An apron from Ellie. And Beryl's sponge.

So after a long leave of absence I am finally writing about my adventures making Beryl's sponge. But it did take a few little steps of planning and encouragement along the way to get me to the sponge-making zone...

1. After returning from holidays, I received a beautiful birthday present from a fellow housewife-in-training, Ellie. Wrapped in old dress makers' patterns and brown string was a gorgeous hand-crafted high waisted apron (and some chocolate...). This was enough to encourage me to get into the kitchen and start making something special.

2. Over a Saturday morning cup of coffee with my friend Peta, I mentioned I was determined to make a sponge. Being an experienced housewife, she was able to provide the necessary advice. 

3. I found the recipe from Beryl. This was not too hard- I had kept it safe :)

4. I invited a bunch of friends over for a movie and dessert night and had an instant party of willing cake eaters to cook for.

5. I dug up Grandma's old sponge tins. They are in pretty good nick considering...

And so after not too much difficulty, I had my first ever sponge cake (happily layered with passion fruit and cream as suggested by Peta). It tasted so good and was just as a sponge cake should be. My apron and I were pretty stoked with the result. 

Win.

A quick aside.

Last Tuesday I found myself in Bingara, a small town of 1300 people in regional NSW. Driving down the main street we noticed that there were fully laden orange trees in neat rows starting at the RSL club and extending out of sight. Not knowing what the deal was with the trees (why was no one eating the oranges? They looked so good!) we drew on the local knowledge around us and discovered that the oranges were waiting patiently for a special day in June on which the Bingara Orange Festival was held. On this day each year, the school children in town come and harvest the oranges (with prizes for the kids who pick the ones with little flags poked in them), bag them up and keep some while the rest go to local charities.

Here's to the quaintness of country life.

The little things. Tasks that were not tasks, but turned into them.

So it's proving to be quite difficult to find the time, along with a group of people for whom to create Beryl's traditional sponge cake. But I'm working on it.

In the mean time I have made small achievements in the kitchen that were not intended to be tasks, but ended up being quite suitable to include.

The first was hot cross buns. These were fairly easy to make but the best bit was that I was able to choose the fruit that I wanted to go in. Peel certainly did not get a look in. I realize that this means they are not  really traditional, but they tasted alright. The random star one on the end in the picture is actually meant to be a Union Jack. In honor of the royal wedding.

The second achievement was making baked doughnuts. Also not the traditional version (as there was no deep frying involved), but I think dietitians have to make the ethical choice sometimes. Ethical as in won't contribute as much to heart disease. So these little doughnuts were really fun to make and turned out to be really rather cute! Dan was especially pleased to discover that some were jam filled... using jam from Task 1, of course. I definitely will make these again, but I also think at some stage down the track it would be the noble thing to do to make the more traditional version.

The third little win I had was with my friend Tara on a cold Autumn's evening. After Papa and I harvested about 50 kilograms of pumpkins from the garden, I straight away texted Tara to see if she wanted to come over and make the pumpkin pie we had been dreaming about during the week. She said 'yep', so we got under way. Both of us were a wee bit shocked when we had to tip almost a full jar of maple syrup into the mixture (eek!)... but the result was well worth it. We ended up with a very, very decent pumpkin pie, plus a few baby pies in ramekins... there was some left over mixture. We ate the pie sitting around the fireplace with warm cups of tea in our hands. A fine way to spend a chilly New England evening.

And that's all for now. Hopefully I'll be able to come up with the goods on Beryl's sponge soon.

Task one. Homemade jam. Again.

The day after I made my almost-jam, I visited my neighbor, Christina. I told her about my jam making expeditions and she actually allowed me to borrow THE recipe book that she used in her own jam business. I was pretty stoked, especially after she explained where I might have gone wrong and what I should do differently...

I finally obtained some strawberries from the local gate sales (although this time I sent someone else again, rather than getting them myself as I was at work... thank you Meredith and Bronte!). Jam batch number two was not very good though...I very much over compensated for the non-setting of the previous batch and made a jam a similar consistency to tar (it does go alright though when nuked for a few minutes...). I am so sorry, Christina, for making such a botch of your lovely jam recipe. And I have definitely learned the value of sticking to the letter of the instructions. 

So I think I will let task one rest for a while. I am determined though, to come back to it one day and finally get the upper-hand in the creation of decent homemade jam.

As for my next task...

Beryl, a lovely woman, grandmother (and very accomplished housewife) I know from church, recently told me that she had been given a recipe for a three-minute spongecake. She was very skeptical of the idea and promised to tell me how it went when she made it the next day. She told me it was ok... her husband, Alan, also said it was fine (but I have a feeling he prefers her traditional sponge to the three-minute variety...). Anyway, Beryl has now carefully written out for me a copy of the three-minute sponge recipe and also her traditional recipe, Fielders Sponge Cake. So perhaps my next task can be making real sponge cake... the traditional way.

Task one. Homemade jam.

I decided to start this little project with something I had wanted to do for quite a while. Make jam. 

Initially, I had hoped to start with a simple strawberry jam, but by the time my poor brother made it to the local strawberry 'gate sale', they were already sold out. So instead, I decided (with the help of Donna Hay) on nectarine and passionfruit jam ("Nectarine?" said my friend Meredith, "that sounds hard to set."). My next door neighbour, Christina, used to own a jam making company, so I jumped over the fence and walked up the hill to ask her advice. 

She wasn't home. So I embarked on this task alone...with a bit of help from Dad. I started off by fishing around the house for a variety of little jars to sterilise. I ended up with some cute little ones. I'm really not a fan of the one with the Kan Tong simmer sauce lid, though (is that why nannas put pretty cloth over the top? To hide ugly lids?). It took a little longer than I thought it would, but after lots of chopping fruit, stirring and boiling, and skimming foam I ended up with five little jars of nectarine and passionfruit jam. 

For some silly reason, I had decided to also do a load of washing at the same time, so I spent a lot of time sprinting out to the clothesline and back again between 'ocassionally stirring' my jam. I'm sure my washing will have lots of odd peg marks. Although all good housewives must be able to do multiple things at once, I do not recommend this particular multi-tasking combination. At least not for beginner jam-makers.

After letting my little jars of jam cool upside down (and becoming very excited when I realised they were sort-of setting), Dad announced it was tea time, so I threw some quick scones in the oven and within fifteen minutes we were enjoying my first ever homemade jam with scones and cream. It tasted pretty darn good. And although it didn't really set like real jam, it was solid enough to be able to spread it rather than pour it on the scones. 

I think I will call task one a semi-success.

Tips I learned:

1. When the recipe says 'roughly chop', you should probably go smaller rather than larger (my jam is very, very chunky...).

2. When choosing a saucepan for making jam, you should probably go larger rather than smaller.

3. It's always a good idea to have a variety of little jars on hand. Thank you Mama for collecting these over the years.

Journey of a figurative housewife

I’m pretty sure that being the recently qualified working woman that I am, I now classify as a grown up. I’m not really the kind of grown up I want to be though. I do well at being the typical grown up of the ‘nought-ies’, but I want to be something a little different. A little older fashioned. A little more fifties housewife perhaps…

Having left home four years ago, I am capable of performing the basic tasks necessary to run a (student) household. I can use the most basic function of a washing machine, cook meals with all five food groups in them, vacuum and make beds (fitted sheets, please!). For many adults my age this is enough. Not for me though. It makes me sad to see the traditional housewife fade away, when she was what I still want to be. 

I have just moved back to my hometown, and being back with old family friends (and my Mama!) again, I feel I have been blessed with a second chance to learn the tricks of the trade from women who have conquered the art of ‘housewifery’.

So I am starting this little project. Each week I will try to master a new housewife-style task, whether it be learning to bake the perfect sponge, do hospital corners, or darn a pair of socks (I'm hoping that the beautiful experienced housewives I know will share their skills and secrets with me!).

So, today begins my journey to becoming a figurative housewife, who knows how to cook, clean, mend, iron and sew. Who is talented in the areas of home-keeping and ‘people-keeping’ and who needs nothing more than a cute high waisted apron to conquer the world, one homemade scone at a time.