I've Found A New Home

Yep, I'm giving Wordpress a try. Not althogether thrilled to pieces by that at the moment but give me time and I'm sure I'll warm to it. Here's where you can find me now.

Hope I see you over there.

Still Broken

Well, the blog is still broken and I can't work out how to fix it. It won't do what I want, I can't load any photos and I seem to have lost half the buttons I need when writing a post.

I'll keep trying for a bit longer but... I'm a little bit afraid this might be the end.

Browsing Some Blogs

I have been meaning to tell you about some of my new favourite blog reads for ages but other stuff just keeps getting in the way. It goes without saying that the blogs listed in my sidebar are ones that I love reading but variety is the spice of life so on occasion I go searching for something new. Sometimes I stumble across a new-to-me blog in the comment box of another, sometimes I'll follow an intriguing link from Twitter and sometimes I'll go looking for who has left comments for me. The blogs I'm sharing today kind of cover all bases. Go check them out - there's a little bit of something for everyone.

Bush Babe -she's like the Australian version of The Pioneer Woman. Life on the land, beautiful photos and interesting content. If you like Ree you'll love Bush Babe.

Chicken Willow - This is a relatively new blog and I'm so envious of Hannah's crafty talents. Posts about her family, the things they get up to, gorgeous photos of Hannah's crafty creations and what has become a highlight of my week Forebear Friday where she shares old photos of her ancestors. Go tell her hi from me!

An Ordinary Housewife - this one has been through a couple of incarnations and I'm loving the latest one. She's a fellow Perth-ite!

City Girl In A Red Dirt World - well the title says it all doesn't it? This is fast becoming one of my very favourite blogs. It's pretty much brand new and chronicles the adventures of a city girl who has moved lock, stock and stiletto to the middle of the red dirt all for love. She's in one of the towns I have lived in (but not the most recent one) and I laugh myself silly at her adventures, and mis-adventures. Mostly because so far they've all been terribly familiar! I know a couple of my readers will love this little bit of nostalgia and when you add in that it's well written and she has a fantastic sense of humour (and the photos of the red dirt don't hurt at all) it's a must-see.

Frills In The Hills - I only found this one a couple of days ago but I am LOVING it. Lovely recipes (I have a bundle I want to try), gorgeous kids and a generally beautiful site. I'm looking forward to taking some time and thoroughly exploring this one. And adding it to my sidebar too.

Hmmmm...

So, what do you think? I'm pretty happy with how it looks but I haven't quite finished tweaking. And while I was busy doing that, I learnt how to put a watermark on my photos. You know, just in case I end up famous and people try to steal my pics. Yeah, yeah - delusions of grandeur, I know! Bush Babe has a super-easy tutorial on how to watermark your photos - look, even I can follow it.

Just Playing

I'm about to start playing with the blog. You know, making a few changes, tweaking bits here and there and generally messing about with stuff I don't know a whole lot about. I'm really hoping it's all going to work (and I've got to go work out how to back it up before I start, just in case it doesn't work out so well) and that it will look sparkly and new in a few days time.

Just so you know in case you drop by for a visit and it's gone kablooie.

Blogger's Meetup

I've finally managed to get all my planets aligned and am off to another Perth Blogger's Meetup this week. I've been trying to make it back for, oh.... about 18 months, but generally life has conspired to keep me away - that and I'm secretly a quite shy homebody so the thought of trekking into the city, at night, to talk to people I don't really know is kind of daunting. That said, the few times I have attended everyone has been really friendly and welcoming so I'm just being a big wuss really.

Anyway, if you're in Perth and you're a blogger of any description - new, long-standing, foodblogger, mummyblogger (or daddyblogger!), technoblogger, whatever-your-interest-is blogger, come along. It's a terrific way to make some new friends, ask bloggy-type questions, get some advice and help and of course find new blogs to read.

The meetup is at The Brass Monkey (upstairs on the balcony, but just ask the staff upstairs and they'll point you in the right direction), this Wednesday night - 21st April, at 7pm.

Amanda and Ron - I'm looking at you!!!

I'm also looking at trying to organise a meetup for Perth Mummybloggers - I'm thinking a casual dinner somewhere that we can have a few drinks and no-one will care that a bunch of women are all talking at the same time. If you're interested let me know.

Site Under Construction

New Year. New Look.

Come back soon and see what I finally decide on!

Oh... and Happy New Year!

Milestones-A-Plenty

It's my third blogiversary today AND this is my 500th post! Who woulda thunk it?

Three years ago we'd not long moved to Red Dirt Central, my big kid had just turned four, my baby was about to turn one and I'd decided to start a blog so that family and friends could keep up with what we were doing. I figured I'd share news of our life in the red dirt along with photos and updates on kids and, in the process, hopefully feel like we weren't quite so far away from everyone. In the next three years I made some great friends through the blogging world, baked more new recipes than I ever thought I would and ended up with people as far away as Italy, Texas and Germany reading about my corner of the world. We also moved back home to the Perth hills and, while I mislaid the blogging mojo for a while, I kept blogging.

I thought I'd share some of my favourite posts from over the past three years.

One of my favourite places and definitely one of my all-time favourite holidays was Exmouth in October, 2007. And looking back at some of the dumb things I've done, but blogged about anyway, has made me giggle. I've also enjoyed looking back and and seeing how much the kids have changed and grown as well as being reminded about some of our not-so-traditional family traditions. I still love this post about Offspring #1's artwork and his attempts to explain it to me.

I also love this post from when I did a work trip from Red Dirt Central to Sydney. To say I was terrified and freaking out would be an understatement and realising, once I was well into the trip, that I could do it on my own was an amazing feeling.

And of course, finding some truly fabulous recipes and sharing them with you has been one of the highlights for me.

Thanks for keeping me company and for reading. Would you do something for me? To help me celebrate my milestone? Please, please leave a comment. Just a quick hello would really make my day. You can be anonymous if you want but I'd love to know you're here.

Catching Up With Friends

Trish, over at Light. Sweet. Crude. has moved house. Her new blog - Eat, Shoot, Blog - is lovely. It's clean and pretty and all nice and new. She's moved all her old stuff over there and added lots of new bits and pieces but essentially it's the same Trish. Great writing, gorgeous photos and enough funny to make me snort hot tea out of my nose. Often.

Pop round for a visit soon. I'm sure she'd love to see you.

Tweet Tweet

I know Twitter has been around for a while but I'm just catching up with it now. It seems that it has been in the news everywhere I've looked for the past few weeks. I've notice more and more blogs adding their Twitter feed, it seems that everyone on Facebook is talking about it, it appears to have become the 'hot new thing' on the radio station I listen to in the morning and it was even on the evening news a couple of times this week.

To be honest, I'm not sure I quite get all the fuss. Then again, I said that about Facebook too and now I'm a firm fan so.... I decided to sign up and give it a go. I've added the button into my sidebar, click on it and it'll take you over to my updates. I'm sure they'll be thrilling and scintillating. Um, not!

So a couple of questions for the Twitt-a-holics amongst us. Do you tweet from the computer or your mobile phone or a combination of both? Call me paranoid and crazy but I haven't signed on for the phone part yet - it just kinda scares me - though I can see that it would make it much easier. How often do you tweet? Do you make a real effort to come up with interesting updates or do you just update with whatever is happening? To be honest, if I waited for interesting it might be weeks between tweets! Got any other tips or hints that might make the initial stages easier? Anyone you think is an absolute must to follow?

Changes

There are lots of changes happening around here at the moment. I'm in the process of finishing up at work and will be starting a new job in about four weeks, Offspring #2 was 'promoted' at day-care and has moved up from the toddler room to the "little" big kids room, and we'll be moving house (again!) shortly so I thought it was about time I made some changes to the blog as well.

I gave it a little make-over, prettied things up a bit, added a few bits and tweaked a couple of others - actually there's more tweaking to be done so don't get too comfy just yet - and am reasonably pleased with my efforts.

What's your verdict?

More Blogs To Read!

Friends of ours recently moved 'up North', they're still a good few hundred kilometres away but a heck of a lot closer than most. Anyway, the she in the partnership has an absolutely gorgeous blog full of the most spectacular pieces of art she has created. Go check out Colour By Numbers and ooh and aah over Sam's creations. Tell her I sent you :)

Another blog that I'm loving is The Pioneer Woman Cooks. I found this one a while ago and it is gorgeous (that word again!), has delicious recipes, lots of wonderful pictures and clearly explains each and every step. Ree, aka The Pioneer Woman, also has another blog, Confessions of a Pioneer Woman. I can only tell you how great it is at the moment because it's being made-over but it is totally worth checking out when it's up and running again.

And the final one for today is the blog of a fabulous and very lovely man I met at the Perth Bloggers Meet. I'm very much enjoying Belongum's Weblog and hope that you'll click over and check it out too.

I made a new recipe over the weekend, but as I'm still recovering from a tummy bug I'll save the food talk for another day.

More Reading Material

Just in case you don't have enough blogs to visit, here are a few more that I've been loving lately and will be adding to my sidebar when I get a chance. It might not be real soon though as things here are a little hectic. I can't make the links a different colour so they show up all pretty-like so just hold your cursor over the name of the blog and click on it to link over and have a read. (Edited to add: YAY!! I made it work so now the links are a different colour and you can find then real easily.)

Mountain Mama visited here a while ago and, as a matter of courtesy, I popped over to check out her site. I love it. She's on the other side of the country to me in a gorgeous country town and shares bits about her life and some lovely photos too. Go check out the tornado that just swept through her town - wow!

Iris is in Germany and I have been reading her blog for a while now. She loves Australia, she's funny and she lives a completely different life to me - all good reasons that I enjoy reading Double-Half.

Ivonne at Cream Puffs in Venice is one of the original Daring Bakers and she makes the most fabulous food and provides gorgeous photos too. Even if you're not big on baking, this one is worth visiting simply for the drool factor! You can also check out The Daring Bakers blogroll to see all the results from the participant's latest challenge.

And finally, a relatively new blog that has just been bought to my attention by Karen at Bitstop is Rock Recipes. Again, the drool factor is unavoidable and there is a nice mix of recipes on there.

Hope you enjoy browsing.

The Best Banana Cake

Trish, over at Light. Sweet. Crude. told me she had a terrific banana cake recipe a couple of weeks ago when I had some over-ripe bananas to use up. I used those ones in a different recipe but hid some of the next lot in the back of the fridge, a necessary measure in a house with two little monkeys, in order to give Trish's recipe a try.

All I can say is: make this recipe! It was delicious. It was moist. It was loudly and widely complimented. And, next time I'm not going to wait for it to cool down, I'll be eating it warm.

Here's a very bad pic of the cake but you'll have to go check out Trish's blog to get the recipe - it's under the heading 'What's Cooking' way down on the right hand side. I used three large-ish bananas and cooked it in a ring pan for about 45 minutes - delicious!

A personal note: I had a lovely comment from a new reader that I had every intention of responding to but... now I can't find the comment! So, thankyou new reader for reading my blog, I'm glad you enjoyed it and hope you come back and comment again so I can respond properly and come visit you!

Some New Reading Material

I have added a few blogs to my "blogs I read" links - food and otherwise.

If you haven't come across The Caffeinated Librarian as yesterday's Blog of the Day click on the link and go check her out. Do be careful though - there are Harry Potter spoilers on there!

Another former Blog of the Day is Humble Pie. I found Gilly's blog through Ellie, aka the Kitchen Wench, and love it. Gilly has terrific recipes and truly beautiful photos of her creations. Even if you aren't looking for a new recipe this one is worth a look.

I usually come across new finds through the comments on other blogs. When I have a bit of time to waste I also like to click on the 'next blog' button at the top of the page - be warned though, this can be a bit risky in terms of questionable content!

So, have you got any favourite blogs you read everyday? Any new finds you've recently stumbled across? Why not leave me a comment telling me who you are enjoying reading at the moment? Please???

You May Have Noticed...

that I have been playing again. A blog is kind of like a room. It gets a bit boring when it looks the same for too long! If you have been through here in the last little bit you may have seen a few different versions. I think this is the one I'll stick with for now, although there may be some tweaking of colours, etc. Let me know what you think. Does it look okay? Is anything too hard to read, too little, too big?

Hey! Maybe someone who has never commented could let me know what they think? Pretty pretty pretty please?????

Busy, busy, busy.

Mondays and Tuesdays in our house are a bit crazy. They are the days I tutor and lecture and involve amazingly quick handovers of the offspring to Hubby in the early afternoon. Yesterday was worse than normal. I rang him 8 minutes before I was due at someone's house for a tutoring session to enquire as to his whereabouts. He told me he was driving out of work right then. Ha! When he didn't get home for another 9 minutes I knew he'd still been in his office. Luckily our town is small so it doesn't take long to get anywhere and life up here is pretty casual so the the Mum didn't mind me being a couple of minutes late. I know that in my real life I'm late for just about everything (only since the offspring joined us!) but in my work life I pride myself of being punctual. Let's see how we go tonight.

You might have noticed that I have added a few blogs to my lists. Amongst them are a couple from Perth (the capital city of our great state for those who are unfamiliar with it, and of course where we really live) that I have been enjoying. I've also got rid of a few, I sure hope that wasn't a massive breach of blog-etiquette.

Nothing much happening here although I am pleased to report that the new weekly schedule is doing it's job nicely. Of course, I am only 4 days into it so it still has time to fall apart LOL. So far I have kept up with the house-work, was organised a couple of days ahead of time for tutoring and lecturing and even tried a couple of new recipes. I also went browsing amongst some blogs and have some new ones to add to my reading list.

So, here are a few blogs that I have found recently and enjoyed enough to go back for more.

Wine Makes Mummy Clever has become my new must read. It's well-written, funny and of course very clever. Needless to say, I love the title!

I Think I Have A Recipe For That has also joined the list. Lots of yummy recipes with great explanations.

And although not a new find Mamarazzi is an absolute must. It cracks me up and generally makes me feel much better about my parenting skills. Hey, I didn't shave my head, ditch rehab or kiss my brother so I can't be all that bad!

Two Firsts

Well, three if you consider that this is the first time I have made this recipe. The other firsts were: first time using my new flan tin and... drum roll please... the first time I made pastry!! I'm totally certain that those of you who usually make your own pastry will laugh yourselves silly when you see how easy this lot was but I was still pretty pleased with myself!

Updates and news first, then onto the recipe.

The kids colds are finally better (YAY!!!) although #2's nose seems to have developed a permanent drip. Sooooo disgusting!

The weather is still horrendously hot and humid and apparently we have a cyclone brewing for sometime next week. Of course these predictions are notoriously unreliable but the real locals seem pretty certain.

Just for fun the other night we stuck a themometer into the bath water to see what temp the water was. We haven't used the hot water tap for anything other than doing dishes for a few months now. We shower with only the cold water on, run the bath out of the cold tap, etc and quite often it is still too hot. We don't ever just grab a glass of water from the tap (besides that I put it all through the filter jug anyway) because it is hot and not real pleasant. Some days I have to run the bath, wait for it to cool down and then get the kids organised and into it - no I'm not joking or exaggerating on this one. Anyway, Hubby and I were pondering on that when he decided we should grab the big-you-beaut-professional themometer from the shed and check out what temp the water really was. The water coming out of the cold tap was 39˚C! That's not cold at all.

Hmm... what other news? Tutoring went well. I'm down for one class for lecturing at the Uni and waiting to hear back on two more. And, after a couple of off-weeks I finally feel like cooking again so will attemp to return to blogging on a somewhat more regular basis.

In news to hand... you may have noticed that I added a site meter to my page. I was very proud because I managed to do it totally by myself and didn't require Hubby's assistance at all - then again the directions were pretty much idiot-proof! Anyway, I have been thrilled to get an idea of the traffic through my blog. I was stoked to discover how many people visit, I was only aware of about half-a-dozen readers, so hello to you all and please leave a comment and say hi. For those of you interested in adding a site meter to your blog just click on mine and follow the directions - it is sooooooo simple and the best bit is that it's free.

And onto the cooking ("at last," I hear you all sigh!). A new flan recipe today. It was pretty simple, although would have been even easier if I had cooked the pumpkin a little earlier. It was very tasty; the bacon gave it a little saltiness while the pumpkin, cream and eggs made it smooth and the herbs just added an extra zing. I liked it and everyone else dug in so it was deemed a winner. Yay for Mummy! We had it with a quickly-thrown-together salad.

Pumpkin and Bacon Flan

from Family Circle Delicious Quiches and Flans

1¼ cups plain flour
90g butter, chopped
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
½ cup grated cheddar cheese
1 egg yolk
1-2 tablespoons iced water (I needed 3)

Filling
1 tablespoon oil
2 bacon rashers (strips), finely chopped
1¼ cups mashed cooked pumpkin (about 375g raw)
1 tablespoon plain flour
½ cup cream
3 eggs
1 tablespoon chopped fresh chives
1 tablespoon shredded fresh basil
¼ teaspoon cracked black peppercorns (left this out because of the offspring)
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg, extra


Place flour and butter in food processor. Using the pulse action, process for 30 seconds or until the mixture is fine and crumbly. Add nutmeg, cheese, egg yolk and almost all the water. Process for 20 seconds or until the mixture just comes together; add more water if necessary. Turn onto lightly floured surface. Knead mixture gently to form a smooth dough. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate 20 minutes.

Preheat oven to moderately hot 210˚C. Brush a shallow 23cm flan tin with melted butter or oil (I used canola spray). Roll out pastry between two sheets of plastic wrap, to cover base and sides of tin. Ease pastry into tin; trim.

Cut a sheet of greaseproof paper large enough to cover pastry-lined tin. Line with paper, spread a layer of dried beans or rice evenly over paper. Bake for 10 minutes, remove from oven and discard paper and beans. Return to oven for a further 10 minutes or until lightly golden. Cool.

To make filling: Reduce oven to moderate 180˚C. Heat oil in a heavy-based frying pan. Cook bacon until crisp; drain on paper towels. Combine bacon with remaining filling ingredients; mix well. Spread mixture into prepared pastry case, bake 35 minutes or until lightly golden and set. Serve hot.

Hmm... a blog!

I got hooked on a few foodie blogs, then a couple of blogs from people I know on various websites and then just started reading blogs all over the place. From there it was a fairly logical step that I would start my own blog. I love cooking so am planning to post lots of recipes and photos of dishes I make. I also love scrapbooking so will be posting photos of pages that I create along with photos of other scrapbooking type projects. Along the way you'll get to see photos of my new home town, my kids and hear about the trials and tribulations of being a Mummy in the north-west.

1600 kilometres from home, surrounded by red dirt, a hubby who works too much and two small kids - this could be a recipe for disaster or it could just be the life of a Red Dirt Mummy!