I'm really not cheating on you!

Dear Optical Delusion,  my beautiful blog.

I am really not cheating on you. You are still my number one.  My favourite, my first.  The thing I've got going over on Wordpress with Lauren is a side project.  Something I've hankered for for a long time.  Something you can't give me.

You see in Optical Delusion we are one, alone, but never lonely, we talk about our life and, for a long time, about the illness,  then the recovery and the veggies... there is always lots about the veggies.  We talk about the primary things.  The camper, the plans, what's really going on.   Over there on Wordpress it is a totally different world.  It's not just me, it's my favourite Ranga Lauren too.  We discuss ideas, themes, schemes but express it all in images not words.   We have guest bloggers too talking about their world and showing us their take on an idea floated.  Yes, true, we do post more regularly,  we try for ever monday night, but sometimes work gets in the way and it has to be later in the week.  Oh and we struggle with the formatting.  Damn thing is so hard.  It resizes our pics and changes our margins and generally drives us both to despair.  Monday nights can be quite maddening.  Where as you are simpler and easier and stick to the visual world, normal English language stuff.  I'm even having to rely upon 1st year uni HMTL to try and rectify Wordpress formatting errors.   You are the simpler solution Optical Delusion.

So don't feel neglected, I am not cheating on you.  Westsidegirls is just an aberration.  A image aberration.... oh and a whole load of fun too!

2015! Here we go!

Well 2014 was pretty good.  No new cancer, still having some side effects from treatment but realistically I'm very lucky and pretty good!     Working in the tin shed is going ok.  It's pretty squishy at times, but it won't be for much longer.  The new building is progressing as expected.  New car is going well too.  Needed some new tyres and yesterday, a new windscreen.   My first ever windscreen after the biggest stone chip I have ever seen!     Started taking a few more photos too.  Something that I have been missing out on in 2014.

Started a new collaborative photographic project with associated blog.  I've been wanted to do this for some time, but couldn't find a suitable collaborator.  But she was under my nose the whole time!  Lauren and I met about 7 years ago and started shooting together.  We are vastly different and 17 years apart in age.  The idea is to photograph the same subject each week and see how similar or how different our shots are.  It's called Westside girls and here is the link!  Westside Girls .

The veggie patches going ok too.   The crops are booming, yet I still haven't got my head around true crop rotation. The original single veggie bed has swelled to 12. For the first time I've grown rockmelons and for the first time I've lost some veggies to something other than insects.   The corn has been stripped and I can only assume that a very smart possum has worked out how to do this and a couple of the rockmelons appear  to have been attacked by lizards.  Still in the grand scheme of things it is ok to be feeding the native animals a share of the bounty!

As for the other Bounty that plays a part in my life,  William Blighs Bounty, I did not spent a lot of time reading about it in 2014.  Although some great new books have been written about the Bounty, and other fascinating maritime history,  I have not been doing much reading of late.  Seemingly a side effect of having some holes burnt into my brain as part of my treatment.   The desire to read is still there, but I find I can only read a few pages before sleep overtakes me and a big heavy book smashes me in the nose.   Hopefully I will get more reading under my belt in 2015.

So what else do I want for 2015???  Well not a whole lot more really.  I'm essentially very happy with my lot.  I am hoping for some relief from the annoying side effects of treatment.   I'd like to be sleeping consistently better than I am.  I'd love to spend a whole lot more time with camera in hand taking some quality snaps and sometime I'll be taking the camper for a spin.  Yep, this is the good life!

2014...Gone, but not forgotten!

2014 in pictures... my pictures.

Roll on 2015.  Lets have some fun!

Let them eat cake!

"Let them eat cake!" she said.

When challenged by Terry the Tradie to make a Christmas cake like his grandma used to make I thought I best rise to the challenge.  Initially I made a version with a bucketload of scotch.  A classic 8 inch fruit cake baked in a slow oven for about 2 hours 20.  I gave him a quarter and asked for an opinion.   He was very happy with the result.  We discussed options like more dates or less grog or different grog.  Different grog intrigued him and we decided the thick orange liqueur Cointreau would he his choice for christmas day.  I set out then to replicate the first, substituting Cointreau but found the it quickly stuck to the bottom of the boiler and needed more liquid so as not to burn.

The second Cointreau cake was a better consistency than the first and so it is the one he will receive tomorrow.

The cake is very easy to make.  Today I am making 4 smaller Whiskey versions and I thought I would blog as I go.

First up you need to soak a kilo of mixed dried fruits in half to a whole cup of grog of your choice.

Then you need to hack 15 or so pitted dates.

Then a about the same in glace cherries.

Into the boiler goes 125g of butter, a teaspoon of ground dutch cinnamon, three quarters of a cup of brown sugar and more liquid.  You need a cup of liquid in total.  It can be all grog, all water or a mix of both.

Throw the fruits in now. The groggy mixed fruit and the dates and cherries.  All in together. Onto the stove top she goes and the butter, sugar and liquid will begin to simmer.  Lots of stirring so that it doesn't catch on the bottom is required if you use all grog, or the thicker liquers like Cointreau.  It needs to simmer for 3 minutes then cool down.

When its cool you need to beat 2 eggs and add the beaten eggs and another cup of grog to the fruit mix.  

They need to all be mixed up well before you add a cup of self raising flour and a cup of plain flour, sifted of course!  Then whack it in the cake tin of you choosing.  Round,  square, whatever.  This mix suits an 8 inch tin.

If you are going to ice it (which I HATE HATE HATE) then the process ends there, otherwise you can pile up more mixed fruit or almonds and cherries or pecan nuts and jazzy up the top.

The tins need to be wrapped in 4 layers of newspaper and tied off with string, then onto a sheet of cardboard and into the oven at about 160 degrees for a smudge over 2 hours.  If the skewer comes out clean, then she's done.

Now most people skewer the top of the cake as it exits the oven and sprinkle over more grog.  Not me.  I use my insulin needles to draw up more grog and inject it directly into the cake.  (eerrr clean fresh unused needles of course) .   You can continue to feed the cake this way for a couple of weeks... depending on how high you want to blow when you get pulled over for a RBT on Christmas Day!

The end result is pretty good and Terry the Tradie agrees.

To tree or not to tree? That is the question!

To tree or not to tree might well pertain to my gardening conundrum.  I do not grow fruit and have one dwarf citrus, but trees steal the sun from my veggies and the lawn.  But I digress, I do not mean fruit trees... I mean Christmas trees!   The silly season.  Home decoration.  As  I live alone, the youngest in our family is now aged 21 and few of my friends have small children, what is the point of the setting up a christmas tree?  Christmas lunch is not at mine this year, I'm not planning any home orientated christmas drinks or parties.  So the question is,  should I bother fighting my way to through the garage to find a 7 foot fake fir tree with 900 hanging points on it AND find 900 baubles to hang on it.. or should I just not bother with a tree at all?

Last year I did hang 3 trees from the ceiling in the office, but this year I'm in the tin shed and I don't really think there is either enough space or sufficient visitors to bother with that.  Home is a different story though.  So the question is to tree or not to tree?

I do have at least 12 Christmas trees in 4 different styles and numerous sizes down in the garage. And yes, I would have at least 5 or 6 HUNDRED baubles to hang off it.  There are at least 6 different star/spiral/angel style tree toppers and tree skirts in 3 different colours!  As for colour schemes I can do a fully silver bauble tree. Or a fully gold babble tree.  Or a vibrant multi coloured tree ... but will I bother?   Should I bother?  Will the enjoyment outweigh the effort?  What benefit is there to a couple of hours hard slog setting up a tree?   I don't feel particularly christmassy.  Will a tree change that?

I already have all the gifts bought, some wrapped, but an hours should see the remained all wrapped with with bows and gift tags.  But a tree????  I'm still not feeling the joy of it!

Facebook and it's challenges

There is lots of weird stuff happening on Facebook. Well actually there is a lot of really boring stuff happening on Facebook but once in a while something interesting happens. This week I was invited by a photographer friend to take a FB challenge whereby I post a black and white image everyday for 5 days.

Now I'm not normally one for FB challenges or chain letters or that kinda stuff and I rarely post pics on Facebook,  but this one caught my attention.  So I thought I'd give it a go.

Initially I was going to shoot 5 new shots, but hell, who has time for that everyday.  Instead I looked thru my archives for some pics that would convert to greyscale and hold the viewers interest.  So here they are. I hope you like them.

Peas peas peas!!!

In the last post I talked about sisters floral front lawn no-mow garden makeover.  Well enough of that tizzy girly stuff... lets talk food production!

The veggie patch has now swelled to 12 1200x900mm raised veggie beds. The last three having only been in place and filled for about a month.  Assembly of them is really easy.  Ordering and receiving delivery of the soil from Green Thumbs Garden Centre was also easy.  Carting the 3 cubic meters of soil from the front yard to the back is a whole different story!!  That was hard.  Sister and I knocked it over in under 2 hours on a stinking hot sunday with quite a few rest breaks!!!  It was hot heavy work.

Those new beds now have capsicum, Queensland blue and butternut pumpkin, sugar snap peas and rockmelons growing in them.  Nothing productive yet, but on their way.  New growth is strong and the butternut has already spilled over the bed edge and onto the lawn.  There is still sufficient space to throw in more produce. A LOT more produce!   In other beds I have all the usual suspects carrots, tomatoes, corn, zucchini, cucumber, spring onions, radish, silver beet, garlic and an abundance of sugar snap peas.

The peas are amazing.  I think I planted 16 pea "seeds" and from that I have already well over 1500 edible pods. A second wave of pods is ready for harvest in the next few days, but 3 vines have given up the ghost and will come out today.  Hence a new planting in one of the new beds.

We are in stir fry heaven here!  So many are eaten straight off the vine.  Sister and I like them in stir fries but mum just steams them and eats them whole. The neighbours are loving the excesses of bounty but I need to get into a rhythm of swapping excesses for eggs....as I chicken out of having chickens!!

The whole veggie garden experience is super easy to maintain.  All the work is in the setting up.  I do wander thru the veg every day.  I water daily when it is stinking hot, but thru the winter months it generally takes care of itself. I have not noticed any spike in the water bills thru watering the food crop.  Weeding is all done by hand.  No pesticides on the food, but I do kill the grass around the outside of the beds with a herbicide to slow the invasion of weeds and grass into the beds.  There are quite a few Redback spiders living in the corrugations of the metal beds.  They get squashed!  I might spent an hour in the veggies every weekend just tidying, trimming and weeding and about 15 minutes some mornings for watering.  Harvesting is in the evening just before dinner.  You can't get much fresher than that!

As per usual a visual reward for reading this far.