Last week of July...

 It was indeed a full week. The kind that can catch you off your guard in more ways than one. It began with days slightly cooler than we've had this winter, and they were just what was needed to refresh body and soul before the soon-to-return tropical heat. 

But little Charlie, just 31 months old, who had been battling fevers that came and went with increasing lethargy over the few days previous, ended up in hospital on Tuesday. He went downhill on Monday night and the doctor thought it was a blood infection so after being rushed into Emergency early Tuesday morning, he was monitored through the day, and once his fever was back down Blossom (who had barely slept for days) and Ross were advised to take him home to continue recovering from what was now believed to be influenza. Apparently the paediatric wards in our hospital were overflowing with babies and small children battling Influenza A or B, and RSV, so it was deemed safer for him to be at home. We only have a few paediatricians in Townsville (the waiting list to see them can be two years) and I can only imagine the strain that puts on parents, and our doctors and nurses in Paediatric wards. 

I called on my two prayer partners (all the way over in the USA) Allie and Susan, and more friends prayed after I posted on Instagram. What a blessing to have so many praying for our little fellow and all the children still in hospital. Charlie is continuing to recover well, and we are praising God for His faithfulness again...as if we can ever praise Him enough, for He is faithful day by day. 

Also this past week:

One afternoon I was out in the yard taking the washing off the line and glanced over to my right where a visitor had arrived...a Muscovy duck! Perhaps you don't know, but birds are a true delight to my heart and when I am in the midst of trials, or weariness, or extended seasons of deep prayer, God uses birds to remind me He is watching and that I can be sure He is working in the midst of every situation. This past week having a Muscovy spend two hours in my company before flying off into the sunset was a miraculous example of the Father's care - for I had never before seen a Muscovy duck in real life. 

The next day I was outside tending the garden, continuing to pray for Charlie and also for the rest of Blossom's family (who were exhibiting symptoms of head colds) when one of my favourite little birds, a Willie Wagtail, came to visit. He was sitting atop the wire on one end of the raised garden bed....

...and he stayed for ages while I chatted away to him. Of course, maybe it was Mrs Willie, and I did say that in my one-way conversation with this precious visitor, but no matter, my little friend didn't seem to mind, just happily wagging his tail feathers to and fro for my delight. 

On my to-do list for ages has been to write up an inventory of everything in our pantries, especially the small one in hubby's study, and the one in our linen cupboard. The main pantry (below) will come last because it's mostly full of the items we use weekly like baking staples, rice, pasta, spices, oil, condiments etc. and my bread machine.

The little pantry shelving inside my husband's study is wedged between our second fridge and his gun safe, a position which attracts more dust bunnies than anywhere else in the house. When I buy up on long term items after seeing them on special at a really good price, I just got into the habit of putting them anywhere I could find space, so it was very important that I took time one day to remove everything, clean the space, line the shelves (at last!) and then put everything back in sensible categories.

Here's the dusty awful before photos (excuse the photo quality as it's a dark shadowy room)...

I removed everything and prepared a notebook to write down exactly what we had in that pantry, how many of each, and what we needed to stock up on...

...and listened to my latest audio book while I worked away.  This is the third book in the series, set in 1923 after the Great War, with two wonderfully different and endearing main characters, Beryl and Edwina. There's a touch of Marple in the stories, so as I have now officially read/heard all of Agatha Christie's books (some twice) this series has definitely helped to fill my mystery book gap. 

Now for the 'after' photos.

The shelf lining has certainly brightened the area, but more importantly, everything is in it's right place at last, and I can easily plan meals for those occasional weeks when I like to "shop from the pantry and freezer and garden" to save on grocery expenses during a tight week. I do in fact think this is a wise habit anyhow, for we need to use what we have on a regular basis and not just store more and more and more without checking use-by dates. 

As much as possible I like to make everything from scratch - stewed fruits, jams, tomato products, pesto, yoghurt, bread, soups, broths, and even our milk (cashew and almond milk being our favourites), but life can be unpredictable so having basic meal items on hand like this means that if for any reason I have no time to cook from scratch, other options are on hand. This is also why I keep a supply of home baked breads and muffins in our freezer...oh my, these are so handy for easy breakfasts or a side plate. 

Lately I have been baking a large focaccia every Sunday (I have shown photos of the various ones from the past few weeks in previous posts) and I divide it into three. We enjoy a third that night for dinner and use some of it for my husband's work lunch the next day. Two portions go into the freezer. One of those portions will be defrosted and served with soup one night later in the week, and the final portion stays in the freezer so that we always have some on hand when needed. 

Yesterday was Sunday, my busiest day in the kitchen, and I decided to play around with a new focaccia topping...well, it was a success, so delicious! I added grapes, pine nuts, rosemary and celtic sea salt before baking. 

I think this is the best one I have made...in fact I am eating a tiny leftover corner from last night as I type this blog post. Having never roasted grapes before, this will be repeated many times in the future.

In the garden we've had an infestation of green vegetable bugs through the tomatoes. I catch them and squash them every day whilst picking ripe tomatoes, but the past few days their population increased dramatically so I decided to pick every single tomato off the vines. The ripe ones will be added to the mountain of ripe ones already on the kitchen benchtop and I'll use them for salads, fresh tomato and onion chutney, and as a quick pasta sauce.

But we had loads of green tomatoes...

...so they have now been washed, chopped finely along with onion and salt, and left to sit overnight. When I finish this post I'll drain them and begin the process of cooking a nice batch of Green Tomato Relish, which I'll preserve for use over the next year. Last year I made Green Tomato Chutney, but we prefer a relish so I've got a good old recipe to try from my 1959 Queensland CWA cookbook. 

Hubby used a natural pest spray on the tomato vines after I removed all the fruit, and we pray the next flush of tomatoes on them won't attract as many bugs. 

Yesterday, while the focaccia was going through the first and second rise, I made four jars of jam using some frozen berries and cherries that I'd bought for half price around Christmas. That's another thing with stocking up - frozen fruit and meat and vegetables and bread etc only last a certain period of time, not forever, especially here in the tropics. I try to look and see what needs using up a few times a month and then shop from my freezer. By doing that I free up space for any new bargains I find, or for freezing bulk meals I've made, breads, muffins, fruit etc. 

I'm going to rest today as much as possible after doing the basics of washing and tidying, making relish and gathering vegetables from the garden. The past week was full on and my Fitbit attests to that, but it's not good to have those kinds of weeks back to back if you can help it. Intentionally slowing whenever possible is life-giving, so I will pick up a book, brew a cuppa and go sit under the poinciana tree for a bit as it's a wonderfully relaxing place this time of year...

....before looking for hidden beauties to pick and display in a vase on my desk. 

I was asked to share how I make nut milks, so I'll do that next week because I can only take photos of one kind of milk at a time (when I make them). 

Other requests were for the recipes I've used for Cypriot Pitta Bread and Focaccia. Both of those are on Paul Hollywood's website HERE and HERE (I make one large focaccia, not two smaller ones).  

I'll be back in a couple of days with the next Virtuous Wife BOM pattern. Oh, and over the past couple of weeks I've added ten more patterns to my Etsy Shop, so if you wanted to browse pop over here. 

I'm also currently working on designs for a brand new Stitchery Club in my spare time (you can hear me laughing, right?)...well, I'm making spare time cause I'm intentionally slowing, and there's something rather relaxing about working on a new piece of fabric with needle and thread in the evening or during that hour of rest each afternoon before taking washing off the line and starting dinner. All I really want now is a new chicken coop and some more chickens so I can slow down even more. Birds you know? They have that effect on me. 

God bless you all, and may your own week be one where you see the kind and faithful hand of God working in your life, even in the very smallest of ways. Look around you and be amazed...look up and give thanks. :-)

Hugs

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Rain rain, sew sew...

It's been unseasonably wet the past few days but fortunately I love these rainy days.

Our bird visitors tend to hang around for hours as the rain showers fall steadily across the day, squawking loud to let me know their feeder is empty and would I please address that situation quickly with a top up...there may have been a please in there, or there may not.

Anyhow, I do top them up and the nice thing is that the usually warring cockatoos and rainbow lorikeets share their breakfast, lunch and dinner rather contentedly together.

Everyone waits their turn, usually three or four feeding at one time, two waiting on the roof of the bird feeder, and you can't see here but there are about six to eight more birds waiting in trees by the side of the yard or on our roof.

Due to the wet weather we've not had to tend the garden, it's being wonderfully watered from on high and hopefully the beans Mr E planted out front (to break up the soil and add nitrogen before we plant a proper food garden there) will sprout strong and healthy in the days ahead.

Hubby has occupied himself working on the Jeep (yes, again) under cover in the carport, and I cook and then disappear to the sewing room.

Our tomatoes are booming with produce and I collect handfuls of these cherry variety every morning.

If I miss any ripe ones my beloved snacks on them during the afternoon, but there's always more ready and waiting for harvest the next day.

We use to snack on bags of lollies but since ditching sugar about seven weeks ago we snack differently...cherry tomatoes being a happy substitution. Even Cully May and Rafaella love nibbling on them so I took a tub of the smaller ones, about the size of blueberries, over when we visited on Sunday morning. 

In the kitchen it's been soups, fish and these delicious curried pumpkin and chickpea patties.

I popped a tomato in each pattie before giving them a light spray with olive oil and baking in the oven to give them a bit of crust. It's much easier to freeze them this way and I was able to give some to Blossom and Ross as well.

When we're having them for a meal I simply spray the pan with olive oil and fry them until golden. 

Served with salad and greek yoghurt they are delicious!

In the sewing room I've worked on two projects. 

Firstly I made a sewing bag with little pouch to hold scissors, needles and threads...and I even took photos for a tutorial. But my computer ate the good photos I put aside and they quite literally disappeared because of a glitch in my system. 

So I'm looking through the second rate photos to see if I can still share that tutorial.

The second project was to piece together My Scrappy Vintage Kitchen quilt.

Excuse the dark photos but with rain all around every room was in shadow...

I personally love the scrappy effect of the nine blocks coming together. 

By adding a red check border and then a simple floral border around the outside those scrappy blocks within were really emphasised.

Last night I hand basted the quilt top, wadding and backing...

...ready for hand quilting a bit each night.

Have you stitched the first block yet?

I've set up a page for the My Scrappy Vintage Kitchen stitch-along over HERE

The link for the first download is on that page.

I'd like to ask for prayer for our sweet Blossom who has been unwell now for quite a while.

Over the past week she's gone downhill and is undergoing a barrage of tests which will include an exploratory hospital procedure under anaesthetic. 

You don't need to know any more than that - our sweet Lord knows all and will hear your prayers.

It's just such a comfort and faith builder to know others who love Jesus are holding you in prayer when life is dark and a little frightening from 'not knowing'.

Just this morning I was reading John 1:16

"From His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace."

And that's what I'm praying for Blossom, grace upon grace as she navigates this path to a diagnosis and healing treatment.

May the days ahead be a blessing to you, days where grace is showered upon your own lives and where grace is offered to those around you.

hugs

Life and changes...

Unlike other May beginnings in previous years, this one brought a welcome cool spell, something we have not encountered before winter's arrival since moving to the tropics in 2009.

The nights may not seem cold to many of you who live in more temperate or indeed 'cold' regions but when we woke to 16 C (61 F) the other day it was breathtaking in a wonderful "now we can wear socks and eat soup" kind of way, so of course I made a pot of soup and some delicious bread to serve with it.

KITCHEN DAYS 

The bread recipe is from my most used breadmaker cookbook but one I'd not tried before, Pesto and Pinenut Loaf...

Our garden has an abundance of basil at the moment, there's always a bag of pinenuts in the fridge and who doesn't have parmesan cheese on hand?

The only thing in the recipe that I changed was switching white bread flour to whole grain bread flour...

This loaf has now been added to our 'bake regularly' menu planner because it was so delicious!

 

We had it with big steaming bowls of lamb, vegetable and barley soup that night, and toasted and smothered with avocado for breakfast yesterday morning.

Some of you may be wondering why I've baked and eaten bread after switching to gluten free almost a month ago?

As I mentioned at the time my migraines were out of control and every day had become one long painful stretch. Having eliminated all my known migraine food triggers with no relief I decided to be very strict with gluten free to see if there was improvement to the frequency and severity.

There was no change whatsoever. The migraines continued to bombard me day after day until I was worn out beyond words and fell in a heap, battling to hold back tears of frustration and weariness.

The only other avenue/treatment I had not tried for a long time was to get my long hair cut very short.

All my life having long hair has been a migraine trigger so every so often I'd cut it short. The migraines were the kind I've had since childhood, the same pain with all my migraines regardless of the triggers. 

But this past year they were much worse, debilitating to the point of my being unable to function most days - and this may be why I had overlooked my long hair as the enemy. I was secretly scared something far more sinister was in play, especially as my father and uncle died of brain tumours when they were the same age I am now.

Nine days ago I walked into the hairdresser and asked her to cut all my hair off. Her eyes widened and she asked, "All? You're sure?? You have beautiful thick and lustrous hair - you want it gone?" I explained about the migraines and indeed I was managing one right there in her salon, my eyes barely open as I squinted under the lights. But "Gone it must be", I assured her, "I'd like my short, funky, slightly spiky hair to make a return." She nodded and began to prep me for a shampoo.

I thought I'd be sad as ruler lengths fell to the floor but instead, I felt free.

Ninety minutes later, after a shampoo, treatment, extra long head massage (which helped with pain management by relaxing me) and that ever so important hair cut, I drove home and dived into the pool...like washing away some part of me that needed to go.

By mid afternoon my migraine was gone. Nine days later and it has not returned. I thank the Lord for the prompt to do this and removing a major cause of my migraines.

Bread is back on the menu and I'm smiling more than I have in a long while.

Soooo....more of the kitchen stuff. Salads are now my every other day lunch (as I am back to enjoying curried egg sandwiches on the in between days) often with fruit and always with avocado.

Mid-afternoon snacks usually consist of grapes, seaweed rice crackers and dip. This has become my reading time and at the moment I'm savouring two favourite English magazines, the ones I have been collecting for years and regularly pull off the shelf to re-read because they're never out of date. Though it is May in Australia the March issues have only just arrived on our shores so I'm reading slowly, savouring each page.

I'm not a great lover of bananas, which is weird as they grow everywhere in the tropics and are cheap as chips, but Mr E loves them so we always have a hand or two on the bench.

The other day when I baked the bread there were three bananas which had gone too far in ripeness so I searched the internet for a good banana bread recipe. I will eat a slice of banana bread if there's no better options when we're out for coffee, and I do like a good banana and date loaf smothered in butter, but I'd never made my own banana bread before - cake yes, bread no. 

THIS recipe by Donna Hay had so many rave reviews that I decided to give it a go...

...and guess what? I'm hooked. It is delicious!

As soon as I finish this post I'm brewing a pot of Tulsi tea and slicing a thick piece for morning tea. Give it a try, you won't be disappointed.

BIRDLIFE

I was hand washing in the laundry tub the other day (we've had no washing machine or power out there for over a week while the various tradesmen come and go to repair the flood damage) when this bright flash of lime and red caught my peripheral vision through the back door so I stepped outside to see what it was.

Up near the pool on the branch of a tree was the brightest green parrot, one which I'd not seen visiting our yard before. I prayed, "Father God please keep that bird on the branch while I get my camera so I can zoom in and get a photo!" and ran inside for my camera.

Swiftly but softly stepping outside again the bird was not there and my heart sank in disappointment...but then, just to my right in our bird feeder was the parrot. Lord, You brought it closer! 

Honest, the parrot was there for no more than ten seconds and I had no time to adjust the focus so I just snapped away until it lifted off and disappeared into the distance.

It was a Red Winged Parrot, a male in fact as it's back was black.

Glorious to see, and such a blessing too because you know I love watching and photographing our daily bird visitors.

We had galahs drop by again this week...

...and of course our regular girl, Betty, who has breakfast with us each day.

SEWING

Having a clear and pain free head has allowed me to finally press forward with bringing together all the blocks of Phyllis May's Kitchen and individually piece and quilt around the applique and embroidery. I've completed 14 out 16 but those final two blocks need something extra added as they are pivotal to the final display so I'm not rushing them. 

Pattern writing for all the blocks is also happening, quite time consuming but it's better to write and photograph each block as I go along instead of having one mammoth week of pattern writing later on. You do know pattern writing is my least liked process of designing?

One new change I've made to pattern writing when a number of different fabrics are being used is to copy Lori Holt's idea and make these wonderful swatches...

I traced circles of fabric from my BOM scraps and used Vliesofix to fuse them to white paper gift tags. This afternoon I'll tie strands of the matching threads used for this project through the wee holes.

They also look lovely as a sewing room ornament but I do think the threads attached will add some extra prettiness.

When I was drawing the circles for my fabric swatches I gathered the fabric scraps into one basket and thought there must be a lot of uses for these little bits. And the fact that I was drawing circles at the time gave me an idea to draw up a few tiny little stitcheries that could feature a spot of applique and dwell inside these small circles. 

Here's the first one...

I've stitched two more and there may be a fourth or fifth yet to make an appearance at the end of my pencil.

There's also a few ideas for projects they could become which are at present juggling for top spot in my imagination. A sweet set of useful patterns, I think. 

FAITH

Holding tightly to Jesus through the pain in my head for so long has taught me that there is nothing in this world I need to get through alone. Yet oddly enough I do try to fix problems in life through my own over-inflated strength and overrated-ability far too often and it's not until I am ready to give up or crawl into bed and hide away under the covers by myself because my efforts are not working that I remember HE IS THERE for me.

Late last year I shared with you a long list of things which I had planned for Elefantz in 2019, plans which were of themselves very good and filled my heart with excitement. But as most of you know, there are good plans and there are God-plans. This past week I have come before the Lord and relinquished some of those plans because in order to follow them through I would need to strive like I've never strived before, lay aside my God-given desire to be a committed every-day homemaker, and follow a path He has not blessed. 

He may bless those individual plans, one by one, in a different season of life, but for now I'm putting my heart, soul and creative energy into what is right before me today and giving thanks for the opportunity to do so.

Like the freedom I felt as my long hair was cut away and dropped to the salon floor, so too I feel freedom in my spirit and within my heart having let go, and cut off, plans which were not suited to the life God has given me in this particular season.

I love this verse from Ecclesiastes. It reminds me that we will have seasons in life where what we have sewn together (our own plans) may need to be pulled apart in order to bring together a better plan, a God-plan for our lives.

I'm joyous to be following His plans, especially the ones I'd not considered, and also grateful that He's with me in the adventures I've desired and prayed about and been able to pursue within His blessing.

Now I must away to make that cuppa and cut a slice of banana bread. The very last of the tradesmen will be here any moment to reconnect the power in our laundry and install new lighting as well...which means I'll have a laundry again and can give my hands a break and let the washing machine be my maidservant once more. (proverbs 31:15)

May your day overflow with great delights, revealing the hidden blessings you might not have noticed but which the Lord has given because of His great love for you.

hugs