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Another Tuesday, another cake. This time we had leftover plums, I bought a little bucket’s worth at the markets and after eating several plums a day for a week, I still had a small bowl of them. They were just a little too ripe for me so, given that it was that day of the week and a cake was due, I thought I’d kill two birds with some plums.

I googled “Plum Cake” and found a number of recipes: a Lorraine Plum Cake, a German Plum Cake and a Pflaumen Kuchen (German Blue Plum Cake), but I settled on another German style plum cake recipe from the Age, sweetly named “Mieze’s plum cake”. Here’s the recipe with my changes

180g softened butter
150g caster sugar [again I used the raw caster sugar
135g plain flour
135g self-raising flour
pinch of salt
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
70ml milk
1/2 cup ground almonds (or fresh breadcrumbs) [I used ground almonds]
10-12 ripe blood plums, halved and stoned [I only had about 6 or 7 left but it was plenty]

Topping:
60g butter
1/2 cup castor sugar
2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 large eggs, whisked well

Preheat oven to 200C and lightly grease a 26cm spring-form tin.

Prepare the topping: melt butter and stir in sugar and cinnamon, when cool stir in whisked eggs.

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy, then mix in flours and salt. Separately, mix eggs with milk, then add this to the butter/flour mixture and mix well. Spoon into your tin where it should be no more than 1/4-/13 the depth as it rises quite a bit. Smooth the top and evenly sprinkle over the ground almonds.

Cover the mix with the plums (cut-side up). Spoon topping over and around plums on the cake. Place cake in oven and reduce the temperature to 180C.

Bake for 50 minutes to 1 hour, until a fine skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. [I ended up having to cook it for 1 hour 15 minutes because I used a narrower and deeper dish].

It’s still cooling so it will probably be my breakfast. The instructions say to serve warm with cream or ice-cream, but I think it will be just fine at room temperature too.

A young strident blonde was overhead, presumably to a parent, on her mobile phone:

If you can’t provide for my every need then you shouldn’t have gone and had children then should you?!

Charming.

I meant to post this about a month ago so hopefully they have all found homes now. These have to be the most character filled kittens I have ever seen. If you are interested in seeing if they still need homes (and can provide one if so) please email me at admin AT bloodykitty dot com and I’ll pass on the details of the people trying to rehome them. Love the little grey tabby’s eyes, they are like Hamish Blake’s or Shirley Manson’s (from Garbage).

I made Chocolate Chip Biscuits/Cookies just before Christmas and felt super domestic goddessy when last week I grabbed some left overs frozen in a roll and had a tray of cookies ready in under 15 minutes. Unfortunately, I’m still addicted to them so I had to make them again. Cake Tuesday ended up being Cake Monday this week because I couldn’t wait. I used the simplest recipe I found on the internet (here), I was surprised how many bizarre chocolate chip biscuit/cookie recipes there are in the world (including one with peanut butter, wouldn’t that be a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie then? I’m just a purist). Anyway, enough rambling, here it is:

• 2-1/4 cups plain flour
• 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 250 gm butter or margarine
• 1/2 cup sugar (I used brown caster sugar because that’s what I had)
• 3/4 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
• 1-2 teaspoons vanilla essence
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup chocolate bits

Preheat oven (190C). Mix the plain flour and bicarb in a bowl. In a separate bowl, cream butter, sugars and vanilla until fully mixed. Beat in the eggs one at a time and then gradually add the flour. Fold in chocolate bits. Drop blobs of cookie dough on greased trays and bake for 10-12 minutes. I tend to prefer them soft on the inside so I pull them out when they are golden rather than golden brown.

If you make too much, the dough freezes really well, it’s easiest if you freeze them in rolls wrapped in baking paper, you can then slice off pieces and bake until golden/golden brown.

Oh I almost forgot, here’s a picture of them with vanilla ice cream, a very tasty combination.

On Saturday, I had a very lovely morning. I went to the growers’ markets with a friend and had the tastiest mango and peach fresh fruit juice. We also got some yummy dense pumpernickel bread, gooseberry jam and goats curd and had a very nice breakfast indeed. After that, we went to visit a nearby community garden close to the harbour and it’s wonderful being in the middle of summer because everything is producing harvest everywhere. We picked tomatoes, zucchinis (with their flowers still attached), beans and lots of herbs. Later that evening, I had a very tasty dinner with the fruits of my not so intensive labour.

Oh, I also got finger limes from the markets, strange little things:

You can see the pulp comes out like caviar. It’s supposed to be interchangeable with lime but it does taste different. Almost beany. Wasn’t a big fan until I made a salad with it:


Chopped up tomatoes, beans, garlic, good olive oil and half the pulp of a finger lime. There was something in the beans and garlic that just went heavenly well with the finger limes, I’m embarrassed to say that I licked my plate totally clean after (it mixed in very nicely with the juices from the saltimbocca which I just had to make again).
Also in a fit of decadence, I stuffed the zucchini flowers with the goat’s curd and fried them up. Mmmmmmm…


Btw, listening to the Pax de deux from the Nutcracker as I’m writing this, this version is on Swooning, part of the ABC’s Swoon series. It’s just so damn passionate and romantic. Loves it! I just love that the whole Swoon series (esp vols 1-3).

I found this ad through my gmail: Yoga Booty Ballet.

Yoga Booty Ballet is a dynamic fusion of yoga, booty sculpting, and dance that will make you feel strong, confident, and beautiful! The workouts are so fun, you won’t believe you’re also losing weight and sculpting long, lean muscles.

Poor yoga, it’s the exercise equivalent of the even poorer poodle, bred with anything and everything because nothing sells like a prefix/suffix. So like the labradoodles and schnoodles, we have Yo-chi (yoga/tai chi) and Yolates (yoga/pilates). At least they didn’t call it Yollet.

A friend once made me seriously jealous of Germans when he described their perfectly designed windows and moderately priced but sexily utalitarian cutlery. How wonderful to live in a country where quality is evident in everyday basic gear. They are so the Japanese of Europe (without the cool craft books). Okay, I have a bit of a “basics” fetish. But check out this VW factory in Dresden, aren’t the Germans just the coolest?.

I think that is where they probably film all their “we’re in the VW factory” commercials (and maybe some of the IKEA ones too!*), maybe all the other VW factories are dank and dingy holes.

For more cool worksites: 10 seeeeeriously cool workplaces and Eric Staller’s Conference Bike! (workcover incident waiting to happen?).

* Swedes, Germans, same diff.

Unfortunately, I’m not on holidays anymore, but if I were then I might be doing fun things like making charming papercraft structures like this Superaurus, this Wild Boar and this sweet thing called “Lucky cat (Beckoning for money)”. Or even this E-type Jag, once my favourite car in the world, or Japan’s Himeji castle. There is even a paper model of my cat, Simby (he’s a Abyssinian). All this is courtesy of Canon and their 3D PaperCraft site, I found the address in a PDF printer brochure trying to clean up my Desktop/Documents/computer/life. I imagine there will plenty more strange links in the next month as I spring clean my digital files and the scary scary pit that is my Firefox bookmarks. I might even get round to tagging the last twenty or so entries.

To follow on from the last post, have been using MyLife Organized heaps and I am liking it more and more. It is not quite perfect (needs better printing options and some tweaks) but it’s one of the most powerful yet simple organising systems I’ve trialled (and I’ve tried quite a few). It also has some inspired little features eg you can zoom in onto one task group and then that’s all you see so it’s great for holding master lists but still allowing you to concentrate on one area without the distration of all the other tasks. What I like most about it is the interface, it’s so simple but just perfectly laid out. I freaked out today when I thought I accidentally deleted all my year’s to-do/project list but it turned up again so I have no idea what I did. I does make automatic backups for you which is very nice. Will definitely be purchasing it when the trial period is up.

As for organising systems, I’ve discovered a possible twist on the Get Things Done (GTD) by Martin Ternouth (the system is outlined about 1/2 way down the page, there’s no direct link) picked up by 43 Folders. The main idea is quite simple, it is to have one task at a time on the desk and to have a clear Inbox by the end of the day. Of course there’s a nice flowchart to help get you there, eg tasks (or projects) are stored in clear files with coverslips, all project files are placed in an accessible project box (like an inbox), when you finish the task you collect all the paper and put it back into the coverslip the contents of which are to be reviewed weekly. All pretty basic stuff but then so is GTD and look at the cult that created. Maybe it’s the flowchart factor, it just makes it so much cooler and, well, systemised. I admit it, I’m a sucker for this stuff. Ishbadiddle has created a flowchart on a merged GTD/Ternouth system, it looks horribly complex but it’s not when you actually read through it. Anyway I implemented my own merged version at my new work today, it’s amazing being presented with a brand new desktop (unlike my normal computer where there is NO visible space and about 512MB free on an 80GB drive… arghhh).

It’s late so I won’t write a whole heap about this, I just wanted to collect some of the to-do list/organisational links I was searching through in the verve of New Year’s resolutioning.

While you’re reading all this, check out musicovery in the background, it’s a cute interactive radio station, it’s like the music genome project only it’s less linear. You can choose mood or dance and you can limit the choices by genre and decade (as far back as the 50s).

Software:

• My Life Organised - I’ve played around with this software a little and I think it has real potential. It’s got a really simple interface but is powerfully flexible. You can export in and out of MindManager mind mapping software which is pretty cool if you use it. Here are some reviews at 43 Folders, this one and this one explains how the program works a bit. There are some instructions for implenting the GTD system (see below). The developer is still very active and it has community support.
• For Mac users, Kinkless looks like it could be worth a test drive, it’s free but you need to have bought OmniOutliner (though that’s meant to be good too). What’s cool too is that it is should sync with your ipod.

Advice:

• 43 Folders advice on building smarter to-do lists: Part 1 and Part 2.
• To-done is a blog that isn’t updated anymore but worth looking through the archives for tips.
• Get Things Done (GTD): The system of allocating time and place to next actions promoted by Dave Allen (the other main competitor is the Franklin/Covey system which concentrates on importance/urgency - here’s a weird article about the Franklin Covey synthesis, a forum post on which system is better - I think a combination is best - it has some neat tips). 43 Folders is one of the big promoters of the GTD cult - here’s a nice intro to GTD.
• Flylady: Rather popular system for managing households and their chores. She suggests creating a Control Journal. One way to domestic goddess status I suppose, but all a bit TOO orderly for me though.

For more paper based to-do lists:

• The Pocket Mod: An online wizard for creating printed organisers. You can also download an offline version. Very neat.
• The Printable CEO Series: Free printable forms to help you manage your day to day tasks so you can focus on being a CEO/your business.
• 5 Steps of My To-Do Lists Revolution: How throwing away traditional to-do lists can be more productive for some people.
• Hacking a GTD Moleskine: A low-tech solution using my favourite notebook, the Moleskine.

Miscellaneous Stuff:

• Darkroom: A cool download when you have a writing project to concentrate on, it blacks out your screen so there are no distractions, your text then shows up in Matrix-esque green Courier.
• Discovered listible which is a community list making project, worth checking out: they have a list of best GTD software, online calendars and firefox extensions.
• Found some stuff on sleep and making it/you more productive, here’s one and another on polyphasic sleep (”taking multiple short sleep periods throughout the day instead of getting all your sleep in one long chunk”) - I can’t think that it would be good for you. And one on How to Become an Early Riser and Tips for getting to sleep faster & sleeping better.

Anyway, good luck with your New Year resolutions/goals and HAPPY NEW EVERYONE!