Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice enough cake. But it needs something to replicate that familiar rum and raisin flavour that I’ve come to love so much. I’m not sure whether it’s some vanilla essence, more brown sugar or even just more rum that’s needed but there is something missing. I’m even toying with the idea of subbing some of the rum for coconut rum to see how that turns out.

RUM AND RAISIN CAKE

Ingredients
155 grams of raisins
3 liberal tablespoons of dark rum
185 grams of self-raising flour
150 grams of unsalted butter
140 grams of brown sugar
3 eggs, lightly beaten

Method
Preheat the oven to 180°C.
Lightly grease a deep 20cm round cake tin and line the base with baking paper.
Soak the raisins in the rum for at least 10 minutes.
Sift the flour into a large bowl and make a well in the middle.
Melt the butter and sugar in a small saucepan over low heat, stirring until the sugar has dissolved and then remove from the heat.
Combine the melted butter and sugar with the rum and raisin mixture and add to the sifted flour with the beaten eggs.
Stir with a wooden spoon until combined but do not overbeat.
Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 40 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean.
Serve with custard or ice cream on the side if desired.

The number of cat enclosure options available in Victoria is staggering. Where we live, the options are much more limited. There certainly aren’t products like the one available below in kit form for purchase. Perhaps there is more demand down south for enclosures of this type where the weather is substantially more….shall we say erratic? I like the idea of an under cover area – it contains sleeping nooks and there is ample room for a litter tray as well. The wire enclosed area has an open bottom so they can nibble on grass – no doubt to be later regurgitated inside.

I think a pot planter of cat nip in the corner will be a perfect addition. The roof has slots in it so the grass and any plants we place inside will still get rainfall. All we need to do is hook up one of our existing tunnels to the side mesh and that’s it! I plan to order it in the next week so hopefully by the time we go on holidays in September, it will be here ready to be put up. Fingers crossed that all goes well!

From "Design A Shed" - very noice style!

Even Rosie is loving the cold weather. Especially out on the sandstone blocks – they warm up quite a bit during the day when the sun is on them and I’m sure in kitty language, that is just heaven! They also make a handy scratching surface it seems. This is probably the first time she has been outside unharnessed and unleashed yet not inside a cat park. She is easier to catch though and she doesn’t jump six feet in a single bound so I am happy to let her out when I have time to watch her like a hawk. Unfortunately Mojo has proved conclusively time and time again that he cannot be trusted – so he had to enjoy his time in the sun wearing his harness. I’m sure if he could, he would complain about the unfairness of it all.

PS – Yes this does mean we haven’t done anything with the cat park yet. That would require us to not procrastinate and actually do something about putting it up. I’m sure the cats have lost hope that it will ever be put up.

Winter is probably my favourite time of year, despite the coughs and colds that go around. It certainly helps when there is less rain than during the warmer months. I guess there’s something dreary about the day when it is cold and wet but when the sun comes out, it really is a beautiful time of the year.  Last weekend I spent an hour or two watching the kite surfers making the best of the gusty weather. Despite the wind, plenty of people were having a BBQ, walking their dogs or just enjoying the sunshine. I don’t usually shoot directly into the sun but I thought that my NSW friends might appreciate it. Yes it’s still in the sky – I hope the rain eases up soon for you and you get to enjoy some pleasant sunny winter days yourself.

And for some not noice….

I remember people telling me when I got my indoor pot plants that it probably wouldn’t be long before the cats started having a crack at them. Well it seems that they must have thought they were fake for around six months because for at least that long, they remained unscathed. The last few weeks they have finally realised that they are real and very very tasty. We spent about a week cleaning up puddles of greenery infused cat yak before enough was enough. They are now on our outdoor table and look just as nice out there – not before the cats did a little bit of damage to the foliage though.

As part of the Noice-ities theme week, Leigh and Laura are asking about your favourite winter recipe. Generally speaking, I tend to eat the same foods in winter that I would in summer. This is probably because I lack any kind of repertoire which extends to seasonal cooking as much as it has to do with a lack of a proper winter like they have down south. I have about 10-20 things that I can cook with any degree of success and fortunately, none of them seem to be any less edible in winter than they do in summer. So this makes it a bit challenging for me to pick a favourite that is more wintry than the rest. Not to mention, Rah already stole corned beef – my all time favourite comfort food that I can actually make.

So, inspired by my dinner for tonight and that it could probably suffice as a winter recipe – I vote for Chilli Con Carne. I didn’t come up with the recipe myself – it was sent to me by email and was vouched as being tried and tested many times. An email which I have stored somewhere on my computer. For reasons unknown to me, I can’t find it right now so I’ll have to make do with what’s in my memory and hope that it is right. I hope it’s right – it’s that particular memory which I’m using to make tonight’s dinner.

Cherie’s Chilli Con Carne

If they are anything like the frangipanis, they will do a lot better. They seem to be kicking along okay, even with the clay base soil we have. If anything, they seem to like it because their leaves have stopped dropping and they are even getting new growth. The three frangipanis should form a nice bit of screening foliage at the front of the house and although I did plan on putting mainly natives in the ground here, I do have a soft spot for the fragrance of a frangipani tree in full bloom. I saw a lovely teddy bear magnolia at the garden expo, so it has a home in my front garden too.

The plants between the two are a mixture of grevilleas and banksias, all in their juvenile state. Tomorrow I plan to add in a dwarf variety of callistemon that I got from the nursery. I’ve also got a heap of plants to put in that sandstone rockwall, mostly small bushy plants and ground covers. It may not look like much now but I’m hoping that in another six months, there will be a fair bit of progress.

After all, look how much my woollie bush has grown in six months! All I can say is it must be really happy where it is….I sure haven’t had do too much for it to grow as much as it has in such a short period of time.

The only herbs I’ve ever managed to grow are rosemary and oregano in the kind of soil I have. I don’t know why I have an obsession with herbs because I rarely cook anything that I can put them in. But I like the way they look and I love the way they smell. Plus when I do get that urge to make a roast of some sort, nothing quite beats having the fresh herbs at your fingertips.

So when I saw this nifty little stacking set of tubs, I figured I had to give it a go. They are called Stack-a-Tubs and they can be used indoors or outdoors for anything with a relatively shallow root system. I have herbs in mine mostly, with some lavender and strawberry plants in the bottom. I imagine annuals would go nicely in them as well. Just place your water loving plants up the top and the ones that tolerate more dry soil down the bottom and away you go. When you give your plants a drink, all you need water is the top tier because any water unable to be stored in the bottom of each tier simply drips through to the next one.

Now I just have to remember to water them and I should have a thriving little herb garden on my patio.

Whoever came up with that ingenious design obviously didn’t think that cats would be remotely interested in pulling them out or they might have done away with the hole in the bottom altogether. Mojo probably wouldn’t give a rats about them but Rosie thinks that plastic bags are the best toy. She will find them in the most unusual of places and the noise of them being ripped apart in the middle of the night irritates me enough to wake me fully up.

So I decided that I could make my own. After all, I made my own stuffing for a DIY camera bag (let’s not speak of its dismal fate after we returned from Tasmania) and it wasn’t overly challenging. It wasn’t overly neat either but it served the purpose at the time. And what with Rah whipping up all sorts of things with her sewing machine (with varying degrees of sucess),  I figured I could probably make my own dilly bag. I made one of these things in high school and I’m pretty sure it only took a double period of classes – so it should be a cinch right? Well it would have been – if I was still 12yo and remotely knew how to thread a sewing machine. Fortunately, my machine caters for complete dummies like me and prints the threading instructions on the machine itself instead of in the instruction manual which is probably lost by now.

It took me about 2hrs to make one simple little dilly bag. Sewing bloggers all over the world are probably laughing right now. Even Rah is probably laughing at me. But that’s ok, because in the end, I finished what I set out to do. Here it is, hanging nicely on my pantry door from its far too long draw cord.

Consequently we are left with this tricky bit along the side of it as it isn’t wide enough to plant anything and turf would simply die there. I think something needs to go there but I’m at a loss as to what it should be. A couple of those long staked citronella burners maybe?? Or a bit of lattice work attached to the fence to put a creeper on?? Or some plants in hanging baskets hooked on the side of the fence with some feature lattice behind them??

Any bright ideas??

But I can now say that I have a backyard. Of course it was always there but a whole heap of barren soil just doesn’t seem to paint the picture of an ideal Aussie backyard. A typical Aussie backyard should have turf in it and now ours finally does.

So now I can embrace the rain when it pours down instead of getting mild panic attacks. I can put some plants in the ground that are well and truly over due for planting. The fence can get put up. Not to mention the cats will be excited because once the turf has established, they can finally have their cat park back.

Bliss!