autumn sunset walk with bonus loom

Pretty sky tonight, PLUS: bonus photo for Beck and Ramona of my girl and her LOOM.

pantry surprises

Yesterday's pantry sort-out revealed all sorts of things I had forgotten were there, including enough ingredients to make this granola, with a few substitutions. Pumpkin seeds instead of almonds. Left out the sesame seeds. Put in more dried apricots to use up the packet. I felt very virtuous.

I also found a third of a bottle of limoncello: I developed a bit of a taste for this on our holiday as often it would appear at the end of a restaurant dinner, a tiny icy cold glass - went down a treat.
Chilling in the fridge as I type.

S started buying drinking chocolate when we were away. I haven't thought of this in probably 35 years: Mum bought this rather than Milo when we were kids and used it instead of cocoa in cooking - probably it was the cheapest option - four kids on one income, these were the economies people made back in the olden days. Anyway, I've had a few hot chocolates lately and it takes me back to my sister and I staying up and watching Ivan's Movie Classics late at night on TV as teenagers. These days are here again in reverse: husband and I  toddle off to bed and we leave the young people to their various laptops, Game of Thrones dvds, internet snark sites ( she is a GOMI addict) etc.

I also found a bag of marshmallows in the cupboard, think these will go well with the hot chocolate tonight! Stay warm if you are in Melbourne - it's flipping freezing out there.

free range weekend

Being in garden-maintenance mode, B thought some chook poo for the garden would be a good idea.

We drove to Dandenong South this morning to a chook farm where we bought some eggs and lots of bags of manure.

I'd never been to a chook farm before. There were a thousand free range chooks in a barn and clucking around in a little orchard. Wow, en masse, they really smell like nothing else, don't they?

Not really the stuff of Country Style magazine rural fantasy life!

The chickens looked as happy as Larry though, and no doubt the smell of the poo now outside in the garden here outside will evaporate quickly, while it adds goodness to the soil.

Various bits and pieces and events this weekend - we went to a really lovely birthday party yesterday and caught up with people I've known for decades through work and library school. Many of us bonded when we worked for a nutty boss in a particular library service in the late 80s. There are lots and lots of fairly incestous work connections in library world, too complicated to go into. There is one man who EVERYONE knows - he actually works occasionally where I do, but we only see each other at parties.

Today I couldn't bear the thought of grocery shopping so I've gone through the food cupboard ( overflowing) and fridge and made a list of stuff to use up in meals this week, and I'll try not to shop.
So many half packets of pasta, tins of tuna, rice, eggs and so on.

I'm going to spend the rest of the afternoon in the kitchen: I have pumpkin soup to make, and there is a bag of bread rolls. I've enough oats, seeds, honey, nuts and dried fruit to make granola and I'll do some shortbread too. Chicken and egg shaped biscuit cutters today for the shortbread. Might make a fruit sponge with  the tin of fruit I found, too......

friday book review: library love

I finished reading Gillespie and I by Jane Harris.It was excellent. I can't write about the plot, except for the line or so I wrote last week, because I could give away important details. In brief: set in Glasgow in the 19th century, among artists, psychological suspense and a mystery. Could not put it down.
The sort of book that in the last few pages has you going "what the.....?"  and at the end you go back and re-read some parts to work it all out.

I've now started the new Kate Atkinson, Life after life. Page one has a Unity Mitford type figure (named Ursula, with a sister called Pammy) shooting Hitler in Germany in 1930. Mitford allusions, page one! I am hooked already. Again, what the.....? Another clever book, it seems.

I am dying to read Burial rites also, but this will have to follow Kate A.  Too many books, too little time.

The photo above gives you an idea of what I bring home from work - a public library, for those who don't read here regularly. There are always piles of random library books in this house. I don't necessarily read every word of every book, but I dip in and out. I also reserve and bring home most of the books people comment about on this blog.

If you are not a library regular, to keep public libraries alive I encourage you to go and borrow a book tomorrow. Or a magazine or a dvd or some music. So much riches for absolutely nothing. And if you are one of those who say, I can never find the latest books, that's because all the smart people have reserved them and you might have to wait a few weeks for your turn. I know in these days of OMG I want everything NOW it makes life hard but I know I'd rather wait my turn than spend $40 on a book that I may not like. I do buy books too, but at the rate I read, I would soon be broke if I bought every book I read.

Current library loans:

current book, next book

I want to knit this hottie cover

not sure about the i-pad cover

a few magazines - more highbrow than what we flick through in our breaks

Jackie, a reader here, told me about this one.

lovely art books to flick through

I love this junior book about Pompeii

Modern poetry book with bonus CD

This book keeps appearing on the returns trolley. It is popular. I want to see why.

I love this: it's like a Lonely Planet guide to Ancient Rome.

What do you have on loan from the library at the moment?

can we talk about the weather?

As predicted we've crashed into Winter in a big way.

It is so cold. Remember I was gardening in sandals five days ago?

The heating was not working in the library yesterday and we all got chilled to the bone. This was just one of the factors contributing to "Why I Hate Work" at the moment. Sigh.

The weather is making me housebound, a bit.
I did go out this morning and buy two new sweaters and 3 long sleeved t-shirts as I seem to have no cold weather clothes all of a sudden. They've all gone shabby.

 I just had a boiled egg for lunch, and I'm going to make a big meat pie to have with broccoli and pumpkin mash tonight for dinner.

 In other exciting news, I am watching the Giro d'Italia and Cadel Evans is currently racing second overall. What else? Looking forward to Eurovision this weekend although we will miss Saturday night as we're going to a birthday party.

Here are some animal and garden photos for those wasting time at work:

Shady warming his feet : there is a heating vent under that cabinet

cockatoo waiting for seed

I planted some white primulas in the stumpy joe pots

the daphnes are budding

all the daffodil bulbs are up

the back garden looks winter sparse and tidy. all the diggers seeds are up.

vego Wednesday: new found love for zucchinis

Zucchini has always been -  to me -  a tasteless, boring vegetable, but I think that's only because I was clueless as to how to cook them. I ate zucchini a lot in Italy and now love them. We have them pan-fried in olive oil as a side vegetable; I made a simple pasta sauce last week and on Monday ( meatless Monday!) I made one of the best dishes ever - a recipe from my Antonio Carluccio cookbook, which I varied a bit from the original, but it was delicious: baked zucchini (courgettes) with cheese.

Easy: make a thick batter using 4 eggs, 100g plain flour and  a little ground pepper.

Cook a couple of minced garlic cloves in some oil for a few minutes, then pour in a bottle of passata and about a cup of water and cook gently for about 20 minutes.

Slice four zucchini into 5 mm slices, dip in the batter and fry in oil in batches 3-4 minutes per side.
Drain on kitchen paper.

To assemble the dish - put a layer of zucchini on the base of a baking dish, ladle a few spoons of the tomato sauce over the top. Cut 125g brie ( the recipe said to use taleggio, but you could use brie, or mozzarella) into cubes and distribute evenly over the zucchini. Do another layer of zucchini and tomato and grate about 100g of parmesan over the top and bake for 30-40 minutes at 190-200 C.

Carluccio's recipe had 400g of cubed cheese but I don't think it needs that much.

Everyone loved this, and I pan fried red and gren capsicums as a side vegetable.

Any other zucchini recipes anyone can recommend?

Kathie Winkle cake stand!

Today I'm showing off a belated birthday present, received last Friday. (Thank you again Neen!!)

If you're a Kathie Winkle fan you will be shrieking along with me.

How good is it? A clever person with an Etsy shop has drilled holes in small and large plates of two designs - Safari and Viscount I think - and attached them with the appropriate bits and pieces.
Can't believe what a good idea this is. I love it very much.

Nothing else exciting. The honeymoon is over back at work - 3 meetings today, 2 of them went on far too long, and I have another on Wednesday. I don't know when I actually get to, you know, DO MY JOB this week.