The Genial Hearth
I’ve just put the kettle on, join me for a cuppa and a chat.
Archive for Blogging
March 25, 2009 at 11:50 pm · Filed under Bilby, Birthdays, Blogging, Craft, Domestic Life, Family, Season, Sewing
I’ve just gone through and added a number of posts that I have been meaning to post for a while… so far back that they may not have shown up in your feeds. Some of them were things I really wanted to share (but I also wanted the timing to be correct…), so I thought I’d post links to them all, here. I’m not promising scintillating reading though… I’ve forgotten much of the nuance, so these tend towards the bare-bones details:-(
Museum Visit
Mum’s Laprug
EChO Concert
Art Prints
Cuddlies
Puppet Theatre
Progress 2008
Planning for 2009
Our January Wine Dinner
January 27, 2009 at 12:04 am · Filed under Blogging, Domestic Life, Food, Recipes
We have a lot of lemons:-) Every year we struggle to use them all up (or give them away).
This year, we’re making an effort to try some new recipes. The first one we tried was Lemon Cordial.
After a bit of a saga to find a recipe, I had four, using essentially the same ingredients, but the quantity of sugar varied dramatically. Finally, chasing the ingredients, I checked with my mum—only to find that she used to love the lemon cordial a friend of hers made years ago! Even better, she could actually find the recipe! So that’s what I used.
Alison’s Orangeade (Lemon Cordial)
1 liter water, boiling
1.5 kilograms sugar, caster
6 lemon, juiced, and zest of half
30 grams tartaric acid
30 grams citric acid
30 grams epsom salts
Put all the ingredients into a pot, bring to a simmer and stir until the sugar dissolves.. Cool. Bottle into clean, dry bottles (or a jug). Dilute to taste with water, soda water or mineral water.
It could do with a bit of adjustment… our lemons don’t tend to be excessively juicy, so next time I’ll measure the juice by volume, rather than by lemons… and adjust it up a bit. But otherwise, highly successful:-)
(Just over four and a half years, and I’ve reached my thousandth post:-) Well, thousandth for now, but hopefully in the next couple of weeks I’ll fill in a number of missing posts—but I’ve made it past that milestone!)
December 27, 2008 at 3:45 pm · Filed under Blogging, Cygnet, Paddington
Christmas and Boxing Day are done!
Now we’re just surrounded by more stuff—people have been very good to us (Cygnet could pretty much be a one-baby advertisement for Lamaze toys!)
Lots of posts to catch up on, and decisions and plans to make for the coming year. I’m hoping to fill in the missing Advent posts over the next week (it was a choice of doing stuff, or blogging stuff… so I chose the doing:-) ) But otherwise, I wouldn’t expect to hear much from me until we’re going to start back at ’school’ in the middle of January. We’ll be busy catching up with folks, going away for a few days, and enjoying Paddington’s company while he’s on leave.
Hope you all had a good Christmas, that your New Year celebrations are enjoyable, and that 2009 holds many good things for you!
December 22, 2008 at 11:34 am · Filed under Advent, Baking, Blogging, Domestic Life, Food, Puggle, Season
Three dozen Fruit Mince Tarts made:-)
I haven’t actually made them in years, so this is a nice change:-)
I didn’t make my own Fruit Mince this year (maybe next year, I reckon Puggle may well be able to do it himself by then), but I still had home-made Fruit Mince, thanks to Lizzy_bbb. I did fail to check I had enough Shortcrust pastry (I had already decided to just use ready-rolled sheets, to simplify matters), so we did the rest with Puff pastry… They’re not as good (they don’t look right:-( ), but they’ll taste fine:-)
No recipe this year, basically circles of shortcrust pastry, place them in a tin, add a teaspoon of fruit mince and top with a cross or some other decoration out of the leftover shortcrust. Bake for about 15-20 minutes in a moderate/hot oven.
December 19, 2008 at 9:55 am · Filed under Blogging, Carnivals, Domestic Life, Food, Menu
Friday: Bottomless Quiche
Saturday: BBQ (sausages and chops) with friends
Sunday: From the Freezer (beef sausages and lentil stew)
Monday: With my folks
Tuesday: BBQ (sausages and kebabs, and white bean salad) with friends
Wednesday and Thursday will be part of the next week, because I’ll have to shop then—I’m not braving the shops on Boxing Day for groceries!
Off to sew!
December 18, 2008 at 8:31 pm · Filed under Advent, Blogging, Domestic Life, Food, Season
Make Shortbread.
I don’t think I’ve managed this since Puggle was born. And this year is no different. It may still occur if I fluke my way through everything else to complete, but that’s exceedingly unlikely!
I did get a decent portion of the remaining Christmas present shopping completed though, and Puggle and Bilby got to go to the beach, so not an unproductive day:-)
December 17, 2008 at 8:31 pm · Filed under Advent, Blogging, Domestic Life, Food, Season
Make Peppermint Creams.
As so often happens around this time, we didn’t get this done. There was a fair amount of present making completed though:-)
We will get to these over the weekend (I hope!), as they provide a good balance to the other baking.
December 16, 2008 at 8:27 pm · Filed under Advent, Blogging, Books, Christmas, Domestic Life, For Children, Picture Books, Season
Read Hettie’s Christmas Gift (doesn’t seem to be available through Amazon—I guess, because it’s Australian.)
We did this. This is another book to which I really enjoy returning. I love the fact that it provides a link between the northern hemisphere traditions that we read about, and our southern hemisphere reality.
December 15, 2008 at 10:08 pm · Filed under Advent, Bilby, Blogging, Books, Christmas, Family, For Children, Picture Books, Season
Read Is That You, Father Christmas?
. Bilby became very excited when she recognised the Christmas tree in the book as being like the Christmas tree in the corner of the room:-)
December 12, 2008 at 10:22 pm · Filed under Advent, Blogging, Domestic Life, Organisation, Puggle, Season
Make Blueberry and Cardomom Bread.
When doing the shopping, I wasn’t able to find dried blueberries (I think I usually find them at Woolies… I was at IGA). Instead I got dried cherries—what the recipe actually called for!
Sadly though, I napped with the children (three nights of Bilby waking in the middle of the night… teeth??), so I failed to put the wheat on to soak in time. None of this bread today:-( (We will make it though, possibly Monday… I’d like to see what it’s like with the cherries:-) ) I’ve cooked some fruit loaf instead, and Puggle was telling me today how he is going to squeeze orange juice for Dada in the morning:-) (I don’t think Paddington reads here every day, so it should be safe to say that:-) )
December 11, 2008 at 10:29 pm · Filed under Blogging, Books, Domestic Life, For Children, Picture Books
Read Wombat Divine
.
This is a family favourite:-) We read it a couple of times today, and I am sure we will read it many more times until it is put away:-)
December 11, 2008 at 11:26 am · Filed under Advent, Bilby, Blogging, Christmas, Craft, Domestic Life, Family, Puggle, Season
Make presents.
The day ended up being far busier than I had anticipated, so although the activity was ready to begin, Puggle and Bilby only really started on it today. Puggle is being highly industrious and productive though:-) He seems really quite excited by them (can’t give you too much detail though, I’m pretty sure some of the recipients are reading:-) )
December 8, 2008 at 11:00 pm · Filed under Advent, Blogging, Domestic Life, Food, Freezer, Season
Help make the Ice-Cream Plum Pudding.
Well, we eventually got the fruit on to soak:-) Haven’t finished the rest (so no photos:-) )… but we’ll get to it:-)
December 6, 2008 at 10:00 pm · Filed under Advent, Baking, Bilby, Blogging, Books, Cygnet, Domestic Life, Family, Food, For Children, Paddington, Picture Books, Puggle, Season
Today the task was to read The Secret of Saint Nicholas
. This was one of the books we had from the library last year, and Puggle recognised it when we got it out again:-)
This gave us a chance to catch up on our cooking:-) So while I put Bilby down for her nap, the boys baked:-)
December 5, 2008 at 11:00 pm · Filed under Advent, Bilby, Blogging, Domestic Life, Family, Food, Puggle, Season
So they shaped the gingerbread (well some of it, and there’s still more to do).
Today’s tasks were making Speculatius (which we’ll end up doing tomorrow morning) and putting out their shoes for Saint Nicholas.
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