based sauce, in a creamy sauce, with chilli and many other ways, but at lunchtime I like them in a clear, clean broth.

MUSSELS IN WHITE WINE

Serves four as part of a lunch spread, or two served with bread or toast.

INGREDIENTS

1 kilo mussels
75 gm butter
1 clove of garlic, crushed
1 sliced leek
good shake dried thyme
500 ml dry, white wine

Scrub the mussels under running water, shake to dry.

2. Melt the butter in a heavy based pot over low heat, add leeks, garlic and thyme. Cook until leeks are translucent, about 7 minutes.

3. Add the mussels and wine ( I used Penfold’s Koonunga Hill Semillon Sauvignon Blanc) and cook until the mussels open ( about 5 minutes) Stir a few times during cooking.

4. Discard any unopened mussels, ladle into a serving bowl with the juice and sprinkle with parsley. Serve with fresh buttered bread. I prefer toasted sourdough fingers for dipping. Delicious and light for the middle of the day.

Father’s Day treats. I made Pumpkin Scones, one of my husband’s favourites. I use a recipe from the cooking book I had in Year 8 at school!

Today is FORTUNE COOKIE DAY. Sounds like a good excuse to eat Chinese for dinner, then crack open a fortune cookie to be assured of good luck, good health or good fortune!

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Two Ann CleevesThrillers and Blood Orange Sorbet

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ANN CLEEVES MURDER THRILLERS

Ann Cleeves, an English crime writer, has written more than 30 novels, including a series of thrillers set in the Shetland Islands. Several have been made into a television series filmed by BBC ONE featuring the main protagonist, Jimmy Perez. All are great viewing. Our most recent read, Wild Fire, was written in 2018 and is the last in the Shetland series. It would also make a great film. Cleeves has worked as a probation officer, cooked at a bird observatory and as as auxiliary coastguard and these interests are all apparent in her books.

This was a gripping murder thriller, with well developed characters and a clever plot. The descriptions of the surrounding landscape make me want to visit the Shetland Islands but only in summer!

Another murder thriller by Ann Cleeves, this time from the Vera series. Many of these stories have also been made into a television series by the English company, ITV. This story has more of Vera’s private and early life revealed in it as her father is involved in the plot. He was not particularly law abiding and not pleased when his daughter joined the police force. Again, a gripping, clever and entirely engaging story.

BLOOD ORANGE SORBET

This is a Blood Orange Sorbet, one of the many citrus treats we enjoy during the citrus season. It’s quite difficult to find blood oranges in Perth but the juice makes a very good sorbet.

Start by putting the bowl of an icecream maker in the freezer for 12 hours, or according to your machine.

To make the sorbet, make a sugar syrup by mixing 2 cups of sugar with 2 cups of water. Stir and dissolve the mixture in the microwave. Cook one minute, stir, mix another minute, stir then decide if the syrup needs more heating to completely dissolve the sugar.

Juice five blood oranges, plus a lemon and add to the syrup. Some recipes add zest, but we don’t, then chill the mixture.

With the paddle in place in the bowl, mix for about 12 minutes until the syrup is almost solid, tip into a container and put back in the freezer until you’re ready to eat it. Delicious.

( There is a range of Blood Orange Sorbet recipes online )

AND IN THE WINTER GARDEN

The first of the tulips. They’re gorgeous, but strangely they are blooming on very short stems.

I love arum lilies but they are considered a weed in Western Australia. I grow them in a contained bed where I can see the large, lush green leaves and lovely white flowers from our bedroom window.

The white irises have begun blooming. I have them in garden beds and in pots.

Monday, August 26th was INTERNATIONAL DOG DAY.

People and dogs have lived side by side for thousands of years and we celebrate this symbiotic relationship on 26th August.

Founded by author and dog behaviourist Colleen Paige, in 2004, not only to focus on our pet dogs but also consider abused and abandoned dogs and puppy mills.

The benefits of dog ownership are enormous. The use of dogs to assist blind, ill and anxious people is ever increasing. Dogs are popular visitors in hospitals and schools. They create social opportunities at the dog park, for themselves and their owners. And even when you’ve been together for years and years, they are still genuinely excited when you come home!

All dog shelters welcome volunteer helpers, money and donations of blankets, towels and sheets.

Our groodle, LOUIS.

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Making Natural Dyes and Lavender Hearts

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Last year I was nearly exhausted by the time Christmas arrived because I was making so many gifts right up until the Big Day! This year I am experimenting with a few things I can make long before the silly season starts so the week before Christmas is still fun.

I’ve been collecting and drying lavender and planned to make some lavender bags. I am experimenting with natural dyes, using 100% cotton ticking as the base fabric.

The first dye I tried was boiled avocado seeds and skins to make pink tones.

After the dye had cooled I soaked the cotton ticking in it for an hour then hung it out to dry. It is a pretty dusty pink colour.

Next I boiled rosemary twigs to make a yellow dye.

This dye is quite pale and not what I expected

This dye is made from onion skins and is a great orange colour. I used the skins from two brown onions and boiled then for fifteen minutes. This is a strong colour. The next day I boiled red onion skins to see if they resulted in a different colour. No, just the same!

I haven’t used fixers or mordants with any of these pieces I’ve dyed. They are only intended to be decorative.

From left to right, the basic cotton ticking, then the avocado dye (pink), the onion skin dye (orange) and the one on the right is the rosemary dye (pale yellow)

I cut a template of a heart shape then used this to cut shapes from all three pieces of dyed fabric.

Machine stitched around the heart shapes leaving a small gap to poke in the wadding and shake in the dried lavender. Clipped the edges. Turned it to the right side, using a scissor blade to poke the heart point out and ironed the heart shape. Clipped the pointy end off the heart so it sat better when turned right side out.

Stuffed the point of the heart and the top with wadding, then poured in dried lavender. I made a little funnel out of scrap paper to direct the lavender in to the middle of the heart. Later I discovered a kitchen funnel worked well, too. I sat the heart in a cup to pour in the dried lavender.

Cut the ribbon and then stitched a button where they crossed. When my parents left the farm my Mother gave me her many jars of buttons. When clothing was finally exhausted, she’d cut off all the buttons and keep them. She kept buckles and other sewing notions, too. I played with the buttons as a child and now I’ve re-used some of them on these lavender sachets.

Sweet smelling, pretty gifts ready for storing until needed.

INVENTORS MONTH

Consider the printing press, antibiotics, the internal combustion engine, the internet, electricity, sliced bread, safety pins and contact lenses: they were all invented by great thinkers and tinkerers and we benefit from them everyday.

August is INVENTORS MONTH. Time to consider and feel gratitude for the amazing range of inventions making our lives easier every day. So, pop the CORK from a BOTTLE of CHAMPAGNE, sit out in the sun on your CHAIR and take a few PHOTOS on your PHONE to celebrate.

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Decluttering, Making Draught Excluders and Going Down South

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DECLUTTERING and MAKING DRAUGHT EXCLUDERS

How do you dispose of things when you declutter? When I recently did a big, well overdue wardrobe declutter, almost everything went into the Church Charity Bin. This was because the clothes, shoes and handbags I was removing were all in good condition. They were work clothes and I’ve finally accepted I wasn’t going to wear them again. My clothes are far more casual now.

When we came back from living overseas for a few years, an entire household of sheets, blankets, quits, towels, pillows and tablecloths came back with us. Unsure what we’d need, I kept most things thinking I would sort and discard when our container of household goods from our previous house arrived. When that happened there was no time for a proper sort so the linen press bulged with a jumble of stuff!

This week, my husband and I emptied, sorted, refolded and restacked the linen press. We ended up with two huge bags of blankets, single bed sheets, pillows and towels to throw out. They looked faded and unloved after not being used for years. These bags were taken to the Dogs Refuge. I couldn’t go because I’d want to bring all the dogs home with me.

They rejected the pillows. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise! My mother really feels the cold and was complaining about the draughts coming in under three external doors.

I made her draught excluders and stuffed them with recycled polyester wadding from two of the pillows! There’s one thin one to put in the gutter of a sliding door and two sausage ones for two normal doors.

The first excluder is small and thin to push into the gutter of a sliding door.

I discovered the easiest way to poke the wadding into the excluders was using a old copper stick, or dolly, from the laundry. I don’t have a copper for washing but find this smooth, old stick so useful for so many jobs.

( A copper is a deep copper bowl built over a fire box. It is filled with water and a fire is lit under it to heat the water. When it is hot the clothes to be washed are immersed and agitated by the stick, before being rinsed, put through a mangle to remove water and hung out to dry. Coppers were used before we had washing machines.)

To make the two bigger ones, I traced around a mug to create four end pieces, then measured and cut two strips for the bodies.

Used the template lines to guide the stitches joining the ends to the body of the sausage, the clipped the edges before turning them right side out.

The linen press is tidy and logically stacked, the excess things have gone to the Dog Refuge and I’ve made my Mother three draught excluders. Now I just need to find out what to do with thousands of books. Text books, travel books, poetry, histories, biographies, fiction and non-fiction, collected over four generations.

GOING DOWN SOUTH

Last week we went to Australind to stay with my mother. The second day we were there, we all went to Busselton to visit her friend. After morning tea we left them to have a good chat and we went further south to Dunsborough, a well known holiday destination. It was a beautiful clear, sunny day and after a lovely wander around the shops we bought lunch and went down to the beach. Gorgeous.

This is Afternoon Tea Week. Afternoon Tea is a British tradition dating from the 1840s. Traditionally, fine china accompanies delicate sandwiches, scones with jam and cream and little cakes and pastries. Sounds wonderful. Start boiling the kettle now!

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Cooking, Mending and Reading.

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MAKING MARMALADE in the MICROWAVE

Using the abundance of citrus fruit to make chunky, delicious, quick marmalade. Try it!

Winter means citrus fruit and citrus fruit means marmalade. The specific microwave instructions are here.

Gathered a collection of citrus fruit and cut into chunks before processing until the skins were finely chopped. Added some finely diced preserved ginger.

Saved all the pips and some skins, rich in pectin, into this little muslin bag which was cooked with the fruit pulp. The marmalade set beautifully and the skins from the pectin bag were deliciously glazed and crystallized. They would be perfect chopped into cooking or used as cake decorations.

Grapefruit, lemon and kumquat marmalade with a tiny bit of ginger. The tulips are in a vase behind the bonsai, not growing out of it!

MAKING SHORTBREAD

Visiting my brother and S-I-L in Beverley, a country town two hours from Perth, taking the shortbread and marmalade I’d made. A lovely day in the country.

MENDING A MOHAIR BLANKET

This loosely woven mohair blanket is quite old and was showing signs of constant use, particularly evident from the number of pulled threads. It’s very warm and light. Greatly inspired by The Repair Shop, a BBCtv program running on local television, I spread the blanket out on the table and spent most of a day weaving the threads back, under, over, under, over using a blunt darning needle. Occasionally there was a tear or very thin, worn thread so I mended it with matched cotton thread. It looks new again!

READING

This fabulous book written by Marcus Binney features interiors designed by antipodean Anouska Hempel, who arrived in London in 1962. Her interiors are Oriental in style, which I really like, too. We brought back furniture and decorative pieces when we came back to Australia after we’d lived in China and I enjoy seeing how she incorporates pieces into her settings.

We’ve visited two hotels she decorated in London and one in Amsterdam. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing her own house, Cole Park and gardens and other interiors she has done, including their apartment in Mayfair, in this book. She has just decorated the Six Senses Duxton Hotel in Singapore, too, so that’s on my travel list now.

An inspiring book. I bought mine from Book Depository.

The last of the roses before they’re pruned and some camellias.

Dawn from the back door. A cold and crisp start turned into a wonderful, sunny day. Again.

Wonderful! Today is Book Lovers Day. Put down your screens and settle somewhere comfortable and enjoy a long read.

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Steam Buns, Apple Crumble and Roasted Vegetables

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STEAM BUNS

We first met these fat little puffs of deliciousness in Bali in May and knew we wanted to make them at home. One cold Sunday recently, my son began the process of making them for our dinner. We were very glad he did as they were wonderful, filled with spicy meat and vegetables.

Cut little squares of parchment paper to slip in the fold of the buns so they don’t stick while they steam. Meanwhile, bring the water to boiling point in the steamer.

Insert paper and fold in half over a chopstick, put in steamer insert.

Steam the buns for eight minutes or until they become light and fluffy. Carefully remove and add fillings, serve.

Steamed Bao Buns recipe from Jeremy Pang www.bbcgoodfood.com

Delicious!

APPLE CRUMBLE

Apples are in season so I made apple crumble. Stewed the apples in water with a little sugar and cinnamon, plus some sultanas. Made the crumble from oatmeal, flour, sugar and butter. Serve with cream or icecream. Good winter food, good any other time, too.

ROASTING VEGETABLES

The Australian Women’s Weekly VEGETARIAN BASICS cookbook.

We’re meat eaters but when I flicked through this book, I drooled and then I cooked! It’s full of recipes using winter seasonal vegetables. I’ve roasted cauliflowers, potatoes, pumpkin, made zucchini frittatas and roasted mushrooms. Each recipe, focusing on one vegetable, has three or four variations.

I roasted large mushrooms with garlic, thyme, EVO oil and red wine vinegar.

I made the Roasted Pumpkin and Rosemary Crumble, using a jap pumpkin and the crumble made from panko breadcrumbs, wholegrain mustard, chopped up rosemary, pine nuts and butter. The second time I made it I substituted plain sourdough breadcrumbs and chopped walnuts as I ran out of panko crumbs and pine nuts. Other crumbles in the book are Miso Chilli Pumpkin, Lebanese Spiced Pumpkin and Pumpkin and Gremolata. Crunch and contrast against the creamy flavour of the pumpkin.

I baked a Whole Cauliflower in vegetable stock, coated with a mix of smoked paprika, garlic, parmesan and butter, and before serving cut into wedges, sprinkled with parsley. Very, very popular!

Roasted a tray of potatoes following their recipe and they were very good, too.

I used a leftover wedge of cauliflower in a little puddle of stock and some roasted pumpkin to make soup. I boiled the veg with some extra vegetable stock and when everything was soft, I Barmixed it. Thick luscious soup served with some leftover crumble from the baking dish.

This large softcover book is full of recipes for readily available vegetables. I’ll be dipping into this for some time to come!

Pages marked for entertaining and this weekends cooking.

OTHER THINGS

Made and froze two trays of pasties for lunches during our wet and cold season.

The 29th of July will be International Tiger Day, founded after an international summit in 2010 revealed that 92% of wild tigers disappeared last century with only about 3000 left alive. Factors being highlighted included the impact of habitat loss, hunting and poaching.

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