celebrate

Posted on August 24, 2014 by cityhippyfarmgirl

macarons || cityhippyfarmgirl

This is a post that celebrates…colour.

This is a post that celebrates, macarons, puddles, sunsets, pink skirts, cumquats and shadows.

You see, this is a post that is wholeheartedly celebrating those teeny tiny everyday moments,

that so many of our lives are made up of.

Celebrating those moments, and sharing the every day…

in a photo kind of way.

Partying dinosaurs that can’t help but bring a little celebration to the table,

and weekend muddy puddle seeking, because…well they can.

A celebration of tea- that first sip of tea while it’s still hot, utter bliss, (tepid tea just doesn’t compare.)

And invitations to constant tiny tea parties.

cityhippyfarmgirl.com

The magic of a flower that holds all the colours of a winter sunset.

Followed by a real sunset… and that will never get old.

Celebrating small hands that still slip easily into our own.

For the desire to run and the freedom felt that goes along with it. He doesn’t have to explain it to me, I can see it.

Celebrating foraged cumquats in a country valley, that turn into delicious marmalade, on home made sourdough, on a sunny Saturday morning.

filtered winter light || cityhippyfarmgirl

For winter days when I get to wear knitted socks that were made with love by my nana. Celebrating afternoon light that barely looks real, and that brings on all kinds of games purely because of the shadows and highlights it creates.

These are not big, large, life changing things. But they are some of our simple happy moments in what are often chaotic and seemingly far too busy days.

These are some tiny snapshots of life, that I am wholeheartedly celebrating.

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This is the last of my posts using the loaned Olympus camera- I had borrowed an OM-D E-M10 as part of the Voices of 2014 competition. As I’ve mentioned in my last couple of posts (here and here) it’s a rather nifty little camera that as a keen taker of pictures I’ve been really happy to have had the chance to play with.

As a last hoorah, I’m going to mention some of the bits I really liked. (See my previous two posts for some of the other trickster bits I might have mentioned before.)

Bits of the camera that I whole heartedly celebrated

Compact- weighing in at about 400g, it’s a camera that isn’t going to drag your neck or shoulder down carrying it about. I’ve done it for hours on end and haven’t even noticed it, except to take photos of course.

Post picture taking and one of the stand out things is the wifi. I do use instagram, FB and email. The wifi is pretty much gold for switching photos from your camera to your phone. Effortless I tell you. No adaptors, no bluetooth, no cords, no dropbox, no emailing yourself a picture. It’s all there in your phone and I still say it’s a magical Wifi-the-Fairy type kinda way.

You can also use your phone as a live camera remote, which is how I took the knitted socks shot- camera in position, adjust ALL camera settings via phone (that still blows my mind a little) and snap, picture taken.

The Art Filters and different Scenes you can choose from are all there to create photo master pieces from too. Either within the camera or afterwards in the phone app. You can also use the Art Filters when shooting video, (yep, that’s a bit cool I know.)

Quality- For a little camera I was really surprised. Lots of oooh kind of moments after I’d taken a pic. I’d love to play with some of their other lens but the kit lens the camera comes with (14-42mm) it does the job, yes it does. None of these photos were edited, not even a whisker, (except the coffee pictures above which were done using the Pin Hole Filter as mentioned) I actually really enjoyed the challenge of finding the camera’s happy spots*, (turns out it as lots.)

* I also celebrated the fact that I had a different camera at my disposal with lots of different buttons. So ahem… I set out to fiddle with every little button and see what they all did- this photo and the earlier five shot colourful umbrella picture uses the template function, where you can join photos together in various ways.

Photo Geek Talk

All photos in this post were unedited using the 14-42mm lens, (except for the above shots in this section as mentioned.) ISO I used varied a little, but generally was set at 400 for most of these shots. I find shooting in manual gives me more scope to play with the effects of the picture but if I’m having trouble getting it all, the auto option is pretty damn easy along with the Scenes settings, (depending on what I’m taking the picture of.)

Thank you Olympus. For the return of your gear, you may now try and pry my fingers from the camera.

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Tell me, what are you celebrating at the moment?

just a little bread and jam

Posted on August 21, 2014 by cityhippyfarmgirl

Jam in summer, marmalade in winter. That’s how it seems to roll around these parts. A steady supply of preserved seasons to go with the endless sourdough that seems to drift out of my oven. It’s a simple pleasure that never ever gets old.

What have you been preserving lately?

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For something a little different, have a peak at ABC’s Organic Gardener magazine- feeling pretty happy to be squeezed in between the lovely likes of fermentation king Sandor Katz and Kate of Foxs Lane.

Pumpkin Spiced Cake or when to break the rules

Posted on August 17, 2014 by cityhippyfarmgirl

I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

I knew there was something…but really couldn’t quite gather enough thought process to find out what. And yet slowly whatever it was, it built up. I couldn’t write. I couldn’t draw. I couldn’t take any pictures and I sure as eggs couldn’t think what on earth it was that was slightly sitting out of alignment.

So I stopped. Stopped trying to put my finger on it and closed the lap top. Said bugger the homework. Put another jacket on us all and headed out. The rules of the afternoon, the time constraints, the blah, blah, blah. Yep, today they didn’t count, as today….there would be no rules.

You know why kids can play so beautifully, for so long, so uninhibited? Because their rules are different, and they don’t care particularly if they break them. If the row of animals isn’t put away before going to bed, life turns out, does continue on. If homework isn’t done on a one off Wednesday, doing double the next day is actually ok because the afternoon before, oh it was rather awesome.

So why was it, that it wasn’t until I had stopped, did I realise it was all the rules that were choking me and leaving me on edge? I have no idea. Really absolutely none. But on the upside I know how good it felt when we broke all the rules that afternoon in late winter and I have every intention of doing it again soon.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Now this is a quite a moist, dense cake, that for me looked like a cake, but tasted like a pie, it kind of broke all the cake rules right there.

Looks like a cake, but tastes like a pie… this was a fine thing to realise indeed.

Pumpkin Spiced Cake

150g softened butter

150g brown sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp ginger

1 tsp cardamom

zest of a lemon

2 beaten eggs

2 tbls molasses

225g self raising flour

75g wholemeal spelt flour

1 1/2 cups cooked and mashed pumpkin (use less if you don’t like a moist cake)

Cream butter, sugar and spices together, add lemon zest, beaten eggs and molasses. Mix through pumpkin and then fold through flours. Pour mixture into a greased and lined loaf tin and bake for approximately one hour at 180C, (or until a skewer comes out clean.)

it was all orange

Posted on August 14, 2014 by cityhippyfarmgirl

there is rather a lot to love about orange in winter isn’t there

Chocolate, Community and Choices

Posted on August 10, 2014 by cityhippyfarmgirl

I’ll let you in on a little secret. This place here, is my number one place to eat out. It doesn’t happen often, actually hardly at all really, but when it does…oh it’s bliss. Sheer bliss.

While this blog is not about food reviewing (and never will be) I can’t help but want to stand on my pedestal and shout…”you really should go there!”

Once in that blue moon period when I do go out, I want to go somewhere that holds similar beliefs to me. Going somewhere where the selling points of a dish are “Salmon from Alaska, oranges from Malta, cheese from Turkey and wine to wash it all down with from Italy”. Nope, it just doesn’t cut it for me, I’m seriously not interested. Tell me the bacon is from a small scale farmer a few hours away, the milk is from the outskirts of Sydney, the eggs are organic and the plated greens were grown three metres away in the small backyard. Now that’s going to make me sit up and pay attention.

Also add to it being some of the best tasting food I’ve ever tasted and I will be scrambling for any opportunity to get a table again.

Now when time ticks by and life gets in the way, their cookbook will be tiding me over. The pages talk of how they started, seasonal eating, not wasting anything and community– all topics of which I’ll happily devour every page, (which is includes this rather tasty Chocolate Beetroot Brownie.)

beetroot brownie || cityhippyfarmgirl

Coming back for a moment, to that wonderful C word that I love so much- community. It’s important to me here in blogland. It’s important to me in ‘real life’ and is also one of the big things that has struck me every time I’ve been lucky enough to eat there. (And it really is a privilege to eat out , for anyone!) Community is something that really seems to jump out at you, even just walking down the street. You can tell that this is a close knit area that really looks out for each other, (which also includes famed sourdough legend, Iggy’s just a few doors down.)

Living in a big city, if you are lucky enough to be in the position of choosing to go out for a meal, then considering where your dollar is going just makes sense. It makes wonderful sense. Combine a little chocolate and community in with those choices and you have yourself a pretty great combination I think.

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Tell me, what are some of your favourite community minded places (or books) to eat or hang out at?

St Albans

Posted on August 7, 2014 by cityhippyfarmgirl

Sometimes living in the big smoke gets a little bit too much for me. A ticket out is needed, and some cleaner air needs to be inhaled in. A particularly sunny Sunday at the end of July was going to be just the day to do it.

St Albans was calling. It was an area we had never explored and seemed to be the perfect spot to go for a day trip. Packing three excitable kids in the car and not much else, we headed off.

Turns out it was the perfect spot to go. It was so lovely, I already want to go back. St Albans boasts the historic Settlers Arms Inn, a lovely sandy river bank to play on, no mobile coverage (this is a good thing) and an abundance of leafy green trees to wander around. It also has a kumquat tree laden with ripened fruit, a lovely lady that owns an equally lovely camel, great pub food for when you get peckish around lunch time and the best collection of letter boxes I’ve seen in a long time.

Time stood still. Wonderful lunch was eaten. Clean air was inhaled and I’m very grateful for St Albans being on the map.

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If you are planning a day trip out of Sydney, I highly recommend it, and if you are looking for accommodation in the area, how ridiculously awesome does this place look?

If you have never seen a camel laughing, please scroll to the bottom…this lovely long lashed camel thought my kids jokes were HILarious.

Love, Lavender…and well, pickles

Posted on August 3, 2014 by cityhippyfarmgirl

Getting a daikon in my vegetable box was met with a little ooooh, now what might I do with that? I’d never cooked with them before, hadn’t seen any recipes and quite possibly I wasn’t sure I’d even eaten any before either. Hooray for delivered vegetable boxes I say, because it completely gets you out of any cooking ruts you might have accidently fallen into. It’s now a vegetable I actively seek as, in this super simple pickle form, well it’s quite delicious.

Little sprigs of lavender are constantly gracing my kitchen window sill. We have a prolific bush out front that produces and produces. Easily adding a little purple distraction to an other wise messy and cluttered tiny kitchen. Distractions like these are most welcome.

Now it had been awhile since I had made Sri Lankan Love Cake. Quite awhile. My love for anything Sri Lankan orientated hadn’t dwindled since I had last baked it, so there was a certain amount of nostalgic mixing on putting the cake together. I had scrubbing elephants in a river to think of, small beach side swinging hammocks to fondly recall and food. Rather a lot of delicious food, that really is something else.

Love Cake recipes seem to vary a fair bit, and as I’ve never actually eaten anyone else’s Love Cake, (sounds slightly raunchy doesn’t it) I’m really not sure how my version (s) compare. Online recipes seem to have rather a lot of eggs, which I haven’t used quite so much here. I have tweaked it a little bit since the last time I baked it though, and using the rose petals rather than rose water. I like this edition a little better and visually, well it’s hard to take a bad picture if something is sprinkled in icing sugar and showered in rose petals….I think even a sausage would look good with that combination.

Sri Lankan Love Cake recipe || cityhippyfarmgirl copy

Love Cake

150 gms crushed cashew nuts (cadjunuts)

150g semolina

2 eggs

4 egg whites

150g sugar

150g softened butter

2 tbls rose petals

1 1/2 tbls brandy

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp cardamom

1/2 tsp nutmeg

Cream butter and sugar together. Add the eggs, brandy, rose petals, spices and cashew nuts. Fold through semolina.

Whisk the egg whites until stiff peaks appear and fold into mixture. Cook in a square tin, greased and lined with paper, (or well greased bundt tin as I have here). Bake at 180C for approximately 25-35 minutes or until golden.

Pumpkin and Jerusalem Artichoke Soup- ELC #6

Posted on July 31, 2014 by cityhippyfarmgirl

On a weekend out of the city recently, there was talk of visiting a local farmers market. I quite like talk like that, even if I’m the one who initiates the talk (ahem).

So to market we went. Buying up on some lovely locally grown organic vegetables, a succulent for $2, and a chopping board. Now I’d been on the look out for a little board quite awhile now. Time was passing, calendar pages were changing their years and still, I hadn’t found quite the ‘right’ board. I knew they were easy enough to make, but I just didn’t have access to any decent wood.

Then I came across ‘The Man at the Markets’, a man who who knew his chopping boards, and every tiny piece of the different woods behind them. After a general chit chat about the weather and the local area, we started talking about the boards he had for sale. Giving each one a run down on the type of wood it was and how to look after them, and what I was going to do with it.

It was this little one that caught my eye though, asking him about it, it turns out it was from an old skirting board from an equally old house just a short distance away from the markets. You can still see the nail holes if you look closely.

It seems I had found my board. It was locally made, recycled, looked good and seemed to fit pretty well with the pumpkin soup I had planned to serve with it. (What type of wood it is, I’m embarrassed to say I have no idea. The man did tell me, but it seems I forgot as soon as I stepped out of the market area….lovely wood I think it’s called now.)

Where is my food coming from?

Pumpkin- Red Bank, Eurobodalla

Jerusalem Artichoke- (Crave Natural, Apple Tree Flat)

Creme Fraiche- (Pepe Saya, Sydney)

Interested in taking the challenge?

Just how local is local? Well this depends entirely on you. Only you know how you and your family eat. Raise the bar just a little from what you already do. If making sure the majority of your meal includes solely food produced in your country, than make that your challenge. If you want to make it a little trickier, go for produced in the same state…trickier still within 160km.

My aim is to really know where my food is coming from for at least one meal a month, (where I will be posting here in the last week of the month).

Eat Local Challenge #5

Eat Local Challenge #4

Eat Local Challenge #3

Eat Local Challenge #2

Eat Local Challenge #1

memory

Posted on July 27, 2014 by cityhippyfarmgirl

This is a post that I seem to have written countless times in my head. One line here, another line there. At times bursts of whole paragraphs.

Sometimes though, it’s not a post at all, sometimes it’s simply a letter. A letter to be written, reflected on, and then gently folded away. After a time, brought out again once more.

These words that I stick together in fits and bursts are words that are accompanied by so much more. There are vivid pictures, and strong seductive smells, intense inner feelings and deep hidden emotions. In there is also probably more than my fair share of nostalgia. It’s my precious memories I’m talking about, and if I stored them in suitcases I think I would have a whole mountain of them.

cityhippyfarmgirl.com

I’m not the first in my family to hold on to memories like a sacred gate keeper. My grandma before me is also one too. I held her hand recently to take a picture of it. Somehow I wanted to capture a tiny portion of her own memories that she held, before I no longer could.

These hands that had lived through a depression era, a world war. Hands that had held three children as they had traipsed their way to school. For eleven grandchildren, these hands had lovingly waved and told stories of the “olden days”. Hands that had now been lucky enough, as she says, to stroke the soft cheeks of five great grandchildren.

As a woman now in her 80’s, there’s a new found fragility to those hands, which is something that I have never known before.

Something that isn’t in my memory.

In the afternoon I took the photo, holding my Grandma’s soft skinned palm, and cool fingers in my mine- I felt her memories. Every single one of them.

In that moment I wanted to say a thousand things, but I didn’t. As the memories they got stuck, and they wouldn’t, couldn’t get out of my throat. Making a jumble of my words, my grandmother, I think she knew. As she held back her own choked words. Instead, I felt the soft, delicate skin of her hand and I was simply there.

As one day, I knew she wouldn’t be… but then, neither would I.

As I type this I can hear my boys muffled giggles. Through a closed door they are trying to be quiet while their little sister sleeps the afternoon in. My small sleeping girl’s memories are just emerging, and I wonder what it will be that both her and her brothers will choose to record for their own childhood memories. Will they carry them around in the suitcases that my Grandma and I seem to do, or simply leave them to the whirl of the winds? Something to be caught, held and then thrown free again at a moments notice.

Will they have memories of being carried high on strong shoulders? Will they remember those late afternoons at the beach and the salty smell of the sea as they ran towards it?

Maybe they’ll have a very small memory of their mother quietly holding their great grandmother’s hand in a sunny room, late one morning.

Or maybe, they’ll simply look at some of my old photographs.

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If I’m lucky enough to get to my 80’s, I don’t think I would ever have too many photo’s. As we are living in such a digital age, my collection of photographs continues to get bigger and bigger. How could it not though? For nostalgic kind of people like me, well photos are a pretty wonderful tool.

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been lucky enough to be loaned an Olympus OM-D E-M10 for a trial period of a couple of months, and I’ve loved seeing some of the things I can do with it, capturing some of those moments that I want to remember.

There’s an always growing collection of many photograph piles and files, along with my instagram account. So many of those little seemingly small insta squares have now got a little memory attached to it like a post it note on a fridge. My kids flick through them, making comment, like the way I used to do to our family photo albums when I was their age. (With this camera there is a nifty wifi function that can switch your pics to any social media or email to doting grandparents as well.)

Being a compact little camera it’s an easy one to carry around in my regular every day bag, rather than carry around something bigger and separate. And, if you like to edit your photos a bit, there are also Art Filter options- which can be done easily either in camera, or afterwards via the Olympus app on your phone.

Sometimes I use this function, and other times I just leave it as it is. As a raw moment.

A captured memory.

The Stars Dance Again

Posted on July 23, 2014 by cityhippyfarmgirl

Soon our school will be holding it’s annual school disco again. Flicking through my archive of short stories, I was reminded of this post. That little almost convulsing dancing boy I still see in the playground from time to time. He’s bigger now and probably doesn’t even remember that intense dance-off he once did. I did though, and it still gave me a chuckle just reading about it.

In honour of school disco’s and the joy of uninhibited dancing, I made a few more of those dancing star biscuits.

lemon vanilla stars

200g softened butter

150g sugar

2 tsp vanilla

1 1/2 tsp lemon rind

225g plain flour

squeeze of half a lemon

Cream butter and sugar, add vanilla and lemon. Then mix through the flour. Roll between two sheets of baking paper, and chill a little in the fridge.

Cut out stars and bake at 170C for about 15 minutes.

This dough also freezes easily into a log, just cut off rounds to bake as you need them.

school disco essentials…surely

loving… doors, dinosaurs, biscuits and coffee

Posted on July 20, 2014 by cityhippyfarmgirl

Loving…

secret leafy doorways that lead into secret leafy walled gardens. (If you never read The Secret Garden as a child, you really should get it from local library. The magic of gardens should never be underestimated.)

Loving…

coffee dates with friends. Just like leafy gardens, the magic of coffee should also never be underestimated.

Loving…

a baking rack full of cooling Anzac Biscuits on wintry afternoons.

Loving…

Playing with dinosaurs at dusk, because really, how could you not love that?

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What have you been loving?

[“Often life’s pleasures pass us by simply because we don’t take a moment to focus on them… Make a point of noticing everyday something that uplifts your spirit or tickles your heart… Stop to breathe in the joy of this moment and then tell someone about it. Share your joy and revel in it. When your joy is savoured, and then shared, it is magnified…” ROBIN GRILLE]

Choosing a simple life

Posted on July 16, 2014 by cityhippyfarmgirl

I’ve never been ‘on trend’ with things. Cutting edge seems more like a paper cut term to me, while most seasonal fashion trends hold my interest like a conference on data entry for a two year old.

One thing that I do seem to be knee deep in however, is the want for a simple life. From a blogging perspective, (and from when I first started) the bloggers searching for a simple life seems to have grown and grown.

There must be something in it if we are all wanting a similar thing? And it’s not just bloggers and social media types throwing themselves into the quest for a simpler lifestyle than our current fast paced one. We’re just the ones with our own tiny pedestals, #hashtagging about it. What about the people who have been quietly plodding on in their own green pedal powered goodness doing their thing for far longer beforehand?

These people are the proverbial roots of the whole picture. The knowledgeable ones who, people like me look up to and learn from.

So is it gaining momentum this lifestyle, this yearn for a simpler way of life?

I hope it’s not like drinking out of glass jars with handles, blending kale and spinach green smoothies or winding yourself up in washi tape. I don’t want it to be a hipster fad, that’s highly talked of, coming and inevitably going. I really hope it’s not. My genuine hope is that this is more than a trend. Something that becomes bigger and bigger, until this quest for simplicity, this need for stepping off the increasingly fast spinning mouse wheel of life gives people a little pause and clarity of ideas. A quest of simple wants, needs and values. All things that so many of us do seem to be seeking.

The difference between my simple life yearning now and family’s simple life journey before me, was that their’s was one out of necessity and mine is by choice. While some people will argue (and I completely agree) that it shouldn’t be a lifestyle of choice, we should be doing more than we are in our current environment. For now though, it still comes down to choice.

I am in the privileged position of being able to choose to recycle. To choose to make bread. To choose to make hand made things. To choose to ride my bike. And, to choose from where most of my purchases come from.

Choices and necessity in creating a simple life for ourselves and loved ones…it’s kind of interesting to think about isn’t it.

What about you? Tell me a little about some of your simple life choices.

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More simple life seekers- blogging style

Simples Lives

Slow Living Essentials

Little Eco Footprints

House of Humble

Think Big Live Simply