Better Late etc

Some months ago I celebrated my 60th birthday with a 7 course degustation and wine matching dinner cooked in my kitchen by local chef Dean Wong. He had offered to cook to cook and serve a dinner for eight people as a fundraiser for the local school and we were the lucky highest bidder for this wonderful prize.

He and his apprentice arrived at 9.00 am on Sunday and took over the kitchen until about 12.00. The team that came back at 6.00 that evening included Dean's father - chief washer-upper! It was a fabulous meal and a very exciting way to celebrate a milestone birthday. We were all treated as though in a very high class restaurant with wine chosen to go with each course and each course beautifully presented. As well as the 7 courses detailed below Dean provided THREE amuse bouche offerings: Asparagus Velouté and Steak Tartare and a third which I am ashamed to say I cannot remember. Certainly a night to remember!

The Menu:
1.    Trio of mushroom soup french, field & brown or button
Johanneshof  Dry Gewurztraminer 2008

2.    Seared snapper with avocado potato crush, asparagus hollandaise sauce
Domain Road Riesling 2009

3.    Smoked cured venison with mango-kumara salad & red wine reduction
Okahu Chambourcin

4.    Double Lamb Cutlet with potato rostie & broad beans lamb jus
Locharburn Pinot Noir 2008

5.    Medium-rare roast duck breast with potato tian, turned courgettes & cherry compote
Cottier Pinot Noir 07

6.    Angus eye fillet of  beef with potato puree, french mushrooms & green beans
Barwick Black Label Shiraz Cabernet

7.    Chocolate & olive oil mousse with raspberry compote
Okahu OBJ Port

Symposium

Next year is the National Quilt Symposium - these happen every two years and next year's is in Queenstown, one of New Zealand's premium tourist destinations. I registered my interest directly after the last one as I have for the last three but I didn't really think I would be able to go. I didn't get to the last one in 2009 either. However, the cards fell right and my good luck was to be invited to join Helen in the motel room she had booked months ago. So I'm going! and I'm very excited about it too :-)

We thought that it would be a good idea for the girls from Wanganui to have a t-shirt so we shopped yesterday and found a red singlet tunic that suited us both. NB: we don't know of any other club members attending symposium but if you are reading this and you are attending and would like a t-shirt - please let me know!) The shirt we chose has a picture on the front (black, silver cityscape) but it was getting difficult to find exactly what we wanted so we decided that we could put our logo on the back. We chose a singlet tunic so that we could wear other t-shirts under it and hopefully could wear it every day. I played with our Cotton-On Quilters logo on the design programme and came up with something I thought was fairly decent. I printed a couple out on to transfer paper and ironed them onto plain white cotton. Here is mine, sewed on with two rows of (stylishly) careless heavy black stitching.

A trip on a jetboat

For Christmas last year we gave Sarah, Aimee, Jessica and my father, vouchers for a jet boat ride on the Whanganui River. We booked the Havoc trip to the Flying Fox with Brent Firmin of the Spirit of the River Jet Boat Tours. This is a one hour trip up the beautiful Whanganui River, one hour at the Flying Fox for coffee and muffins and a little tour around and then another hour back on the river. Unfortunately it rained on the day we went this time. That only meant we didn't get many photos, we still enjoyed it and it did let up a bit while we were at the Flying Fox.

The two girls and Sarah were given a ride on the flying fox - half way out over the river. There is no road access to the house, all people and supplies are brought by boat or by road to the other side of the river and then winched over on the flying fox.

And why am I just showing you these photos now? 4 months after the event? because the camera we used to take these photos was, um, mislaid, until very recently. Until I had to get the backpacks out for our trip to Sydney actually. Last time they were used was, oh, in January for a trip on the river I think!

Two Excellent Trades

Terry and I celebrated our 40th Wedding Anniversary in February this year.

 We decided to treat ourselves to a red table setting - red for a ruby wedding and red for a large family gathering at Christmas. We found a lovely red tablecloth and  red and cream runner but although we searched for a long time we could not find the table mats that we wanted. I decided I would have to make some but I haven't had much time for sewing over the last year or so and I wasn't hopeful I would get them made any time soon.

Then a lovely lady from Canada wrote asking if we would consider a trade. She wanted some delphinium seed and wondered if we would like to take something from her Etsy shop in exchange. We don't normally do this but she asked at the right time, offering the right thing. Elizabeth of Lilybeth Goodies has made me 12 table mats and 12 napkins. I chose the fabric for the mats from an online source and Elizabeth took it from there. (Oh, and before you tell me that I've set the table wrongly, the small knife and fork are on the inside because they are for dessert - pancakes with feijoas and almonds and greek yoghurt).

They are beautifully made - Jennifer and I spent ages last night trying to work out how the mitred corners on the napkins were done. Just imagine it - 48 tiny little mitred corners on those 12 napkins! Amazing! I'm totally happy with the trade. Thanks Elizabeth! I hope you get as much pleasure from your delphinium seed as we will from the work you've done for us.

 

 And this is our dining room with the table set for Sunday night dinner. Can you see the other new addition? Yes, the doors have arrived from France - but they haven't been installed on the cabinet yet, that's for another day :-) Aren't the colours perfect? It was very exciting when they arrived all beautifully packed in a wooden box.I will show you more and better photos of the doors when they are installed on the cabinet.

Here is a picture of the quilt in its new home - Christine writes that its perfect with the colours of her room. So that was a happy trade too!

Jessica's Cat Quilt

Two posts in one day after a loooooooooong drought! (see here for the other one). I know, I'll explain. While Terry was away on a business trip for four weeks, he took my camera. I don't like to post without pictures so I didn't post much, just one I think with a photo taken on my phone. Then as soon as he got back we had our grand-daughters to stay and after that I had minor surgery (all is well, it just took a while to recover from the anesthetic). So I haven't been quilting much and I haven't been thinking too well either! But now I am back doing both.

When my grand-children or my niece's children turn five, they get an "I'm Five!" quilt from me. Jessica is about to turn five and she has asked for cats. Unfortunately, because of all the interruptions to scheduled life we have had this year its not the fanciest I'm Five! quilt I've made but I hope the lovely fabric will make up for it. Here is the unquilted top. I'm going back out to the sewing room now to make a backing out of all the fabric I bought and didn't use in the top!

We went to a wedding

 

We went to a wedding on Saturday. A garden wedding and I knew it would be hot because Terry knows the weather god and Judith had asked him to use his influence and make sure it would be a lovely day for her daughter's wedding. And therefore I knew I would need to wear a hat to the wedding. Not many people did but as I have fair skin and I can't wear sunblock because it makes me go funny I had to have a hat. 

I chose my outfit for the wedding, a black and turquiose and hot pink skirt I had bought recently, a new black top and relatively new black shoes. I would just need to buy a hat, black, turquoise or pink, plenty of choice! 

But I found out that a new hat would cost more than a new outfit and I would get a lot more wear out of a new outfit. I already had this caramel hat and matching shoes that I bought for my daughter's wedding 15 years ago and had only worn that once. So I bought another outfit to match the hat. :-)

It was a great wedding!

Fate says No to Christmas Cake!

Words and no pictures this time.

Did you ever get the feeling you were not supposed to be doing what you are trying to do? Because I can't eat wheat I have to make my own Christmas cake each year. I don't really like it much but I want to be able to eat it if I feel tempted and I do usually, to be part of the tradition, part of the family get-to-together and all that. So I make a gluten free cake every year and I eat a couple of small slices. No-one else cares either way that its gluten free because its mostly fruit anyway.

And because I don't really care for it I just use whatever recipe has been published in the paper around the time they reckon you should be making your cake. This year the recipe was for a boiled fruit cake. Ok. it looked easy and easy is good when you are living in chaos and your kitchen has been reduced to the basics.

So I found what supplies I had - lots of lovely organic, sulphur free dried fruit. I bought the sherry the recipe called for. I boiled up the fruit with sugar and butter and jam. I let it cool and added eggs, sherry, spice, flour and baking powder. I double lined the cake tin and heated the oven. I poured the cake into the tin and carefully carried it to the oven - and dropped it splat on the floor! The special baking tin with the removable bottom dropped its bottom and the cake was all over the place. Well, organic sulphur free fruit is expensive, there was no-one around, the floor was washed that morning (Wednesday, cleaning day) and it was going to spend 2 hrs in the oven... so I scooped it onto a plate, rearranged the paper lining and tipped it back in the tin. Strike 1.

While it was cooking I rang my mother (tip of the month, ring your mother). I mentioned that I was making my Christmas cake and using a boiled fruit recipe. She said she had never really liked boiled fruit cakes, they didn't have the 'life' of unboiled ones. Strike 2.

So, the next day, Thursday, I thought the cake was pretty small, I had a lot of dried fruit left and I am soon to pack my kitchen up into boxes. Lets see if I can make a cake that hasn't spent some time on the floor however brief. I mixed up another one and offered to let Terry lick the mixing bowl - I had the spoons. He said thanks. After a couple of tastes he said no thanks, he didn't like it. Strike 3. Well three strikes and you're out but what was I going to do with all that uncooked batter? I decided to cook it anyway certain that after three strikes nothing else would be allowed to go wrong.

The cake had been in the oven about an hour when the power went off. After 10 minutes and it hadn't come back on I was getting anxious about my half cooked cake so we rang the power company. Oh, yes, we know its off, no we don't know why - best estimate is back on in 5 hours! Strike 4.

We drove into town and finished it off in Jennifer's oven. I also bought ingredients for dinner which we had while the cake cooked. I bought ham for Terry which he didn't want and he didn't want the salmon I bought for myself either but that doesn't count as a strike against the cake, just against the week.

So if you visit and I offer you Christmas cake you get to choose which one.

Guess Who

not a builder, not *any* tradesman, not me...

Two work-gangs: new drive & house extension

 

  

  

  

  

  

 

Freshening up the bedroom

Over the last week, Terry and I sanded down and painted three sets of drawers and a chair for our bedroom. Our room is very large but because of the shape of the roof and the rafters, there is not much of a wardrobe and most of our clothes are in drawers. Because we've never bought a bedroom suite, the chests were a motley collection: inherited, gifted and bought second hand or new all at different times. Only two match.

The most recent items we've bought are a white dresser with a blanket box on top of two drawers and two white chairs. We liked the lightness the white pieces brought to our room so we decided to refinish some of the older and more tired looking chests with white paint and new handles. We also painted an old chair white, the sole survivor of a dining set our family used up as they grew.

The two taller matching chests of drawers we acquired from my parents about 20-25 years ago when they were redoing their room. I remember helping my dad when he made them about 50 years ago from kitsets so its lovely to have given them a new lease of life.

Little by Little

I've spent a little time in the sewing room - just enough to put the borders on the Row by Row - and only that because its club day tomorrow and I want to take soemthing for Show and Tell. The first pic is my computer generated idea of the outer borders I would put on the centre rows, the second pic is the actual finished top. Not a finished quilt yet, still to be layered, pinned, quilted and bound.

So what have I been doing if I haven't been in the sewing room? Mostly office work.

Last week we sent out 400 plant list brochures to people who had bought plants or seeds from us in the past two years. I laid out the plant list pages including photographs on my computer and sent it as a pdf file to our friendly local printer. We then folded all 400 and put them in prepaid envelopes and posted them. I also spent a few days putting the plant list on our website here. And there were a couple of advertisements to design for garden publications.

I spent some time researching and found a free desktop publishing programme for Terry to use in his new (reprised) role as bulletin editor for his Rotary Club. He is hoping to encourage other members to take over the job and if we can present them with a free desktop publishing programme and a template for the newsletter already laid up in the programme then it will be easier for them to learn this skill.

I found an free email checker which checks all three of my email addresses (don't ask) and pops up the subject line of anything new. I need this because Terry and I share an inbox. We both need to have access to the business email, and if he has Thunderbird (our email programme) open I can't access it so I don't know if an email I'm waiting for has arrived or not.This way I do.

I've been hanging out washing on my new clothesline! Its fabulous, its in the best place in the garden, down by the cherry tree. It gets lots of wind and sun and its huge! And you can see the washing from the kitchen window so you don't forget its out there and leave it too late until its all cold and damp again.

I still love it!

We've been so busy all day, cleaning up the office and its still only half done. But every time I had a reason, well alright, an excuse to go downstairs, I saw Maria's lovely quilt on the coffee table and every time I had to stop and stroke it and marvel! I can't believe she was able to give it away. And not only the quilt, she also sent some fabric, thread, applique circles all ready to iron on and a lovely scissors fob made by her daughter. I'm so lucky!

Now you know its Terry's 60th birthday soon and we are having a big family reunion and a big party next weekend. All four of our children are coming, most of their children and some partners too. My sister and brother-in-law, Terry's mother and brother - all coming to stay! Of course we haven't got room for them all to stay with us, various friends have offered to billet some of them but the young children and their parents are staying here. Nadeeka and her boys are allergic to dust which is the reason for spring cleaning the office as Nadeeka has volunteered to sleep on an air mattress in there. And it needed it anyway! So the whole place is being damp dusted and all the piles of papers are being sorted and most, apart from financial stuff, thrown out - we don't need it all now, everything can be found on the internet! I don't know what will happen if it ever falls over though...

Quick Quilt

Tomorrow is the Quilt Show! But before I can go and see who has won the challenges, I have some visitors coming to see the SwiftQuilter in action. And I had no quilt to load up to show them so I made a quickie top today. And as I have only washed my red, orange and yellow fabric, I had to make a red orange and yellow quilt. I think it looks like a boy's quilt, don't you? I wonder which little boy I can give it to when its finished. It took a couple of hours from pulling the fabric to finishing the border (well, I had to iron all the fabric I used) but I'm very happy to report that I only had a very mild allergic reaction to my sewing room today. Using washed fabric and having most of the (unwashed) fabric now shut away in bins and the cupboard AND my filter working away in the corner has made the sewing room a much more pleasant place to be. Of course, its all tidy and dusted at the moment because of the visitors coming so that will help too.

And look what I've got in my laundry - 24 boxes of dye catchers! My daughter Sarah found a bulk source of them for me and they arrived in the mail yesterday. So I'm working my way through washing all the fabric, pile by pile. I'm about 1/5 of the way through now. The cute wee squash sitting on top were in my organic fruit & vege box a couple of weeks ago. I love getting the box each week and seeing what surprises I have!

Man, those dye catchers are great!

I've had a lot of comment from people who also suffer from the chemicals in new fabric. Lisa suggested a room air filter, Nancy suggested a fan and also said you have to wash fabric with hot water and detergent, not just soak it. Nellie and Catherine said why iron it? Fold it and wait until you need it before ironing it because you need to iron before you cut it anyway. So I've bought an air purifier for the sewing room which I am also using in the office for seed counting days. That should help lessen that allergy reaction too. And I've started washing all my fabric. I did a big batch of RED fabric this morning and used two dye catchers. Here they are after the wash. (For the people who don't know about dye catchers, these started out white!) There is no colour run on the fabric at all. I've got a load of purple fabric in now with another two dye catchers.

BUT I've only got 3 more left after that. Does anyone know where I can get more in New Zealand? I've only ever seen them in Countdown twice and that was once on the shelf and then again later in the remainder bin. I guess they didn't sell very well. I bought all i could at that point but I haven't seen them since and I've nearly used up all I have. This is what the box looks like - have you seen any around?

My Kitchen Window

This is one of my favourite views - which is a very good thing when you consider how much time I spend in my kitchen at the moment. I love the view beyond the window but I also enjoy the pretty jugs and pots of flowers on the sill. You can't see the garden or the cherry trees in this photo as I have just this minute taken it and its starting to get dark.

Terry has mentioned in his blog that his excellent vegetable garden is producing a lot of lovely tomatoes and more courgettes than we can use and I have been turning them into ratatouille and tomato soup to stock our freezer. I have frozen 6 single serves and one 3 person punnet of Roast Tomato Soup today. I used The Gluten-Free Goddess' recipe (more or less) from her blog and it turned out to be very very good.

As well as preserving goodness from our vegetable garden there have been apples and nectarines to freeze from the orchard and the peaches are nearly ready to pick. I have also been doing a lot of baking in my kitchen lately as we both prefer to eat gluten-free biscuits and bread - and they are much nicer made at home. I've regularly been making Gluten Free Flatbread and I'll give you the recipe for that shortly. Its much the nicest Gluten Free bread I've had, homemade or bought and it freshens up nicely in the toaster after its been frozen.

Do you remember back in very early January we had a visit from two of our favourite people from France? Caroline and Bruno gave me the large red gerbera on my window sill and it has had between 2 and 5 flowers on it ever since. Which is why Terry bought the little orange one the other day to keep it company. Don't they look nice in front of my little group of orange and red jugs? I bought the middle sized one in Lyon and Caroline's mother gave me the matching plate. I'm looking forward to our kitchen extension which should give me some room to display the plate too - although I will lose my lovely kitchen window!

Here is my adaptation of this Gluten Free Flatbread recipe:

Gluten Free Flatbread
· Heat 1.5 cup water to blood temperature (40 sec on high in microwave)

Add:

• 2 tsp sugar
• 2 Tablespoons instant yeast

Leave to froth while you mix together in a bowl:

• 2 cup fine brown rice flour
• 1 cup tapioca starch
• 2 teaspoons xantham or guar gum
• 1 teaspoon salt

Mix in food processor

• 2 teaspoons cider vinegar
• 1/4 cup oil
• 4 eggs

Then

1. Add yeast mixture to wet ingredients
2. Slowly add dry ingredients to wet ingredients.
3. Beat well.
4. Spread mixture thinly with spatula to cover two non stick biscuit trays
5. Place dough in a warm spot, allow to rise for 35-40 minutes.
6. Preheat oven to 375 deg C Bake.
7. Bake for 20 minutes or until the top is slightly browned.
8. It will come out of the oven with a slight crust that will go away as the bread cools. Allow the bread to cool 15-30 minutes before using. It will become flexible and soft.
9. Cut into large pieces to use as a folded sandwich bread

A Day Filled with Treats!

Wednesday is sewing day - well, the morning anyway. And I enjoyed the morning with the rain pouring down so heavily at times that it was quite dark outside but I was warm and working well in my lovely sewing room with the lights as bright as daylight. I can't show you what I was doing as its the row by row challenge and who knows who might see their row quilt on my blog! But it went well and I'm happy with the finished row.

I had a lunch appointment with Jennifer and Terry decided he could be in town at that time too and would join us. So he popped up to the shed to collect the mail as I got ready to go out. And look what he brought back down to the house! My Four Seasons Swap Quilt! isn't it lovely? The colours and fabrics are wonderful and it is perfectly at home on my coffee table. I can look at it and smile whenever I pass the table (which is often as its on the way to the stairs and going up and down the stairs because I've forgotten something is what keeps me fit!) The quilt is beautifully finished and I think the pattern was a good choice for the fabric. There was also a parcel of goodies - two bag patterns, some ink jet fabric sheets and some fabric! What a fabulous package. I wonder if she knew that one of the other Challenges we have for the quilt show in April next year is "My Best Bag"? I'll enjoy making a bag from a pattern instead of guessing and fudging it which is my usual method. I'm going to make the one with the gathered side pockets. And you can see the box it was sent in in the background - she has even put a map of Australia and New Zealand on the box! I tried to open the box without ripping the map but I was too excited to be careful enough and it tore itself apart.

Well, I just had a few minutes before I had to leave to put a comment on my partner's blog to let her know it had arrived safely. Follow the link to her blog - she since posted about the quilt and tells of the problems she had making the quilt and why it was late arriving. I really didn't mind and there was no need to add the extra goodies - but it was wonderful to receive them!

After that excitement we carefully drove into town, still lots of rain about but thankfully, none as we walked from car to cafe. It was hosing down at the time we intended to leave so we all sat back down and had another cup of coffee and a gluten free biscuit. Then Jennifer and I spent a happy couple of hours shopping - clothes from "The Mill", and then a look at the $2.00 shop! Another drink and show and tell and then I dropped Jennifer off and came home.

And now the rain has stopped and the sun is pretending to shine. Terry is out planting nasturtium seeds in the orchard and I'm thinking about what to cook for dinner.

So - how about that for a perfect day? Sewing, shopping, a wonderful parcel from abroad and lunch with two of my favourite people?

okay, okay

I know I haven't posted for a while, that's because I've been hosting family, working hard and doing secret stuff in the sewing room.

We had Sarah, Chris, Aimee and Jessica to stay last weekend. I would have posted about that but we didn't take any photos and its a bit boring without photos. Then all my quilting time this week (which wasn't much, see the comment above) was taken up with completing a row on Audrey's Row by Row quilt. And I can't post pictures of that because she isn't allowed to know what is happening with her Row by Row until she gets it back. Suffice to say, it involved ripping patches out and resewing because I hadn't read her preferences properly.

And this weekend I've been doing more secret stuff but I'm going to show you anyway because I'm pretty pleased with it and I don't think Chris reads my blog. Hope not. Sorry Chris if you do but you'll be getting it soon anyway.

Our grand-daughters do some pretty nice artwork at times and one evening while they were visiting us, Chris was musing on how cool it would be to have some of it put on a t-shirt. I don't think he ever did anything about it but I decided to see what I could do for his birthday which is coming up soon. The first step was to scan the art, add their names and print it onto a vinyl transfer sheet. Then I ripped white fabric into a rough square and ironed the transfer onto the fabric. I ripped some fine calico into another, slightly larger rough square and layered these onto the front of a black t-shirt. After pinning a piece of vilene to the inside of the shirt, I machine sewed round the edges of both squares with a mock hand quilting stitch sewing through all four layers (white fabric, calico, t-shirt and vilene). A bit of a twiddle through the middle and then trim the vilene away from the back. Finished!