Around here - March 2025

Last week in South East Queensland we prepared for Cyclone Alfred with Brisbane and Northern NSW shutting up shop for a couple of days with schools closed, ferry and bus services cancelled and everyone bunkering down just like the old days of 5 years ago due to Covid.

The Gold Coast copped a huge amount of rain and wind as did Northern NSW and Bribie and Redcliffe.  Lots of areas of Brisbane flooded with power out for days and trees down however we were very lucky that by the time it got to us it was downgraded to Ex Tropical Cyclone.  Queensland is known for Cyclones however up North.  It had been 50 years since a Cyclone was in Brisbane so this was going to be quite the event.

I did ended up packing some precious photo albums, hard disk drives and camera gear into some plastic crates just in case.  I wasn't worried about flooding where I am however I was more worried about the 100-150km expected winds and with some tall gum trees behind my house if they fell on the roof then that would be the end and water would mostly definitely come inside.  Thankfully it was very mild at my place and Sunday night was the only concerning rain event however we were all good.  Parts of my suburb ended up with no power for a few days however we didn't loose power which was great.  Apart from the inconvenience of no power you loose everything in your fridge and freezer as well and with the cost of groceries that is never good.

I did do a big cook up on the Friday of some chickens in the slow cooker, happy pantry slice, focaccia and banana bread just in case we lost power.  It all felt very much like Covid with the shops out of most things, toilet paper, milk, bread, eggs, canned veggies, meats etc. the shelves were bare and are only just restocking shelves now a week later.  Here's a few pics.

Banana Bread

I premade some coffee shots and put them in the freezer in case the power went out and the largest ice cube tray happened to be this Christmas Tree one.  Add milk and you have yourself an ice coffee.

Ice Coffee

Homemade fresh ham and salad sandwich

Teddy on the couch

I loved this pic that was posted - honestly if you were in flood waters this would be totally necessary.

We all know about the cost of living with everything going up, petrol, groceries, electricity, insurances [even more so now with another natural disaster event].  I use Microsoft Windows and the annual fee went from $109 to $159 AUD which is insane.  Lightroom Software which I use for editing my photos is going up from $14 to $25 AUD.  I find that everything we do now has to be a subscription so there's annual or monthly fees.  Just to have your email storage there's a fee, a fee to keep your iCloud so your phone is backed up.  It's actually quite hard to reduce costs in 2025.

As for groceries I spent $99.55 today at Coles and apart from the $18 worth of organic chicken I didn't really buy anything as I had to stock up on some spices etc.  I ended up with 2 lots of toilet paper as they were on sale from $13.60 to $11.00 so I saved $5.20 by purchasing 2 lots.  I bought 2 lots of milk as it's the first time in 2 weeks I have been able to buy it from the supermarket as it was in stock.  Take a look at my trolley there is nothing in it and this is $100.  You can see why the cost of living is an issue if this is $100 worth of groceries with only 1kg of chicken.

Hope you have a great week, I'm needing to mow the lawn, weed the veggie patch and get some veggies in the ground.  I've ordered some garlic which should come in the next week and the variety is Glen Large which is good for our Sub Tropical Climate so we will see.  Rhonda from Down To Earth grows this one so I'll give it a whirl.  I've tried to grow garlic twice before with not that much success.

Chloe's Caramel Fudge - Thermomix

A couple of years ago I came across Chloe from NZ on IG and she posted this fabulous caramel fudge recipe and I have been making it on special occasions ever since.  I can't believe I haven't ever written out the recipe for my blog before so I can easily refer back to it.  This is a Thermomix recipe and the fudge melts in your mouth.  I made a batch for my lovely neighbours.

INGREDIENTS

• 200gms White Chocolate Melts
• 125gms Butter
• 2 Tablespoons Golden Syrup
• 220gms Soft Brown Sugar
• 395gms Sweetened Condensed Milk

METHOD

Line a 28cm x 18cm slice tray with baking paper, leaving some overhanging when fudge is set.

Place chocolate in Thermomix bowl and chop 5 sec/speed 7. 

Transfer into a bowl and set aside until needed.

Place condensed milk, butter, golden syrup and brown sugar into the mixing bowl and cook
8 mins/100 deg/speed 3.

Scrape down the sides of the bowl with spatula and cook a further 20 mins Varoma/speed 3.

Add chopped chocolate and mix 10 sec/speed 4 (or until mixture is smooth)

Immediately transfer fudge into prepared tray and smooth surface.

Leave the fudge on the bench overnight to set before cutting into pieces.

Belgian Chocolate Slice - A Christmas Tradition

Every Christmas I make Belgian Chocolate Slice which believe it or not the recipe was was a tear out page from a 1992 magazine which was a promotion for Glad Bake [parchment paper].

When I first started making this slice I didn't even own a mix master and would put the biscuits in a brown paper bag and try and roll a bottle over the top to crush them.  Fast forward to 2024 and the Thermomix takes about 2 seconds to crush the packet of chocolate biscuits.  It's a family tradition that I make this every year and all of my family look forward to eating it too.

It should have a place on the blog so here is the recipe.

BELGIAN CHOCOLATE SLICE

INGREDIENTS

50gms Unsalted Butter

100gms Dark Cooking Chocolate

1 Egg beaten

250gms Arnott's Choc Ripple Biscuits

75gms Mixed Dried Fruit [or you can just use sultanas]

75gms Glace Cherries

75gms Chopped Nuts

150gms Dark Cooking Chocolate Melted [for the top]

METHOD

Line a Slice tray with glad bake [parchment paper].

In a bowl put the biscuit crumbs, dried fruit, cherries and nuts and give it a stir.

Melt butter and 100gms dark chocolate in a saucepan. [I melt it in the microwave about 45 seconds and then see how you go in 15 second spurts.

Once the butter & chocolate are melted stir in beaten egg and pour into the bowl that has the biscuit crumbs, dried fruit, cherries and nuts.

Spoon mixture into tin and press down firmly, smoothing over the surface.

Refrigerate until chilled.

Melt 150gms dark cooking chocolate and pour over slice.

Refrigerate to set.

Cut into small squares and serve.

Around here - Christmas Season

It has been raining in Brisbane the last few days and would you believe it Term 4 of Tennis was 11 weeks on a Tuesday night and 5 Tuesdays of the 11 it rained.  Term 3 was 10 weeks however I only enrolled on the second week and it only rained on the last night.  The grass is growing so fast due to summer heat and the rain a couple days after it's done it looks like it hasn't even been mowed.

Last week I went to QBE and bought a beautiful cookbook of a person who I follow on IG.  She is Turkish and lives in the USA and started a IG account and posted her cooking videos and has grown a huge following to over 10 Million people which has lead to her first cookbook.  I can say the quality, style, photography, textured linen feel cover is absolutely beautiful. She also has a Youtube Channel.

The tips, the layout and instructions and all the recipes are beautiful.  I love hearing about her story and how she got here.  The first thing I'm making is a long fermented pizza dough.  Mix together on a Tuesday night pop it in the fridge until Friday night.  It's called Schiacciata which is a bread/pizza dough recipe and I'm looking forward to cooking this in my pizza oven.  The photo above and below are from the book, not my photos or cooking yet.

For our Christmas table this year I'm going to turn our napkins into little Christmas Trees so I've ordered a click and collect from Kmart for the Napkins.  See Beth from Baby Mac Blog's post from last year where I got the idea from.  I wanted to do this last year however the napkins all sold out and I'm still waiting on my order to be fulfilled at the moment so hopefully they are in stock.

Here's a few Christmas photos from the archives.

Around here - Christmas Season

Here we are just a few weeks away from another Christmas.  This year is the first year in 16 years I didn't have the end of year mad rush with school events and concerts.  So far I've got all the Christmas presents for one kid for Christmas and nothing yet for the other.  I want to give presents that they actually want so it's a little hard when one of them doesn't know what that is.  There's still time to work this out and I'm sure it will get sorted in time.

My son turned 21 last week, how does that happen, wasn't it only yesterday I gave birth to him.  Time moves so quickly the older you get.  I'm so proud of both of my kids out in the world doing their thing, saving up, travelling, they are both amazing cooks and meal prepping their lunches for work.  I'm very proud of them and also the values I've instilled in them is shining through.  I'm also so proud of myself as a single Mum and raising them on the smell of an oily rag and how they have grown into such confident young adults.

I bought myself a new Breville Coffee Machine during the Black Friday sales and it's a bit of a learning curve from my Nespresso Pod machine.  Getting the right grind and timing of the pour but it's been a fun thing to learn.  My son got a fancy coffee grinder for his 21st and little coffee scales from a local coffee place that I took him too a couple of weeks ago so he's right into the perfect expresso as well.

I also bought myself two new bedside table lamps from Freedom as the ones I bought over 13 years ago were old and I had snapped one of them at the top of the lamp.  I love my new lamps and the textured base and it really makes the bedroom.  The picture below is from the Freedom website, not my room but this is my beautiful lamp.

My veggie gardens are full of weeds at the moment so I need to get stuck into that on the weekend.  I mowed the lawn last night after all the rain we had so it was quite long.  It always looks great but I don't enjoy mowing the lawn anymore.  Ten years ago it was no problem but I'm not that cardio fit so it's an effort.  I've been doing weights at the gym for the past 4 months and I'm loving getting stronger but my cardio fitness needs a lot of work so I find mowing an effort.

Teddy is loving going to the dog park every morning and is besties with another dog called Teddy and they run and chase each other all over the dog park which is great because he comes home he's tired and ready for a big nap so I can get on with things for the day.

I have so many lovely Christmas photos over the years as every December I participated in Ali Edward's Photo project called "December Daily".  Thought I would share a few of my favourites below.

Hope you are having a relaxing lead up to Christmas and it's not so crazy.

Easy Ciabatta Bread

I've made this recipe before and thought I has posted about it however it's not on the blog so I'm typing it now so I have the recipe.  I always include links as well the the original recipe however over time with blogs disappearing so does the recipe so I like to write it out here so I have it forever and also have the link for as long as it's working.

This is the Easy Ciabatta Bread Thermomix Recipe which I'm making using my TM31 Thermomix which I've had for 13 years - still going strong.

If you don't own a Thermomix you can make a similar recipe that you can make without a Thermomix.

EASY CIABATTA BREAD [THERMOMIX]

INGREDIENTS

• 500gms Bakers Flour
• 470gms Warm Water
• 2 Teaspoons Dried Yeast
• 2 Teaspoons Salt

METHOD

1. Add all ingredients to the bowl, mix on Speed 6 / for 8 seconds.
2. Let the mixture rest in the bowl for 10 minutes.
3. Turn up to Speed 9 / for 3 minutes on REVERSE.  [yes, 3 minutes] 
4. Dough will be very sticky - pour into a large well oiled bowl and let it sit for 2.5 hours until it has tripled in size.
5. Empty and scrape out the dough onto a well floured bench top.
6. Divide into 3 pieces, dust with a good amount of flour, then using a spatula shape roughly into flat balls and put on a tray with baking paper.
7. Leave to prove on the trays for 45 minutes.
8. While waiting, turn the oven to 250 degrees to heat up while proving.
9. Now, with well floured hands, pick up each dough gently and quickly flip it, stretching into a Ciabatta loaf shape [oblong].  The flipping helps spread the air bubbles - even it it looks a bit untidy, it will rise beautifully in the oven.
10. Bake at 250 degrees for 10 minutes, then turn the oven down to 200 degrees for another 15-20 minutes until the bread is starting to brown and sounds hollow when tapped.

NOTES:-

Preparation time - 3.5 hours

Total time start to finish - 4.0 hours

Makes 3 loaves [2 large and 1 small]

Level - EASY

Around here

Well it's Spring time in Queensland however last week we had days over 30 degrees and Saturday was 35 degrees [95F] so looks like Summer is going to be be a hot one.

It's my Birthday month and in fact Teddy is one year old on the 11th September also so two Birthdays in this household.

I have found an exercise class that suits me which is about 10 minutes drive away and have been going 3 mornings a week with yoga/Pilates on a Saturday.  I don't love exercise but I know as we age we need to make it a priority to keep our bones strong and healthy.  I also took up a tennis/fitness class this term and we have 2 nights left then it's school holidays and I've enrolled in Term 4 which runs 11 weeks one night a week.

My sister is coming over from Perth for a week's visit so will be spending lots of family time together which will be great.

Here's some recent photos and photos of the Pink Cockatoo [Major Mitchell] bird that is in my suburb.

Home grown lettuce

I have two of these birds in my backyard which started out as babies.

Teddy

This is a pink cockatoo [formerly known as Major Mitchell] and he runs with the white cockatoo's in our area and this day I was lucky enough that he was sitting on a fence post behind my house.

Here he is again as it was overcast and starting to rain.  They have the same colour on his crest underneath his wings when he flies....so amazing.  See these images.

My neighbour goes fishing on his boat and brought me back this snapper which I cooked up with a butter garlic sauce and OMG it was to die for.....yummmmm

Some B&W film Scans I took on my Canon AE-1 Film Camera