It's Getting Hot!

It is really starting to heat up here in sub-tropical Red Dirt Central. Over the weekend it was in the low 40's (about 108˚F) but has been a bit cooler the last couple of days hovering around 35˚C or 95˚F. The wet season officially begins at the beginning of November and the town Cyclone Clean-up is underway. Rubbish is being laid out on the verge for the street collection, a ncessary part of living here but not terribley attractive! Meanwhile the mercury continues to climb and it just gets hotter and hotter. It's not even really hot yet but I am certainly noticing it.

Last time we lived up this way (pre-offspring) I worked full-time so was in air-conditioning all day at work and then Hubby would flit home to switch the air-con on, thereby cooling the house for my arrival an hour or so later. He would then return to work and arrive home for dinner. All nicely organised and making the most of our ability to keep cool. As a stay-at-home-mummy this time round I am noticing the heat a lot more (please don't say it's because I'm 10 years older and more likely to be affected by heat and other such middle-aged issues!) . Anyway, Hubby decided it was time to bite the bullet and set up the pool. It's one of those cheapie round blow-up things but it is a decent size (about 10' from memory) and has a filter so the water stays good. We are onto our third year with it so the $99 was definitely worth it. We have put it around the side of the house as this section is out of the way and already mostly fenced, we just need to add a gate and will have that done by the weekend (no, the Offspring are not currently allowed out the back unsupervised). We have put up a shade sail so the pool is pretty much shaded and now we just need to pretty-up that section of the yard a bit - pull some weeds and maybe put down some pavers as a pathway as the blue-metal ground cover is HARD and hurts your feet.

Here it is in all it's glory. The clam shells at the base of the pool are a complicated system (devised by Offspring #1 and Hubby) for ensuring that feet are clean upon entry of the pool and allowing for drying off in relative cleanliness upon leaving!

And some pics of the offspring frolicking!

A Delicious Start To The Day

French Toast

recipe adapted from Nigella Lawson's version in delicious, July 2006

A couple of handfuls of stawberries, hulled and halved

2 tablespoons caster (superfine) sugar

Custard or thickened cream, to serve

French Toast

2 eggs

2 Tablespoons thickened cream

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

6 brioche slices

40g unsalted butter

Combine stawberries and sugar in a small saucepan. Heat over low heat until strawberries are warm and tender and sugar has melted.

For toast, beat eggs, cream and vanilla in a shallow bowl. Melt half the butter in a non-stick frypan over medium heat. Dip half the brioche slices into the egg mixture, allowing excess to drain off. Cook 1-2 minutes on each side until golden, keep warm in oven if needed and then repeat with remaining brioche slices. Divide toast among plates and spoon over the strawberries and serve with custard or cream.

Serves 6

OMG!!! I hadn't come across sweet French Toast before, only the savoury somewhat bland version that kids tend to like but was never high on my list of favourite foods. This is divine. Nigella's recipe has baked rhubarb but since that isn't currently available in Red Dirt Central and as I had a punnet of sweet juice strawbs in the fridge I went with them. I did make this with regular sandwich bread because nowhere in this town could I find brioche. I think it would definitely be better with brioche so next time I make it I will have to be a little more organised and make the brioche the day before so that I can have this spectacular treat for breakfast. #1 and I thoroughly enjoyed this and I think it may even rival our favourite breakfast treat of pancakes with maple syrup and cream! Is this, or a version of it, a regular recipe for some of you out there? Have I just been dozing in dullsville as far as French Toast is concerned? Enquiring minds want to know LOL.

As you might have noticed I have been making some changes to the look and layout of my blog. I quite like this version - let me know what you think. Is it easy to read? Not to hard to find stuff? I have also added a few new finds to my lists of "Who I read" - check them out, some great recipes, lovely pics and a few chuckles too.

And Some More Pictures From Our Holiday

This is Nikki's Restaurant on the foreshore at Onslow.

Hubby had dinner here when he attended a regional meeting at Onslow recently and raved about the food. I'm not sure that it wasn't just being in a restaurant, eating food prepared by someone else, without kids, that made it such a pleasant experience LOL. Anyway, he said we had to have dinner there while on our trip. We shared Garlic Prawns and the Dip Trio with Turkish Bread as an entree. I'm not a big fan of seafood but the prawns were delicious - they were in a creamy garlic sauce that was to die for!! The dips were pretty darn good too, especially the sundried tomato one. Offspring #1 was most impressed with both entrees and matched up bite for bite. Offspring #2 had eaten before we left for the restaurant and I had crackers for her but she also snacked on the Turkish bread and made her current favourite sound (beside high-pitched squealing - is that a girl thing??) mmmmm...mmmm to signify her approval.

We both chose the fish and chips for main course, this came with a salad bar type-affair and we ordered just salad bar for #1 knowing that he would eat half of my dinner (all of which was suggested by our very down-to-earth waitress). The fish was freshly caught (as you would expect in a fishing town!) and it was nice but I kind of wished I had chosed the sirloin - if only because nice meat is really hard to get in Red Dirt Central. Offspring #1 ate his body weight in chips, tried some of the salad and then declared he was too full for the fish. Funnily enough when my dessert arrived he suddenly had enough room for "just a leeeeeetle taste". The cheesecake was very obviously made in-house. Good in one way - not one of those boxed cheesecakes that look great but don't taste nearly as nice, but it was very similar to a cheesecake that I make so wasn't quite the treat I was anticipating. Still a nice way to finish a meal though.

And here are some pics of the beach and the foreshore itself.

That is pretty much it for the Onslow pics so tomorrow I will actually have to come up with something to write about. Yikes!

More Pics (as promised)

While we were at Onslow we went to visit "old" Onslow. The original townsite was pretty much destroyed by a cyclone in about 1918 (not too sure on the date as I can't remember and can't find the tourist info sheet) and the whole town was moved to where it is now, right on the coast. The old townsite was quite a way from the new site and was about 4 miles away from the river. It is kind of eerie out there now - there are only a couple of buildings left standing and although there has been some work done signposting points of interest the whole place is just bits of left over stuff in the middle of the scrub. I was really interested to learn that the town was much older than I had thought - most of the north-west towns are quite young because they sprang up around mineral deposit discoveries in the the sixties and seventies. Onslow as a town started in about the 1880's.

These are the building that are left - the police station/court house/accomodation for the police, magistrate (who was also the town's doctor) and their families.

And the old gaol, complete with broken glass embedded into the cement on the roof to stop those inside from getting out. Crude but effective! You can just see it on the closest wall.

This is all that remains of the telegraph station.

And the blacksmith shop...

The cemetery was really sad. There are about 10 or so gravestones that can be easily seen and they are inside an old wire fence in the middle of absolutely nothing. When we were at the cemetery the wind dropped and it was just stinkingly hot and still - really quite spooky.

I've Been A-Scrappin'

I know I said I'd share more Onslow photos but I went a-scrappin' today and am well pleased with what I made so have to share pics of these instead.

I have made one Star Album previously, from a kit with some pretty dodgy instructions - I have a hard time following written instructions at the best of times but this time I had to get Hubby to read them and decipher what the heck they meant. Since then I have been meaning to go back and have another go - this time making a couple of changes and generally tweaking things a little to make the album easier to make and a little nicer to look at. I didn't have much time to get organised for today's crop session so decided that rather than rush and be unhappy with the finished pages I would revisit the star album project. I got two albums made and am really pleased with the finished products. I am planning to give them away as gifts so they are embellished (for non-scrappers: they have 'bits' - like buttons and ribbon and shiny things - on them to make them look pretty) but have not photos. The recipients can add photos as they wish.

Here are the two albums closed up. The ribbons on the side tie the album closed.

Then when you open it up...ta da! The ribbons tie the album open in a star shape.The blue-green album is for a friend who is having a baby boy in a couple of weeks.

I haven't decided who the Christmas album is for yet. I'm still deciding what other gifts to make and then will make some decisions about what is for who (hmmm... should that be whom?? I know, it's shockingly bad either way LOL!)

I promise - Onslow photos tomorrow.