Woolly Weather and the Holden Whisperer is missed.

It's February and we have the heater on and I am knitting scarves. We'll be making gender non-specific snow persons next.

I have been making this....

A double batch of granola, my favourite cereal. (the cup of Black Adder Licorice Tea is for consuming on the side)

For the regular batch;
75g dates (stoned and chopped)
75g sultanas or raisins
50g blanched or chopped almonds
50g raw cashews
50g macadamia nuts roughly chopped
2 cups rolled oats
1/3 cup grapeseed oil
1/4 cup pear juice concentrate
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 150C combine mix fruit and put aside. Combine nuts and oats separately and set aside. Heat oil and pear juice concentrate in a saucepan til simmering then pour over the nut/oats mixture and mix well. Put into baking dish and press down to about 3 cm. Bake for an hour, stirring now and then until golden brown throughout. Cool in baking dish and then stir in the fruit and store in an air tight container.
This is my version of a recipe in Stephanie Alexander's Cook's Companion. You can use honey. I prefer the concentrate because it's low glucose. You can add other nuts or dried fruit of course. For me this is sweet enough in fact you could probably leave out honey/concentrate all together and just use dried fruit.

I have also been here.
To purchase this.

It was very difficult to leave the establishment due to all the yummy, affordable, desirable, colourful woolly stuff. In Borders today I tossed up between '400 Knitting Stitches' and 'The Knitter's Handbook', eventually choosing the latter for it's broader content, but seriously people 400 DIFFERENT STITCHES!!!! ??? I have to have that book. It shall be mine oh yes it shall. (I'm a gonner aren't I......)

Did I mention that Beau is out of nappies and off the boob?? I do believe I did. Sorry, repeating myself. Baby number two is knocking on my reproductive door and my heart simultaneously.

We are currently car hunting. (she said quickly deleting all posts raving about the joys of car-less life) Station wagon lovers that we are, and who wouldn't be with kids, dog, Camberwell Market booty storage needs.....My father has been working on cars, trucks, boats, bikes anything with wheels and a motor for most of his life and while all my other mates were buying; trashing and pumping money into mysterious new cars as teenagers, I drove around in a small green Mazda 1300 that Dad and his TAFE Automotive engineering class built from the ground up. They built it, cleaned, it spray painted it and primed it for me and it went on and on and on and on. And when on the rare occasion anything did come loose (it was usually from neglect on my behalf) Dad was there to fix it. So Consequently I have Trust Issues with Mechanics. Thankfully we now have one who is of Dad's ilk. My brother and I call Dad the Holden Whisperer because for example, K and I bought our last car here in Melbourne on the basis of Dad listening to the engine on his mobile phone in WA. Say no more.

What was my point here....?? I'll move on. Just to clarify the whole car free thing.....Beau is now of a weight that coupled with my lack of fitness, makes carrying him around on the back of the bike a dangerous sport. But more importantly the Big Move is nigh. Foggy though the details may be, the act is inevitable and you won't see me riding around dirt country roads on the way to the shop with a new born baby and a toddler in tow. I do still prefer to walk, ride or train/tram/bus it whenever possible because the irony of it all is that I do hate traffic.

K and Icurrently in the midst of Detox. Not that there's a lot of Tox in my body to De so it's a bit of a break from daily cake really. I do feel rather light and good and pious as if the Lord is watching me and He is pleased. This is part of Preparation for Conception of a Baby and makes us sound like a pair of Control Freaks when actually we are a pair of hippies who generally leave everything up to the Universe. Given that we're officially in our 40's, a bit of conscious effort won't go astray.

OK I'm going now. K is 1 meter away from me at his computer. It's a disturbing picture. Aint no babies gonna come from this kind of an evening...