Time to Buy a Bike?

I have never been much of a bike rider.  I didn't learn to ride a bike until I was 12.  However, now I am thinking of buying myself a bike.

The catalyst?  I have just been offered a new job that is only a short bike ride - about fifteen minutes - away, although it would be a fifty minute walk.  Most of that distance is through back streets and parkland, so there are few busy roads to brave.

I love the look of some of the retro cruiser bikes that are currently on the market, such as the Apollo Cruiser below.   They appeal in so many ways: only three gears, comfy seat, cute basket up the front, skirt-friendly.

Lycra is not my thing; I just want a simple bike that will take me from A to B without too much drama and with a reasonable amount of comfort.

Are you a cyclist?  What kind of bike do you ride?  Do you know anything about cruiser bikes?

Rock Cakes

'This is Ron,' Harry told Hagrid, who was pouring boiling water into a large teapot and putting rock cakes on to a plate.

'Another Weasley,eh?' said Hagrid, glancing at Ron's freckles. 'I spent half me life chasin' yer twin brothers away from the forest.'

The rock cakes almost broke their teeth, but Harry and Ron pretended to be enjoying them as they told Hagrid all about their first lessons.

                                                                              from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

Rock cakes get their name because they are lumpy and look a little like rocks, not because they are rock-hard.  At least, fresh rock cakes aren't hard, but like most scone-type mixes they should be eaten fresh or they can come to resemble pebbles.  I like my rock cakes straight out of the oven, split, and spread with unsalted butter.

This recipe comes from The Commonsense Cookery Book, which was the required text for year 7 Home Science at my high school.

Rock Cakes

2 cups self-raising flour

90 g butter or margarine

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 tsp ground ginger

2 Tbsp currants, sultana, chopped dates or mixed fruit

1 egg

3 Tbsp milk

Heat oven to 200 degrees celsius (20 degrees less for a fan-forced oven).  Grease an oven slide.  Sift flour.  Rub in softened butter lightly with the tips of your fingers.  Add sugar and ginger.  Add dried fruit. Beat egg, and add to it the milk.  Add eggs and milk to dry ingredients, and make into a stiff dough.  Place mixture in small, rough heaps on prepared oven slide.  Bake for 10 to 15 minutes.  Allow to cool on a cake rack.

Tips

• Although the recipe suggests ginger, you can easily swap this for cinnamon or mixed spice.  
• I usually use commercial mixed fruit for the dried fruit, and I always put more than the recipe says.  
• If the mixture appears too stiff after you add the milk, just add a little extra milk.  
• Keep an eye on the oven as overcooking will burn the fruit.

In the Paper: Payneham Community Market 19 February 2011

If this image is too blurry, you can read the article and admire Will's gappy smile and friendly, borrowed chook here. Scroll through to page three (yep, I'm a page three girl!).  You can also read the online version here.

Working Things Out

vegie patch

For the month of February, instead of working four days a week from 9 until 3, I'm working five days a week.  Another staff member has gone back to China for the Chinese New Year and I have taken on an extra day's work to help cover for her.

One extra day a week doesn't sound like much, but it is making a difference to me.  I don't have as much time to organise my household.  Overall I feel more tired.  I feel I have to be more organised every day because I don't have Fridays to catch up on any messes.

This is a roundabout was of explaining why I am not blogging much at present.  However, I am looking forward to March, when I should be able to write more frequently again.

Thank you for your patience!

My Favourite Way to Eat Tomatoes: a Reader's Tale

After I wrote about my favourite way to eat tomatoes, a reader emailed me with a delightful story about her favourite way to eat them.  I asked her permission to share this story with you.  Thank you Laurie!

My favorite way to eat tomatoes is now a wonderful memory. When growing up in South Florida and the Keys, I would often be at my Gramma's house in the dog days of summertime. (She had the ugly but amazing lemon tree). No one had air-conditioning in those days, and she lived in a house with lovely cool wood floors and high ceilings (from which the quilting frame would hang when the women relatives would come for quilting weekends - but that's another story.)

Gramma would sit on the back porch and announce "Darlin', It's too hot to be a meat day today."

She'd ask us to go and pick some tomatoes for dinner - and we would simply have them sliced with a bit of salt - still warm from the heat of the day. Sitting on that back porch, eating those tomatoes, basking in her love and kindness - Life was Good!

Pottering

eggplant

Every day after after work I go for a wander around the garden in the afternoon sunshine.  I think and daydream whilst examining the plants.  I check for insect damage and see if the tomatoes need to be tied to their stakes again.  I worry over plants suffering from heat stress.  I look at the young fruit trees and see if they have grown much since I last looked - they usually haven't, because I check them before work too.  I imagine future harvests and I pray for rain.

Then I go into the house and face my hungry children, desperate for their afternoon tea.

Summer, I love you (although I'd love you even more if you weren't so hot!)

jap pumpkin

sweet basil

silverbeet

Tomatoes Galore

It's that wonderful time of year when there are lots of tomatoes in the garden.  Even after last week's heatwave which scalded about half the unripe tomatoes on the vines, there are still plenty to eat.

One of the lovely things about growing your own tomatoes is that you can grow heirloom varieties rarely seen in shops.  I have tigerella and Amish paste tomatoes, periformes, tommy toes, green zebras, and other varieties from unnamed seedlings provided by friends.

The scent and taste of home-grown tomatoes is very different from mass-produced ones.  They are hardly recognisable as the same fruit.

I think my favourite way to eat tomatoes is split in half then roasted in a slow oven.  I add a drizzle of olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and a little salt and pepper.  You could add fresh herbs or some crushed garlic before putting them in the oven too, if you like.  Delicious!

What is your favourite way to eat tomatoes?

For Any Adelaide Locals Out There

This Sunday, 6th February, will be the first Essential Edibles food swap for 2011.  Come along, bringing a lot or a little to share (or just yourself), and meet some friendly and inspiring people.

Blackberries

Every so often a lady comes to the office where I work selling flowers that she grows on her property in the Adelaide hills.  Today she came with blackberries freshly picked this morning, and along with just about everybody else, I bought some.

The difficulty is deciding what to do with them.  Blackberry crumble?  Pie?  As they are with thick, yellow cream?

However, the way they are disappearing from the bowl on the kitchen bench, I suspect there won't be any left for dessert.

Not a Good Year to Be a Queenslander

It's just not a good year to be a Queenslander.

First there were the terrible floods that devastated much of the state and took many lives.  Now, only a few weeks later, Cyclone Yasi threatens the north of the state, causing tens of thousands of people to evacuate.

For all those in Queensland, we are thinking of you.  I hope and pray that everyone who needs to, gets away before Yasi hits.

And hopefully, sometime soon, Queensland will go back to being the place that is "beautiful one day and perfect the next".

image is courtesy of wikipedia