good stuff

Well, the giant show that Andy has been working on opened last night (and closes tonight) and the first review of it is excellent and shows a great understanding of the piece in all its complexity and weirdness. Hoo-flippin-ray because so many excellent people have worked their passionate guts out on this ... including myself holding the fort back here at home, I must add, ha!

In other Good Stuff news, imagine my surprise when in one day I received two emails from lovely bloggy friends saying they'd each tagged me for one of these blog award doo-dads.

This one came from Suellen of Sew Indigo, who has a great eye for vintage patterns and has fearlessly tackled projects from boat cushions to couture sewing courses.


And this one came from Mary at Biblioblog, who is indeed a versatile blogger with a love of reading and sewing and some delightfully thought-provoking posts.

Now, as Suellen noted, these awards can seem a bit like chain-letters or those emails you get where you have to pass it on to seventy of your best friends and something amazing will happen, and I've never been known to reliably follow through on any of those. (And none of my limbs has yet dropped off or anything.) The difference here - as Suellen also pointed out - is that somebody has taken the time to appreciate what you're doing in your slice of cyberspace, and that is indeed one of the lovely aspects of blogland.

So I am grateful to be appreciated, and I'm going to share the love in a small way of my own devising.

If you have a spare moment, may I introduce you to Harriet of Look What I Did Today. She is a mum of four and recently returned to blogging. I thought some people reading this might like to pop across and give her some encouragement to keep going. She does some fantastic sewing and keeps chickens and even lives in Adelaide too although we've never met in person... maybe one day :)

So Harriet, no pressure to do anything except, if you like, share seven things about yourself as per the Versatile Blogger rules, as I am going to do below.

1. I've worn contact lenses since I was 13. I kind of enjoy the soft focus ease-into-reality that being short-sighted gives me in the mornings, except I tend to not notice the mould around the bottom of the shower for rather too long.

2. I am not really a 'party person'.

3. I am the designated spider-catcher in our house and I'm fine with that.

4. I love reading chapter books aloud to my big boys and look forward to sharing many of the same books with Clem as he gets older.

5. I bite and pick at the skin around my fingernails when I'm anxious or thinking hard or sitting still for a long time, which is a yucky habit.

6. I love lots of different foods but I really dislike bitter almond flavour: marzipan, morello cherries, amaretto etc and I have a hard time understanding how anyone could tolerate it - surely some people must taste things differently?

7. I find cooking meals a chore and would gladly live on poached eggs and the like, but baking is another matter entirely. (Which is really just an excuse to post some yummy pics here.)

 We went blackberry picking at our usual spot along Brownhill Creek last weekend but the blackberries were past their best. We gathered enough, however, to put in an apple-and-blackberry pie just like last year's. Also, there were figs. Which called for fig and frangipane tart (recipe conveniently in the weekend paper).

I am lucky that when Andy is home, he happily takes care of the nutritionally-sound food provision around here. In fact he did the grocery shopping just now. Am I not one lucky girl?

- Jane x

PS I am also meant to be working on decluttering during the month of March, as invited by Faith who suggested we encourage each other on Project Simplify 2012. As yet March has been a bit frantic and I haven't got to any of this yet but it's waiting in the wings... really!

fig and banana cake (or, necessity is the mother of invention)

First, I want to acknowledge the tragedy in Japan and say how helpless I feel. I have made a donation to the charity suggested by verypurpleperson, who lives in Tokyo. I made softies for the Queensland flood victims. I've signed up to do the same for Christchurch. There's just too much of this going on in the world. I feel awfully lucky to live where I do.

So. In my lucky part of the world, life goes on. And so does cake.

not the prettiest of cakes, so I accessorised

I invented a cake! I've made it twice now so I know the first time was not just a fluke.

We've had a bounty of figs around these parts. I won't call it a surplus because I'm yet to experience too many figs. We love 'em. We have a small tree, but after putting the word out that we're a fig-lovin' family, they've been rolling in from all directions.

Some were looking less than their best after a few days. A fig-lovin' friend at work suggested baking with them, which I hadn't considered. So now I present the improbable but delicious


Fig and Banana Cake.

Almost healthy!

1 cup wholemeal self-raising flour
1 cup fine semolina
3/4 cup soft brown sugar
2/3 cup powdered milk (this was part of the 'necessity' - we were out of fresh and I had this left over from some other baking)
1.5 tsp mixed spice or other spices of choice
2 tbsp LSA mix (ground linseed, sunflower seeds and almonds - I usually have this around, it's easily left out or substituted for other chopped nuts)

120g butter or marge, melted
2 - 3 over-ripe bananas, mashed (I put over-ripe ones in the freezer to keep for cakes)
3 eggs
5 or so ripe figs, chopped
1/2 cup water (roughly)

Mix all dry ingredients well. Combine wet ingredients and mix into dry. Add more water if needed to make a good cake batter consistency. Pour into large, greased ring tin (I use one of those flugelhorn, erm, hugenflopff, whatever, pretty ones!).

Bake at around 170 degrees Celcius for about 45 minutes, or until a skewer only just comes out clean. I do this on non-fan-forced. I find my cakes turn out better that way.

Tastes great with natural yoghurt. It hasn't lasted long enough in my house to experiment with any icing ideas. I call that a cake success.

I think the figs could be substituted with various other fruits, fresh or dried. Dried pear for some reason sounds appealing. Grated apple might work nicely, and then pump up the cinnamon content.

I'm sometimes surprised at how much fruit you can actually put into a cake. I have a banana cake that I am still pushing the limits with, to see how many bananas can go in without it turning out all wrong. I think I'm up to nine large bananas.

What's your favourite fruity cake?

- Jane x