Nigella Lawson - Feast

For years now I have been following the blog "Mouthfuls of Heaven"
Last year I got thinking about Nigella's book Feast and thinking I would love to try and cook something from each of the "special events" in the book.
I have decided this is the year.  I don't know how many actual recipes I will cook, but it will begin with New Years!

Feast is not just about big-deal special occasions: it’s about the way we use food to celebrate life.

‘Pleasures and Principles of Good Food’ to celebrations from feast days to familiar rites of passage.

Essentially about families and food, about public holidays and private passions, about how to celebrate the small everyday pleasures as well as the big occasions, it includes everything from Christmas, Thanksgiving , Hanukah and Eid, to Passover and Easter; from Valentine’s Day to that first breakfast in bed and Sunday lunch fit for the In-Laws; from a seasonal pumpkin feast to the ultimate Chocolate Cake Hall of Fame; from weddings to funerals, from Georgian and Venetian feasts to children’s favourites; from Carbfeast to a final post New Year fast…

So I am looking forward to a year of cooking for my family and friends, both special occasion and simple meals which celebrate our relationships and time together.

You Capture - Lines

I finally got organised to get back into my blog and the first thing I did was to visit ishouldbefoldinglaundry and find out the next You Capture theme. Guess What?   It was lines.

I was taking my daily photo of Saana (see future post for further info) when I noticed the curtins behind her made beautiful lines hanging down. I began to wonder if I could capture that for this week.

Then I wander out onto the deck to see if I could get I photo of the deck poles all lined up. After taking the photo I realised the deck was full of lines. Looking at this photo afterward I wished I had cleared the deck of all the junk, but I didn't have time to do it again.








While outside I started thinking, that lines didn't have to mean straight lines so I took some photos of the curved iron work on the arch.  After taking the photos of the iron work, I had great fun playing around the the colours and other stuff of these photos

Thank you for Beth from You should be folding laundry for this challenge.

Click HERE to see more photos of Lines

13 for thursday - Garden

  I decided today to take a walk and take some photos of what is growing in the garden at the moment.

1.   Lots and lots of tomato plants.

2 Green Zebras. I chose these because they are meant to be low acid which will be good for Saana.

2 Tigerellas. I chose these because the look so pretty and I suspect they are also lower in acid.

1 Amish ox-heart. I had two of these but I gave one to mum.  I kind of wish I had brought another one.

Lots of bush tomatoes in the back bed.

4 Tumbling cherry tomatoes in hanging pots and one in the ground.   I transfered the one in the ground because it wasn't doing well and I needed the pot for the next tomatos.   I think I brought 3 red and 2 yellow, but I'm not sure.

2 Siberian cherry tomatoes. These are meant to be good for hanging pots and the cold climate.  I'm looking forward to seeing how they go.

2. Lots of corn

2 different types of sweet corn 

2 punnets of baby corn These are a lovely red colour on the stems

Under the seedlings I put the seeds of

3 different types of beans

cucumber
Balinese sweetcorn
Yellow Empress sunflowers

3.  Fruit

               My New Passionfruit                Strawberries                                               Rhubarb

4.  Herbs 
basil,  coriander,  dill, chervil,   2 types of thyme,  lemon balm, lemon grass, sage, rosemary, marjoram,  oregano, chinese salad leaves, curry plant, garlic and normal chives,  mint

5.  Carrots and beetroot.  

  I also planted parsnips but they didn't come up. 

6.  Capsicums and Chilies
Normal capsicums
Banana capsicums
Jalapenos
Cayenne pepper
Haberno
Some of these are from punnets and some are from larger seedings which we put into paper bags and wrapped in paper for a few weeks before planting out.

7. Beans
normal blue lake climbing beans
dwarf beans - butter
Purple King - climbing beans These look so pretty already, you can see them at the back

8. Eggplants
A normal eggplant ( I think, I lost the tag)
Listada di Gandia This is a diggers eggplant, it is stripy.






9.  Lots of lettuce

10. Silverbeet

11. Alliums
Leeks
spring onions
red onions
garlic

12. Self Sown

Peas 

cucumber or squash

13. Grapevine

WG's first go in a ball pit.

IMG_6279
Originally uploaded by jess64_canberra

IMG_6282
Originally uploaded by jess64_canberra

You Capture - Peace

Here is my daughter sleeping.
When I read this week's theme of peace. That was what I thought of straight away. She looks so peacefully when she is sleeping. But it is also my peace time.




Thank you to "I should be folding laundy"

Saturday's Paper

I have decided to create a weekly post to record what I have ripped out of the paper each week, rather than keeping the pieces of paper.

This week I read an article in the Canberra times about illustrators of children's books and some new books for young children. The four books they reviewed were

Anthony browne's "Little beauty"
I love Anthony browne's books and I was pleased that we could book this one out from the library straight away. So I have reversed it and hopefully it will be waiting for us at the local library soon.


Margret Wild's "Piglet and Granny" illustrated by Stephen king.
This wasn't available at the libary, but another one of the same series called "Piglet and Mama" was available so I have reserved that book.



Clem always could! I hadn't heard of Sarah Watt before, but apparently she has worked on animated films and is the wife of William McInnes. This wasn't available at the library, but I will keep my eye opened for it, because the story sounds good and the illustrations appear to look stunning.

My Silent World by Nette Hilton and Vincent Agostino
This books sounds really interesting, I love the idea of using pictures books to expose my daughter to different people and different lives.



Also in the Canberra times I found two websites of interest

Green Garbage Project From their site it states

For one year, from July 6, 2009 to July 6, 2010, we aim to live without producing garbage that winds up in a landfill. You can find all the details about our challenge on this site, so check back often to see how we’re doing.

MetaFilter
Apparently this is a site that daily lists 10 things on the web that are worth "having a look at". Not sure if it is for me, but I'll check it out at sometime.

Finally - also from the canberra times an article on this book
I heard Roger McDonald speaking on the radio and the book sounds wonderful. Full of extraordinary photos of Australian landscape from across the last 100 years. I love the idea that many of the photos were taken for different purposes, from how they are seen today. McDonlad also discussed how all but one of the photos don't have any people in them, but there would always be one person standing behind the camera. An interesting thought, but how we view landscape photos.




So that is all I have so far from the Saturday papers, but then again I haven't read all of them, that will take me all week.

1st Annual 'Save The Frogs Day

As brought to my attention by Stuart today is the 1st Annual 'Save The Frogs Day .

I have been considering how I can attract frogs into my garden. We already have a pond, but it was not very frog friendly due to being
* Deep
* Steep
* Close to the house and a long way from the gardens.
* Goldfish donated by a friend
I have been working to add things to the pond to make it more friendly. There are now ways for the frogs to climb in and out of the pond, and we have extended the garden so it comes right up to the pond. Now I just have to lose the goldfish, not sure how to go about that.
I am currently creating a wildlife friendly native garden at the back of the yard and I'm looking into how to create a bog garden, which will hopefully increase the frog friendliness of our overall garden.

Why still Jess's Garden

Over the last year I've been playing with a range of blogs about my changing life, but I have decided that I can't maintain multiple blogs and I'm in the processing of bringing the posts from the other blogs over to this blog.
When I orginally started this blog I wrote this post, which basically discussed the idea that I was a beginning gardener, but I didn't outline why I had chosen the name "Jess's Garden".
As I think about it now, I chose the name because I garden to create a space that I want to share with my family. (Jess is my dog) This is still the case, this blog is about me trying to create a home and family. Creating a garden is a key part of that process, but it is not the only part, so I feel the different parts of this blog are all congruent to the same goal.

Sage flowers

Join



I wanted to post pictures of the garden, but the everytime I went outside with the camera, the rain started again and I couldn't get any photos I wanted. So instead here is a photo of the sage in flower from before christmas. I love the purple flowers.

Yes that's how I feel

As I drove out to pick up DH this morning I happened upon a radio interview on radio national with Peter Sculthorpe I must admit I don’t know anything about him, from the interiew I know he is an Australian composer. I caught the tail end of the interview and he managed to give such a good summary about how I feel about religion, spirituality and life in general.

QUOTE FROM TRANSCRIPT

Peter Thompson: You gave up on talking about God because people misunderstood what you meant, is that right?


Peter Sculthorpe: No, that was when people would ask me what sort of a composer are you, and I'd say, Well I'm a religious composer, and people would say, Oh, really? What, Catholic, Anglican, Methodist? But by religious composer I meant that almost all my music seeks the sacred in nature, and if that's not being a religious composer, what is, if one is seeking what is sacred.


Peter Thompson: But you're very attached to that saying that Pandit Nehru, former Prime Minister of India, used in describing Bali that Bali is the morning of the earth, the morning of the world.


Peter Sculthorpe: Right, yes.


Peter Thompson: That's what you're describing, aren't you? That God in nature?
Peter Sculthorpe: Yes, God in nature, yes, which is related of course to Shintoism, Japan, which is to do with the sacredness that is in all things, in all nature.

END QUOTE

The idea of scared in nature is how I feel about my spirituality. I find it such a hard thing to define for myself or others and there I was sitting in the car going. “YES, that’s it.”
I’m now off to see if I can find any of his music to see how it makes me feel.
( I really should listen to RN more often, the interviews and discussions are so often thought provoking.)

My poor husband

Sometimes, (just sometimes mind you)I feel sorry for my husband. Just now he goes out and brings in all the wet washing on the line. The weather has been wet, windy and plain weathery and thus the washing hasn't dried for several days. I'm feeling very behind in the washing and today's load of nappies has been sitting in the machine because there is not much else I can do with them.
Any way instead of being grateful for my husband dealing with the washing I get cranky because my LOOPY mind decides he is making implications about my inability to deal with the washing.
What is with that!!!! He was helping and I'm cranky and letting my own guilt obsurce his helpfulness and caring.
Oh well, I'm loving the wet weather must make the most of it.