Snap it {red}

I saw today's theme and knew this would be a cinch for me.
Inspired by Sarah and Ally. I decided to do a collage of my favourite red photos.
As you can see red features a lot in our hut, I'm trying to find some more red for my wardrobe too (today I'm wearing a new red skirt).
I look forward to checking out some of the other red links later today.

Playing along here.

Monday Menu {the Hoot cake}

Well this last week was all about one thing the cake. My sister sent me a text a while ago with a photo of a Hoot cake (up until that point I admit I had never heard of Giggle and Hoot). It looked doable. I gave them a few types of cakes to choose from (for inside) and they decided upon a caramel mud cake.
So over the last couple of days the cake took shape, I baked two mud cakes, made some buttercream, Rob sandwiched them and covered them in the white fondant (he's much better at that than me, and believes he has a second career in plastic surgery if he ever desires a career change), then the cake was carefully transported to my sisters. Where, on a very cool and miserable Friday evening, she and I set to work with 2 kilos of coloured fondant and that photo. We're pretty proud of our effort. Although it didn't start promisingly when I was quickly trying to make some royal icing to use in sticking the bits together with. I hit a spatula in the mixing bowl with the electric mixer throwing icing sugar and goopy icing all over me and the bench and the wall. My sister just heard me say "oh no". She had the good grace just to laugh at me, and the damage wasn't too bad. But we moulded and rolled and cut and came up with:


My sister had cooked up a storm, baking cupcakes, jelly cakes, scones, biscuits. meringues, fudge and fairy bread. I offered to make a second cake just in case the 40 guests were still feeling hungry. I quickly made the Annabel Langbein lemon and coconut cake on Saturday morning, covered it in cream cheese frosting and added some pink mini bunting. I left the coconut out of the icing this time, as I thought that last time it made it look a bit lumpy.


The party was a great success, the birthday girl walking around (yes she can walk), dancing to music, opening lovely gifts and being loved by all her many Aunties, Uncles, grandparents, great grandparents, great aunties and uncles, and friends. I'm not sure what she thought of the Hoot cake, she smiled and looked intently at it, and seemed shocked by us all suddenly bursting into song. But she knows how to clap and clapped along with us.

I got the icing from a new-ish cake decorating shop in South Hobart, A Tiny Bit Marvellous. A bit like a lolly shop for cake decorator professionals and wannabes like me!

The rest of the weekend was spent relaxing and doing some de-beige-ing.
The menu this week (apart from the cake):
Monday: leftover beef and quince tagine with pumpkin and fennel couscous, and a fennel and orange salad.
Tuesday: a fish-less paella, with roasted red peppers and olives.
Wednesday: a spinach and pine nut omelette.
Thursday: Tomato pasta sauce, with red peppers, olives and fetta.
Friday: THAT cheese (1792, a washed rind matured on a piece of Huon pine board).
Saturday: Beef, mushroom and red wine pie.
Sunday: Beer braised ham hocks, with fennel, apples and cabbage.


What's been on the menu and your place?

De-beige-ing chairs

The cake worked well, and Maisy's party was lovely. I'll share some photos tomorrow.
We bought a few more Piper Tru-line blackwood chairs a while back. The style matched our two red chairs (the ones I saved from the tip). But they were covered in horrid beige vinyl.
So today was the day, it was grey and cool so we stayed inside and tackled the chairs. The other chairs had come apart easily once you unscrewed the screws. But the cushions on these ones didn't budge. We worked out that the vinyl had adhered to the timber frame, perhaps if they'd been in the sun. So we took to them with a razor blade and a knife. Cutting then free! We recovered them with the same red as the other chairs. We did two, but will need to buy some more fabric to finish off a 3rd chair. We're pretty happy with them!
Hope you had a lovely weekend. I'll be back tomorrow with the Hoot cake.

Growing and planning

A cool wet week at the hut.
The little seedlings are growing well in the vegetable garden, broad beans and peas, the lettuce has slowed down, but we thought we might harvest some mini rocket for a little salad with dinner tonight. I'm not usually into the micro-herbs thing. We bought a Bruny Island cheese yesterday, a 1792, and it is beyond ripe, it was so smelly we put it in two plastic containers, which may now need to be thrown away! But I'm sure it will taste fine. Friday cheese night is back!


I couldn't resist a little more garden retail therapy this week, and justified it by purchasing vegetables and flowers, it's so not frivolous that way.
So I ordered some (ahem 48) Mary Washington asparagus crowns, some red Ad Rem tulips, Golden Parade tulips, red ranunculus, and Gerbera Garvinea plants in red, pink, yellow and white. Apparently they are cold hardy. I haven't seen any leaves pop up yet from the other bulbs we planted, but I guess I'm being impatient.


All images courtesy of Garden Express and Tesselaar.
It's a big weekend coming up, tomorrow is my niece's 1st birthday party! I can't believe it's a year since I went to visit my sister in hospital and got to hold her tiny baby, less than a day old. She and I are making a Giggle and Hoot birthday cake, tonight we're decorating the top of it. I hope it works out ok.
I might drop by here over the weekend, the weather is shaping up for an inside kind of weekend.

Lemon linguine

I meant to post this recipe (if you can call it that) yesterday, but blogger was having some weird issue with the length of the post. I did ramble on a bit yesterday, sorry about that, but I wanted to capture the feel of our weekend.

This is my favourite pasta meal to make, it's so easy and delicious, and we usually have all the ingredients in our home, so no special shopping required. I found it in my first Nigella cook book, How to Eat, the page has became dog eared and splashed.  I remember when I used to dine alone I would make this for myself, serving a rocket salad on the side and drinking a gin and tonic as I waited for the pasta to cook.
I have left out the cream from Nigella's recipe, that used to make it a bit runny, this sauce is much thicker and voluptuous, clinging to the pasta, rather than pooling in the bottom of my bowl.

Lemon linguine

{based on Nigella's recipe in How to Eat}
To serve 2

300g dried linguine pasta
2 egg yolks
2 eggs
1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese, plus more to serve on top
Finely grated zest and juice of a lemon
salt
pepper
1 tablespoon butter
Italian parsley

While your pasta is cooking in a big pot of very salty water, mix together the egg yolks, whole eggs, the grated Parmesan, the zest and juice of the lemon, salt and pepper and whisk to combine well.

Once your pasta is cooked, drain quickly and then return it to the pot (off the heat), add the butter and stir to coat the pasta well. Tip in your sauce and stir around to coat. Tip into your bowls, top with extra cheese, chopped parsley and some more pepper.

Eat. Rocket salad and gin and tonic optional.

Monday's Menu {our normal little life}

We had another quiet stay-close-to-the-hut weekend. At least the weather was nice enough this week to go outside, open windows and get some sun. Maybe our quiet life might seem a little dull to others but I wouldn't have it any other way. I posted this photo of the hut, reflected in our dam yesterday on Instagram. One of the comments said it looked like a fairy tale. Which made me think about our life at the hut. Rob and I often walk around the block, checking on our trees, looking for thistles and enjoying the dogs running and wrestling nearby. There have been many perimeter walks, mostly with the hut present only in our imaginiation. There were times when I dragged my feet, that I didn't enjoy it, because I didn't think we'd ever live there. Seeing the empty spot where the hut should be just made me feel upset. The problems seemed insurmountable, but still we couldn't think of anywhere else we'd rather be. I guess that's being a little melodramatic, but I hope I never forget the difficulties we had to get there, as it makes me all the more grateful for the quiet weekends we've had recently.


We've put a moratorium on going into Hobart on weekends at the moment. With the shorter days it seems such a waste to be driving around shopping so we've been trying to get organised on Friday evening for a weekend in. Having said that, our washing machine is becoming quite temperamental so shopping for a new one may be a task for a Saturday morning soon. So our weekend started with some shopping and then a quick lemon linguine with a glass of wine, then reading new library books on the window seat.

Saturday morning is becoming our sleep in morning now, and I was treated to bacon, eggs and baked beans with freshly baked rolls in bed. Claudia was very interested in the bacon, both dogs got a little taste afterwards. I borrowed some novels from the library for once, normally I stick to cooking or gardening books. So I enjoyed reading Eat, Pray, Love and an old Rosamunde Pilcher novel set in Cornwall.

I made some meatballs to freeze for future meals, and cooked some quinces for a tagine I had in mind. Rob spent his morning on his hands and knees shoving aluminium fly screen underneath the cladding of the hut, in an attempt to keep the mice out.

Rob came in after lunch and made a massive batch of shortbread cut out as foxes. Which I have just realised I have failed to photograph. I think he was a bit over it by the end, as the mix was quite crumbly but they were very tasty.

Claudia has obviously decided to take the mouse problem to task. She snuffles around in the tufts of grass looking for them. Up until now I didn't think she'd been very successful. On Saturday afternoon she was pouncing and pointing and then just stood there until we came closer, then she picked up a poor mouse and ran off with it! I guess she didn't think it was fair if she had caught it that we should get it. Apparently it was quite comical to see me running after her, and her running with the mouse's tail hanging out of her mouth. I'm still not sure if she swallowed it or spat it out somewhere.

I cooked the beef and quince tagine, we've become quite obsessed about chuck steak at the moment and are dreaming up all sorts of slow cooked casseroles to use it in, serving it with a roasted pumpkin and fennel couscous.

Sunday was so sunny so we took the dogs for a walk on nearby Manuka Hills through some dry sclerophyll forest. The dogs loved it and ran around pretending to be timber wolves. We headed back to the hut and listened to Radio National's coverage of the Sydney Writer's Festival while we oiled all the timber window frames, doors and skirting with tung oil, a job we'd been meaning to do for awhile. We planted the red ranunculus in the flower garden, quickly walked another perimeter and then headed inside so Rob could help me dye my hair. I'm not sure it looks very different though, the colour was just called Chocolate, but looks a bit red under lights.

How was your weekend?

On our plate this week, chicken soup, scrambled eggs, steak and those potato stacks again, my breakfast, quince and beef tagine, tomato and meatball soup, lemon linguine and chicken and roasted vegetable risotto.

MONA

I didn't get around to a post yesterday. I hadn't taken any new photos of our garden, and I felt like I'd been chasing my tail all week so gave myself a break when it came to blogging.

This week was a bit exciting, well at least for my family. On Monday my sister and I headed out to MONA to check out the function rooms for our other sister, who lives in London. It was fun to get a personal tour, especially as I have to admit (albeit shamefully) that it was my first visit to the Museum. We started off in the restaurant, wandered through the wine bar. These spaces were certainly nice but nothing too spectacular. Then we were taken into the museum (through the back security door). Then into a massive elevator to take us down to the Organ Room. This was the one my sister was really keen on. The elevator door opened and we faced a wall covered in plants. It felt like you had walked into a jungle. We turned left and entered the room, a large wooden Organ took up one corner, the room itself was about 30m long, concrete floors and walls. With lattice like concrete windows looking out over the water and towards the mountain. It had a some couches and fluffy rugs, and a very groovy octopus couch. The bar was in the middle with a background of sparkly tiles. It certainly was a spectacular space, like being in a millionaire's lounge room (which I guess you are!)
So we reported back to our sister via emails with photos and movies, the next day she announced her wedding will take place at MONA early next year while they're visiting for Christmas. I'm really looking forward to it already.
But now I'd like to go back and have a look at the museum, we were escorted back out through the museum and up the glass lift, and it did look unlike any other art museum I've seen.
Have you been? What did you think?

Snap it {inside plants}

Today's Snap it theme is inside.

Excuse me while I become a botanist for a minute.
When I used to demonstrate in the undergraduate practical classes with Rob, one of the activities we did a lot of was hand sectioning of plants.
This was something that takes a little practise, to get a perfectly even slice of stem or leaf with a razor blade (and not slicing the top of your finger off). The plant material is sandwiched in preserved carrot to make it easier to slice. Then once all your little sections are swirling around in a bowl of water you would pick out a few nice ones, pop them on a glass microscope slide and apply some Toluidine blue stain. This stain is taken up by the different cells and if a cell wall contains lignin it will go sky blue or pectin it will go purple. A cover slide was placed carefully over the top and then onto the microscope platform to examine. That's when the fun begins, identifying the cell types and drawing them. This was the bit I used to help the students with.
Australian native plants have to deal with a very harsh environment. Examining their anatomy (how their cells are arranged) you can find out how they adapt to combat the stresses they must overcome to survive. Hiding stomata in furrows so that the plant doesn't lose too much water, thick waxy cuticles to reflect light, increased numbers of lignified cells to create hard leaves that protect the plant from wilting.
Here are a few of the resulting sections through various plants. I think they look stained glass windows.

Playing along over here today.

Monday's Menu {Mother's Day megamix}

Trying saying that really fast.
We finished our week on a culinary high with a Mother's Day lunch for my parents and brother at the hut.
The weather was FOUL all weekend. Horizontal sleety rain, gale force winds, snow on the mountain, winter temperatures.
So we hibernated inside.

The menu:
Monday: our weekend curry with the addition of silver beet and served with rice, papadams and yoghurt.
Tuesday: the 2nd encore of the curry, with more silver beet, butternut pumpkin and potatoes. I think it was the best version of the three!
Wednesday: our cheat's ravioli (made with wonton wrappers). Stuffed with Elgar cottage cheese, spinach, pine nuts, and parmesan, served in a tomato sauce.
Thursday: Pan-fried potatoes, speck and onions.
Saturday: vegetable soup.


On Friday we treated ourselves to meal at our favourite Tasmanian restaurant, the Red Velvet Lounge. Quite luckily for us, it's only 15 minutes down the road to Cygnet. We ran in from the rain, and felt warmer as soon as we saw the wood fire. Our neighbour is the front of house, so we caught up on neighbourhood comings and goings, the current mouse plague our gardens. Steve came out for a quick chat too. A small group of musicians sat in the corner of the restaurants singing and playing music, adding to the ambience. I can't get enough of this place, and would go every week for dinner (or lunch, or breakfast or for a piece of Banoffee pie) if we could.

I had been thinking about a steak with chips and Bearnaise sauce all week. Rob had read an article on how to best eat out. Apparently you should order the item that sounds the least appetising. Don't order the steak (like me), but the item that at first glance you wonder why it's there. Because it will be there for a good reason. The theory goes that the chef has to cook steak all the time, so won't find that interesting, but the different item, may not be ordered very often and therefore will be more exciting for the chef to cook. He thought he'd test it out at RVL. Which isn't very risky because all of the food looked delicious. So he picked the lambs fry.

We enjoyed a glass of Blighs cider each and a Chicken liver parfait, with red wine jelly, sourdough toast and cornichons.

Then our mains arrived, my steak was cooked perfectly, smothered in a the Bearnaise sauce and the chips were nice and crunchy, just how I like them. The lambs fry was served with bacon, slow cooked onions, potato puree and sherry sauce. We decided to share so ate half and swapped. I had never tried lambs fry before. But it was tender and delicious with the sides and the herbs. But I found it very rich (especially after the liver parfait and steak, so couldn't get through my half). Happily full, we stumbled out into the cold and headed home to the hut with smiles on our faces.

Weekend baking included pancakes with stewed apple and blackberry jam (Rob), date loaf (me, found this recipe on BabyMac's blog, so easy and so good) and Coconut rough slice (me).

Sunday menu for Mother's Day

Nigella's Union Square Cafe Bar Nuts

Annabel's baked Sicilian olives

with Jansz NV sparkling

Nick Nairn's potato stacks

Roasted onions, neeps, carrots, parsnips, and leeks.

Wilted silver beet

Margaret Fulton's Roast tarragon Chicken with brandy cream sauce.

Rye dinner rolls.

Nick Nairn's chocolate souffles with brandy cream.

I think the guest of honour was suitably impressed, she liked her present too (slightly narcissistically I gave her two photos, one of Rob and I on our wedding day and one of us on the day of my PhD graduation) for her photo wall. She had been hinting that she didn't have any photos of us.

After they left (and Rob took the dogs for a walk) we lazed on the window seat. 

We didn't get around to much mouse proofing, however, we did catch three in the humane trap (ie we let them go in the bush). They are so cheeky. On Saturday night we heard much squeaking coming from the heat pump. We opened it up and out hopped a mouse, it must have been fighting with another mouse cause we could hear scuffling. He brazenly looked us in the eyes and ran back in before we could do anything!

Hope you had a lovely weekend, particularly those of you who are mothers to children young or old.

Supermoon gardening

The moon was amazing last weekend, wasn't it? So bright. You could see everything. The gardens are even beautiful by moonlight. Rob took these photos on Saturday night and had a bit of a play in Lightroom afterwards. It does look like the hut is on fire though!



Apart from our bulb planting session last weekend (which isn't very interesting photographically until they pop up in a few months time) not much else to report in the garden. I found some cheap red Ranunculus bulbs last night, as unfortunately Tesselaar had run out and they weren't in my order.

What's been happening this week at the hut?

• We made a curry last three dinners and one lunch. It kept getting better, with added silver beet, pumpkin and potatoes! I made papadams in the microwave (hardly taxing).
• Probably good we saved money on food, cause we took Nigella to the vet yesterday. Nigella is plagued by a common German Shepherd problem: sensitive skin. She gets these terrible hotspots that she will lick and lick. Yuk. Usually we can just spray them with a topical treatment and they clear up. But I noticed one on her front leg had become a bump. I'm my mother's daughter, which means my first assumption is, oh no she's got cancer! So we visited our local vet yesterday, more for my peace of mind. Verdict was an infected hotspot. Two weeks of antibiotics combined with the drugs should clear it up. Poor Nigella she really hates the vet. But she was quite good (by that I mean she actually walked in the building, she has been known to lie down in the car, passive resistance like and refuse to get out, 40kg dogs are hard to move). She shook while the vet shaved her leg to take a sample. 
• We have mice in the hut. Eww. Cheeky buggers are getting up under the vertical boards we think. One has made a nice home in our heat pump. Although I haven't heard squeaking the last few days from there. They have moved onto our kitchen cupboards. Rob is a man possessed. Filling up gaps with steel wool. I was in the breezeway the other night and I heard some gnawing noises coming from behind the wardrobe (yes it's still there). We pulled out the robe to find very obvious signs of mice and they have been stealing the dogs biscuits and lining them up along the skirting board. There are a lot of knot holes in the interior cladding and they must be in the wall. Last night one ran the gauntlet along the bifold door and dove into our library basket. They are so damn fast our dogs don't even see them. Rob took the basket outside to release the mouse (and I hate to say it we both thought it was so cute) and the cheeky bugger leapt out and headed straight for the hut (outside the kitchen) so we suspect there is a hole there for them to enter the hut. Rob has some flyscreen wire that the hardware store recommended. I think there will be some mouse proofing this weekend (oh a tube of selleys to plug up knot holes!)

So looking forward to the weekend, we're off to Red Velvet Lounge for dinner tonight.

Tomorrow mouse proofing and some baking, and on Sunday my Mum and Dad are coming down for a Mother's Day lunch of roast chicken.

Hope you have a lovely weekend.

Snap it {black & white}

I have some great night photos of the hut that Rob took during the amazing light of the supermoon that I'm dying to share, but perhaps tomorrow.

I don't take a lot of black and white photos, I rely on the subject and colour to make a photo memorable.
I'm a one trick pony, this is a photo I recently posted on Instagram for Fat Mum Slim's photo a day challenge.

These are our Neil Poulton designed Surf uplights.
When the lovely sales person suggested them, we were doubtful. Would three of them (with some task orientated lighting in the kitchen and over the window seat) really light up the whole 12 x 4m area in our main room?
The answer is yes. Not only yes, but they light up the whole cathedral ceiling in a way that our proposed down lights would never have done. During the day they disappear as they are white like our walls. Although I baulked at their price, I have not regretted them once.

As an aside, the spiders have been happily making webs up in the peak of our ceiling. Over summer as we left windows and the bifold door open zillions of tiny flies and bugs flew in, and those that didn't roast themselves on the Surf lights ended up in the spider webs. It was starting to look a bit untidy.
Rob let me know he had a genius plan for removing them, he would attached the vacuum cleaner to some 4m lengths of electrical conduit pipe and suck them up! I did express some doubt about this plan. I knew I wouldn't be game to wave a 4m pipe above my head without fear of marking the ceiling.
But on Sunday he proved me wrong, I admit. It seems the pipe was made for it, as the vacuum cleaner brush fitted neatly on one end and the nozzle on the other. Webs and flies all gone, but our friendly spider was determined to stay, so he's up in the corner above the window seat biding his time!

Playing along here.

Monday's Menu, with a side of beach walk

The menu was for warming comfort food this week, with grey skies and plenty of rain, we get home in the dark and need something to warm ourselves up. Autumn is slipping into winter. For some reason, this year I don't mind as much as normal. Although I do mind the mouse that has set up home in our heat pump!

Monday: we ate left over French onion soup (which was so rich for such a small serve), potato gratin with a salad.
Tuesday: we had a late lunch, so all I could contemplate was a rocket salad with pear, walnuts and shaved parmesan.
Wednesday: Pasta puttanesca.
Thursday: we stopped at my parents place for dinner. Mum made us her Italian beef with potatoes, and a delicious lemon cream dessert (I ate it too quickly to take a photo).
Friday: Baked potatoes topped with cheese and bacon.
Saturday: Beef curry with rice and papadams. The sauce was thick with spices, lentils, onions, garlic and chickpeas.
Sunday: Shepherds pie.
Baking wise, Rob made some rye baguettes and I made a cherry, almond and coconut slice from the Primrose Bakery cookbook. The slice hasn't lasted long, the container is nearly empty!
What have you been cooking recently?


We spent a happy afternoon on Saturday planting out my spring bulbs, carefully lining the paths with the tulips, and the ranunculus and anemones are spread randomly around the triangular beds. Now I just have to wait to see them pop up.
Yesterday after cleaning the hut, we realised that we were free to do anything, as the garden didn't need any further attention. It was an unusual feeling. We decided to go find some plants for Rob's botany practical, he wanted something new. So we grabbed the dogs and headed south. We didn't go far. stopping at Trial Bay. The dogs were super keen, after being cooped up all week because of the weather. Once off their leads they ran around on the rocky beach, sniffing seaweed, and cheekily looking over their shoulder to see if we approved as they waded into the water. I made a pathetic attempt at only letting them go in up to their legs, but as you can see that didn't work.
Rob walked at the back, taking photos of the plants, while I went ahead, determined to get to a jetty that I could see at the point. The rocks were beautiful colours, one even a bright aqua colour. Others were covered in bright yellow and orange lichen. I got to the jetty with two dogs hot on my heels, it was a bit rickety, but I encouraged them to walk along it, so I could take some photos. Those brave dogs, they ran up and down the jetty and looked back to where Rob was wandering along.
Once he got there I think they both wanted to show off a bit, Nigella spied a submerged branch and she swam out to get it, Claudia (who isn't as keen on swimming) even followed her out there. The water was so clear (and must have been freezing) but Nigella loved swimming around us out on the jetty even swimming under it. From our highpoint on the jetty, we were able to see her cute legs purposefully swimming under the surface. Nigella has hip dysplasia, so can't actually run very well anymore, but you could tell she was so happy to be swimming so freely in the water.
We could see a misty grey cloud coming so high tailed it back to the car. But it was a lovely way to spend the afternoon.

Photo collage from my iPhone. Some tweaked in Instagram.



These last three taken by Rob with the real camera.

Orchards and a Birdsnest

It rained a lot yesterday. I meant to take a photo of our new little broad bean seedlings popping up, but I ran out of time this morning.
On Wednesday we ordered nine new fruit trees for our collection from here, they were:
Gravenstein apple
Huonville crabapple
Mcintosh apple
Coe's Golden Drop plum
Sloe
Damson
Fullers quince
Van de Man quince
Medlar
We had stalked the website for weeks waiting for the new trees to be available and as soon as the site was live we went crazy.

Yesterday I was killing some time in Hobart while poor Rob had a dental appointment. I was looking for a top to go with my raspberry skirt I found in a second hand shop a couple of months ago. I had a very specific colour of blue in mind. I went into Espirit and found several tops in the perfect blue. But sadly not in my size.
I was a little disappointed, but when I got back to a computer I looked up Birdsnest, and found the top in my size.  It was my first purchase via Birdsnest, and I clicked the button at about 11am . I can't tell you how delighted I was to find it already at my doorstep this morning. But it was not just the promptness, or the cute bag it came in that made me happy. I can't believe they took the time to write me a personalised handwritten note. This is by far the best service I've had in person or online, and it has made my day. (I've sent them an email to let them know this). I like to recognise people or companies that impress me, and these girls are doing a fantastic job.
There was also a big box full of my bulbs, so we'll be busy planting in my flower garden this weekend.
What are you up to this weekend?

Snap it {yellow}

Looking back in my albums I found a little bit of yellow. I need to see these photos, it's a grey old day here in Tasmania. Unsurprisingly all were photos of flowers!

Playing along over here today.