Thursday at Ma's

Ivy, Heather and I had a great day on Thursday. It was so windy outside so after a quick session painting the fence (which I had promised them) and mixing up sand and water as tea and custard while I put the washing out we came inside.

Amongst other activities we made a cubby house.

We also cooked up some pancakes from a mix I had bought from Natural Evolution, an Australian company that makes flour from left over and damaged bananas, sweet potatoes and other things then also creates cake mixes etc.

They were so yummy and I have even frozen some as they reheat really well in the microwave.

My Market Run delivery exceeds all expectations

This is what I received this week from The Market Run for $20 (including delivery)...

• 1/2 watermelon
• 1/2 butternut pumpkin
• cos lettuce
• small eggplant
• 2 potatoes
• large sweet potato
• broccoli
• asparagus
• button mushrooms
• punnet tiny tomatoes
• 2 tomatoes 
• 1 orange
• 1 mango
• 1 lemon
• 1 avocado
• 2 nectarines
• 1 peach
• 1 kiwifruit
• 1 pear
• 2 bananas
• 2 carrots
• 1 cucumber
• 1 zucchini
• 1 brown onion
• 1 red onion
• 2 red apples
• 2 green apples

I don't think I missed anything!!! And this is called a "Baby Box (adapted for a senior)". I just can't get over it. 

Stoves new and old

This morning I was up on a very rainy morning to cook my Christmas Cakes. The new stove had done them well and even though we had a storm to start the day, we did not lose power and the cakes cooked quickly in the fan forced section of the stove.

Yesterday Kim and I had our last day together before school goes back in February and we worked hard to get the BBQarea all sorted for play and entertainment. Mind you, I don't have a BBQ at the moment but that is beside the point.

Today the whole area and everything in it is well washed with all the rain we are having. My tanks should be full by now and my soil is well soaked I hope.

I have a new stove

My original stove is 72 years old and was leaking gas slightly so that I had to turn it off at the tap behind the stove when I had stopped cooking.

After much deliberation and mourning I found one I could cope with in my kitchen and yesterday the electrician came to create a new dedicated circuit because my old stove had no electricity. While they were doing the circuit under the floor I was able to clean all the grime out from behind and under the old stove. My new stove was delivered just as they finished the electrics but they could not do the gas.

They took my old stove out to my carport where it is going to be used as a serving bench.

It doesn't look too bad out there.

The electrician organised for a plumber to come today to fit the gas part and now it is fully installed and cooking a rice pudding because I know how rice pudding should work.

Unfortunately, the inside is nowhere near as big as my old stove. The top oven can be used as a griller or conventional oven, the bottom oven is a fanned oven or conventional oven. I just turned it on! I am now learning by my mistakes.

Having never had an electric oven before I am going to have to get some help and practice positioning shelves and working out where to cook things and what temperatures to use. It has always been just guesswork previously. It even has a timer and I can program it to turn on and off when I like but that is another experiment.

So wish me luck. If you'd like to come and experiment with me please do.

My Second Baby Box

This morning I figured "if you don't ask you don't get". I emailed The Market Run asking if they had such a thing as a Single Seniors Mini Box which might include some things babies might not be interested in and lo and behold this arrived this afternoon in my order...

I could not have been more delighted.

I just love the challenge of working out how I am going to include this produce in my diet from fruit and veg I may not have automatically chosen if I'd been shopping myself. I love it. Last time I made zucchini slice out of the zucchinis. I roasted a whole lot of the roasting veg and froze them for another day. Towards the end of the fortnight I made a chicken and vegetable soup from what was left, some of which is now in the freezer.

What a surprise! It is wonderful. Just like Christmas when I open the box.

I can add to this the silver beet, peas, lettuce and carrots I have in the garden at the moment and prepare a feast every day.

All of this for just on $20 and free delivery.

Shopping online

Last week I had my usual Woolworths online shop delivered but as I do not like buying greengroceries from Woolworths I did a bit of searching for online options at least while I am not allowed to drive.

Most of the companies sell either couples boxes as the smallest or have a $50 minimum order. All too much for a single person, especially one with a vegetable garden.

I found The Market Run offers some mini boxes with no minimum order for delivery in Sydney only. I ordered a Baby Box. As Tuesday is the day for delivery to my area I received my box today.

My box included 2 corn, 1/4 watermelon, 1/4 pumpkin, 1 avo, 2 zucchini, 4 bananas, 2 red apples, 2 green apples, a bunch of 3 beetroot, 1 head of broccoli and 5 carrots. They are beautifully fresh and sourced from Australian farms. All of that for about $20 and free delivery.

I am thrilled and now have to figure out how often I need one of these or another type of box. They also sell other kitchen needs so I'll look into that next time too.

A bit of patchwork and other stuff

Over the last week or so I've been very busy finishing off a few things and experimenting with others.

First, I have finished 3 quilts but they are not yet photographed officially and labelled. That will come later.

Then I was inspired by a Leader and Ender project done by Bonnie at Quiltville. While hers was done with 1.5" squares entirely, mine is done with 2.5" squares (I have hundreds already cut) and 1.5" squares for the centre of each row.

These strips will be much longer and there will be something running down between each row. I am making batches of short rows (shown here) so that I can mix and match them later. Towards the end I'll cut the bottoms off level and sew them to the tops so that I get the straight top and bottom required.

And then there have been a few days cooking.

I found a recipe for slow cooker fruit paste online but mine had not even set after two days of cooking so I have declared that a failure and packaged it as thick fruit jam to have with cheese. It tastes quite OK.

The next cooking experiment was the Microwave Lemon Curd and it worked wonderfully. Set well in only 3 minutes and tastes fantastic. No fuss, no double boiler and I did not even strain it. Fantastic.

There was time spent with Ellen and Geoff and Jen and the girls, and of course the regular babysitting scattered in amongst all that.

Easter and Anzac Day

Marion and I have had a quiet, wet long weekend. Lots of quilting has been achieved. Also we have worked with Geoff to move most of his belongings (stored at my place for the last 6 months or so) to his new home. Only the pot plants and some larger items of furniture to go now. This enabled me to be able to clear some room in my quilting 'sweat shop' upstairs ready for another quilting weekend next weekend. I just moved the clutter over to the space Geoff had been using for storage and will sort that later (ha ha!).

We made some Anzac Biscuits of course and they are absolutely delicious. Invited Helene in for morning tea. I had to use her butter to make the biscuits because I only had margarine. 

Desert Limes

Surrey planted two desert lime trees (Citrus glauca), one at home and one at the block. Both are growing well but the only crop has been from home. I recently harvested 600 gm of full sized ones and some tiny ones that I stewed and strained for lime ice blocks (to use as flavouring juice).

So far I have frozen them whole and have thought of or found ideas for sorbet, curd, jam, ground into savoury dishes, ground with sugar to add to drinks. Anne and I crystalised some and covered them in dark chocolate the other night. That was fun and they taste great. If anyone has ideas or recipes for what to do with them I'd love a comment left here.