Alice In PeaLand

I sit here in our shed, sharing space with tins of paint, light fittings and all sorts of other crap, willing the last few weeks of house construction to hurry up and finish!  I can hardly believe we have lived in a shed for over 8 months.  It's been fine for the most part, but every now and then I have to have a hissy about tripping over things.  Then I have a wee tidy up and vacuum up the sand and dead bugs and boy do I feel better.  :-)

Anyway, house report.  The tiler has finished and we are rapt with his work.  We have breathed a sigh of relief that we like all the tiles we chose, even more so than we imagined.  This is the ensuite shower.  We went for plain old white tiles but we chose the ones with a slight ripple in the surface, rather than smooth.  I love how they look when the light shines on them, all sorts of lovely patterns dance across them.  And above that is the row of little stone tiles for a bit of pizazz.  The glass guy was in today to measure up for the shower screens, can't wait to see it all finished.

The standard for this home is for one row of tiles above the bath, but when we saw it we thought it looked just a little plain.  As it happened, there were quite a few of the little stone tiles left over, and just enough white tiles for a second row.  So, after speaking sweetly to the tiler, he was happy to accommodate our wishes, and he added the row of stone tiles and cut row of white tiles above.  What do you think?  We absolutely love how it looks and I can't wait to have a bath and try it out! :-)

 

This is the kitchen tiling above where the stove will go.  The lower section of the rangehood is in place and the tiler has done an amazing job marrying the two together.

Look what he did, goodness know how.  He cut channels right through two tiles so the arched glass sits inside them, which means the rangehood sits neatly atop the tiles, rather than sitting in midair above them.

We are hoping to see the electrician arrive in a few days and he will start finishing off power points, light switches, light fittings and ceiling fans.  Next week hopefully the plumbers will arrive and then we really will be on the home straight!  In the meantime Madame Pepper lies snoring on her back, oblivious to all but her next meal. 

 We have been busy the last couple of weeks using and preserving plentiful produce.  This is a chocolate beetroot cake which was rather nice.  There are two cups of grated beetroot in this one cake.

 

More beetroot, this batch was destined for pickling and for a dip.  We have had great success growing root crops in our little vegie patch so far, perhaps our soil is good for them.

King Edward potatoes destined for the dinner table tonight.  later..... we had them mashed and they were delicious!

 

But the best thing of all is the masses and masses of sugar snap peas and snow peas that are growing like the clappers.  Every day I skip down to the vegie patch and pick the ones that have matured enough, it's amazing how fast they grow now the weather has warmed up a bit.  But even better is simply wandering around the plants, grazing on peas straight off the plants.  Steve says I am like Alice In PeaLand, every time he turns around he finds me in there.  :-)

We have a few onions growing, just for cooking.  Steve loves pickled onions and when we found a 10 kilo bag of small onions at the local farmers market for $10, it was a given.  We also stocked up on a few more 2 litre jars and vinegar, armed ourselves with knives and set to work preparing the onions.  It didn't take as long as we thought, and doing the job outside in the breeze meant no streaming eyes.

 

And here they are, sitting in their spiced vinegars.  Note Steve's numbering system, which correlates to a file on his computer, where his secret concoction recipes have been written up and hoarded away.  The jars have been tucked away in the cupboard for the magic to happen and we look forward to trying them soon!

Still in the vein of food gathering, Steve and his mate Laurie had a splendiferous day fishing last Monday.  Just look at this haul of fish.  The long ones are pike, the dark pink ones are breaksea cod, the round silver ones are sweep and the light pink ones are orange wrasse.  After they spent hours filleting them, they each ended up with 7 1/2 kilos of fish fillets woohoo.

That restocked the freezer!  Protein with low food miles to keep us going for ages.  Brilliant.

In amongst all this food stuff, we spent a couple of mornings cruising around Albany and Denmark, enjoying some exhibits of the annual Southern Art Trail.  It was good to get out and do something just for the hell of it, we tend to get so caught up in our little hobby farm that sometimes we forget the rest of the world is out there.  Tomorrow we are heading into Albany again, alas this time not for the joy of art, but for a set of new  tyres for my car.  I'll be roadhugging those gravel road curves in no time!