There's a moral to this story

This past weekend was full of great food and it was cooked by other people. I didn't cook a thing. Not even toast. That's my favourite kind of food. Stuff that magically appears with no effort on my part. In a previous life I think I was a Princess and people fetched and carried for me  and I didn't have to lift a finger. Somehow I've retained the memory of those wonderful times and I'm spending a lot of my current life pissed off that I have to do all of those things myself. 

On Sunday, we went to Cheesefest so not only did I eat my weight in cheese samples, I also managed to chug down some chips fried in duck fat (mmmm healthy) and a pork belly burger with caramelised apples and some funky (in a good way) BBQ sauce. I'm thinking I may try to recreate those burgers at home. It'd be a great meal to do for a crowd and it was delicious. 

We bought some cheese.  Oh how we bought cheese. I am a cheese-a-holic and if I ever turn into a serial killer and wind up on death row I'm going to ask for a cheese platter as my last meal. And since we have 43 blocks of cheese I'm all ready for guests so if you want to come over please feel free . Bring crackers. Cynthia, you're in charge of bringing wine. 

  

When I got home on Sunday , I felt the urge to bake. Cookies no less. The idea has been rattling round in my head for about a week and would simply not be silenced. That was my first mistake- listening to the voices in my head. I've been trolling Pinterest and the internet looking for inspiration. And I continued searching when I got home from Cheesefest yesterday. Because I was so full of cheese I needed something sweet. After two hours, I finally narrowed it down to Ginger Molasses Cookies or Chocolate Chip.

Then I decided I was feeling way too lazy to bake cookies. 

An hour later, in  a flash of motivation I decided it was now or never.   And I chose Cinnamon and Brown Butter Chocolate Chip.  I'd have those babies done in time for warm cookies for a late supper. That was the plan as it played out in my head. 

This is a slightly complicated recipe. First you have to brown the butter without burning it.  Then you have to cool it to room temperature. Then in another bowl you have to get some of the dry ingredients together. Then you have to add other stuff to the cooled butter and beat it until your arm falls off. Then with your other arm you have to add the dry ingredients. Finally you have to add the chocolate chips and stir them in by hand with a spoon. I used every bowl, measuring cup and spoon in my kitchen.

That's when I took a breather and decided to clean up a bit and turn the oven on to heat in preparation for the delight of baking my own cookies. So I flicked my eye over the recipe to see what temperature the oven had to be on, when out of the corner of my eye I saw this in the recipe. 

Cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap, and refrigerate the dough for at least 12 hours. 

I'm pretty sure I said WTF! out loud. And you all know how much I abhor swearing. I've heard of resting pastry and even refrigerating cookie dough but for 12 hours? Really? The dough didn't do anything but laze around in the bowl. If anyone deserved a 12 hour rest it was probably me, not that lazy arse cookie dough. But I was determined these cookies were going to be awesome and so I accepted I was just going to have to get up at the crack of dawn and bake those cookies before I went to work. Every time I deviate from a recipe I end up scraping stuff off my ceiling. 

That early am cookie baking? Didn't happen. I got distracted by a load of Bloggers Quilt Festival posts. I excel at finding things to distract myself. 

So when I got home tonight and told Mr. P it was too hot to cook dinner and that I hadn't even eaten lunch until 3pm so I wasn't all that hungry anyway I had totally forgotten I had 23 hour old cookie dough cooling its chips in my fridge. Until I opened the fridge at 7.00pm to get a drink and saw it sitting there looking at me with accusing eyes. By this stage I had 23 hours of my life and about 17.00 bucks in cookie ingredients invested in a finish.

I said WTF! And you all know how much I abhor swearing. And then I took the cooking dough out of the fridge and sat it on the bench to come to room temperature as the recipe called for (making the whole resting in the fridge for 23 hours kind of redundant if you ask me since it was at room temperature yesterday before I put it in the fridge) and then I rolled those cookies into balls and threw them in a 180C degree oven to torture them for 10-14 minutes.

These cookies are da bomb. Cinnamony and chocolatey and buttery deliciousness.  Mine are also the size of man hole covers, so I can eat three without feeling a shred of guilt. Run off and make them now. Just don't forget about the 12 hour compulsory rest after the first leg of the race. 

  

The moral of this story. Things are only ever effortless with food when someone else takes responsibility for it. ( I just sent Mr. P down to the shops to get my dinner - a pack of salt and vinegar chips) Lessons learned: Read the freaking recipe BEFORE you start cooking. 

Blogger's Quilt Festival October 2012

It's time for the Blogger's Quilt Festival hosted by Amy from Amy's Creative Side.   There's so much eye candy out there I go into sensory overload.

My name is Shay and I suffer from PCS. (Pattern Challenge Syndrome) I read instructions and they always looks like they're written in gibberish. So my usual modus operandi for quilting is that I eyeball a quilt I like and decide in my own head how it makes sense for me put it together. Then I cross my fingers, warn my husband that things are going to get scary so he can leave the house for a few hours, days,  weeks,  whatever , lay in a supply of endless swear words and jump in where angels fear to tread. 

But when I saw this pattern, I desperately wanted to make the quilt and I had no idea how it was done. So I realised I was going to have to suck it up and learn to read Cantonese, or Aramaic or whatever language it was written in because I was totally in love. And love can triumph over anything. Even language barriers. You can imagine my excitement when I discovered that the pattern for Merry Go Round was written in honest to goodness English. Bless you Sandy Klop.  You're my hero.

This quilt was full of firsts. First quilt from a pattern, first try at angled binding (I could have taught a few sailors some new swear words during that part of the process) and the first time I ever used Batik fabrics. Don't let anyone tell you they're grandma and horrible because they aren't.

Because a pile of seemingly Grandma Batik strips managed to morph into this.

I love finding the perfect backing on sale for 4 bucks a metre. 

 I picked something soft and curvy for the quilting as a contrast to all those angles and sent it out to my quilting fairy so she could really make it shine.  By the time I got to the quilting stage I was packing death that if I touched it with my machine I'd ruin it forever.  The quilting fairy used rainbow coloured variegated thread to match the colours in the quilt.  

This is my most favourite quilt ever.... 

Vital Stats:

Quilt Name: Merry Go Round 

Size:  74 inches by 80 inches 

Quilting: By Sharon Parkinson at Patchwork on Parade 

Special Techniques: Angled binding, AND I used a pattern! 

Best Category :Favorite ROYGBIV Quilt

A huge shout out to Amy for hosting and to everyone who is stopping by from BQF. Its lovely to have you visit. Please feel free to have a sticky beak around while you're here. I'm off to take a squizz at what everyone else is showing off !

I got it all going on over here (finally)

I finally brushed the cobwebs off my sewing machine this past weekend. It had been so long since I'd touched it that I was afraid I'd forgotten how it worked. 

I have been promising to sew the wings onto this fairy costume for about 6 weeks . It took all of three minutes and I did it this weekend.

Flurry finally got finished. Another WIP bites the dust! And I have yet to make a Christmas type quilt that I adore. Maybe it's time to give up?

I'm 6 hexies away from having enough to finally assemble this into a  quilt top, so I went virtual shopping on Sunday and bought some fabric for the blocks these are going to be appliquéd onto. Yes - I'm taking the easy way out. If I have to do a bajillion more hexies by hand around all of these I'm going to tear my hair out.  A couple of other things not related to this project may have slipped into my cart at the same time. That seems to happen to me a lot.

We acquired a smaller kennel recently (for free  which is always my favourite kind of acquisition!) that I thought would be a great replacement for the manky cat baskets we had out the back and so I cut a chair cushion in half and sewed it shut and voila! instant cat cushion. I love projects that take 10 minutes.  Too bad the cats don't really like their new home...Mordecai in particular has been looking at me with voodoo eyes ever since his cat basket disappeared. 

And I worked on my Briar Rose quilt. I started this one in August at a sewing workshop and I'm hoping to get the top finished by the end of the month.  I'm a lot further on than this picture shows, so the goal of a finished quilt top is actually looking like a serious reality. It's actually prettier in person than my crap photography would have you believe. 

I haven't shown my Farmers Wife quilt progress for ages and that's basically because there hasn't been any progress. It's been sitting in it's plastic tub mocking me. I'm calling it . The blocks are about to make the coolest pot holders ever. Stay tuned to be amazed. 

Mrs Green Thumbs

You may wonder where I've been and what I've been doing in my absence. I have been doing ...wait for it..gardening. When you've all stopped laughing hysterically (I'm pointing at YOU Little Miss Sunshine ) I'll show you some pictures. You see, while we were away Mr. P commented how lovely the gardens were at a couple of places we stayed. Neither of us actually like gardening and since we live on a large block we've kind of our garden go back to nature and said that "one day we'll do something with our garden".  I have a black thumb and I wanted to make sure the things I've been haphazardly planting round here were going to pull through before I committed to an entire garden do over. 

I decided that " one day " was this Spring and so I've been madly pulling weeds (which is pretty much the whole garden actually) and working out which bits I need to napalm with Roundup so I can start to have a garden that doesn't look like the deepest darkest parts of the Congo. I'm going to be buying Roundup in 44 gallon drums. It'd be easier to get a crop duster in to do a fly over. Seriously.  And getting my garden to a state where its actually fit to show in it's entirety will take years. But someone said that a  journey of 1000 miles starts with the first step and if I don't start this now I could very well be dead before it even gets close to completion. So I've weeded and pruned and transplanted and watered and fertilised this last couple of weekends and now I can actually show you pieces of my garden that don't look completely feral. 

My rosemary has survived. The basil turned up its toes though. 

 These agapanthus have survived 18 months of neglect. I finally fertilised them and stripped all the dead bits off last weekend. Now I just have to get Lola to stop thinking this bed is her own personal digging patch. Right after I get the cats to stop thinking my leek planter is a toilet. 

Last time I had a ficus I killed it within a month. This one has survived at least 6 and has been under planted with lilies which have also miraculously come back looking healthy and like they might actually make it. 

One of our big achievements-  This garden bed is new and has hydrangeas all along it. Once they're big and bushy its going to look gorgeous. And that retaining wall is new too and looks fantastic as you come up the driveway.  

This is our front veranda. I'm not all that keen on the quilt on the miners couch but I have some fabric coming that's going to be perfect for a purpose made quilt for that spot. I plan on doing some snoozing out here at some point in the not too distant future. 

My potted hydrangeas which I've kept alive for over 4 years and grew from  dead looking sticks. I am the hydrangea whisperer...

I bought a curry plant today to replace the massacred basil.  Mr. P asked what you do with a curry plant. DUH!

And this is the next project. This is going to be my new vegetable patch. Any vegie growing tips anyone? 

Lastly in all the madness that happened in the week or so before we went away I forgot to show off one of the most thoughtful gifts I have ever received. The wonderful Cynthia at Home Matters 1st sent me one of my favourite things in the world- Pyjamas. But not ordinary every day pyjamas. I got personalised pyjamas that make me feel like a rock  star every time I wear them...see that crown? That's from my blog header ! Are these not the most fabulous pyjamas you've ever seen? 

Sewing happened for the first time in a long time this weekend, and I'll be back to show off the fruits of my labours sometime this week. I even finished something! 

The Prodigal Blogger Returns

The Transportation Security Administration take their jobs very seriously. We were body scanned and had our hand luggage and /or our checked baggage rifled through at every single airport we stepped foot in. I forgot at the first airport that I had 110 mls of coconut sunscreen in my hand luggage and we got ripped out of the line and questioned. Another time  Mr. P had a breath mint in his pocket that looked like an ecstasy tablet.  I'm pretty sure that was what placed us on a watch list for every subsequent airport. At one point I was pulled aside by a security dude who, to add insult to injury, was pissing himself laughing , because apparently the bras in my hand luggage looked suspicious. The only thing suspicious about it was that he hadn't ever seen bras that huge before and he was obviously concerned I could make a Sherman Tank out of all that underwire on the 29 minute flight between islands. 

I strongly suspect that Mr. P wearing this t-shirt didn't help our cause. And I'd like to point out that my checked bags were only fully searched when they were mislabelled with Mr. P's name. Yep-it's official- my husband looks suss. 

In comparison, on my arrival back in Australia I duly declared my 345 packs of Oreos (I literally squealed when I saw the huge range in supermarkets there) and one of everything single thing Hershey manufactures, 400 York Peppermint Patties, maximum allowable amounts of cheap liquor, and my awesome wooden salad hands. I could have been a mule for a Columbian drug cartel carrying 19 kilos of A grade cocaine but because I was speaking with an Aussie accent mate, I was just waved through without a bag check. My fears of ending up on an episode of Border Security and having my Oreo stash confiscated were completely unfounded. 

It took me forever to get over the culture shock of being in another country. There were so many things that were different and not just the obvious ones like accents and driving and money and the fact that I gained an extra day that I also lost again somewhere over the Pacific en route home. America did you know your butter is completely different to ours? Is yours made from albino cows or something? And why does all your bread taste like someone fell over into the dough vat with a 20 kilo bag of sugar?  Any why are brown eggs more expensive than white eggs? Don't all eggs come from a chickens butt? What's up with your bacon? The good bit is missing.  What do you do with it? Why is your walk man at the traffic lights white and not green? Why are your light switches upside down? And why do your toilets suck everything down with a g force that was so great that I was concerned for my life every time I had to pee? I found that so amusing I had to video it.  Pondering this and other imponderables kept me amused for hours. 

American Butter 

The Aussie variety 

On the other hand American restaurant chains are the shitz. I fell in love with them and the price of booze in the US. I thought Mr. P was going to wet his pants when he bought a bottle of Canadian Club for 13 bucks. I had to remind him to start breathing again. How you aren't all obese alcoholics has me buggered.  I swear if I lived there I'd be drinking Southern Comfort like it was water and staggering to Denny's 3 times a day for fully loaded cheese fries. And I'd eat breakfast at least three times a day too. In fact , some days I did. I also defiled your bread by adding Vegemite at every possible opportunity. 

I bow before your burger greatness America. You ARE the masters. Hand you a hunk of hamburger mince and some cheese and you knock out something that is awesome in a way Australian burgers will never be. 

And you know how to do proper chocolate fudge cake too... Cheesecake Factory how I love you so. I miss you already. If I could have worked out a way to get this stuff home without it growing fur and going green I would have done it. 

It wasn't all eating and getting shit faced on cheap booze (although I have noticed an inordinately large amount of food and cocktail pictures among our holiday snaps). We did see some of the sights too. Sea turtles and lava and hydrangeas the size of my head. Pearl Harbor, a palace, gorgeous beaches and hula dancers. Most of Hawaii is incredibly beautiful. And we only drove on the wrong side of the road twice.  

And naturally I managed to accidentally stumble into a few quilt shops. And had to post 40 pounds of fabric home in secret because that was the only way of keeping Mr. P from knowing exactly what I bought to augment my already overflowing stash ....

I came home to this jar of treasures that Little P had been collecting for me since we left. It doesn't get any cuter than that. 

Things that are treasures to a three year old

On the agenda for this weekend is getting re-acquainted with my sewing machine and spending some serious time in my pyjamas. And drinking some decent tea. And sleeping. And trying to find a recipe for chocolate fudge cake because the 12 pounds I put on overseas simply wasn't enough. 

Home Stretch

Do you know that feeling where you're anticipating something but you have a lot of crud to wade through first to get to the good shit? It always feels so close and yet so far away. It's like those dreams where you're being chased by something hideous (insert your biggest fear here) and not being able to reach somewhere safe.  That's been me this week.

I've been refusing to get excited about Mai Tai's and grass skirts and sunshine until I got through some of the billion skillion things I had to do this week in order to get to the cocktails, flip flops, sarong part of my life.  I gotta tell you people it's only Wednesday and this week has been as slow as molasses. 

One thing I can cross off my list of things to do this week is "getting an ear infection". Naturally I had to do this the week before I'm going to be stuck 10 miles up in the sky in a tin can for 10 straight hours. I'm not great with decompression in planes anyway (I'm the pathetic creature sitting in Row 7A keening and rocking when we descend feeling like my head is about to explode)  but I really did it properly this time and am dosed up on steroids and antibiotics so my ear drum doesn't perforate mid flight. Dousing the plane with ear goo isn't the way to make friends on a long haul flight. 

Cool stuff I'm looking forward to (because this time next week I'll actually be in Honolulu-not bragging- just saying) includes being somewhere the sun DOES shine, driving on the wrong side of the road, learning how to tip and having everyone stare at me because I talk funny. I'm hoping we aren't going to stick out like dog balls and embarrass the crap out of Australia somehow. 

I suppose I should probably start with not saying things like "stick out like dog balls"...

Mish Mash

With our departure drawing closer, I've been working long hours so I can go on holidays from work with a clear conscience. Not much else that's blogworthy has been going on here unless you count the batch of cakes I made that I forgot to put eggs in (they were like little rocks and tasted very strange) or the fact we've been living on takeaway for about a week. 

Mordecai is firmly ensconced back in usual life after his near death experience. My credit card is not so much dented as completely smashed into tiny pieces. But it's nice to have a happy (breathing)cat.

He is minus a lot of fur , and all the neighbourhood cats are taking the piss out of him. I told him to tell them this is the "half poodle" cut and it's very chic right now. 

While I'm bitching and moaning about how poverty stricken I am I'd like to show something I ordered before the cat decided to suck the life out of my credit card. I haven't bought shoes in weeks so I went on a bender.

There are actually two of each shoe but I was trying to be arty with my photography. I Love Billy is my absolute favourite brand of shoes and since I bought three pairs on sale for the price of one it would have almost been sacrilege not to buy them.

I've done a bit of sewing lately but it doesn't feel like a huge amount of progress is being made. I've pressed all the bits for this quilt that is making it's debut appearance on my blog. I stupidly announced to Little Miss Sunshine that I was  aiming to have this top together before we went away and once I have an idea out there I find it hard to change it so watch this space.

And I finally sucked it up and basted Flurry yesterday because it's been sitting here mocking me for about a year now. 

I was assisted by my helper , Little P who has obviously been watching me baste quilts for so long that he knows how it's done without instruction or prompting. And yes- he did it in his pyjamas. I'm so proud. 

The plan for today is to quilt that darn thing. I'm already plotting about how little quilting it really needs to remain stuck together! If you hear crying- that will be me. 

P.S. 9 sleeps!