Bound for South Australia

Hello again, it's that blissful week between Christmas and New Year when most Australians take the week off to go and enjoy some sun and surf. We've headed off to South Australia, to a town called Millicent. It took us about 2 hours and 40 minutes driving excluding the stopover in Penola so the kids could stretch their legs.

I loved the noticeable landscape changes from the evaporating pink salt lakes and bulokes leaving the Wimmera to the Blue Gum and Pine forest plantations with stumpy flowering red gums on the roadside in South Australia. Not to mention the Stobie poles. I couldn't resist sending a friend with the same surname a text just to tell her the kids bemusement when Mark told them to look out for the first Stobie pole. They are unique to South Australia and after a lifetime of looking at wooden or concrete power poles, they certainly jazz up the view out the car window. We passed a charming Art Deco pub in Apsley

and then the various Santa mannequins out the front of the magnificent grazing properties and then wineries of the Coonawarra. Each with their own personality and pose.

Heartwarming indeed to see the Christmas spirit on full display in rural Australia.

Why Millicent? We were hoping to stay at Robe which is the preferred destination of most Horshamites but I left my booking too late and the campsites were all full. After a bit of a Google and a read of the reviews on tripadvisor we settled for a 3 star caravan park in Millicent, inland from the Limestone Coast. It is the first time I've ever seen 5 out of 5 star ratings for a caravan park so that in itself was enticing enough to make a booking.

Our site is lovely, flat, grassy, nestled in behind a large tree and one of those rubbery waxy shrubs. Power available on both sides, water, rubbish bin, picnic table and a view across paddocks and pine plantation to hills on the horizon.
After pitching the tent we ducked into town, famished, to pick up fish and chips, forgetting and then rejoicing that South Australia is half an hour behind us (time zone change) and realising that we were the first customers and had another half an hour of evening to enjoy. We then went to the nearest park and after feeding the seagulls the remnants of dinner went to the most impressive playground I've seen. It had every piece of playground equipment a child could wish for and the big drawcard for our kids was the flying fox.

Tomorrow, we hope to go to Robe, to see what all the fuss is about and why it drives half my town to lob at its cafes and beaches every summer.

Adventures in Cakemaking

Tomorrow it is my daughter's 6th birthday. Despite toying with the idea of just buying an ice-cream cake from Wendy's, I now have a well established tradition in our family of making cakes from scratch. The problem is this is a party cake and it requires a bit more preparation than the cakes I make for family gatherings.

I also have horrible memories of my last party cake for Lucinda where I went all-out. It was made using the Wilton Castle Cake kit and, naively, I assumed "kit" meant simple to construct. Alas, no. It involved watching about 15 hours of Youtube videos, reading Cake on The Brain's blog , learning more than I ever dreamed necessary to make a tiered cake, lots of trial and error and dare I say it, swearing. I don't think I have ever sworn that much (I'm embarassed just thinking about) but it was 1 a.m., tiny silver balls I was placing around the window frames with tweezers kept sliding off the royal icing, everyone else was asleep, and I was just over it.

And the next day, at Lucinda's party, I was a walking zombie and the cake Mark (I discovered he was a deft hand with the royal icing piping) and I had spent hours toiling over was deconstructed and destroyed straight after "Happy Birthday" had been sung.

This year, my animal loving daughter is getting a girlified version of "Fred the Dog" from The Complete Book of Home Baking by Ken Fin books. I'm fairly sure this book will be out of print now as my husband bought it from a hawker about 15 years ago but the actual cake recipes are of the no-fail, triple-tested quality so I am not expecting a flop cake result.

I better get started.

Spring has Sprung

The spring cleaning bug has hit hard here. It's September school holidays and despite the sea of kid clutter scattered throughout the house I am driven by a burning desire to dispose, order, clean and refresh. See my knitting blog for this Sunday's adventure.

Dealing with Sugar

Look at this.

It wasn't supposed to be my afternoon tea but the kids left the packet on the bench. I'd just had a handful of almonds to quell the afternoon sugar craving and thought, "Oh well, I'll just break it in half" and then ate the larger half. In the time it's taken me to write this, it has disappeared and I don't recall eating it and neither do the kids.

Interestingly, I know how naughty chocolate and sugar are, being a Robert Lustig fan - "Sugar: The Bitter Truth" is essential viewing on YouTube - and occasional follower of Sarah Wilson's I Quit Sugar blog. I also know firsthand the impact of sugar having once worked for a chocolate manufacturer where the staff warned me, "the average weight gain of a new start is 7 kilos". I managed okay. I think I put on an uncomfortable 3 kilos. In the short period I was working for them I got my first ever tooth filling at 36 years old and the three pregnant women at work, including me, all gave birth to babies bigger than 9lbs (4kg approx).

I am a normal size, active woman and so are the rest of my family members. All the senior family members, however, have Diabetes Type 2 and in my last pregnancy I was diagnosed with Gestational Diabetes which now determines an annual blood test to check for the onset of Type 2. My mum was a shocking sweet-tooth and there was always a bag of snack size chocolates in the fridge crisper and a packet of mint leaves lollies in the top cupboard. Sweet biscuits in the pantry, juice in the fridge. Cordial and milo on the bench. She dealt. We consumed. And the history repeats in my household minus the juice and the cordial.

With the insistance of my husband, I've made a small change to our diet already though starting with breakfast. I've found a small selection of sugar-free cereals in the supermarket namely Uncle Tobys  (whatever happened to the apostrophe in that brand name!) "Weeties", "VitaBrits", rolled oats and the puffed rice and puffed corn in the health-food section. I wish and I hope, with the rising popularity of the anti-sugar movement, that more sugar-free variety would appear on the cereal shelves and extend to the other shelves. I think the secret to avoiding sugar is going to mean avoiding supermarkets, purveyors of all things processed, and continuing to grow as much of our own produce. I don't want to deal in the sweet stuff anymore. It's time the love-hate relationship ended.

For the very first time...

Well! Here it is. My first post in a blog that has been milling around in my head for the last few months. I've been thinking about blog names, borrowing books on blogs and social media from the library and reading stacks and stacks of other people's blogs. Several friends I know now write blogs. My passion for knitting in particular, leads me to blogs regularly for tips, videos and patterns. My recent kitchen renovation plans have seen me trawling through interior decorator blogs looking for snippets of confirmation that my choices are the right ones and that they add value.

Why "Maiden Adventures"? Maybe because we've recently had a federal election in Australia and I was thinking about forthcoming "maiden speeches" made by freshly created politicians. Maybe because I'm female and it adds a touch of femininity. And maybe because of my penchant for mediaeval history/romance fiction and the tangible sense of what it means to be a maiden in a predatory world. It's almost cricket season too and my bowler husband and his team will be lusting after a "maiden over". But mostly because this is my maiden voyage into the blogosphere and I hope the seas aren't too choppy.