Christmas baking: vanilla shortbread

  

I love cooking for my family and friends. Having people in our house and feeding them, nourishing them, gives me great joy. So it should come as no surprise that I love giving gifts of food too. Recently I’ve been giving out jars of our olives and small slabs of homemade quince paste but wanted to do something more Christmassy.

I think homemade biscuits are a beautiful Christmas tradition and this year I decided to jettison my fear and attempt shortbread. 

   

I don’t know why it scared me but it did – something about not overworking the dough. I always like a forgiving dough and shortbread seemed just a little too precious for my liking.

Turns out I had shortbread all wrong. It’s really not too tricky.

These turned out so well (although the next batch will leave the oven just 3 minutes earlier so they stay perfectly pale all over) and I decorated them very simply.

I popped some greaseproof paper inside paper bags  – to stop grease stains from the high butter content – and gave them out to our school crossing guards who do a wonderful job of glaring at speeding cars and generally keeping us safe as we brave a busy thoroughfare on our way to school each morning.

What about you guys? Any favourite Christmas biscuits? Do you give homemade food as gifts?

Well, that’s been a veritable flurry of pre-Christmas posts hasn’t it? I assure you I will return to my sporadic ways from now on. I always seem to get a Christmas ant in my pant right before Christmas about documenting all the good stuff.

I hope you and yours have the MOST wonderful Christmas or other festive celebration – be happy and safe and sound. I do truly wish you all love and light.

Island of the Gods: a trip to Bali

Every morning I wake at 5.30am, just as the insects start their relentless stridulation and the roosters their crowing in earnest.

This early rising is unusual for me. Then again, the tropics have always agreed with my body clock.

I sit on a wooden platform, set within the lush jungle on a steep hill, perched high above the rushing river Os below. As the sun rises slowly behind the palm trees on the ridge opposite, it gently burns away the thick, morning mist drifting up through the lush valley.

Through the trees are glimpses of emerald-green, terraced rice paddies and the still morning air, is broken only by the occasional whooping bird call or the sound of over-sized foliage falling from the canopy.

As the sun finally rises above the treeline, its golden light illuminates the garden. Delicate spider webs appear as if out of nowhere, suspended between over-sized fronds, last night’s rain drops sparkle like jewels on deep green leaves and pale leaf tips glow with a bright translucency.

From the other side of the river bank the rhythmic tok, tok, tok of a temple drum starts slowly, increases in urgency then slows again until the last, lone, beat fades to silence.

And the scent. Well, I wish I could tell you it is the heady fragrance of frangipani and tuberose but it is overwhelmingly eau de DEET-infused insect repellant. It’s cloying but essential at this time of day.

I am in Bali. And I apologise for coming over all overly sentimental, but I feel like I’ve come home.

I haven’t been here for 11 years. And that time was for one short terrifying night and day. Long-time readers might remember the story but if you are newer here, you can read the background to all of this in this post I wrote from Jakarta last year. I feel the need to warn you that it’s a bit of a harrowing story. But if you are interested in why being back here in Bali, in paradise, after so long is making me cry (in a good way!) each and every day, then that post gives you all the background you need.

However, if, like me just now, you don’t really want to contemplate anything that came before or the whys and wherefores, but just sit and be, then I hope my photos will simply convey a small sense of the deep beauty of this place.

It’s so good to be back.

PS: I have finally got around to starting an Instagram account. You can see some other Bali shots over there and I’ll be updating regularly over the next few days of our trip so follow along if you’re interested. Click here.

My chips love me and the feeling is mutual.

You’ve seen the miraculous Easter bunny bread and now I give you the loving chip.

Google Reader is so May 2013.

Google Reader, as you may or may not know, is shutting down at the end of this month.

If you subscribe to my blog via Google Reader and would like to keep receiving my posts, you have two options:

1. The simplest way to make sure you don’t miss any twirling betty posts is to subscribe via email and have them delivered direct to your inbox by filling in your email address in my side bar over there on at top right of my site. You do have to gimme your email address (obviously) but I don’t EVER (and won’t ever) use it for anything other than delivering my ramblings/projects/recipes. And perhaps sending you the odd love note because I am so grateful you subscribe.

Okay, I won’t send love notes. Unless you want me to. Call me, kay?

2. Move to another feed collating service such as Bloglovin’.  They have a simple importing process that means all your feeds are brought across with just a few clicks. Simple. Painless. Free.

And it’s quite a pretty interface. Visually-minded peeps will like.

If you’re not sure which path to take, can I be cheeky and urge you to subscribe via email? Each new subscriber gives me a warm inner glow and lets me know I ‘aint writing into the ether. Although perhaps I should be given I use words like ‘aint.

These interior shots of my beautiful old piano are simply window dressing. It’s really an admin post but I couldn’t, in good conscience, leave you with nothing good to look at.

I had the piano tuned recently and I was mesmerised by the repeating patterns within. I’m going to take it up again some time soon. Even doing scales is very therapeutic if, like me, you like mind-calming activities. Yes, constant scales. The family will LOVE that.

My great grandmother bought this piano and had it shipped from Germany to Melbourne in a salt-proof, lead-lined box aboard an ocean liner. I can imagine it being loaded at that end by the makers with an “Auf wiedersehen Klavier, meine liebling”  and received  in the antipodes with a “this is a bloody heavy box, mate”.

Just like the Aussie patois, it’s a beautiful thing.

Unexpected echidna.

Much better than an expected echidna, yes?

Do you know what an animal that lays eggs and then suckles its young is called? Well, apart from just plain fecking weird, I mean.

We call that type of animal a monotreme, amigos. And there are only two types of monotreme in the world.

Here is one I prepared earlier.

This little chap was just walking along the side of the road when we spotted him and as soon as I got in close to snap him (with my camera – I’m not into punching wildlife) tucked his head away so he was just a spiny mass. But I waited patiently and that cute little bill soon appeared again.

The only other monotremes are platypuses. Or is it platypi. Anyway, both of those.

And we all know what the reaction of the first Englishmen to see a platypus specimen when it was sent back to England was. Yes.  “WTF is that”?

To be honest, actual proof that they said that exact phrase is hard to come by but imagine what you would say if all you had ever known were fluffy English meadow creatures and you were suddenly confronted by a furry, duck-billed, four-legged, webbed-foot, beaver-tailed nocturnal amphibian. That laid eggs.

Exactly.

I wish unexpected echidnas (or platypussies) in all of your futures. They’re the best.

Vale Kathreen Ricketson

You might remember a little while back I did a post about the wonderful Action Packs for kids produced by Kathreen Ricketson of Whipup.net.

I am simply devastated to tell you that Kathreen and her partner, Rob, passed away suddenly last week. They were on a the trip of a lifetime around Australia with their two beautiful kids and many, including me, had been following Kathreen’s posts avidly.

Kathreen and Rob drowned off the coast of WA. Their kids were on the beach with friends.

There are simply no words for what I feel for those kids. I can’t stop thinking about them.

Kathreen was one of the leading lights in the craft blogging world and her death has left so many people reeling.

The funny thing about this blogging biz (both writing your own and reading others) is that you form bonds with people you’ve never met and possibly never will. Sometimes you don’t even really have any contact with them but get to know them through their writing. They let you into their world and you get attached. Sometimes deeply. There are thousands of people out there who are feeling Kathreen’s loss keenly and who are shedding tears for her babies.

From a personal perspective, when I first started blogging a few years back, Kathreen gave me lots of warm support and encouragement when a couple of things rattled my confidence and she also gave me my blog its first exposure to a wider audience when she published one of my tutorials on Whipup. We had never met but shared a number of email exchanges, most recently after my Action Pack post. I was and will be eternally grateful for her support of a new blogger. I looked up to her in almost every way – as a blogger, creator, galvaniser of community, giver of support and beautiful, thoughtful mother.

She gave so much, in so many ways, to so many people and her death leaves an enormous gap in the crafting community.

I’m just profoundly sad.

Another thing about the making community is their support of each other. Inundated with requests from people asking how they could help, Kathreen’s family have set up a trust fund for her kids.

You can donate via Paypal using otilijaandorlando@gmail.com or go to this post on WhipUp for details on how to do a transfer or direct deposit. There are instructions for both Australians and overseas residents.

I’ll just leave you with the last bit of advice from Jules who had to undertake the heart-breaking task of writing a post on Kathreen’s blog letting people know she had passed away. You can read the full post here, but it’s this last bit that we should all take away:

“…In the meantime, hug your children extra tight tonight, kiss your partner good bye, call your family and friends and say I love you.”

And if it feels right, make a donation towards Kathreen’s kids’ future. It can never be the same without their parents, but they might at least, down the track, take some small solace from the outpouring of love towards them, in their mother’s stead.

Can you feel the love?

 

Hope your Valentine’s Day is chockers with love my darlings.

Summer snapshots

The Australian continent has spent sizeable chunks of the last month labouring under a Dome of Heat. It warrants capital letters.  Might even warrant a stentorian, drawn-out delivery like the beginning of Lost in Space. Doooooome of Heeeeeeeeaaaatttt.

Parts of the country have experienced temps so soaring and sustained that the Bureau of Meteorology has had to add a never-before-seen searing hot pink colour to its thermal maps to represent the high temperatures.

Here in Melbourne, we had a few days above 40 Celsius and many in the high 30s but we’ve also had lots of milder, beautiful summer days. Victoria has really not suffered at all compared to other parts of the country.

In some central Australian towns, backpackers have been basically taken up residence in the aisles of air-conditioned supermarkets and people have been frying eggs on the pavement. Because, you know, nothing tastes as good as an egg caked in asphalt grit and dirt.

I just hope we can keep bush fires at bay for the rest of the season.

All the photos in this post are from around the Gippsland Lakes where we traditionally spend our holidays. It’s a magical spot.

This year we only had short time there from the end of December to the start of January but it was no less awesome for so little time.

We spent time sourcing summer fruit in beautiful countryside, watching boats sail past and just generally relaxing.

Of the berry farms we visited, the raspberry farm was my favourite. Not only because raspberries are the best of all berries but also because they collect the raspberries they gather here in these old prams. Like precious, tiny, juicy babies.

School and kinder start back in earnest tomorrow and I’m hoping my weeks will soon start to take on a more settled routine.

I’ll be back with a little more regularity shortly. Starting back with a little creative decorating idea tomorrow.

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I missed you my possums. Hope everyone is tip top.

I’ve Kickstarted some creative projects: my two favourite investments.

Have you heard of Kickstarter? It’s a funding platform for creative projects and the way it works is that creative types post their proposed projects on the site and people to whom the project appeals then commit to various levels of funding to get the project off the ground. There are more complex rules and checks and balances  around it but that, in a nutshell, is how it works.

In the first half of 2011 I invested in a project called the Urbio Vertical Garden. Check out this link to their original Kickstarter page to understand more about the original idea. You’ll see that instead of their hoped-for $15,000 goal they raised a whopping $77,000. Down the side of the page you can also see the rewards that investors for each level of pledge.

I pledged at the second level and my reward was a small Urbio pot and wall mount. However, when manufacturing was delayed and as a reward for investors’ patience, they threw in another single pot. So now if I get sick of having them on my wall, I can make a cute vase like this.

I’ve had my pots for a while now but finally got them on our living room wall just before Christmas.

I love ’em! They’re magnetically attached to a plate that’s mounted to the wall so every now and then I just slip them off, give them a sprinkle of water, and pop them back on the wall.

Ideally, you’d have a whole wall, like this:

As the project progressed the scope expanded and went from vertical garden to vertical multi-tasker.

My handsome husband has been telling me over the last few months about the world’s tallest timber apartment building that’s been going up near his office. I’m fascinated by it and he sent me a snap of the facade today pointing out that they have Urbios on the walls of each apartment’s balcony.

These little pots have even made their  way into eco-conscious and design-savvy projects all over the world. And I helped to kick start them.

The feeling of having been part of a larger project, playing a tiny part in bringing something great to fruition is wonderful.Not only that, these are projects that even if they weren’t placed in the current context  of conservative institutional lending, might not otherwise have been made.  Physical rewards aside,  my investments have brought an enormous warm inner glow.

Another project I’ve invested in is the stop-motion short film, Cicada Princess. I got totally carried away by the director’s vision and pledged $100 to that one evening. Red wine may or may not have loosened my purse strings. And there’s a helpful piece of advice for all: don’t shop online or surf Kickstarter for cool projects after a couple of glasses of red. The creators will thank you but you might have a hard time explaining to your handsome husband that you just spent $100 smacker0os on an as yet unmade short film about bugs.

I’m awaiting the arrival of my DVD and handmade cicada (one who actually appeared in the movie) with great excitement. The creator of this project has clearly eaten, slept and breathed this film and so much work has gone into it.  His hard work has paid off as it’s already been accepted into a couple of prestigious film festivals. And along the way, a lovely thing happened: Stephen Fry agreed to narrate it. I LOVE Mr Fry and he certainly adds some star cache, no?

With good projects, the creators keep you abreast of developments, delays, and thank you loudly and often. A similar site based in Australia but funding some great projects all over the  world is Pozible.

These sites have their  detractors and of course you should have a good old read so you’re making an informed decision if you do decide to invest. But I’m here to tell you there is no price that can be put on that warm inner glow.

Has anyone else backed any projects on crowd-sourcing sites? Do tell.

[All photos from Urbio.com, except those of my own wall, obviously].

New Year’s resolutions and family portraits

New Year resos. Yeah, I’ve had a few.

This year’s include some totally achievable and not-at-all unrealistic things like “lose 20kg by May” and “write book”. There are also a swathe that focus on family and basically boil down to cherishing the everyday moments instead of railing against the mundane.

Well, only time will tell how I go with this year’s plans but I did at least tick off one of last year’s resolutions and got some professional family photos done towards the end of last year.

We spent an afternoon with the lovely Fi of Fi Mims Photography. She and her husband also own and run the laid-back Cowderoy’s Dairy in St Kilda  – a favourite spot many Melbournites will be familiar with.

I can’t recommend her highly enough as a great gal and beautiful photographer.  She not only somehow got Olive to respond to her gentle suggestions, but also managed to capture us in a way that’s different to our usual totally un-posed stuff but that is still really natural and true. Quite the miracle really.

Fi was a pleasure to work with and at the end of our session, she took a couple of polaroids and left them with us. I loved that little touch of having some candid shots from the day while we waited for the really good stuff. I had a hard time choosing which prints to buy, but eventually settled on this lot.

So here we are my loves: me, that handsome husband and those dear little baby Bettys.

And yep, I am totally hiding the extra 20kgs I’m carrying behind my child. Well, kids have to be good for something, right?

Happy New Year my loves.  I hope 2013 is the bees knees. The cat’s whiskers. The duck’s guts. All those good things.