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Books, Using Preserved Lemons and More Painting

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books

A friend gave me a novel she’d read and enjoyed. She said it was an easy read and a lovely story. I’ve read books by the author, Sophie Beaumont, previously and enjoyed them. Turns out A Secret Garden of Paris was exactly what I needed during a pretty awful week when my husband was in hospital. I could pick it and put it down depending on what was happening.

Set in Paris, it refers to gardens I’ve visited and many I’d never heard of, but want to visit. It has an Australian connection, plus lots of food and romance, visits to flower markets and the renewal of a family garden. And a happy ending! Beaumont a wrote The Paris Cooking School, which I also enjoyed. Wonderful descriptions of food, a lots of romance and references to well known areas of Paris. Easy to read with a clever plot.

Sophie Beaumont is the pen name of Sophie Masson, a prolific author of childrens’ books, young adult books and fiction and non fiction for adults. She was born in Indonesia to French parents and grew up in both France and Australia. She was awarded an AM (General ) in 2019 ,’For significant service to literature as an author, publisher and through roles in industry organisations.’

Also read Jane Caro’s The Mother. This is a hard story to read as it deals with the frustrations a mother feels when she realises her younger daughter is totally controlled and very afraid of her husband. Newly widowed, and afraid for her daughter and two grandchildren, the mother eventually takes things into her own hands. I couldn’t put this book down. Clever and thought provoking, don’t expect a happy ending!

preserved lemons

This is the second time I’ve made these chicken meatballs in a tomato based sauce, thickened with finely chopped onion and carrots. This time I added chopped preserved lemons as I found the chicken a little bland. Wham! Preserved lemon cheered the chicken up enormously. The recipe is intended to serve four. I really like knowing I have a ‘spare’ dinner in the fridge. ready to heat, during these busy weeks managing medical appointments. This time I added baby beans and small, boiled potatoes with parsley and butter.

Really like having a second dinner in the fridge.

Finely chopped preserved lemon perked up these chicken meatballs.

Preserving lemons (here) is easy and a great way to use fresh lemons when you have a tree full. Just be sure to scrape the pulp from the rind before you add the lemon to your recipe.

painting

Still managing to paint every few days and also did a session with a group. We each painted house scenes from given illustrations. Really enjoyable.

The original painting I was given to copy.

Water colour paints are very slow to dry in the cold. This painting was done in an art journal, not on water colour paper.

Keep warm if you’re in southern Western Australia! It’s very cold.

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Journals, Painting and Cooking

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journalS

I have written in a journal for more than 37 years. Recently I found some of my journals from when we were in Hong Kong in 1987. We were on our way to Guangzhou, where we often went for business but the time had come to move there. Those entries make interesting reading! Initially we lived in a hotel while we found an apartment. We then lived within a compound which also included the American International School.

I was thinking about the number of years I have written an account of our daily activities as I was down to the last covered journal. I’d bought more, but I needed a session of covering and gluing in the marbled end papers. So, a session and now I have a pile of them ready to go. The latest haul of journals are embossed on the spines and corners and also a little larger than the existing ones. I’ll see how they fit on the shelves with the others.

Gathered journals, paper for covering them, glue, trimmer, scissors and end pages. New journals ready to go.

flowers

The camellias are blooming. These white ones always make me think of Gabrielle Chanel as they were her signature flower. Then I painted an artichoke, followed by a carnation.

cooking

We had booked to go down south for four days. Instead, my husband went to hospital. So, when he came home the tiny knob of leftover bread became bread and butter pudding, which he loves. Some minced chicken became chicken meat balls in sauce. Since then I have done a lap of the supermarket and the fridge is full again. We’ll re-book our trip down south, but meanwhile he is home, but has many appointments and procedures in the next six weeks.

The chicken balls normally have ginger in them, but having no ginger, I sliced some pieces of sushi ginger and added that to the mix. Really like how they tasted.

Bread and butter pudding using the leftover end of a loaf, sliced and buttered plus apricot jam. I usually use marmalade but didn’t have any! Placed the bread in the dish, poked sultanas between each slice then a mix of egg, some sugar and mil. Baked until the crusts browned. Delicious.

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Bits and Pieces

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roses

My Mother loved her garden. She grew vegetables, herbs and flowers of every kind. Her ideal gift was bags of mulch, fertiliser or a new plant. She loved receiving gift cards for the local hardware store. So I try to have some flowers next to her photo all the time. These are Iceberg roses. They have a lovely scent, although some of them, planted at a different time, have very little perfume.

The Abraham Darby is still flowering, too. It smells lovely.

The Mr Lincoln is a large standard rose. I have painted the roses many times because they are so lush and smell lovely.

Despite constant battles with chili thrip I have decided to keep the roses. So many people I know have dug up their roses. The experts explain how you can control chili thrip but not eradicate it. Some of the sprays suggested are not products I want to use in our garden, so I persist with the water blasting. It is successful on some roses, not others.

cooking

Soup weather is traditionally winter time, but I’ve been making soup since January. Most of our soups are flavoured with curry, because that’s one of the flavours my Husband can taste. I often use carrots as the base vegetable, too, as they blend well and thicken the soup.

One kilo of carrots makes a lot of soup base. I add whatever else is available. I begin by frying the onion then adding curry powder, then the carrots and anything else that comes to hand, so no real recipe!

I made more muffins but used passion fruit pulp instead of blueberries. I’ll make more this weekend. They were very popular.

The passion fruit muffin batter doesn’t look very enticing, but they were delicious.

picking

Apart from the last of the roses, I’ve been picking lemons and limes. Also herbs and perpetual spinach. The spinach is a versatile vegetable; it can be eaten in a salad, cooked as a vegetable or wilted into anything else you’re cooking which would benefit from a splash of green! Easy to grow from seed. I have three plants which are ‘cut and come again’. The more I pick, the more they grow.

flowers

I once read in a gardening magazine that peonies will only grow in areas where apples grow. Apples don’t grow where we live, but they are grown domestically and commercially further down south. So when I saw in our local news paper the nearby fresh fruit and vegetable market had peonies for sale I mentioned it to my husband. Well, actually I placed the folded paper, showing the ad. over his computer screen. Subtle? Effective.

Added little branches trimmed off the lemon tree. Some of the branches have immature fruit attached. The pink against the deep green of citrus leaves contrasts well. So pretty!

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Lino Printing, New Journals and Cooking

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lino printing

Really enjoyed a lino cut printing course. I haven’t done any printing for years. Our first activity involved our drawing our chosen image onto paper which transferred onto a polystyrene type of block. We then printed this image (the fish) onto paper. This allowed us to learn how to apply the ink all over the image and place it on the paper.

Next, we transferred our image for the lino cut onto the lino block, ready to cut. This was not old fashioned stiff lino which required heating but a far softer product. It all would have gone well, except I forgot to take my glasses and had pre-drawn a complex image for printing.

Never mind! I’d made several copies of my image and we left with some extra lino, so I’ll cut it and print the bird image again. I have (somewhere) a set of cutting tools. And I’ll wear my glasses.

journals

For years I have written in a journal everyday. I used to be able to buy them at Chinese supermarkets in Northbridge and some newsagents. They were easy to find. Post Covid they are hard to find. I ordered ten from an online auction site.

What I hadn’t anticipated was that these journals would be a little bit bigger than the ones I’ve used for over thirty years. The photocopied images I cover the books with are fine, the marbled pages I glue in as end papers are too small. A morning of marbling coming up. Bit tricky, though, as it has started to rain and the rain is forecast to continue for a week. I print the in the laundry then lay the prints to dry on the paving just outside the door. Need fine weather but we’re so pleased with the rain.

Apart from the larger format, these journals have traditional embossing on the corners and binding. I hope the printed covers will cover the embossing smoothly. Don’t really like it!

cooking

Our son was here for four days and I had most of the meals prepared. I had to make dinner for one night. Checked what was in the fridge. Found eggs, bacon and cheese so the die was cast. Snipped some spring onions from out the back. Cooked up a chopped onion and the bacon, whipped up the eggs, added some yoghurt and spring onions, grated cheese , and wilted spinach and then grind of black pepper. Into the oven.

While the egg and bacon pie cooked I prepared and cooked some vegetables. Leftover apple crumble followed.

My husband can taste a range of flavours now, but curry still dominates our soups and meat dishes. This time the slow cooker was in use to make enough meals to eat some now and lots to go in the freezer.

Browned onions, then 2kg of cubed rump steak and added it to bay leaves, curry powder, beef stock, five chopped carrots and some sweet potatoes. Salt, pepper, left it to cook for five hours on ‘high’.

Next morning when the curry was cold I put two lots in the fridge and the rest into the freezer. Experience has taught me to label the boxes. We’ve had some interesting thawed dinners which weren’t what I expected!

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Basket Weaving, Mother’s Day and Other Things

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basket weaving

I joined a friend at a basket weaving session. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but the tutor had an array of beautiful baskets, from tiny ones to really big ones, hand woven from rope and stitched together with wool or cotton thread. Very inspiring.

The rope I’d chosen and the thread I used to stitch the bowl together.

We each selected a piece of rope, cut off some wool or cotton thread and threaded our darning needle. We began by making a loop to start forming the base. Everything was stitched into place using blanket stitch. Once we’d shaped the base we were shown how to make the ‘walls’. Three hours flew by. I came away with a small, slightly wonky basket. Really enjoyed the activity, the chatter of the people around the table and seeing the lovely baskets people made. The tutor offers other courses, so I’ll be looking them up.

mother’s day

Australians and many other countries celebrated Mother’s Day last Sunday. I hope all the Mothers had a lovely day, whatever they did with or without family. Our son couldn’t be here so he arranged two boxes of treats to be delivered from a French bakery. One box of croissants and one of mixed delicious cakes, scrolls and macarons. Superb!

A wonderful box of various delicious French treats.

My husband and I celebrated Mother’s Day by heading off to our favourite yum cha restaurant. We’ve been going there for years. We arrived quite early as the line builds up quickly on weekend mornings. The queue was already enormous! Often one member of the party lines up and the rest arrive later or sit on the walls. When the doors open and guests can enter, suddenly the person in front of you actually represents eight family members!

We were so lucky! Most groups were six or eight, but they had one two person table available! The line behind us was as long as the line in front of us, so some people were waiting ages to get a seat. But the little treats are so good! Brisk service, really good food and interesting watching the world go by. A huge selection of flavours. We had squid, crab, prawn and some pork dim sum plus a favourite turnip cake, all beautifully presented, all delicious.

One of my Mother’s Day gifts was Janelle McCulloch’s latest book, Where The Old Roses Grow. The sub title is Vita Sackville-West and the Battle For Beauty During Wartime. I am really enjoying it. Regular readers know I only buy books I really, really enjoy (I borrow books from the library, generally) and I have almost all of the books Janelle McCulloch has written. There are many.

other things

Forty odd years ago it was cold on our wedding day. Monday was 28ºC but there was a lovely sea breeze.

We celebrated our wedding anniversary on Monday. We went for lunch at a local restaurant with a great view over the Indian Ocean taking in Rottnest Island. It’s only been open a few months but has had very good reviews. We were not disappointed!

Half Shell Scallop Blue Swimmer crab tart.

Fremantle Swordfish Saltbush Fed Lamb medallions

Yuzu Tart Neopolitan Semifredo

more other things

I really like this small urn, one of a pair and struck some rosemary slips a while back put in both of them. They don’t have holes so I wanted to plant them in pots I could take out for watering. Problem was, I couldn’t find pots that fitted well!

So I cut the rim off two yoghurt pots which fitted well but were too tall. Then I reapplied the rims using double sided tape. Worked really well.

Washed the empty pots and sliced the rim off with a Stanley Trimmer. Reattached the rims to the pots using double sided tape.

Fits snugly.

I will toparize the rosemary plants when they are bigger. It will help them stay small enough for the pots. Bit of a long term project.

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