Not little junior Girl Guides - although Brownies and brownies definitely go together! I mean this primer on making brownies from the American Chemical Society. Bless them!

This evening I made little salmon & corn cakes, from a recipe Idle invented many years ago. I hadn't made these for about 12 years, but had held on to the recipe she'd jotted down on the back of an envelope ( Read more... )

This afternoon, being Friday, & therefore pretty much impossible to get vets, scientific researchers or other story fodder to return phone calls, I spent a little time taking my brilla tops one stage closeer to completion ( Read more... )

It's a boiled fruitcake made with gluten-free flour.

Here's another view of the cake (already cut) and a glimpse of the kitchen.

Woo hoo! I have just cast off the lacy scarf after working on it this afternoon & all night, apart from breaks for Dr Who & the Iron Chef. It's looking pretty good. I am pleased with it, & I hope my friend will be too. All I have to do tomorrow is weave the ends in and sew the amethyst-like beads onto the strips of stocking stitch at either end ( Read more... )

Bananas have finally stopped being a luxury item, & even though we are in a pretty chilly winter for eastern Australia, suddenly there is a glut of bananas in the fruit & vegie shops. Not perfect bananas but on the edge of over-ripe ones. They are so cheap I don't think they can be Australian, altho' of course I hope they are ( Read more... )

Winter started with a vengeance this week, with gale force winds and heavy floods over much of the state. As well as coal tankers being driven onto the beach at Newcastle, threatening to spill fuel oil, there have been roads collapsing and flash flooding, which have resulted in the sort of holiday fatality figures we've come to expect from road ( Read more... )

This evening I made this for dinner, replacing the tomatoes with home-made plum sauce. I cut the quantity of spinach in half, but forgot to reduce all the other ingredients. Result - a whole wok full of spicy, healthy, filling but unfreezable food. No questions about what to make for lunch or dinner over the next couple of days ( Read more... )

I have just put a batch of pumpkin apple streusel muffins in the oven, but I'm not sure if they'll turn out right as I had to (a) translate US ingredients, & (b) substitute. So, I have a query about canned pumpkin. The recipe called for 1 cup of canned pumpkin. I substituted with 1 cup cooked mashed sweet potato (kumera). The resulting batter ( Read more... )

Since my osteopath and my naturopath have both suggested that my cholesterol-lowering medication, Lipitor could well be contributing to my ongoing joint pain, headaches & lack of energy, I've decided to get off the pharmaceutical bandwagon and try something a little more 'natural ( Read more... )