That’s What Your Mum Said

A very close friend gave me this book a couple of years ago for my birthday. Needless to say, she knows me quite well!

The recipes are old-school and delicious. My absolute favourite is the Simplicity Chocolate Cake because it is just that – simple. I make it into little tiny fairy cakes with a yummy butter frosting on top; I imagine it is just as good with a little icing sugar dusted over it and served alone.

125g butter, melted

2 eggs, lightly whisked

1 cup self-raising flour

1/3 cup cocoa (I always add a teensy bit more because I am greedy)

1 cup caster sugar

1/2 cup milk

1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence (I use extract because I like the smoothness)

(Note: I always get the cold ingredients out to come to room temperature beforehand)

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celcius (356 degrees Fahrenheit). Grease and line the bottom of a cake tin (or put patty cake cases in a tin)

2. Melt the butter (they say over a saucepan – I use the microwave). Sift the flour and cocoa together into a mixing bowl

3. Add the sugar, the eggs, milk, vanilla and the melted butter.

4. Stir to combine with a wooden spoon or an electric mixer; beat hard for 3 minutes, or until the mix lightens in colour

5. Pour mixture into the tin. Bake for 40-50 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean (when I bake my tiny cakes, I cook for around 8-10 minutes. Obviously, just adjust for the size you are creating).

6. Enjoy the heck out of it!

Six seed soda bread by Heidi at 101Cookbooks.com

I think I will make it this weekend! Perfect weather for some bread baking here (quite chilly and very rainy, so putting the oven on will warm the house AND help dry our clothes)!

What are you making this weekend?

My Mum used to get up quite early in the morning and often she would spend her time making pikelets. I would wake to the smell of them cooking in the warm house and it piqued my hunger – enough to want to get out of bed!

I would stumble into the kitchen anticipating the deliciousness coming my way.

Then Mum would say ‘DON’T TOUCH THEM! THEY ARE FOR MY WORKMATES! DON’T_TOUCH_THE_FOOD!

I think I get my nasty streak from her.

Her recipe makes about 10 small yet very fulfilling pikelets. I have them with lemon and sugar on top, but they are just as nice with any topping you can think of – honey, butter or jam are usually the best (add some cream with the jam version for hella goodness)! Apparently some people can afford fresh berries and are just a little bit fancy. If this is you, you might like to make something that looks like this:

If you are like me, you will produce something that looks like this:

You know what – they still taste DAMN good!

1 cup self raising flour

1/4 teaspoon bicarbonate soda

1/2 cup of milk with 1 teaspoon of vinegar in it

2 tablespoons of caster sugar

1 egg

1 dessert spoon of melted butter

1. Heat a frying pan over medium-high heat and add a little butter

2. Mix dry ingredients together. Add the milk, egg and butter. Mix until smooth.

3. Spoon small amounts into pan – you want the pikelets to be about 10cm wide. Cook until small bubbles rise in the batter and the face-down side is brown. Flip, and cook until brown.

4. Eat as many as your heart desires

Well, straight up, I am a jerk/gerk (I am in two-minds about the spelling of this baby). I haven’t posted in forever and let us all be honest: not good enough. Can I list some excuses?

1. I have been thrown into the world of the law. It is fascinating and terrifying and all consuming. I go to bed thinking about Contracts. I wake up thinking about the Criminal law. Sometimes in the middle I sneak a little ‘Gilmore Girls’. I am getting decent marks and now have exams to look forward to in about three weeks time. Woot?
2. I have been lame-ass sick. The doc’s tell me it is a hyper-active thyroid, however they don’t actually know what it causing it. I have had at least 3 diagnoses so far but I guess I will wait until I see the endocrinologist in about a month. This thyroid thing (I call him Clive) is a crazy mofo. Makes me eat like a horse whilst still losing weight. Makes me have panic attacks even when I’m not stressed or anxious – just feels like pumping that adrenalin through whenever and wherever. Makes my mind a bit hazy. Makes me avoid coffee because it sets him off and makes me shake like a drug addict. If he continues, he will lead to bad things like malnutrition and osteoporosis. I want him fixed dammit!
3. I am lazy. When I have time to blog (which actually happens quite a lot) I tend to do Sudoku puzzles or make cakes or just sit and contemplate my navel.

I will try harder. I am reading all of your delightful blogs, I swear! They keep me happy and alive. What more could I want?

Tonight I am doing a placement at the Legal Centre that my university runs. I get to watch a fourth year law student talk to a real client and interview them regarding their legal issue. I am excited about this because legal-aid style law is where I want to head. None of this corporate swill for me (unless they offer me cake and iced coffee all the time….). Hopefully I don’t get a crazy who has just stabbed someone and wants to know their rights. I guess it is about a fair trial and all that….

I have just finished the book ‘the ethics of what we eat’ by Peter Singer and Jim Mason. This is my second Peter Singer book on the topic of animals as food (after his classic ‘Animal Liberation’)  and it has been the paddle that has finally whacked me over the edge.

My partner and I have made the leap to vegetarianism.

He has always been very close to being a vegetarian but he would eat meat if I cooked it. Honestly, we only eat meat about once a week now anyway so it won’t make a huge difference. What will be noticeable is that we are also cutting out fish and skipping the pescatarianism. There is some heavy evidence that fish farming is one of the worst with relation to pollution but even just catching wild fish is not something I want to be involved in any more.

We won’t be going vegan just yet. I have been having some fairly serious health issues that mean no matter what I eat my body isn’t dealing with the nutrients properly, so we are keeping the cheese and the eggs. I will start looking into ethical cheese though, and will probably attempt to use soy milk form now on (I drink all of my coffee with soy, but the partner will be harder to convince).

I have been getting some amazing recipes from the gluttonous vegan (seriously, she is a genius) an it is amazingly easy tor replace any meat with tofu or my absolute favourites, kidney and cannellini beans. We use a LOT of beans.

I am happy about this decision. It feels good to be making a little bit of a difference just in our household. Don’t get me wrong – I will miss the odd steak or chicken in my favourite Balinese dishes. However I just don’t think it is worth the cruelty they went through to get to my plate.

Before I started the degree that shall hereby be known as “Bachelor of buttloads of reading” I made a few things for presents. I have also bought a few things recently. Here they are.

I knitted this hot water bottle cover for my dear friend Peta’s birthday gift. She comes from the same small village as I did and we have both moved into big cities (albeit quite a distance from each other). We have had to grow up and be responsible, however people from our little village have slightly different values to those of the people we went to high school with and then subsequently met in the big wide world. We like track pants and climbing trees and making cakes out of the ingredients we have in the pantry (hello marshmallow, milo cake). She is a public servant in a job that requires her to be dressed up and coiffed during the day, but I know she loves being a sloth at night. This will help her through the long winter ahead (she lives in one of the few parts of Australia that actually get painfully cold).

If any of you are interested in this pattern is is a super-quick project and very rewarding. I have given them to many people as gifts now!

These were delicious. The partner loved them, and my parents actually stole the rest of them from my house when they visited. Yes, STOLE. Sneaky bastards. Joy the Baker is the genius behind these Honey Roasted Peanut Thumbprint cookies and I applaud her.

Another dear friend Mitch turns 30 this week and he had a killer party on the weekend themed ‘Rockers v Mods’. I will have another post with the delightful pictures but this is the notebook case we bought him. It is from byrd & belle and I would highly recommend their craftsmanship. He loved it by the way.

• I cooked these:

Earl Grey Tea cookies at Shutterbean

Honey and Pistachio Biscotti at A Cozy Kitchen

Both were delicious and very easy to make which is a lovely feature when cooking. I also made a Mangomisu (Tiramisu with Mango instead of coffee/chocolate) and Banoffee Pie for Christmas Day. Yummo!

• I bought an ‘Australian Women’s Weekly’ magazine. I don’t quite know why
• I continued knitting this scarf during this Australian summer weather. Kinda loopy
• I am looking to buy thankyou cards and blank note-cards to use throughout the year
• I cleaned the mirrored doors in my bedroom

What did you do this week that made you realise you are your mother?

Around these parts (my townhouse) we celebrate Gravmas. December 25th was the day that Isaac Newton was born (in the old style dating system) and as you are probably aware, he was led to discover gravity by watching an apple fall from a tree.

I celebrate something that is real to me and that I can see and understand. I have full respect for other beliefs, but being a staunch Atheist, I will celebrate the next few days with nothing in mind but my awesome family, far too much fantabulous food, my lovely partner, my new red polka-dot dress, and an apple atop my Gravmas tree! Oh, and gravity (probably when I fall over after a few too many ciders).

I hope that you all have a safe and amazingly fun-filled holiday season. Get too drunk, eat too much and pass out in a heap, I say (just make sure that if you are in the North it is a warm place; in the South, make sure you are near to an air-conditioner)!

To blow the cuteness factor of this through the roof, here is my nephew at his first Gravmas last year.

I have not eaten solid food in approximately 41 hours. I have not had anything to drink in approximately 15 hours. It is for a good cause which will hopefully clear a lot of things up that I am worried about and ease my mind, but frack this is torture.

I cannot think straight and I can barely stand. I feel so ridiculously weak. Food keeps me not only physically but also mentally stable. Brain do not compute.

Dinner tonight will be magnificent.

I have an incurable case of foot in mouth disease that often causes awkward, knuckle-biting moments in my life and the lives of those around me.

Whilst camping on the weekend with my entire family (four siblings, four nieces and nephews, parents, partners, aunt, cousins, cousins’ children) and many friends, I made a total dick of myself. A lot of these friends are what I would lovingly term bogans. They are insanely lovely and would do anything for you, but they do enjoy a bourbon whilst singing along to ‘Live’ and wearing socks and thongs. One of my older sisters’ friends is called Ferret (I can only assume due to his small, lithe stature) and he is a hell of a lot of fun. Around the campfire on the final night he came over to get some damper with butter and golden syrup (hells yeah) and lifted his hand to waggle his little finger. To me, after a few glasses of champagne at the afternoon wedding and a few more goons later, it looked as though he had magically bent his little finger all the way down and waggled his knuckle. It was amazing! I had never seen anyone do it before! I got very excited and yelled “whooooooaaaaaaa, do it again Ferret, show me again”! I then hopped up and went over to him whilst looking amazed and excited. I was really confused as to why the partner and my oldest sister were looking embarrassed and saying “oh, Adele, no”. When I got to Ferret, I touched his knuckle to try and figure out how he had bent it over so crazily.

I discovered he wasn’t magic.

I discovered that he has no little finger.

I touched his stump.

Face palm city.

Here are some of the less awkward moments of the weekend. Except for the crocs. They are damned awkward.