Welcome 2013

Hello dear reader,
It's been pretty busy around here with two small children to entertain and occupy for the last couple of weeks.
We've been on a bit of a mission to keep the TV turned off for as long as possible during the day. It's no TV before 4.00 pm, and when we do, it's a movie, and you know, the kids are actually having an old fashioned holiday.
The house is a complete mess, but they're having fun.


They've been drawing,
drawing on the footpath,
seed planting,
walking to the Milk Bar,
building cubbies out of cushions,
cooking with me,
threading beads,
playing complicated pretend games together,
trampolining,
painting,
playing with guinea pigs,
making sweets,
indoor swimming when it was too hot for outside,
stuff! It's good.
I have been going bananas in the garden.

Here's pictures

Sour dough bread I made

 Elsie's play dough man

 little man with a beret

 Little Parisian pickling cucumbers...

 Carrot flowers!

We call these fairy lanterns, not sure of the proper name

 This is beautiful! Purple!

 Corriander flowers

 Lovely plant and planter for Christmas, and my new "no dig" beds.

 Lettuce, basil, and sunflowers

 Another "no dig" bed...looks a bit like a shallow grave...Tomatoes up the back

Cosmos and Pea

 Banana passionfruit flower

 Plum/peach yumminess ripening

 Lemon bounty

 Apples

 Columbine

 Crispy Columbine

Pretty green underworld....

Bruises and bread making

Have been busy.
Designed some business cards and tags for my jewelry bits and pieces.
Been baking lots of bread...I am quite suspicious of the soy flour that's added into just about all the bread products, I believe it's not a good ingredient, especially for boys.

 Also, our girl hit the deck for the second time in two weekends...This time I took a photo. It's a hell of a bruise.

Oh, and also a wee collage. Just an experiment of what you can do with one page from a fashion magazine. I'm a bit stuck ..."art-wise", so doing these collages is really just an exercise, not some statement about my current art practise.

Yummy and easy to make

I must tell about the easiest, and most yummy bread product I made on Monday.

This is perfect for kiddies (to eat, and help make), and to accompany soups and casserole-y type stuff.

You, could start this at about 4pm and they would be on the table for an early Winters' tea.

We shall call this....mmm 

spiral scroll rolls

You will need :
1 teasp dry yeast
pinch sugar
2/3 cup of lukewarm water
2 cups of good bread flour ( '00') is good
1/2 of salt
1/4 cup of olive oil

Then what ever you want inside....
We used:
Tomato paste
sliced ham
grated cheese

To make

get a big mixing bowl

Turn on the oven to about 200 degrees C or 400 F

*tip in the flour, yeast, sugar and salt, making sure the salt is on the other side from the yeast, pour in the lukewarm water and oil. Combine with a spoon, to begin with. Then abandon the spoon, take off your rings and get amongst it.

Knead...I use my hands, never the dough hook of a mixer, or a bread machine. If you know how to do this, go for it. Knead for as long as you can, no less than 5mins, the longer the better. You know when it's done by the amount of spring back there is when you press your thumb in it.

Make it into a tidy ball, spray/grease a bowl, place the dough in it, cover with a clean, damp tea towel. And find a warm, draft free place to put it for about 1/2 hour. I put mine on top of the stove while the oven is
 warming up.

When the dough has risen a bit...don't be alarmed if it doesn't look very impressive. It will be delicious.


Knead the dough a bit more on a lightly floured surface.

get a rolling pin out, roll out the dough until it's about 1/2 to 1 cm thick

get your ingredients that you want. In our instance - spread the tomato paste, pizza style, lay the ham out, cover with cheese

Now, I think this is the fun part. Roll up the ingredients, do this so there is no looseness in the roll.
You should have a dough sausage shape now.

Cut with a sharp knife, slices about 2cms thick, and place onto a lightly floured tray/dish. It looks great if you place them next to each other, like a flower.

Whack them in the oven for about 40mins, check then every 5ish minutes after that to get them just the right amount of golden for you.

When they're ready, place the rolls (still all joined) on to a wire rack to cool for a few minutes, then serve while still warm with whatever warming goodies you have...or just by themselves cut through with a big blob of butter. 

Yum.

Please try this, it's so easy, don't be afraid of the yeast!

Enjoy.