fiveandtwo

Making, But No Photos

I've made seven rabbits, a new toy after much prototyping; lots of Baby Owls (fourteen?); eight scarves of sewn together wool fabric squares; three bags and sewn together the panels for five wool patchwork bags. Hive of industry, I tell you. A photo session was meant to happen today but it was too gloomy. You'll just have to wait, with bated breath.

So, you get photos of tonight's tea instead.

Waiting for the soup. The bread looks all artisanal but it's from Coles, called Pane di Casa to sound handmade. It's pretty good for small town Australia when you can't be fagged making bread.

Pea and ham soup, recipe from Stephanie Alexander's The Cook's Companion, the big orange book. That book was published in the 90s, I think. It really got me going with cooking. Meals have never been the same at our house! There's Giles roughing up Cooper the pup in the background. It seems a house of many people and animals here sometimes. It adds such richness to my life.

Bits And Pieces

The apricot jam has somehow sweetened up enough on its own.

I've grown accustomed to the burners on the gas stove, I'm very happy with it now.

I was the one grade five parent who helped at the grade six dinner dance (many others had other family/kid cimmitments and couldn't come, I know). Traditionally grade five parents have helped set up/cater for/clean up after this function. I was just a helper, which is what I'm good at. Ever an Indian and not a chief.

Here's a photo:

Who's the odd one out? Hahaha. Do I fit in? No. But that didn't prevent me from having a good time with those splendid women.

In Progress And Other Stuff

Must be because it's Spring, sap rising and all that, but there's been a flurry of activity at chez fiveandtwo. Paintings languishing for over two years are being worked on.

 
The first two in a series based on the Old Laundry photos.

Two from last year are finished.

 
Scrap Yard 1, 28cm x 38cm, acrylic on canvas.

 
Scrap Yard 2, 28cm x 38cm, acrylic on canvas.

 
Scrap Yard 3, WIP. This series is based on the photos I took at the scarp yard last year.

Some more fruit paintings, I was on a roll after the two I did for the 10 x 10 exhibition. They're all 25cm x 20cm (quite small). I did an apple too, but I'm not happy with it, and I think the pear painting on the left is the most successful.

 

Three pears, three teatowels and a jar of lentils?

In other news: I've been planting out my seedlings. Too early, but we're going up north for 3 weeks and no-one will be here to water the punnets, so they've a "better" chance in the ground. A monstrous tree dahlia has been removed , the tank drained and cleaned and a new top for the stand put on. The tree dahlia was growing next too, and under, the tankstand and pushing it over. Would you believe it rained all that night and half the next day? Now the tank is full again!

I made a summer jacket!  Short sleeved, kind of 70's style, I think. Only needs buttons. Will blog about it when I return from Qld in late October. I'm jotting things down on my "lists for the holiday" as I think of them. Bags have been removed from the ceiling space. I tried the bathers on I bought only 2 years ago - they don't fit (sigh...), fortunately a pair, scarcely-worn, from the oppy recently will do the job. I do like to swim in the sea when it's not absolutely frigid (waters off Victoria  all year round, for me). 
 

Mr 5&2 had a birthday today. He is past his half century by two years now. Had all the kids for lunch - Linsey was in "the 'Dale" for the weekend, and Giles' girlfriend of 3 years came as well. No alcohol was consumed (this is for you Anna!). Splendid sitting out on the front deck eating that Pip Lincolne Teriyaki chicken - sooo easy, and very good.

Probably no posts now until the end of October.

Cats And Dogs

Finished!

 
Eight dogs.

 
Three birds.

 
Two cats.

 
 
Two little dresses.

 
One little top.

 
One felt purse (decorated with old buttons from my vast collection).

The blue toddler dress is cut from one of those long, linen dresses that were popular in the 1990's. I was able to use the embroidery that was on the front of it.

I should mention that all these projects have been in the pipeline for some time. Cut out a few months ago and partially sewn over the intervening weeks. Only finished this last week. There's no way I could complete them from scratch in just a week.

Saturday afternoon saw fourteen jars of plums bottled.

 
The red plums are Satsuma, Japanese/blood plums. Even though the entire crown of the tree broke off before Christmas, pretty much half the tree gone, it's still laden with fruit. The yellow plums are Prune d'Agen, the European prune plum and my favourite fresh. I haven't bottled them before. I used Mason jars for the first time, which I got from The Redback Trading Company. I might buy some more next year. I used the Fowlers jars etc a while ago but I'm not really a fan. I also re-use supermarket jars until the lining in the lid gets worn. I've discovered I can get new lids from Green Living Australia, and keep the jars going. They also have cheesemaking supplies.

Cheers, people.

 

Poo Jam

Made jam early today, before the temperature soared. I'd been waiting for enough fruit from the greengage plum tree to make jam. This year, finally, enough plums. I used a recipe from Sally Wise's A Year In A Bottle. She bungs the plums in whole, "the seeds rise to the top as the fruit is boiling and you skim them off". The seeds do rise, but in my batch the seeds had lots of fruit flesh still attached. Do I skim them off flesh and all? I endeavoured to scrape off the flesh. Some seeds remained. The jam is nice, but not sensational, which is what I expected after reading much about the wonders of greengage jam.

 
It looks quite nice here, with the sun on it. In reality it's more murky and brownish. Like the poo nappy of a breastfed baby.

The greengages make good eating, sweet and rich. Not sure about the jam.

 
In the background is a year's supply of plum sauce. Seven 600ml bottles. Used as you would tomato sauce and to baste chicken wings (yum). I plan more processing of the blood plums, perhaps on Tuesday when a cool change is predicted. The crown broke out of the tree just after Christmas. I had to climb into the tree and try and wind myself around to saw off the damage. So much fruit still on the (remaining) tree.

The blood plums very good eating this year, also the prune plums - delicious.

Garlic Love

I bought freshly harvested organic garlic last week. Three kilograms of it.

 

It is a revelation. Best garlic I have ever encountered. Superb (insert more words describing something really good). Price very reasonable.

"Where did you get it?", I hear you ask. Well, a local lass has set up  Blue Sky Organics with organic garlic being the beginning. The website is under construction but Madeline can be contacted by email at info@blue-sky-organics.com. Currently being harvested and cured is the variety Tasmanian Purple (featured in the photos). To follow: Red Rocambole, Silverskin and White Crookneck.

 
Some is being sold at the Ceres market in Melbourne as well, I'm told.

Recipes saying "peel and crush two cloves of garlic" used to really irritate me. Two? That doesn't work! I was using a whole bulb. Until now. Now I understand the two-cloves instruction. Those cooks used good garlic, recently harvested no doubt. Proper stuff. I told you buying this garlic has been a revelation.

 

Garlic love indeed.

I Hung Out With Awesome Women.

Yep, spent much of this Queen's Birthday weekend at Sewjourn.

I sewed three long-sleeved T-shirts.

No, you don't get pictures of my sewing, you get pictures from my morning walks. That plastic bag on the fence annoys me.

I sewed two-and-three-quarter pairs of trousers (didn't finish the third pair). 

I finished sewing a dress which was bloody aweful. Potato woman extraordinaire.

 

We ate wonderful food. Delicious winter food: slow-cooked lamb, Portugese chicken, lemon tart, sticky date pudding, it was immensely satisfying.

I got to hang out with wonderful women, really interesting and talented women.

I got to see my favourite eldest daughter, her really nice boyfriend and some of her other friends (the lass lives "on my way home").

Maybe I'll post the tops and pants, maybe not. It was satisfying to get some winter clothes made, but the company - the women - was the best thing.
  
 
  

  
   

Fish Finger Pizza

I found this advertisement in Woman's Day/Woman's World March 27,1980:

Try it for tea tonight!

I find a fish finger pizza really bizarre. Does anyone else think this?

Magazine from the oppy.

Choko Curtain

This has been advancing over recent weeks.

The choko vine. I thought it was dead, lots of dead lengths of vine in the nashi tree over summer. In a second wind it's advanced over the nashi tree and the climbing rose and tumbled down towards the vegie garden.

I let you in to a dark secret here: I like chokoes, not the ones like you see in the fruit shop. They're too big. Little ones, half the size of your "standard choko", and even smaller. They're brilliant sliced into strips and briefly stir-fried. Crisp, crunchy and amenable to being coated with whatever sauce you desire.

This one is a baby. the choko maybe the size of my thumb.

 Delicate flowers.

And tendrils.

Such a rampant vine. Delicate is misleading.

Wee ones waiting for a stir fry.

I am an anal weekly menu writer so I can say this will be Saturday's tea.

My mother refused to have anything to do with chokoes, offal or anything that wasn't  "packaged". No rhubarb either. I've only just discovered the delights of rhubarb.

The reason was probably the way these were dished up to to her as a child. Tinned rhubarb and thoroughly boiled choko blanketed in white sauce. My maternal Grandma and her sisters were turfed out of home when their mother died. Grandma was twelve and "went into service". She was a parlour maid - dusting, sweeping and such like. Consequently didn't learn cooking, sewing, knitting and the usual home-making skills. She met a handsome merchant seaman and emigrated to Australia (from England).

Grandma's M-I-L was really supportive of her transplanted D-I-L and taught her to sew and knit and the rudiments of cooking.

Grandma went deaf while still a young-ish woman (early 30's) but it was before hearing aids. The early hearing aids helped, but I think she withdrew from contact with people, I guess it was too hard. All Grandma's love was given to her pets. Grandma had no interest in me or my siblings. The cockateil, the budgies and Tibby the cat wer her loves.

It must have been so hard for my Grandma. I can understand why she withdrew from people (her first child died at 18m of pneumonia and don't think her terrible grief was assuaged, even then), Great-Grandma Black taught Grandma her home-making skills, but Great-Grandma died early and Grandma lost her support er and offsider.

This has become really off topic.

From chokoes to Grandmas. I never really knew her. I didn't even like her.

The Chicken Recipe

I've just had a wonderful weekend of sewing at Sewjourn in Lancefield. In the company of a bunch of splendid women. I can't show what I made just yet - buttons and buttonholes need to be done.

Requests were made for the recipe of the "french-style" chicken we had on Saturday night.

Here it is:

7 chicken maryland portions

butter and olive oil for browning chicken

1 bulb garlic, peeled, finely chopped (yes, the whole thing, not just 1 clove)

2 leeks, halved, finely sliced, rinsed of dirt

2 carrots, peeled, finely diced

2 sticks celery, finely diced

half a bottle of dry white wine

salt and pepper

fresh parsley, chopped

Brown the chicken in butter and oil and place in a large baking dish. Heat a bit more oil and butter in the same pan used for browning the chicken, add garlic and soften a little. Careful not to burn it. Add celery, carrots and leeks and stir for a couple of minutes. Add wine, salt and pepper. Stir and heat through. Pour mixture over the chicken, spreading the vegetables around. Cook in a moderate oven about 1.5 hours, until the chicken skin has crisped a bit and the "sauce" has reduced.

Sprinkle with chopped parsley to serve. Very nice with plain cooked rice and a green salad.

All I added to the dish at Lancefield was an extra carrot and 3 extra maryland portions (to serve 10).

Since I don't have a picture of the cooked dish you'll have to make do with this somewhat disturbing one.

 

It comes from The River Cottage Family Cookbook by the quintessentially english-named Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Fizz Carr. A lovely cook book aimed at the novice cook of perhaps 11+ years and onwards. Or younger, if cooking with an experienced helper.

And now for something completely different.

I found four Kathie Winkle plates and two Kathie Winkle bowls at the op-shop yesterday! And a cup and saucer in a green I particularly like.

 

It's a wonder you didn't hear me hyperventilating from there.