At the Craft Market

I've just got back from the St. Kilda craft market. I'd been a bit upset about the loss of my favourite brooch, my silver brolgas brooch — I'd last worn it two weeks ago in Sydney at the Romance Writers of Australia national conference, and when I'd taken my jacket to be drycleaned, the brooch wasn't on it. I phoned everywhere I'd been in Sydney, but no luck, and since I'd bought it some years ago at the St. Kilda craft market, I thought I'd see if I could get another one.

I was almost ready to leave when I went to put on my earrings, and lo! there was the brooch, in the bowl with my earrings. I must have removed it on auto-pilot when I got home and not recalled it at all.

Still, the morning was brilliantly sunny so I decided to head down to the market anyway.  My time at the beach in Sydney had spoiled me and I wanted to see the sea again — I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky — she says, channelling Dad, who used to quote poems at the drop of a hat — that one's Sea Fever by John Masefield, one of his faves.

Despite the bright sun and brilliant blue sky, it was chilly -- 10 C -- and I got there early enough for most stalls to be just setting up so I wandered off and bought a coffee at the The Europa Cafe — St. Kilda is renowned for great cake and coffee shops in the European tradition— where I resisted the delicious fragrance of fresh-baked cakes and chocolate and stuck to one small coffee.

I took it to the beach and basked in the sun with the sound of waves on one side and seagulls and rainbow lorikeets in the palm trees above me.  Seagulls are noisy, pushy brats, but I love lorikeets. They cluster in my flowering gum tree every morning chirruping and squawking happily, and each summer they descend on my plum tree and steal my plums, but I don't mind. There's something magical about them, and I'm not sure whether it's the drought or the bushfires or simply a result of more people planting native trees and bushes in the city, but I've been seeing a lot more lorikeets and other native birds lately.

Anyway, back to the market. It's a mix of crafts, some junky and not to my taste, others beautiful. Prices range from a few dollars to thousands — I saw one gorgeous silver bracelet for $1200 and a beautiful pair of gold sea-urchin earrings for more than $1000.  I  shopped at the cheaper end of the scale. I bought a couple of lovely pewter brooches and a pair of earrings, and despite my intention of not buying anything for the house — I'm planning to renovate and am supposed to be getting rid of stuff, not acquiring it — I was also tempted to buy this gorgeous glass dish.  I congratulate myself on not buying one of the hand-turned wooden bowls — I have a weakness for beautiful wooden bowls and spoons.

I do love markets, especially craft markets that sell lovely things. Do you?

At Coogee

I'm just back from the Romance Writers of Australia conference in Sydney. This year it was at Coogee Beach, a location I'm very fond of. My writing group have been on retreat there for the last two years, and we've come to love it. I blogged about our retreat last March on WordWenches, so if you want to read more, go here. Mind you, it's not hard to love Coogee — a gorgeous beach, lovely accommodation and dozens of good restaurants and eating places.

The hotel is just over the road from the beach, and I had a balcony room, high up, so this was my view.

Even though it was winter, it was so warm I slept every night with my big glass sliding door wide open, and I fell asleep to the sound of pounding surf, and woke to this.

The  second day the surf was spectacular, with waves crashing on the rocks and spurting upward. I had only a cheap pocket camera with me and couldn't catch the splashes, but even so, some of the photos give you an idea of what it was like.

 I'd started brainstorming with my friend, Barbara Hannay, but the warm, fresh, blowy weather lured us out and we walked up to the bluff, almost to Clovelly. Barbara has a slideshow on her blog.

This is the view looking back toward the hotel. The hotel is the big white building in the top right-hand corner of the picture.

One of the nicest things happened on our last night at Coogee. Up until that point, we'd eaten virtually all meals at the conference, or at a place chosen by our publisher (thank you Harlequin Australia) but on the last night we organized whoever was left to go to our favorite Italian restaurant, La Spiaggia, for dinner. 

We love it for two reasons — firstly, the food is excellent and it's a really friendly place. Secondly, the first time we went there, two years ago when we were doing our first Coogee writing retreat, Jess, our waitress, turned out to be a writer, too, and we bonded. The second time we went back, there she was again, and we talked about agents and things like that, so we were hoping she'd be there again, and we could catch up on how things were going for her. 

This time when we went in, we were a bit disappointed to see she wasn't there, but the food was fabulous and we had a lovely meal anyway. Then the barman came over and asked if I was Anne Gracie. Bemused, I admitted I was, and he said Jess would like to buy us a drink. She still worked there, but not on Sunday nights, and the guys had phoned her to let her know we were there. Even better news, she'd sold the book she'd talked to us about in March! Isn't that wonderful? We were all so thrilled. It was the final fabulous touch to a great meal and a lovely weekend. 

Thank you Jess! My first taste of Sambuca, and it won't be my last. And I can't wait to buy the book. We'll be back to Coogee and La Spiaggia, and next time we'll be buying the drinks.

The Mysterious Affair of the Mouldy Cake

 I'm borrowing another friend's email again here (with permission--and the names changed.) Writers are often born story tellers and my friend is no exception —this story is too good not to be shared.  The images I've used are from the web.

Just had a small marital win. My husband is a car-neat-freak. He changes to a new car every 20,000 kms, courtesy of his work, so it always smells new. He washes it once a week, vacuums, checks for scratches, wipes away fingerprints, you name it.

Me, I work on the assumption that if I remove the spiderwebs my ancient car may not stay together. The dog and kids and I go to the beach - often. We collect sand. And stuff. To say my husband and I are polar opposites in the car department is an understatement. But our differences mean whenever I drive his car he checks it and sighs - loudly - and fetches vacuum.


He's been away overseas for two weeks. My sister was here at the weekend, she's also a neat freak so I drove her round in my husband's car.


So his first day home, he went out and checked it all over - deeply suspicious. Then in he came, looking appalled, carrying a cake container he'd found under the front seat. Full of... horror of horrors.... mouldy cake!!!!

I was still in bed when he brought it in, and it was like all his deep dark suspicions about who I am were finally confirmed. His whole body was vibrating with accusation...


But it had me bemused. Contrary to popular belief, I don't actually stow mouldy cake under car seats - the dog and I eat any cake down to the last crumb. I looked at it from all sides - definitely mould - definitely a lot. I recognised the container. I took a deep breath and opened it to investigate.

It was the chocolate cherry yule log I'd made for my husband to take to his staff morning tea last Christmas. He'd asked me specially to make it.  It took me ages and I was really proud of it. He'd obviously put it under the front seat and forgotten it, and it was only because he was suspecting - horrors of horrors - sand!!! that he'd finally checked under there.


Shoulda seen his face. 
I reckon I could go on a holiday to Hawaii on the strength of this.
Heheheheh

Marion Lennox & seals

My friend, Marion Lennox, who writes fabulous romances, occasionally sends emails that are just too good  for an audience of one or two, and since she doesn't blog, I decided to hijack an occasional email. So with her permission, I'm going to share her latest, about her weekend, with photos.

Gorgeous gorgeous day, lovely enough to entice me out to Port Philip Bay where the seals are enjoying their new Chinaman's Hat. FYI the old Chinaman's Hat was a bell buoy the seals loved.

 It eventually fell to bits and everyone including seals were so sad they built them another one - the seals then ignored it until it started to rot. Now it pongs and it's wonderful.

We went out in the boat, it being one of those amazing  milliseconds of time when nothing's fallen out, over, in, it's not on the hard getting its bottom scraped, nothing desperately needs sanding, the tender's motor's working, the tender's not leaking, we can find the life jackets, someone remembers the thermos, hundred dollar bills have stopped for one moment being used to paper the deck, the weather's fabulous, we're all free, no one's seasick, and even the seals are doing their thing. This may never happen again in this lifetime but for yesterday we're truly grateful.

I loved this pic of a seal family, with two females looking on as the big bull seal snores in the sun, and the cheeky youngster climbs all over him.


A curious seal swam up to investigate...

  ...took one look at the strange creatures in the boat and flipped away back to the seal colony.


Thanks, Marion, for sharing such a lovely event.
Marion's books nearly always have animals in them, whether they're dogs, cows, frogs or twin baby alpacas. I wonder if we'll ever get seals...


Anyone here have experience of yachties? I was just a kid when my brother-in-law built his first small boat ( a mirror) in my dad's garage. It started something and over the years my sister and her family had some wonderful experiences with their various yachts  - mostly built by my brother-in-law. I still remember the letter she wrote to me while they were sailing the Whitsunday Passage. Just fabulous.

ANZAC biscuits

ANZAC biscuits (ie cookies) are an Aussie tradition. They're also the most common biscuits I bake -- not that I bake biscuits all that often, but when I do, these are the quickest and easiest and I nearly always have the ingredients to hand. They're also delicious.

ANZAC stands for Australia New Zealand Army Corps and these biscuits were invented during World War One by the wives and mothers of soldiers away fighting on the other side of the world. The 25th April is Anzac Day, a public holiday in Australia that  commemorates the role of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps in the dreadful Gallipoli Campaign of 1915.  During this long and bloody campaign a spirit formed among the soldiers, a tradition of mateship forged under fire and in impossible conditions. It's still part of how Australians see themselves today.  (That's my grandfather on the far right, by the way, standing holding the rope. He wasn't at Gallipoli -- he fought in Flanders, also horrible.)
If you want to learn more about ANZAC day, visit the Australian War Memorial Site. I'm really only talking about biscuits here.


Australians are pretty big on sweets and cakes and biscuits. An old cookery book of my mother's, about 250 pages long, devotes the first 50 pages to soup, meat, and vegetable dishes, the next 50 to puddings and desserts, the next 50 to cakes, and 20 to sweet biscuits. And then there's jams and jellies, and confectionery.

I suppose it was partly about country cooking and hospitality -- with no refrigeration, sugar is a natural preservative, and heaven forbid visitors arrive and you have nothing to offer them with their cup of tea. My grandmother, an excellent country cook, would never be caught short, and invariably had two or three sweet treats to offer visitors - usually some kind of cake,  plus scones, and biscuits. And country men devoured them and burned off the sugar in hard physical work.

Soldiers at war lived on army rations --  basic, boring, usually stale , and often weevilly. They used to joke about the flat  "ships biscuits" that cracked teeth -- "army tiles" some called them. So women back home racked their brains to find something to send their boys that would last the 2 month journey and still be tasty.
(The picture above is of my grandparents taken on leave during WW1. Romantic, eh?)


What emerged was a biscuit (cookie) made of ingredients that most women would find in their pantries : oatmeal, flour, sugar, coconut , butter and golden syrup. No eggs, because they would go bad on the long journey. Oatmeal was a staple -- porridge was a staple breakfast food. Coconut is a commonly used ingredient here, no doubt because it's grown here. And golden syrup is a by-product of sugar production -- a kind of light molasses -- a golden brown colour, lighter than treacle, which is almost black -- and we have a large sugar industry, so like people in the southern states of America, we use it in our cooking. 

These biscuits, placed in an airtight container (often old tea tins like the one on the right) lasted the two month trip easily and were still delicious to eat. I don't imagine they lasted long after the tins were opened -- they'd be shared around -- a little taste of home to boys and young men fighting in a foreign land.
At first they were simply called 'soldier's biscuits' but as people back home became used to hearing reports about "the ANZAC boys' they were soon called ANZAC biscuits.


So here's the recipe. It's very user friendly and adaptable. I'm also giving you my lazy girls method, where you mix the whole thing in a saucepan. Less washing up ;)


INGREDIENTS
1 cup rolled oats (I've used all sorts, even microwavable oatmeal) 

1 cup plain flour

3/4 cup desiccated coconut  (dried coconut)
1 cup sugar  (white, raw or brown)
125g (4oz) butter
2 tablespoons golden syrup (see note above)
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
1 tablespoon boiling water

1) Preheat oven to 150C (300F)

2) Melt butter and golden syrup together in a large saucepan. Remove saucepan from heat.

3) Mix soda with boiling water and add to melted butter and syrup. It will foam up a little. 

4) Mix oats, flour, sugar and coconut into the wet mix.
5) Place walnut-sized lumps of mixture (about 1 tabsp) on greased tray (allow room for spreading).

6) Bake in a slow oven (150 C or 300 F) for 20 minutes. They will look golden and toasty

7) Loosen while warm (they come out very soft) and cool on trays.

The number it makes will depend on the quality of the ingredients used, which will affect how much they spread in the baking. If you overbake them and you find them too hard and crispy, crumble them up and use them as topping for icecream. They will soften with age, too. 

If you make them, write and let me know what you thought.

Easter

It's Easter. In the northern hemisphere, Easter means spring; here it's autumn. Not that my plum tree knows it. Confused by the hailstorms and the unexpected rain and after clinging to life through thirteen years of drought, the poor thing has reverted to its northern hemisphere instincts and is trying desperately to put out new leaves and blossoms, when the rest of the non-indigenous plants in my garden are just beginning to turn gold and crimson.

I love autumn leaves. In Australia, only the exotic species have autumn colour, most of the native plants  remain grey-green throughout the year, and only the new growth on the gum trees is crimson. I remember a glorious autumn in Scotland the year we lived there when I was 8, and I ran about catching coloured leaves as they fell -- I'd read in a story that to catch a leaf meant a day of good luck, so I wanted 365 leaves to give to my mother. I got them, too. I expect it gave Mum one day of good luck at least -- a child fully occupied the entire day and exhausted at the end of it.
One day I'll be in eastern North America to experience the full glory of deciduous Fall. But it won't be this year.

For me, Easter means barbecues in the bush, in particular the north east of Victoria, where we lived before we started moving every couple of years. The foothills of the Snowy Mountains.  I wrote about it here once. No barbecues this year, alas. I'm working through the Easter break. Everything is very quiet - most of my neighbours have gone away because it's the last break before winter.

And I'm not buying chocolate eggs -- I'm buying bulbs instead. Lilies, hoop petticoats, tulips, more freesias -- can you ever have too many freesias? I have them drifting across the front garden, naturalized in the grass and spread by seed. The fragrance is divine -- one of my favorites, and I've decided to have more in the back garden and hope they fill the lawn one day.

Buying bulbs on line is not quite as much fun as driving up to the bulb farms in the Dandenong Mountains, an hour's drive from here, but still, such a pleasure to plant papery brown things or small waxy lumps and a few months later a tentative gorgeous spike or two of green and then... flowers.

Have a fabulous Easter.

Seasons Greetings

I'm popping in briefly to apologize for the lack of posts for such a very long time. A lot has happened in the last six months and I'm only just starting to get back on top of things.

I'm head down, and finishing a book so this won't be a long blog. I just thought I'd share some of my "between scenes" activities — the fiddly fun stuff I do with my fingers while my brain is dreaming up the next scene in the book. And at this time of the year it's decorations and ornaments.

I love Christmas. I normally have a real Christmas tree — mostly a seedling or a branch from the pine trees that my dad planted many years ago. I don't care about falling needles,

I love the smell of fresh-cut pine sap and to me, Christmas isn't the same without it. But those trees are a 90 minute drive away and I'm slaving over a hot book and can't afford the time. I know I could buy one, but this year in particular I'm feeling a bit sentimental and if I can't have Dad's pine trees, I don't want any, and I'm working all through Christmas anyway, so I'm going minimalist.

On a recent dog-walk beside the creek, I picked up some lovely fallen eucalyptus twigs and sprayed them with chrome paint, which comes out shinier than silver spray paint. And on them I've hung home made paper ornaments.

Now I'm no origami guru -- I've never even made one paper crane, let alone a thousand. But trust me, these are easy. And made with beautiful paper and a couple of beads they look stunning, even if I do say so myself.

The beautiful colored bells are made with 5 inch square Japanese orgami paper and are amazingly easy except for the last tricky bit, which takes a little fiddling until you get it — it's easy after the first time. You can see someone making it here on youtube, but she rushes the fiddly end part, so go to Ann Martin's wonderful blog which shows the fiddly part best. I added a few beads and an occasional tassel to mine. I've also made some tiny bells, too, as you can see from the pic on the left.

Some people hang them the other way up, which gives you a variety of shapes.

Then there are these beautiful pinecone mobiles, which are so easy -- just cut and thread along with some beads, then hang and watch them catch each little breeze. I made this with good quality textured wrapping paper, but the first one I made with photocopy paper and it's lovely, too.

I loved this little wreath. I like tiny things, so this is half the size of the pattern here. I used white note paper and the lining of a very

pretty envelope for an alternate pattern.

If you're snowed in and have kids to entertain, I blogged about crafts last year on Word Wenches (and will do again this year) so click here if you want more fun and easy things to make.

All the best for the holiday season — stay safe and happy, and may the new year bring peace and safety for all.