The story of my morning tea

So I started my new nursery job yesterday. I've just had two whole days of 'induction,' which is basically a lot of talking about fire drills, and where the brooms and spades are kept and so on. Necessary, but brain-frizzling, especially when I haven't really had to concentrate on anything more onerous than the nutritional information on the back of a Rafferty's baby food packet for about two years.

Anyway, I searched high and low on my computer for an appropriate native plant picture but couldn't find one I was happy with. I did, however, find pictures of the cupcakes I made the other day, so I'll tell you about that instead.

[Alternative post titles considered: Opinions on Red Velvet Cake or Why You Should Always Check the Pantry for Ingredients Before You Begin]

Over the weekend I decided that it was high time I made a Red Velvet Cake (read the bit about the historical indicator reaction between cocoa and vinegar making the cake red coloured; how cool is that?!) Yes, I got the idea from Masterchef, I admit it. I tend to make half recipes of baked items these days, since I'm the one who tends to eat it all I figure it helps me eat a little less sugary-carby goodness (actually, what really happens is that I eat it at the same rate I usually do but it's gone in half the time, leaving me with an earlier opportunity to make something else.)

Anyway, I found a recipe (there are dozens so I won't link one). The funkiest ingredient was buttermilk, but that's OK because I happened to find powdered buttermilk in a healthfood shop a while ago and it's wonderful as a pantry backup item since buttermilk is not something I usually buy. I got started: butter, sugar, eggs, buttermilk, red food colouring, bicarb...plain flour. Plain flour? Oh, bugger, no plain flour. Oh well, I'll just use self-raising flour. It's only a half recipe after all.

I pop it in the greased tin, there's plenty of room (what's that line? "Never assume anything. It makes an Ass out of U and Me.") Into the oven. Walk away.

Some time later I can smell a distinct burning scent, wafting it's way through the living room. I glance over at the oven. Cake looks OK, nicely risen to the top of the tin, still 10 minutes left on the timer. But a few minutes later this burning smell is increasing and odious. So I look again, thinking there must be some crumbs stuck to the oven element. And indeed there is something stuck to the element, but it is not crumbs, it is half a Red Velvet Cake, which has overflowed the tin and dripped down over all the wire racks and the oven base.


It seems that bicarb soda and SR flour make a cake rise even more than I'd imagined, and wasn't it fun cleaning that lot up out of the oven?! Half the cake was actually edible and we ate it, but I didn't enjoy it. I wasn't sure if I was just imagining it or not, but I thought I could taste just a hint of the bitter extra bicarbonate.


So I wasn't satisfied. A few days later I wanted to try again, and this time with plain flour, and I thought I might make cupcakes so I could fit them into my lunch box easily (yes, I have to take a lunch box to work now.) I followed the recipe carefully, but left out the food colouring since it does nothing for the taste. I made sure to only half fill the patty pans, since I wasn't sure how much the mixture would rise if one didn't overdo the rising agents.


And they came out cute and rounded.


And they're quite nice, but to be perfectly honest - and I'm sorry to all Red Velvet aficionados - I'd rather have a little chocolate mud cake any day. The RV cake is lovely and moist, and has a good texture, but I found it a little insipid and didn't have much depth of flavour really.

However, as Matt Preston would say, there is a hero in this dish. D had been out to a friend's birthday the night before and when he was telling me what they'd ate I mostly heard 'meat meat meat beans cupcakes peanut butter icing.' What what what? Peanut butter icing? How have I never heard of this before? Cakes, biscuits, ice creams, satay sauce yes, but icing? Must. Make. Peanutbuttericing.

I tried it out: beating together about a tablespoon of margarine and the same of smooth peanut butter, then beating in about a cup of sifted icing sugar, then adding a dash of milk to get it to a better consistency (no recipe, I made it up) and Wonderment! The stuff is A.Maz.Ing.


Did I mention it was about midnight at this point and I supposed to be at my new job at 8:45am the next morning? Since it was so late, I iced a single -still warm -cupcake, scoffed it, then did my teeth and went to bed. The icing I'll make again, but I'm not so sure about the red velvet cake.


The next morning I iced a few more of the cupcakes and took one to work with me (in my pink lunchbox) to eat with my coffee at morning tea (morning tea? More wonderment! I have never had a job which let me have a sit-down morning tea before.) The job, meanwhile, I think will be good once I get my head around everything. The site is huge, and there are hundreds and hundreds of plants for me to learn about and I only know about 50 of them so far, but so many beautiful green things around me and a lovely setting. It will be a lot of work, but worth it.

Raspberries and windflowers

One of the really good things about staying at a house with a really lovely and full garden is that there is plenty of plants which can be divided and propagated and then taken over to our own garden.

Over the weekend I dug half a dozen Japanese Windflower plants out of the kitchen window patch. They're the white, single anemones and far too beautiful not to try them out at our place.
The roots are surprisingly thick and robust considering how delicate the leaves and stems are.



I've popped the whole lot into a couple of pots and they're staying outside in the rain and semi-shade. Let's hope they do well, I think they look a little seasick, hanging over the edge of the pots like that, thinking, what the hell just happened?


I also helped myself to some of the raspberries. Notice they all have leaves? It never really gets cold enough here for plants to go truely dormant.


Last year at Christmas we ate ourselves silly on the raspberries out of MIL's patch. I did plant some at our place last winter but they were eaten by insects so many times that they struggled and struggled and eventually died. I also have native raspberries planted and they are looking quite good but aren't known for an abundance of fruit. These raspberries have been potted up into a very sexy ice cream container, ready to be shifted later on in winter.


I might take some more over the week, I think, the more I have the more will survive? Right?

Shed full of wood

This is going to be a bit of a dull post, but I need to put it out there that there is actually building going on. As in wood being placed and then being screwed together, and then more wood and more screws and so on and so forth.
Our shed smells like a hardware store because it is full of wood. Big bits, bigger bits, and then some 'chunky bits; massive bits' according to D.


And one of the best bits is that some of this wood was sort of free. Not free, exactly, but a trade of sorts.
I have whinged about the enormous pine tree out the back before. It's in our neighbour's yard, but right in the corner and since it's at the north end of our block it's impact is enormous. We have been in discussions with the neighbour, N, about removing the tree. N was keen, but then decided to put her house up for sale. The pine tree is a negative for her too as potential buyers have been put off by it, so she's agreed that we can still go ahead and remove it, but we'll pay for it. Which is OK, actually, since we don't plan on going anywhere in the next 20+ years I think it's a good investment.
Anyway, N happens to be a bit of a greenie herself, and at some point in the past she had grand plans for decking around her house and she bought a whole heap of recycled hardwood from a house demolition, but then never got around to doing anything with it. She's given all this beautiful old hardwood to us to use in our house. There's enough to use for all our bearers and plenty left over after that. This wood might be jarrah, and the old nails have already been removed: bonus!
I love that we're reusing this old wood. I love that these worn pieces of suburban history are going into our little cottage. Aren't they cool?


So, there you go, real building! About time, too...

Winter Wednesday #5

I think we're up to Hazel's Winter Wednesday #5 anyway?

For today, some subtle Winter flowers in my front garden. They might not be hugely showy like flowers of other seasons who wave their petals and stamens and anthers like flags and shout, 'look at me!' but they are still there, peeking out from behind the leaves, a little bit shy, 'hello? I'm still here...'

There are the violets I pinched out of a nature strip last year. They have spread like crazy, and have luminous little blooms appearing everywhere;


And I don't remember planting a white one, but I must have? Did I buy it and forget, or did I manage to 'borrow' a white one by chance?


And then the natives, oh, the natives!

Lovely little correas, like stoic troopers going on and on in defiance of the wind and the rain and the cold;


There are the hardenbergias which have been twining their way about the roses. Their other name, Happy Wanderer, suits them well. I have a violet coloured one about to flower;



and a white variety as well;


There are pretty wee grevilleas, and a red eremophila, both only 8 inches tall;



And it's not all about the flowers. How gorgeous are these shining magenta Lilly Pilly fruits?


And lastly, not a native, and he's only small, but isn't there someone who always has to be LOUD? Red red red snapdragons, faces wet with dew, 'Hello Winter! Bring it on! You can't beat me!'


Stay warm, folks x

Check!

I love making lists and then ticking things off them. Done! Check! Tick! The current gardening 'To Do' list was only stored in my head, but today was one of those miraculous afternoons when the sun is shining as though we are three months on from now, the air is still and nearly warm, lorikeets are bickering in the trees, and in four short hours I got so much done in our yard. It was amazing!

I managed to:

• Finish pruning the roses.

(View from new 'Nightingale' [astringant] persimmon through to pruned roses)

• Plant the quince tree (even though I swore I'd bought all the fruit trees I was going to this year I convinced myself I needed another one. Besides, quinces are one of Chef-D's favourite fruits.)
• Plant the asparagus crowns (one purple asparagus, one 'Fat Bastard' asparagus. I had a brainwave about putting them in amongst the roses.)
• Plant another round of broad beans (this time, 'Bunyard's Exhibition.')
• Tie up the Experimental peas.

(Experimental 'Greenfeast' peas already have some flowers)

• Transplant a living, healthy lavender from the end of the hedge (where it was an extra) to replace the dying one in the middle (why, oh why, is it always plants in the middle of hedges that turn up their toes?) The dying lavender went into the rose bed in case it proves to be a Lazarus cultivar.

(Dying lavender)

• My boy, wonderful husband that he is, got rid of the last of the Awful White Gravel for me!

• And the last thing I did today was plant the lomandra border along the driveway (I really need to scan that garden plan to show you...) I did it as the sun went down, as my grubby hands stiffened in the cold, and I completed just as it got so dark I couldn't really see anymore if I'd planted them in a straight line or not, and finished off with coffee and a biscuit from my boy while my babe caught a nap in the car.
  

And when we got back 'home' to MIL's there was a package in the post for me. Actually, it was addressed to D ('Um, did you order something in my name? What is this? It's really heavy'). That, my love, is 800g of mixed heritage and gourmet seed potatoes! I think I must have looked at just about every Australian nursery site on the Internet to find these babies. I wanted as many different sorts as I could get, but not too many of each because I don't want to fill up the entire backyard, and although I found a number of sellers who had a really good variety, only these people would post exactly what I wanted to South Australia.


In my 800g of potatoes, there are 20 individual spuds, and 16 varieties within them. Unfortunately, they're not separately labelled so which one is which will only be my best guess, especially under the layer of dirt. The other slight problem is that some of the photocopies of the labels are unclear and I can only read 12 out of 16 despite my best squinty efforts. Shall I tell you what they are? For the potato connoisseur, I have: Sapphires, Nicolas, Red Norlands, Pink Fir Apples, Toolangi Delights, Sebagos, King Edwards, Cranberry Reds, Kennebacs, Bananas, Bintjis, Brownells, and the four mystery varieties (not expensive either, less than $20 including express post).


What's the plan for all those potatoes? Well, this time, for once, I'm not winging it. I've actually done a bit of research, referring primarily to Peter Cundall's Practical Australian Gardener. I'm going to use a no-dig method which starts with a green manure crop (which I sowed about a fortnight ago, a bit late but oh well), then involves lots and lots of hay and manure and potash. I've even already bought the potash; I'm ready to rock and roll... sometime in August.

A series of mishaps

A whole ten days ago I posted that I had some penstemon and geranium cuttings waiting for me to pot them up. It has, as I mentioned, been a long ten days since then. Apart from the various illnesses doing the rounds of the family, there was also the part where I was walking home from work, after getting off the bus at 3am last Saturday night. One minute I'm calmly, but quickly, walking along (it was very cold, wet, dark, windy...), and then next thing I know I'm lying on the side of the road. In the mud. I'd stepped right on the edge of the asphalt, and my ankle gave way beneath me, tossing me over into the gutter: SPLAT. All very undignified. My ankle hurt; the palm of my hand hurt, and there were some furious embarrassed tears too (although, at 3am, it's not like anyone saw me.) And I'm then sitting there, ankle hurting, owwww, how am I going to get home now? Before my better-self piped up with, oh just get over it, stand up for Heaven's sake, can you walk on the ankle, or not? Staggering to my feet, I realised sheepishly that my ankle was not, in fact, broken, and I could limp the last 200m home, where once I got into the light and the warm I realised I was quite literally covered in mud, leaves and debris to my waist, and I even had mud in my eyebrows. In my eyebrows! Good work, if I do say so myself. The next day my ankle hardly hurt at all, my hand had barely a scratch, but my wrist was hurting and my whole knee had turned purple (and still is) which is ironic because I didn't even realise I'd banged it at the time.

Anyway. Moving on.

So, as I said, it was a bit windy that night. I discovered in the morning that apart from my purple knee, the wind had blown my cuttings off the table outside -where I'd left them because I was going to pot them up 'any minute now,' and smashed the glass all over the paving. Bugger.
I rescued what I could and put them back into some water (where they languished for another week).


During the week we went around to our little cottage and I pottered in the garden out the front, clipping roses, planting strawberries, planting my second persimmon, and also, as it transpired, doing a little impromptu pruning on one of my favourite correas by being careless with the hose, accidentally ripping off the entire leading branch. Feck. I guess that particular plant is destined to be even more of a ground cover than I had intended. I thought I might be able to save some of it somehow, so took it home and put it in a container of water by the sink. Look how big it was!


What's a girl-gardener to do? When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. (An unfair judgement on lemons I always think; I like lemons particularly.) Or when you accidentally rip out half a correa, try to take as many cuttings from the poor soul as you can. Like so. Or not like so. This is not meant as instructions because I have very little clue, I'm just winging it really, but more of a record of 'What Katie Did Next.'

This is as far as I've gotten with my propagating for a week: filled pots. They've been waiting, and waiting... and waiting... for me to get my act together.


Then I clipped off as many usable correa twigs as I could and pulled off most of the leaves.


I trimmed them all off to the same sort of size and dipped the ends into the rooting powder.


Then I made a little forest of them in a pot. There may be too many in here, but then I'm assuming that most of them, if not all, will not strike.


While I was there, I finally got around to making cuttings of the penstemon and the geraniums too.


Like little ducks all in a row...


I'll update this one in a couple of months or so when I know if it worked or not.

May your working week pass quickly xx

Phat Grissini

It's been a bit of a long week. After SP got over her lurgy, she was happy for a whole entire day before falling victim to another one, so we have been pinned to the couch. Again.
So, first up, a belated addition to Hazel's Winter Wednesday series: Is there anything better than finding a patch of sunlight to flop into on a cold day?


Yesterday afternoon SP was briefly well enough that I was able to whip up some grissini (bread sticks), a seriously underrated food. They're very quick and easy to make, so long as you don't try to be a perfectionist about it and make them all the same size or anything, and you don't need to worry overmuch about how much or little the mix rises because it's not that important. I think they'd be a fantastic one to try with kids.

I based my recipe on this one which I found in a quick Internet search, but as usual I changed it up a bit, not least because I thought that '623g of flour' and '397g water' were very strange measurements indeed.

So, take:

• 320g flour
• 200ml luke-warm water
• 1 sachet yeast (7g)
• 5g salt
• 20ml olive oil

and mix the whole lot together roughly with a fork. When it comes together into a dough, turn it onto a bench and knead it about for a few minutes. You can add extra flavours at this stage, I added about 1/2 a cup of shredded Parmesan cheese (the cheaty stuff out of a packet). When it's all nice and elastic, pop it into a bowl, cover, and leave it somewhere warm for an hour or two until it's doubled in size (on top of the coffee machine is a fantastic place if you have one, otherwise turn the oven on for a couple of minutes to warm it up a little, then turn it off again and leave your bowl in there).
Then have a cup of tea, watch some TV, pop the laundry on, etc, until time has passed and you're ready for the next part.
Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
Divide the dough in half. Roll out the dough to make it nice and flat and as thin as you can manage, then fold it in half and roll it out again. Cut into about 16 long strips, then roll into snakes or twizzle into long rolls.
Place on a tray about 2cm apart.
Sprinkle extra flavourings over the top: a little salt and pepper, or garlic salt, or flaked dry chili, or extra Parmesan cheese.
Repeat for the other half of the dough on a second tray.
Bake for 20-25 minutes until golden brown. The longer you bake them the crunchier they will be.
They'll keep for a few days in an airtight container, but they might not last long enough to worry about that.


Apparently they are nice enough for even poorly SPs to have a couple at once.


Happy weekend everyone xx