Enough bikkies?

This morning after TeenageDD went to school I was busy adding to the goodies she would be taking to share at the Beef Week she will be attending with her school agriculture group. I've already made a wholemeal pumpkin fruit cake and a dozen wholemeal banana muffins so I baked a double batch of tollhouse cookies, or chocolate chip cookies to other people.

A double batch means 72 cookies but I decided I could keep some for DH and I as the recycled ice cream tin wouldn't take them all!

As it's a 3 hour trip I wonder if there will be any biscuits left by the time they arrive as 26 children are attending this one?

Cheers,
Robyn xo

Afternoon tea

The pumpkin scones are eaten, I haven't bought or baked any biscuits or cakes, so there's no temptation to snack on sweet things, and it's Mother's Day tomorrow, Sunday, so I'll be visiting my Mum and I don't want to go empty handed - foodwise. I'm also tired of eating a piece of fruit or having nuts and dried fruit for afternoon tea. Teenage DD is going to a week long cattle show with the school next Monday, as well, so I'll need to donate some edibles for that.....something filling as teenagers have hollow legs!

So it's a good time to cook up something healthy that I am unable to eat a lot of in one session.

After looking through the supplies and the recipe books I decided on pumpkin fruit cake as it's diet friendly, filling, healthy and pumpkin is one ingredient I have plenty of.

The recipe for this tasty morsel is on the recipes page. I only have the name Linda on the recipe as credit for it but I think she was in a quilting forum I used to be a member of. This cake keeps and freezes well and it's very easy to make a double batch, as I've done, so you can share with a relative/friend or eat one now and freeze one for later - for when you've run out of goodies to eat with your afternoon tea.....or coffee!

Oh and I should have taken the photo just after I cooked it as it disappears fast around here ;P.

Cheers,
Robyn xo

Sunshower

The rain always makes the light look clearer and the colours more intense.

Thanks for looking!

Cheers, Rob xo

Possum light sunset

It's this time in the evening I call Possum Light time - a time when it's not light but it's not dark either - there's a briefer time in the morning when this happens too. Possum light as it's a term used in Elyne Mitchell's Silver Brumby book series and when I first read them as a child, then living in suburbia, the phrase caught my attention and my imagination and I never forgot it. That's what good writing is about. It's also the time when I'm most likely to see the resident possum, if it's going to visit, so it must be based on truth :).

To see the sunset and the evening stars (look closely there are 2) at the same time is a real treat so I thought I'd share it as the last post for this month. If you click on this photo you can view it in a bigger size. Enjoy.

Cheers,

Robyn xo

More on pumpkins...

I had a comment from Wayne on my Pumpkin Pickin' Paradise post and I thought it would be easier to answer it here than in the comments section.

"Hello Robyn - Great article and pics. Very helpful. My "unplanned" vine started in a worm tower in December. Now, end of April, it has pumpkins of various sizes and still getting flowers and young fruit. Have not harvested any yet. How long should the vine keep producing pumpkins before it dies off? Regards Wayne"

As Wayne is a no reply blogger and I don't know his location I can only say that what happens here is that some pumpkins will be on the vine until the first frost, about May/June, when the vine dies off naturally. Some say it is best to leave them on the vine until then but we can have rodent problems so I prefer to harvest mine when I can. Also the hard skin pumpkins like Queensland Blue or Jarrahdale are better left until the vine dies down, so I've heard (keeping qualities/flavour apparently), but the soft skin varieties like JAP/Kent it doesn't seem to matter.

Wayne, experiment with yours - harvest one that has a dried pinched stem, put it in a dry semi sunny spot and watch for the stem rosette to wither and flatten, about 4 weeks or so, then cut it. As you cut it there should be a crisp cracking noise which also indicates that it's ripe. Some people tap the pumpkin on the bottom, like you do fresh cooked bread, to see if it's "done" before cutting, but I'm not good at predicting ripeness like this. Another way to check ripeness is to scratch a tiny spot of skin off the pumpkin and see it it "bleeds"or "oozes" and/or if it smells "green". If it does it's not ripe. If it just looks a bit wet in the scratched spot but doesn't ooze or if it stays dry it's ok to use. Document the results for future reference. Take photos if it helps.  Remember I'm only referring to JAP/Kent pumpkins and I'm not sure if this method works with other varieties of pumpkins.

A ripe JAP/Kent will keep for about 3 months in cool conditions then they begin to decompose inside. Not the type of pumpkin soup you want! Hard skin pumpkins left to dry on the vine will keep for 8-12 months without any effects so it's always good to be sure of which type you've unwittingly been gifted with by Mother Nature.

I neglected to put my pumpkin soup recipe on the recipes page when I made it, so that's done now, and I've just discovered I don't have any photos of my pumpkin soup. As you know I can't see the point of blogging if there's no pics to look at so I found a relevant photo in my photofile of a potholder I made for a swap a few years ago. I'm sure there's some of this fabric left too so there could be another potholder or so on the list.

Cheers,

Robyn xo

Pumpkin Scones, strange bugs and a Guarden Cat

Finally made the pumpkin scones and remembered to take a photo. Recipe is on the recipe page. Apologies about the photo, these were the last 4 of the unfrozen ones and the late afternoon light doesn't do them justice.

Whilst rearranging the garden beds I came across this little fellow and as I don't know if it's a friend or a foe I took a photo of it. It's a bit bigger than a lady bug and could even be a type of ladybug. Google images and various entomology and insect identification internet sources have not come up with anything like it's patterning so I still don't know what it is.
I'd be really pleased if someone could help with identification as I've never seen a bug with this patterning before.

Of course I had my chief guarden (yes, the misspelling is deliberate) assistant out there keeping the birds, field mice and other predators out of the pumpkins and other vegetables. She's not quite blending with the garden decor as the leaves aren't turning orangey colours yet but she is camouflaged enough to startle a thieving bird when she moves to a more comfortable position :). She won't be happy when I remove the last of the shady weeds from her spot under the orange tree! Other people put up bird stands but I think I'll have to erect a cat one as the vege garden is the tubby tabby's favourite daytime place.

Cheers,
Robyn xo

Spammers and access

Apologies, I thought this posted a couple of weeks ago but I've just realised it didn't.

In an effort to make my blog more available to some of my regular followers I removed the anonymous comments restriction as I was wondering if that was preventing them being notified of my new posts. That was a bad move, on it's own, as I was suddenly reporting about 4 posts a day as spam as they have links that attach to what looks like dubious advertising sites and their comments read like a used car sales pitch. Smarmy.

So, to try and rectify this I've done what I really didn't want to do...... opted for word verification and left the comment posting open to everyone as most of the anonymous spam comments are made by automatic net crawlers not actual people.

Hopefully, all the followers of my blog will now have access to it and all the spam will stop.

I do like posts with photos and I thought this one would give a laugh after being serious about the spam. Daughter took DH doubling up on the back of the statue at McKinley Racecourse, Queensland, when they were up that way a few weeks ago. I told him he should be careful, in future, where he put those hands!

Cheers, 

Robyn xo

Heart Food

Found out on Friday that I haven't lowered my LDL cholesterol so now I'm on medication to help lower it :(. The doctor wants to see me in 1 month to check up on my blood pressure and in 2 months I need another a fasting blood test for the cholesterol levels and another visit to the doc about this.

I've been researching good heart foods and as fish and salad are high on the list I decided that this lovely mullet, that was on special on Friday, would be stuffed with mushrooms and capsicum, baked in foil in it's own juices and accompanied by the roast pumpkin and lentil salad recipe I found on my search for new ways to use pumpkins.

DH (Mr meat and 3 veg) wasn't overly thrilled with it but he did eat most of his salad and commented that it wasn't too bad. That's high praise from a man who thinks dried peas/beans are only for feeding hens and cows.

Guess he'd better become used to eating heart healthy as this isn't a restaurant and I don't do a la carte meals! 

For those waiting on the pumpkin scone recipe it's still coming but I thought I'd help ensure I was around for a bit longer to post these things by eating healthier ;P. To compensate I've posted the roasted pumpkin and lentil recipe on the recipe page. It is surprisingly delicious!

Cheers,

Robyn xo

Triple treat

Yesterday I went to have my blood test and bugger me, after fasting overnight and driving 40km into town I discovered I'd left my referral at home! The lovely ladies at the lab suggested I pop up to the surgery and ask if it was possible to have another one as the surgery was fairly good about this sort of thing. They were probably thinking early seniors moment!

I did so but I think my new doctor doesn't trust me to be an amenable patient as I ended up with another consultation. After enquiring about my bp readings at home and my diet he took my blood pressure and it was 115/78.....perfect! I gave him a smug look and said "I told you we're all stubborn women in my family and I could do this".  He just shook his head and smiled at me but reminded me not to go off my tablets as he gave me a new referral.

After the blood test and some tripping around town on my little high I arrived home to be greeted by another wonderful sunset, and fortunately I've been carting the camera everywhere with me, after missing a few golden opportunities lately.

It took 3 tries to find the right manual combo that gave me a picture that showed what I was seeing:

5:35:22pm
f2.8 Exposure 1/125
Washout

5:35:46pm
f2.8 Exposure 1/250
still too pale

5:36:04
f2.8 Exposure 1/320
not quite the vibrant colours my eyes were seeing







5:36:38 GOT IT!
f2.8 Exposure 1/400

and of course, just wondering what it would look like taken up once more to f2.8 1/500 at 5:37:06 and it's not too bad either, though a bit dark.

Have you noticed the coloured clouds at the top of the photos disappearing and the yellow becoming less? It all faded away in 94 seconds!


The third treat was when I arrived in the house to discover an overseas parcel waiting for me. Oh yay, my prize had arrived from Tracy! My very first signed copy of a book, Chorus of the Dead, that I won back here and not only that it is the first in a new series .

I'm going to read it all over again as book 2 in the series called "Dead Silent" will be available in the next few months :D.  Can't wait to see how that reads!

Cheers,
Robyn xo

The NEW me?

Well, not really, as I've had my hair short since about October last year but I had it restyled and shortened again before Christmas 2012 and I've also lost a few kgs so my face looks thinner. The photo on the left was taken today, on short notice, as I needed a face shot for a forum I'm in. I'm dressed in a daggy old men's shirt I slob around home in. I look a bit different to a photo I took 2 years ago, on the right. Look how chubby my face is in that one, there's no cheek bones!  Move over moonface Bert Newton! That's why I'm not posting full body ones - too embarrassing as being short I look really round while I'm overweight! Another reason for wearing oversized shirts.

Follow up cholesterol blood test tomorrow so I'm hoping the weight loss, exercise and change of diet has shifted some of it out of my blood stream. My goal is not so much to lose weight but to eat and exercise my way to no prescribed medicines if possible and a BMI between 21-25. The latter is looking acheivable as I've dropped it 2.2 points to 27.7 in the last 6 weeks. I've discovered BMI isn't about your weight it's about your fitness as I've lost this much weight before but hardly made any impression on my BMI.

No hoping about this, there's going to be a new me before Spring and I'll need all new clothes. Ones that show off a bit more of me rather than hiding it :).

Cheers,
Robyn xo