Sunday, June 21, 2009

Winter Magic 2009

This weekend is Winter Magic in the Blue Mountains and we joined in as always and enjoyed celebrating winter solstice with the mountains community and visitors from Sydney and elsewhere. The festival is always magically and this year was no different, great bands, great events, the parade was fantastic and so many of us were dressed up and sharing in the spirit of the day.

The 'wife' and I were inspired by the Victorian Farm that has been running on BBC Knowledge and we went as Scottish middle class farmers, sadly I took no photos, but many others did of us, but no-one we know so nothing for the blog but I took some great shots of the day.



Monday, June 08, 2009

Edna's peanut cookies

Our Queen's birthday long weekend was busy and delightful, its so nice to have a long weekend to spend more time with friends and in the studio and although we were out and about quite a lot, I also got to spend time in the kitchen and to do some baking. Also, as we have our house on the market, I thought the smell of baked biscuits might be a good touch to push a prospective buyer towards a sale, it what all the 'how to sell your house' stuff says at least.

I decided to use my mum's peanut cookie recipe Edna's Recipes. Raw, unsalted peanuts are an essential ingredient in these biscuits and give them their unique taste. I don't know where she got the recipe from, it feels like an American recipe, its certainly pre-WWII. The smell of those biscuits cooking transported me right back to my childhood and the pleasure of stealing the raw mixture from the bowl and being in the kitchen with mum while she cooked.

I won't rewrite the recipe here as you can get it on Edna's Recipes blog, but I'll go through the method with some photos.

The mixture in the bowl after all the ingredients are mixed together

Roll the pastry into balls that are golf ball size and then flatten them, the mixture doesn't spread that much, so flatten them well.



The smell of baking biscuits did indeed float through the house and did indeed tempt a buyer, so fingers crossed, they may have done their tick, thanks mum!

Wednesday, June 03, 2009

World environment day 2009

Renew

Reuse

Recycle

Remember we only have ONE planet, let's not destroy it.