Gone

Eeeek! It's been too long. The last week has been really crap. The Galumph's step-grandfather passed away in the UK, all alone in his house, and it was a few days before he was found. Such a sad and lonely death. My heart goes out to him.

The Galumph, his sister, and their father are the only family this man had left, and even then it was only by marriage (he's Galumph's father's step-dad), so the task fell to me to write his obituary. How do you write about somebody you've never even seen a photo of, let alone met? I hope I did him justice. Ever since his wife passed away a few years ago, it has been his wish to die so he can be with her, so at least it's some comfort knowing that it finally happened. God preserve me from such a lonely end.

As you can imagine, there's been a lot to organise. Circumstances being as they are, there's going to be a coroner's report done, so Galumph's dad has flown over to the UK to deal with that. We have no idea when the actual funeral will be, because apparently in the town he's in, there's a bit of a backlog of cremations. Who knew? Gah, it's all such a ghastly mess. I've spent the last few days trying to locate real estate agents, auction houses etc in his town, as everything will need to be sold and packed up. His whole life, neatly folded away by strangers. It'll be like he was never there. The thought breaks my heart.

I was intending to do some blog wittering, but it doesn't really feel right anymore. Too light-hearted for a post like this. Maybe tomorrow. I'm off to cuddle my Grumbles now.

If only he offered to weed my garden (and that's not meant to sound dirty!)

Some crazy old man just banged on our door, asked if I wanted my garden weeded for $20 bucks, cast a very disparaging look at the garden when I politely declined, then swore at me when I asked him to close the gate. Grrrrr! And he frightened Grumbles. No shiny penny for you, sir!

Don't worry, it wasn't the spunk above. He was a lovely gent that I met at a wedding a few months ago. He had such a wonderful smile that I couldn't help but snap a photo. And he danced like a dream!

I'm off to a 63rd birthday party at a Russian restaurant tonight. Should be fun, especially with all the courses we're being served up. Borscht, here I come!

Thursday is cake day!

This cake would definitely have to be the strangest cake I've ever made or eaten. An utterly bizarre match of flavours: chocolate and beetroot. I used a fabulously rich cocoa, which made the chocolate flavour incredible, but then you got this strange earthiness coming from the beetroot. It wasn't bad - in fact it was rather good - but completely unexpected.

Anyhow, if you've got the time, and have a couple of beetroot kicking around the bottom of the fridge drawer, give it a burl. Then you can have the fun of serving a slice to somebody, and then stand next to them in a completely maddening way and demand they figure out the magic ingredient. The Galumph's best response was "Ummmm, chocolate?", bwahahahah!

Chocolate and beetroot cake

200g (about 2) trimmed beetroot bulbs, washed
30g (1/4 cup) cocoa powder
60ml (1/4 cup) hot water
200g (1 cup, firmly packed) brown sugar
2 eggs, lightly whisked
125ml (1/2 cup) reduced-fat milk
60ml (1/4 cup) vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla essence
225g (1 1/2 cups) self-raising flour, sifted

1 - Preheat oven to 180°C. Brush a 7cm-deep, 11 x 21cm (base measurement) loaf pan with the melted butter to lightly grease. Line the base with non-stick baking paper.

2 - Put on rubber gloves, unless you really fancy having purple hands for the next couple of days. Use a vegetable peeler to peel the beetroot bulbs, then a grater to finely shred. Set aside.

3 - Place the cocoa and hot water in a medium bowl and stir until smooth. Add the sugar and eggs, and use a wooden spoon to beat until smooth. Stir in the beetroot.

4 - Combine the milk, oil and vanilla essence in a jug. Sift the flour into the cocoa mixture, then add the milk mixture.

5 - Pour the cake mixture into the prepared pan. Bake in preheated oven for 55-60 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the centre of the cake comes out clean. Set aside for 5 minutes and then turn onto a wire rack to cool. Cover with chocolate icing, then scoff, making frequent exclaimations about the flavour combination, until somebody gets so annoyed they dong you over the head with the loaf pan.

Wardrobe Refashion

I'm in! I've taken the four month Wardrobe Refashion pledge, and shall abstain from purchasing any new items during this time. Although I think undies are allowed. Some of mine are looking decidedly in need of replacing. You know, holes in unfortunate places. I seriously need to make sure I shop for underwear far more often than I currently do.

Anyhow, undie confessions aside, it's going to be all sew sew sew here, and no buy buy buy. Not that I really buy much anyway, but it's always different when you know you can't. You suddenly find yourself with a wallet full of money and shops full of tempting clothes that normally you wouldn't consider. If I find myself tempted, I shall simply have to have a stern talking to myself, and march myself home to occupy my mind with some sort of activity. Maybe like darning my underpants. Eeeeew!

Don't all turtles feature plastic rings around their shell?

For those of you interested, have a read of the fascinating entry on No Impact Man about the impact of plastic on our environment. Shudder!

Alas, they didn't play any Beastie Boys

That, believe it or not, is a conga line. Wheeee, that barmy sure went off like a frog in a sock! Not the actual ceremony - it was lovely, so reflective and holy and wise. The reception, however, was one crazy dance after another. Alas, I didn't get to boogie on down myself, as poor old Grumbles took fright at the cranking up of decibels and the smoke machine, so while everybody else was doing the Nut Bush, I was stuck at the back of the room nursing a very frightened little girl. Still, her death-like grip around my neck (there was not way she was letting me put her down) prevented me from mazel toving the wrong person (I can get a bit carried away with newly aquired lingo, and thank you all for your suggestions).

Behold: death like grip in action!

He glows! Even without hands!

We're going to a bar mitzvah this weekend, for the Galumph's step-sister's son (hmm, complicated). And when I say this weekend, I mean for pretty much the entire weekend. Our weekend gone, gobbled up just like that! We've got the synagogue tomorrow, then a big reception on Sunday. Is that usual, for the BM to take an entire weekend?

Tell you what, it makes my pissy little first communion look a bit ordinary. I had to wear my sister's communion dress. I think it looked really nice on her, but she was petite and blonde with blue eyes. I was gangly and stick thin, with nothing coloured hair and the dress ended about half way down my calf, instead of gracefully sweeping the floor like it did for her. So my mum thought she'd dress me up a bit by making me wear sparkly silver socks with big clunky white school style shoes. Let me tell you, it didn't improve the look any. And to this day I remember how damnably itchy those horror socks were. In fact, in every photo I've got this scowl on my face, because my feet were being itched to death by them. Oh, the awful memories! And to top it all off I don't think we even did a fancy lunch afterwards. It was the same old sad Sunday sandwhiches, munched in front of The Wide World Of Sports, as per usual. I'm still bitter.

And no fancy presents, no siree. I received a nice picture of Jesus sitting next to the angel Gabriel, and a glow in the dark (I kid you not) Jesus statue which my brother promptly broke the hands off, so poor old Jesus glowed each night holding up his stumps. This step-nephew person has requested that we buy him two juggling tools at $75 a pop. Man, he's got a good deal. Much better than stumpy hands Jesus.

Anyway, the point of this post (besides being cheaper than therapy) was to ask all you wise peoples of the internet what does one write on a Bar Mitzvah card? "Happy Bar Mitzvah" sounds a bit lame. "You're now a man!" sounds a bit, um, pervy. "Just be glad you're not getting a crappy glow in the dark Jesus!" sounds a little bitter and scarred. Suggestions most welcome!

Marilla said I had to!

I had the strangest dream last night. In it, Marilla Cuthbert (the lady who takes in the orphan Anne Shirley in the Anne series) gave me a special camera. That in itself is weird enough, because 1 - Marilla is a fictional character, and last time I checked most fictional characters didn't pop out of their books to hand out cameras to readers; and 2 - Marilla lived in a time waaaaaaaaay before digital cameras.

Anyhoo, Marilla hands me this camera, and says in her scratchy old voice that it's a gift from Anne, and it'll make me take awesome pictures. And it does - it's got a special filter function on it, so that if I wanted to take a photo of clouds and make them appear really impressive, then it would. How snazzy is that? So then I woke up, and realised that the camera in my dream is the camera I own in real life, and I think my subconscious is telling me that I should really get off my behind and learn to use it properly. Strange to think that my subconscious pretends to be Marilla Cuthbert, though. Hmmm.

On a completely unrelated note, how cold is it today? Brrrrr! It feels like there is snow in the air. I am totally going to make a chocolate pudding for dessert tonight, then scarf it down with lashings of cream. Yum!

Put the plastic bottle down or the environment gets it!

Well, it's been a little while since I treated you all to a plastic free update, so here are my latest thoughts on it.

The first week was hard. Not only did it involve trying to figure out alternatives to plastic packaging, but then I had to hunt around and source them, milk being a good example. But, really, once I got on top of that, it started being much easier. I knew where to get my vegies, cheese, milk and bread in non-plastic or, even better, no packaging and this experiment started coasting along more smoothly.

The fact that the only things I seemed to buy were edible goods helped, admittedly, but the fact of the matter is that my mind set, when it came to purchasing/consuming, has changed a lot over the last few weeks. I'll be in a shop, and something that in the past might have not only caught my eye, but ended in a purchase now prompts thoughts like "Hmmm, do I really need that? Is it manufactured using sustainable and ethical practices? Can this purchased be justified? Can I reuse the packaging? Does it meet my environmental/moral standards?" If the answer to any of those questions was "NO!", then my wallet stayed safely in my bag, and I walked home with a halo of shining goodness hovering over my head.

Not to say that I haven't been tempted. I REALLY REALLY REALLY wanted to buy the Donna Hay autumn magazine, but it came wrapped in plastic with a free giveaway kitchen timer, which really has to be the most stupid giveaway of all time, because doesn't pretty much every stove have a timer? And if they don't, then wouldn't most people have a microwave timer they could use? Sheesh! So, no Donna Hay for me.

And - confession time. Once my 21 days was up, I gave up trying to get milk in glass. The delivery schedule was just too unreliable, and the cost was astronomical. $2.90 for 720ml is just too much for a family that easily drinks over 10 litres of milk a week, so it's back to organic milk in a liquid paper board carton for us.

However, I think generally I will continue trying to be plastic free. My bread will be from local bakeries in a paper bag, my cheese wrapped only in paper from the local cheese shop, no more juice/drinks in plastic bottles, and most grains and cereals I'm now buying from an local organic wholefoods shop, where you scoop out what you need in a paper bag and pay by weight.

I'm shampooing my hair with the awesome shampoo bars from Lush (no more shampoo/conditioner bottles!), my facial stuff (moisturisers, cleansers etc) come from Aesop which package their products in glass bottles (ok, the lids are plastic, but they are 100% recyclable, and this was the best I could find), I'm only buying soap that comes in either nothing or a cardboard box, and for general house cleaning it's bicarb and eucalyptus or tea tree oil.

Whew, that's enough babbling for one day. I'm going to sign off now, before the humungous storn that's heading our way hits and we lose power, plus I'm a big scaredy cat who actually turns off the computer when the Bureau of Meteorology tells me too. Enjoy your Tuesday, folks!

Pieces of Melbourne in black and white

Wiping the dust off the blog

Cough, splutter, hack.
I'm back!

Thanks for all the well wishes. That bug was a killer. It had me laid up in bed for all of last week, and anybody who knows me knows that I never spend the day in bed, let alone a whole week. Still, a lot got done - I reread the entire Harry Potter series, which is like comfort food for the brain. And I even napped during the day, which I dislike doing tremendously, as I tend to give myself lockjaw (don't ask, it's a mystery to me), and do strange dribbles on the pillow, and wake up feeling grumpy and distinctly unrefreshed. Yeeeeeah, that was far too much info, huh?

Okay, let's all have a look at my Mother's Day pressie. It's a bunch of vintage images, which have been made into cards with pithy witticisms stuck onto them, all happily bunged into a frame. My favourite is the well dressed lady on the end, who informs us that "Honey, you couldn't pay me to be twenty!" Oh yeah, I'm hearing you, sister. I'd hate to be twenty again. All the angst of trying to figure out who you are, and where you fit into the big scheme of things - forget about it! Not to mention all the bad haircuts. Twenty nine is so much easier.

Rightio. I'm off to do some knitting. I'm on a tight deadline to finish this top by the 29th of May. Somehow I don't think I'm going to finish the front, neckband and two sleeves by then, but perservere I must. I might also cough up some pleghm, and put it in a jar for my friend, who works at a lab, to have a look at, because I'm pretty sure that the antibiotics I've been on for 10 days are doing diddly squat, and I'll bet my right arm that my particular brand of bugs are resistant to them. You'd have thought that when I went back to the doctor for the second time that she might have put me on something else, but that appears to have been too much trouble. I've just talked to my friend on the phone, and don't worry, she's all for it. She loves stuff like that, and we all need friends of that caliber, yeah?

I'm green on the inside (of my lungs)

It's not easy being green. Especially when you are sick. It's easy enough to cough up green stuff, but sticking to your plastic free diet - um, yeah. It kinda went out the window. Since Galumph was in charge of the shopping, we completely fell off the wagon. The litany of sins is horrendous - juice in plastic, cheese in plastic, bread in plastic... yikes!

And I was in no position to argue. I spent most of last week lying in bed, half-heartedly trying to read Emma (not bad for bed-ridden reading, actually, which I'm sure all those Janeites just love hearing) and contemplating various ways of wrecking revenge upon whoever gave this nasty bug to me. The last was completely pointless, by the way, as it appears that I'm the only I know who has it. Boo hoo.

Still, I felt sufficiently recovered yesterday to head out for a Mother's Day lunch of Yum Cha (organised for the Mothershipinlaw, not me, more boo hoos) where I drank a lot of tea and consumed not much else.

Still, plastic free shall continue - I decree it to be so from this moment onwards! And if this piece of information redeems me at all, then I offer it up freely - I spent the entire week blowing my nose on pieces of recycled non-bleached toilet paper. Hooooonk!

My favourite white powder

Ahem. I've been neglecting my plastic free reporting, haven't I? So sorry about that. It's just that, well, I've met somebody new. And all I can think about is him! He's great in the kitchen, never smells, always cleans up after himself, and I've even found a use for him in the bedroom* (blush!). That's right - it's Mr BiCarb Soda!

I really need to work on taking a straight photo. Excuse the slant!

Bwahahahahah! Did I have any of you going? Nah, thought not. But seriously, I'm so amazed over how powerful a cleaning agent bicarb is turning out to be. I needed to clean the bath on the weekend, so I made a paste of bicarb and water, with a few drops of tea tree oil thrown in for nice smelling/antibacterial action (thanks for the tip, Herhimnbryn!) and then smeared it on the bath ring with a knife. Waited 15 minutes, and then scrubbed it off, and my goodness! It seriously made all the grime disappear right before my eyes, without any hardcore elbow grease required from me. Really, it was like magic! And the best bit was that I hardly needed to use any water (rather an important consideration in these days of water restrictions) to rinse it off the bath walls. In the past, when I'd used cream cleansers, I'd spend most of my time trying to rinse the gunk off, including all those pesky bubbles which just seem to keep foaming and forming the more you try to swat them down the plug hole, so having the job done so quickly and with a minimum of fuss and water was fabulous.

I've also used it to get rid of the curry stains on my yukky white kitchen benchtop, and once again - pow! Gone! Seriously, I'm so impressed that if I could have any more children, I might have to bestow the name 'Bicarb' on one of them. Heh heh, just as well I can't!
Ummm, what else? I cleaned the toilet using vinegar and tea tree. That was a little weird. I'm more used to dipping chips in vinegar, not toilet brushes, so there was a bit of odd gagging going on from my end, but it too worked a treat. And now our bathroom smells like a fish and chip shop - huzzah!

* Apparently, it's good to sprinkle some on the carpet before vaccumming to deodorise. So the handy hints on the back of the packet tell me!

Jeans!

Woohoo! I got me a funky new pair of jeans!

Hooray - my arse is on the internet! (Shown for purposes of topstitching only)

So, whadaya think? I'm rather pleased with them. I made quite a few modifications: I brought the legs in 2 cm at the waist, tapering in to 4cm each side, and brought in the yoke 2cm at the centre back, as it was looking a little on the gappy side. I also decided not to topstitch the waistband or add the belt loops, as I thought all that red topstitching was quite enough detail, thank you very much! And the pocket lining is red and white polkadots. Polkadots - cooooool!

I'm a-telling you, I love the fit. They are snug without being so tight that your lady bits start to suffocate. I feel very rock chick in them, bwahahahah! A very warm rock chick - they feel much cosier to wear than my crappy old ones. It'll be homemade jeans from now on, methinks. I mean, how rock is that - I'll be totally anti-establishment. Awesome. Well, until I get sick of putting those darn waistbands on. The air verily turned blue as I wrestled it on this afternoon. Is it just me, or does anybody else have any trouble taming all that folded denim with interfacing, and making it sit just right? Man, it's hard work.

So, that's one item knocked off my S.W.A.P. list. One down, 10 to go - gulp!

Project specs

Pattern: Stretch jeans pattern from Ottobre magazine 1/2006

Fabric: Denim, 1.25 metres

Notions: Interfacing for waistband, red spotty cotton for pocket facings, 15 cm jeans zipper, 15mm button, red topstitching thread

Rain, rain, come my way

The heavier the rain falls, the better Grumbles sleeps. So bring on the rain - I'll have me a new pair of jeans in no time!

(Oh, and a note to the weather gods/spirits/deities: if you could make it rain over the catchment areas, so that 1 - our farmers will have enough water to irrigate; 2 - our poor botanical gardens and their trees will be less stressed; and 3 - at long last I might be able to have a shower longer than 3 minutes, that'd be good too. Ta!)

I'm in!

I'm in! I've decided to participate in S.W.A.P, and below are the patterns I've chosen:

Bottoms:

Black pants - BurdaStyle, Pencil skirt - Vogue 8317, Sailor style pants - Vogue 7546 (not pictured), jeans from Ottobre magazine 1/2006.

Tops:

Bustier - Vogue 8393, Vintage dress to be made as a top - Vintage Pattern Lending Library, Shirt - Simplicity 4077, Blouse - Simplicity 4177

Dresses:

Vogue 8387, Vogue 8184

Jacket:

Burda Style Cardigan

What with the crazy warm Melbourne weather we're having (apparently it's 10 C warmer than the average autumn temp!), I decided to go for a more trans-seasonal range, rather than strictly a winter one. I wanted to have something I could wear on any day of the year, no matter the temperature. I also wanted garments that could be dressed up or down, depending on the occaision, and could take me from playgroup to an evening out (ok, so I might be a leeeetle bit over-dressed for playgroup, particularly in the pencil skirt and bustier, but you know me - I'd rather be over dressed than under dressed!).

Sticking with the plastic free month, I've decided to try and make all garments out of natural fibres only (viscose and rayons are allowed). Zips might be a bit tricky, but any buttons will definitely be wooden, or at least scavanged from what I already have here.

Phew - that's a whole lot of sewing. Wish me luck!

To SWAP or not to SWAP...

Oh my! I'm very tempted to enter S.W.A.P. (For those who don't know, the challenge is to create a capsule range of 11 garments, all of which must work with each other i.e. every top must go with every bottom. Tricky!) Very, very tempted. Although, I must admit, despite the fact the I badly need some new clothes (the trousers situation is rather dire), I don't think I need 11 new pieces. Maybe I could do a mini-S.W.A.P?

Hmmmm. Dunno. However, I'd best make up my mind soon, as it starts today. Yikes!

Oh, and by the way, if you want to see some first class sewing, drop by Erica B's place. Wow! Talk about inspiring!

Soon I'll be sporting some plastic free jeans!

Today's post is all about jeans. Or, rather, my sudden lack of.

You see, a couple of weeks ago I glanced down as I was walking down the hallway, sporting my all-time favourite comfy pair of jeans, and noticed to my great horror a hole in the knee. Not a little one either. This hole was so large and gaping that it looked like it was a denim mouth which at the present moment was attempting to regurgitate my knee.

"Fanbloodytastic", I thought. "Just what I need - another expense. What with all the money I'm spending on milk in glass for Plastic Free month, I don't think I can afford another pair of jeans."

Then I looked down at the other knee. Eeeeek! The beginnings of another hole! This surely was far too much horror for a Saturday morning.

So I betook myself to the sewing machine, and patched up the holes as best I could. But you know what jeans are like - once they receive the patch of 'mend-and-make-do', they immediately lose their cool factor, and start reeking of something not so cool. Something like... dagginess. Gulp.

So, sighing and bemoaning my current financial state, off to the shops we went. I checked out Just Jeans (gah! The prices!), then Sportsgirl (gah! the prices, and the cuts - I'm a woman, not a skinny mini 14 year old who thinks nothing of showing most of her bum crack to the world) and a few other places, but came home jeans-less. The music in the shops was so loud I couldn't even think (yes, I am getting old), everything was very expensive, and the quality was crap. I refuse to pay good money for fabric that is so pre-distressed that it will last a scant three months before falling apart.

But do not despair, my friends. Over the hilltop the cavalry came, in the shape of Ottobre magazine. Way back in issue 1/2006, they featured a pair of jeans for sizes 92cm - 170cm. Yeah, yeah, I know they are for kids, but I did the measurements and calloo! callay! It looks like we have a winner, as I just sneak in at 168cm and I have no waist to speak of - I'm a big ol' bean pole. Plus I've already made a pair for Grumbles, and let me tell you, these jeans are sweeet! (Don't worry, her's were done in cord, so we won't be the matchy matchy denim fambly).

So I got myself some lovely indigo demin, a metal jeans zip, and hunted around in the stash and found some red topstitching thread left over from my uni days. Dudes, we're in business! And the best of all - they'll be plastic free! No swing tags to cut off, no bags to carry the jeans out of the store, no plastic buttons. And they'll cost in the vicinity of $30. Huzzah!

Muuuuuum, what's for brekkie?

The thing that has turned out to be the hardest in this experiment of mine is food. I've got the cleaning covered (baking soda fixes all evil!), and apart from Galumph's shirts and whatnots the other day, we're not really buying much of anything else.

But the food involves a lot of walking around to gather ingredients that don't come plastic wrapped, and a fair bit of frustration as it's quite common to get to the shop and discover the milk is late in coming again. Thank goodness I live in the area I do, though - for example, there's an organic grocer, three independant bakeries for bread baked goods, a fish shop and a cheese shop, all in walking distance from chez Jorth. I think this experiment would be nigh on impossible if you lived in a very small town or in the country, where these food opportunities didn't exisit. It would also, I dare say, be rather difficult to achieve if you worked outside of the home (not that being a full-time mum isn't working, but at least I have the freedom to scoot off to the shops whenever I can).

The other food issue is expense. It's certainly not cheap to eat this way, although I dare say the food is far better for us, and tastes much better too. Having reread that sentence, a thought has struck me - maybe the food isn't actually that expensive. Maybe I'm just paying the real cost, rather than a 'watered-down, government subsidised farming, buy in bulk and rip off producers' cost. Excuse the pun, but it's definitely food for thought.

Since this post is all about the food, I'm going to jot some breakfast ideas down. It seems to be the meal I'm having the most trouble with. Dinner is fine, and lunch is usually dinner left-overs, but breakfast is turning into a bit of a nightmare! Yesterday, for example, I had soup for breakfast, because I was too tired to think of anything else. How hard can it be, I hear you ask. Well, while most cereals come in a cardboard box, they also come with a plastic liner on the inside, so they are out, and we are running out of our supplies that we started with. And if I haven't kept on top of our bread situation, then it all goes up you-know-what creek. So, some breakfast ideas, for us all.

Note: The below list presumes that all ingredients come in paper/glass/nonplastic packaging.

- Porridge, by itself; with raisons + cinnamon + grated apple; with stewed rhubarb + apple

- Toast, with butter; with jam; with coleslaw + cheese; with tinned sardines; with baked beans; with feta + cucumbers; with chutney + cheese

- Eggs, scrambled; poached; fried; on toast, mixed with dinner left-overs

- Fruit and yoghurt, either fresh, or stewed i.e. apples, quinces, pears

- Pancakes with honey; lemon + sugar; jam + cream; maple syrup; compote + cream

- Muffins; with rhubarb + apple; apple + sultana; orange + chocolate; feta + spinach

Whew! Any ideas you guys have would be greatly appreciated, so c'mon - leave a comment!

Moudly pasta and stern statues

Statue that resides in the gardens of St Patricks Cathedral. I have absoloodely no idea who he is, but gosh darn he looks impressive.

Yesterday was a very good plastic free day, if I do say so myself:

- I washed the bathroom basin using a baking soda paste. This was so easy, and I'm a bit ashamed of myself for not doing it before. I shudder to think how many scary chemical cleaners I've been responsible for pouring down the sink over the years. Anyhoo, baking soda is very good at breaking down grease and grime, so you just plonk a bit into a cup, add enough water to make a paste, then smear it all over the dirty sink/bath/bench top. Wait 15 minutes or so, then scrub it all off. So simple! And now our basin is sparkling. I kid you not. It's gleam-a-rama in that bathroom of mine. If you're keen to try it yourself, here's a nifty site with lots of baking soda tips and tricks.

- Being a public holiday, you know this means a bike ride for the Jorth household. We took the Bay West rail trail again, but this time rode all the way along to under the West Gate Bridge. My verdict of the ride? Very windy. But a good kind of wind, the sort that blows all the cobwebs out. And a bit of sea air never goes astray. We were even big nerds who packed our own lunch: Moroccan sweet potato, carrot and chickpea soup in a thermos with some fresh organic bread. Yum! Although a word from the wise: Only add one tin of chickpeas to the soup, not two as I did. It kinda tasted far too chickpea-ey, rather more like a liquidy hoummus than a soup.

- With the good always comes bad: the pasta nests I made went mouldy. Sob, sob! In our old house we never encountered that problem, as it got a lot of sunlight in through the windows, and I would have ample room to let the pasta dry in the sun. In this house, however, it's much darker and colder, and the poor old pasta nests just didn't stand a chance. So, I'll make some more this weekend, then hang them over the clothes horse so the air can circulate all around. We live and learn. At least we had one meal out of them.