Taking time out for tea

Every so often we like to have a proper afternoon tea on the weekends. This weekend was one such time.  We had Earl Grey tea and Ginger Gems.

Out comes the pretty china, the silver cutlery and the tiered cake stand.

All set and ready for us.

The boys getting stuck in. 

Ginger Gems and family time. A happy recipe.

My gem irons are really heavy cast iron ones. They are at least 80 years old. My Nana married when she was 16 and they were given to her as a "must have in the kitchen". If my Nana was alive she would now be coming up 100. So every time I make gems I think of her. It was her legacy to me when she died - along with an amazing gridle.

Ginger Gems

Preheat your gem irons in an oven at 200oC. This mixture will fill the irons 1 1/2 times.

50g butter and 1/4 cup sugar - cream well.

Add - 1 egg and 2 tablespoons golden syrup.

Then add - 1 cup plain flour, 1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger and mix in.

mix together 1/2 cup milk and 1 teaspoon baking soda then stir it into the gem mix.

Take gem irons out of the oven. Put a dot of butter into each cavity and place 1 tablespoon of mixture in. Do this quickly as mixture starts cooking. Put into the oven for approx 10 minutes until well risen and golden brown.

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Jumble

My mother used to make this slice recipe. It is really easy to make and reminds me of my childhood. I don't know why it is called Jumble but it is a very appropriate word in my life at the moment.

A lot of things have been jumbled up. Two very close relatives have been very sick and the job I had agreed to start I backed out of due to various issues. So when I thought all was going smoothly it all got jumbled up on me. So I have gone through a huge range of emotions, ended up exhausted but am now feeling that I am coming out the other side. God is a good God.

Here is the recipe as it comes from my mother.

Jumble
4oz butter
3/4 cup sugar - cream together
then add 1 egg and stir.

Sift in
1 Cup flour
1 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Cinnamon
2 tsp Cocoa

If the mixture is not wet and soft then add a little bit of milk. Put a baking sheet on the tray you are going bake this on as you put the mixture on it and roll it out to about .5 cm thick. Make sure there is a lot of flour on your rolling pin as it sticks easily. Do not roll right to the edges as this does expand a bit.

Bake at 400 deg F for 20 minutes (sometimes it does get a bit dark around the edges)

While it is baking get icing ready. Make a water and icing sugar and cocoa powder icing quite thick. As soon as the slice comes out of the oven use a sharp knife to cut it into squares (just do the cuts - do not separate it), then pour the icing over the hot slice. It will run and melt. Sprinkle on 100's and 1000's and press it slightly into the icing. Cool and eat. Yummy.

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It might look like it but it is NOT a quail egg.

Look what I found in the chooks nest today. The cold weather has definitely affected one of the chooks!!!

The egg on the left is the normal size, the other two chooks have also gotten slightly shrunk eggs but the one on the left is about 1/4 the size of the others. It will be interesting to see if there is a yolk in it.

It took a while but I have loved doing it.

Well after the last quilt for charity where crafting was a grind, I started this as something that I had wanted to do for a long long time. It is a paper pieced pattern that I got off the internet.

I finished the piecing last weekend

then sandwiched it together and started quilting. I completed a little bit every night.

Finally finishing the quilting today. I am really thrilled with the pattern. I tried using loops around the edge for the first time and quilted a lot more closely than I normally do.

Trying to take a photo of it finished and on the bed when a slightly hyped up boy (typical of a Friday after school) jumps in the photo. It had been book week this week at school which ended in a character parade. Eli went as Goldilocks (he has a wig he bought two years ago that is attached to a hat and plaited as two pigtails) and won the prize for the best costume in his class. It takes a confident boy to carry that off!!!!

Instead of using a zip closing in the back I used domes so that it is easy on and off and easy to wash.

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New Anti Bullying song written and sung by a 14 yr old New Zealand girl

Nakita has been working on this for a couple of years. Researching by interviewing hundreds of school kids about their bullying experiences. Her voice is amazing. At the end of assembly last year at school she sang and I have not heard such an amazing live voice for a long time. She has such a bright future ahead of her.

Bullying is such a massive issue, it can destroy some kids lives forever, and it seems that although nearly every child has been bullied at some stage they still turn around and do it to others. This is such a powerful message. I think she should get onto Ellen, and Oprah etc!!! Nakita makes me feel proud to be a NZ'er.

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I am not a shoe shop

I feel as thought the last few days have been spent in the shoe shops. We have bought;

Slippers for Jakob

new sneakers which had to go back.

New school shoes

New sneakers for Jakob

Eli's feet have grown four sizes in the last 1.5 years!! Far out. Now he is finding shoes really hard to fit. After two sessions at the shoe shop (both lasting an hour - which is 3/4 hour too long in my opinion!!).

How does something so mundane take so much effort? We still have not gotten any sneakers for Eli and I am not prepared to step back into a shoe shop for ages.

There seems to be a lot going on here.

I don't know about you but my home life seems to be like my craft life at the moment. A rather large number of projects on the go and nothing actually being completed. When they finally do it will all look amazing!!

And on top of this we still have to get carpet in the hall and bedroom and finish painting everything in the lounge.

Firewood being chopped and a grumpy Jakob stacking it.

A new woodsheet being built - The most solid ever.

A new garden and paths being marked out. Do you see the paint lines?

Eli getting stuck into making Donna Hay easy muffins.

The muffins out of the oven - red currant as the fruit.

Yummy muffins - from Donna Hay T.V programme

Into a bowl sieve together:

2.5 cups of self raising flour

1 tsp Baking powder

1 cup caster sugar

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients. Into the well put

1/2 cup vegetable oil

3/4 cup milk 

1 egg

mix the wet together in the bowl to ensure the egg is beaten and then mix all together. The mixture is quite stiff.

Add whatever fruit you want. 300g fresh or frozen fruit. Put into muffin tins (put the mixture over 12 muffin tins) and sprinkle the top with granulated sugar. 

Bake at 180 deg C for 30-35 minutes until the top is crunchy.

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How frugal are you?

I am so frugal and find it such a waste to miss out on discounts or free things that it means my purse is stuffed full of loyalty cards. Why would I pay full price for gas bottles if a loyalty card means I get a discount every second time. I love coffee, why would I not want my sixth one to be free. Ditto for material!

 Which gives the dilemma as to what to do with them all. Well my smart new purse was made with the intent to banish these cards elsewhere. Last week at my stitching group with Jane I finally finished the hand patched stretched hexagons. Today I sewed them into a mini wallet with a plastic insert. No more fishing through all the cards to find what I want. Now I just need to flip the clear plastic pages and I can spot the card I need quickly.

It does look a bit like a Mum and child wallet. But hey. When I finally finish my messenger bag it will all look snazzy. I love these Asian taupe materials.

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A most reluctant finish

Well this quilt has finally been finished! It has been a quilt I would call SIGH if I named quilts. I have sighed the whole time making it. The patchwork I blogged about back here. It is donated cut blocks which I only had to add a few more in. Donated flannelette backing which is original from the 70's.

But how I struggled with this quilt. I had to push myself to sew it, push myself to sandwich it and the quilting of it was procrastinated about for ages and ages. I feel that this is the worst quilting I have done in a long time. There are material puckers, it is only straight lines, it looks like the first quilt I have ever made. But no matter what I did to try and fix it, it just wasn't working. So I closed my eyes (figuratively) and just got on with it.

The flannelette back

I know why it was such an issue;

1. I like to start things and not necessarily finish them as I want to get onto the next idea.
2. I found this utterly boring, not my style of patchwork and quilting at all
3. I was unhappy with my finish on it.

But the good thing is that it is now another finished quilt for the Orphans at Hope Homes International, so I spent all my time sewing talking to myself ("any child will be thrilled with this, they will not look at how well it is completed, they will appreciate that someone has done something for them) etc etc

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Wild Blackberries as a gravy base

A couple of weekends ago we spent time at our friends second home on some land in the middle of nowhere. All the blackberries were ripe and so the boys and Aaron came home from a walk and swim very proudly bearing a bag of blackberries.

 Well yesterday there were still some remnants in the fridge. I made a pork roast with free range pork from my sisters farmlet. In the bottom of the dish I put a finely chopped onion, a finely chopped apple and the remainder of the blackberries. When I took the pork out to rest I put all the juices, onion, apple and berries through a sieve, pressed quite hard. Then into that liquid I mixed 1 Tablespoon of cornflour. It was deep red and delicious.

Having fun at the river just before picking blackberries.

I forgot to take an after photo but it was AMAZING. Quite subtle but fruity and it got he thumbs up from us all.

Ruby red rich roast quince

Straight out from the oven. Delicious with whipped cream. One of the upsides of the foul weather is it blew all the quinces from the tree so I don't have to try to pick them off the high branches.

If you roast them the skins just peel off and the core pops out. Oh so easy.