Mmmm... cinnamon scrolls ....

I never intended this blog to have much baking in it - after all, I never baked anything until a few months ago unless it came out of a box - but here we are, another recipe!

Its just my style- not too many ingredients, simple instructions, no mixer required, and if it ends up looking messy you can say it was meant to be! Oh, and yummy with a cup of tea.

This recipe is in Linda Cockburns book 'Living the Good Life' about her quest to not spend any money for 6 months. (Its a great read, quite funny and full of inspiring ideas, though I'm not tempted to give up my spending just yet...!)

I have never made dough before so was pleasantly surprised that my first effort really worked, my 'dough ball' more than doubled in size in about an hour. Lots to roll out, this recipe made 12 large scrolls and around 8 smaller ones.

Cinnamon Scrolls

2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons cinnamon
2 tablespoons brown sugar
500g plain flour
2 teaspoons dried yeast
2 tablespoons sugar
approx 1 cup water

Microwave sugar, butter and cinnamon until melted. Set aside to cool.
In a bowl combine flour, yeast, sugar and enough water to turn it into a dough. On floured bench knead the dough until smooth and elastic.
Return it to bowl, cover with tea towel and set aside until doubled in size.
Preheat oven 180c, knock dough back then roll out into rectangle around 1cm thick. Spread melted cinnamon butter across dough.
With sharp knife cut into 3cm strips. Roll each into a scroll and place on greased tray. Bake until golden (around 15-20 mins on 180c)

*(I also added sultanas to this recipe, sprinkled on top of the cinnamon butter)

I am really pleased with my first effort, although the cooked dough didn't 'puff up' as much as I had expected, they are still a nice texture and taste good, perfect with a cuppa!

Yes, we have no potatoes .....

Garden update for this week...... some good - like the tiny grape tomatoes, not many of them but they are so sweet .... and some not so good - we decided to see what potatoes have grown since we planted them way back in Oct last year (see here )

The cage method revealed - nothing. Not a thing. Not one spud! We did have a few healthy looking plants for a while, then waited until they died back as we were supposed to. But there was nothing at all going on in there other than a worm-farm in a cage. Today I dug through the larger no-dig spud-bed down the fence line and again found nothing except decomposing straw. Hmm. Disappointed :-(

Luckily we have a lovely neighbour 2 doors down who gave us a bag of hers last week as she has just grown sooooo many she can't use them all! Of course she left with some fresh eggs ;-)

On the up-side my trial-seed-saving parsley has germinated! (And it only took 2 weeks which I think is pretty quick for parsley) At rough count I think there is at least 20 seedlings which is great. I'll pot them on in a week or so (just a pity there'll be no lovely potatoes to put the parsley on!)

Other planting - 6 purple king beans plants into the patch to replace the ones eaten by the bowerbirds. Pumpkins and eggplants settled in well, happy with the 8 days non-stop rain we've had. Rain also responsible for rotting a few of the tomato plants, being constantly wet does not make them happy :-(

Edibles this week - few tomatoes, various herbs, rocket, chillies. And 24 eggs last week :-)

Frantic baking ..!

We have been having hot days here for over a week- (high 30's) which has NOT made me want to cook anything at all. When its 36 inside the house the last thing I want is the oven on! But yesterday I just had to do it ..... I've had no biscuits or cakey things for over a week* (long time for me) so it was on with the oven early in the morning before the day got too hot.

* I decided last year to stop buying shop-bought biscuits, and only make my own.
This was a BIG deal for me as I do like my biscuits (!) but was committed to doing it after finding out that a lot of commercial biscuits -including tim-tams- use palm oil (you can read more about why this is a problem HERE ) I really surprised myself by sticking to it now for over 3 months and I truly don't miss them. The rest of the family prefer home baked biscuits too and have never asked for any shop ones.

I made 24 lovely choc-chip and banana muffins, and a big quiche for lunch with ham, tomato, feta and basil. The thermometer only went up 1 degree during the frantic-bake-off (!) and I used 10 of our eggs which were stacking up and 2 over-ripe bananas no good for anything else.

Basic Muffin Recipe -

3 cups SR flour

3/4 cup sugar

2 beaten eggs

1 1/2 cups milk

170g melted butter

(add fruit/choc chips/cinnamon etc for flavoured muffins)

• Mix flour and sugar in a bowl (and any other dry ingredients if using). Mix melted butter, milk and eggs together, then add to dry ingredients. Do not overmix.
• Spoon into buttered muffin pans and bake at 200c for 20 mins/until golden.
• Cool on wire rack (if you can wait!!!)

Last week in the garden

A quick upate of what's new in the garden ....

The veggie patch has been looking decidedly sad recently, so it was time to pull out the old and try something new. We harvested what must have been the world's smallest carrot crop - after months in the ground we pulled out around 15 teeny tiny carrots, the biggest of which could possibly be called a baby carrot, the others even smaller! At least the kids enjoyed pulling them out and we all had to laugh at the size of them. We ended up eating some of them raw- a mini-snack (!) and the chooks got the really tiny scrappy ones.

I think they hadn't had enough water, as deep down the soil was quite dry and no worms. (Together with the 'chooks in the patch' experience) Oh well, mark that one up to experience!

I had some butternut pumpkins (5) and a sugar-baby watermelon that our kids had germinated in containers, along with a couple of capsicums and tomatoes. We dug over the ground again, added a bag and a half of cow manure and few handfuls of blood and bone, and planted the new round next to a few eggplants.

They've been in a week now and looking good - survived the heatwave we've been having and still standing.

Oh, I did find out what has been eating our green stuff - bowerbirds. I had suspected them but caught 3 in there last week, tearing away at beans, silverbeet and the new pumpkins. So now we have the chicken fence all around, and a bird net over the top. I stopped short of putting a lock on!

The other side of the patch will be planted out when this lot germinate - also last week (can you tell the kids have started preschool ??!!!) I started off some cauliflowers, purple king beans (to replace the bowerbird-eaten ones), cherokee wax beans, rainbow beetroot, and the parsley seeds I saved earlier.

I wasn't sure about the cauli's so just sprinkled loads of seeds in.... at last count there were 50 germinated seedlings! Oops! I might be looking for cauli recipes later ......

Doggy biscuit?

I just had to post this - yesterday my daughter (3) was eating a rice cracker when she shouted out "mummy, I made a dog!"

It just looked so funny!

Solitary Confinement ...

Well good news on the chooky-front ...Rosie is finally back with the gang !


We put her in 'the cage' on Sunday, very basic no-frills-cheap-motel style accommodation after the chooky palace she is used to! Raised lock-up cage with food, water and a perch. Thats it. Poor Rosie :-(

And as if thats not humiliating enough, we had a storm the next night and my hubby had to run out in the middle of the night and find something waterproof to cover the cage- so she ended up with a Thomas Tank Engine playmat roof on .... Oh, the indignity!

I think the idea is they should be in the cage constantly for 3-4 days, but I let her out with the others for a bit free-ranging (even prisoners get rec time!) The first day she went straight back to the big house and onto the nest. No messing- I put her back in the cage until the next day.

She has been ok when outside the past 2 days so I think the broodiness has finished, so it was 3-4 days. She's back in the big house tonight with her friends, and when we checked was settling in the 'sleeping end' with them (laying/nesting box is at the opposite end). Hopefully will start laying again within a week.

Glad its over - I felt quite mean every time I walked past her- they're good at the guilt thing!

Broody Rosie

Rosie, one of our lovely Rhode Island Reds has been acting a little strange for a few days now- spending lots of time on the nest, making the weirdest noise when I go near her and fluffing herself up like a puffball .... but she was still laying so initially I discounted broodiness.

Today however, she didn't lay, and has made it very clear that she is sitting ready for her chicks, thank you very much! Small problem though, in that we don't have rooster, and we don't want to raise chicks yet, so this is where Rosie and I are having a little disagreement!

I didn't think we would have this issue yet, she is a cross-breed (usually less broody) and only been laying for 2 months. I hope the other 3 don't get ideas ....

She has hardly been off the nest all day, in fact only when I remove her and I 'shoo' her to make her walk around the garden, (thats a sight to see!) Although even then she stands, feathers all puffed up and squawks at me in disgust! I don't mind losing an egg a day, we have plenty (27-28 a week) and are giving some away to friends. Problem is, it is not good for hens to allow them to be broody indefinitely (if you don't have fertile eggs to give her) as they do become entirely focused on sitting in the nest, and nothing else, often not eating or drinking, and not wanting to move around, scratch outside etc. like normal behaviour. She already looks thinner and its so hot I have to keep making her drink.

The other problem is my other 3 chooks can't get on the nest as she's hogging it! They are laying somewhere near it, although I did see a disturbing sight this morning- one of our Australorps, Lady, had managed to squeeze in, but then Rosie just sat on top of her like Mother Hen! So there was an elevated Rosie with Lady's head stuck out from under her wing!

I've read up today on ALS and BYP (Backyard Poultry) for info, and it looks like its either raising chicks or breaking her out of broodiness. The most successful method usually involves isolating her for a few days in a separate airy cage, with plenty food/water but no nesting materials. Apparently if she has access to a warm, cosy nest -she could stay broody for months :-(
An airy cage with no nest will cool her body temp down enough to break the broodiness. Sounds cruel, but worse would be to let her carry on and risk her health.

What a steep learning curve this is!

Anyway, here is our fluffball Rosie- with a mean look in her eye as I approached with the camera!

Australia Day 2009

As some of you know, I wasn't born in Australia, but in England. However, having spent a total of 16 years here now (5 years when I was a teenager, and 11 years so far this time) I really do call Australia home. And I do feel more than a little patriotic on Australia Day - I love it! It's a time to reflect on what it means to live here, to feel like you belong here. I truly appreciate the chance I was given to return to this beautiful country. Its the place I want to be for the rest of my life with my family.

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Top 10 things I love about Australia .....

1. The Blue Mountains - I never tire of seeing them
2. The smell of gum trees on a hot day
3. The summer storms and the smell of rain on the hot earth
4. The weird and wonderful animals
5. Manly Beach
6. Sydney harbour
7. Catching the ferry between them!
8. Uluru - once visited, never, ever forgotten
9. The persistently optimistic national attitude of "She'll be right mate"
10. Our beautiful children were born here

To everyone out there, wherever you are .....

have a wonderful Australia Day :-)

HUGE knitting! (no, not mine!)

I thought this website might be of interest to some of you out there......

My MIL sent me the link (I think in jest - I have a barely-started scarf from 2 years ago) !

http://www.ingridwagner.com/Art/Knitting/

The woman is based in the UK, but her ideas could be used anywhere by anyone who has knitting skills. She makes wonderful rugs, wall art and HUGE knitting projects using needles the size of BROOM HANDLES! Inspired by her wonderful global travels.

Its truly amazing. I LOVE the rugs! So warm and inviting, perfect for those cold afternoons (she says, currently in 32 degrees!)

Seed saving

A few of my plants have gone to seed recently in the heat- I half neglected them and half meant for this to happen so I can try a bit of seed saving.


I picked these seeds today - from an Italian flat-leaf parsley. There are a load of heads like this one but the others are still green so 'll leave them a while. I usually just buy seedlings but will give these a go and plant them later this week (nothing ventured nothing gained!) Apparently they can take up to 6 weeks to germinate, so I'll keep updating .... but it may be a while!




Also have some coriander (cilantro) going to seed - bit green though so I'm hoping they will dry on the plant too?



I also saved some seeds from our hot chilli and planted them out yesterday- I can't even imagine eating more than one plant produces as they are SO FIERY, but they just look so pretty!