When I go to the beach I feel both child and adult.
For an Australia Day activity Miss 13 asked if she and her little brother could decorate milk arrowroot biscuits.
At first I felt slightly bemused. Does this reader think my blog design is so awful that I need to change my blog design, and as soon as possible?
Then I realised that there is a more likely explanation. My summery looking blog with its beach theme looks like it is six months out of date as it's the middle of winter, right? It looks like I have been too absent-minded or lazy to change my blog design to match the seasons.
Except of course that it is midsummer here in the Southern Hemisphere. And it's extremely hot. Therefore, a beach theme is entirely appropriate.
We in the Southern Hemisphere are used to Northern Hemisphere seasons being considered the norm. After all, just about every Christmas film we ever see either shows a white Christmas or is dreaming of one. Meanwhile, we eat cold Christmas turkey and prawns on the beach.
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Abundance is a bowl of peaches taken straight from the tree.
And in 1935 my grandparents were married in sleepy, sunny Melbourne, Australia.
Despite troubling events elsewhere in the world, like all new wives my grandmother had more personal issues to deal with, not least, her inability to cook. Gran was a career girl; for several years prior to her marriage she had worked as a legal secretary and had not needed domestic skills.
Many years later, having becoming an excellent cook, she narrated a cookbook in which she shared her favourite recipes.
Here is how she described her first afternoon tea as a married lady:
I remember my first afternoon tea as a married lady. I didn't know what I was going to do because I didn't know how to cook. Luckily a lady came to demonstrate my new stove and I got her to make everything I needed: a sponge sandwich, scones and little cakes. The day she came,Uncle Norman was there laying the second hand lino with a great big hole in the back of his pants. I'll never forget he had to keep backing out of the room so that she wouldn't see it.
She left me a little book called 100 Tested Recipes,compiled by Miss Thelma Crump and Miss Helen Potter of the Home Service Department of the Colonial Gas Association. It's dated 1935, the year I was married so it must have come out especially for my benefit. Most of my cakes and scones are still based on recipes from that book.
My first afternoon tea was a great success, though one of the aunts asked me how many eggs I'd used in the sponge and I didn't have the faintest idea!
On her 102nd birthday this post is a tribute to a charming lady, a fantastic grandmother, and most of all, a terrific cook.
Whether we like it or not, and whether we define ourselves as homemakers or not, we all have to perform household tasks in order to make our homes pleasant places in which to live.
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When it's hot enough to be able to smell the rosemary bush in my backyard as I brush past, then its time to make this marinade.
Having just discovered that agapanthuses are also known as "lilies of the Nile", I know which name I would prefer, were I an agapanthus.
Mother Nature clearly knew what she was doing when she created summer food.
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