In praise of the domestic

Even without the overcast sky I think it would have been cooler this weekend.  We've passed through the time when hot turns to warm and now we're getting closer to when warm becomes cool.  Perfect!  I want it to be March and April all year.  Hanno and I had a traditional, for us, Sunday.  He ventured out to the wet and squelchy garden to put up trellises for the cucumbers, I baked and did some sewing.  All in all it was a lovely day.

I had been meaning to use up some of the delicious chocolate the people at Green and Black sent me before Christmas.  I'd already given some to Shane and Kerry, and made some chocolate mousse, then forgot to take photos of it. Yesterday, in my celebration of quiet domestic Australian Sunday, I made choc chip biscuits.  It was an easy task because I already had the cookie dough made and frozen, all I had to do was defrost and chop.

The cookie dough I used is the cheap and easy recipe I found at the down to earth forum which I think is an old Australian recipe from many moons ago. When I make this recipe I always halve it and have the second half in the freezer for a month or so:

CHEAP AND EASY BISCUITS

Makes 7-8 dozen, cook for 10 minutes in a preheated oven at 180C

500 grams butter (approx 1.1 lb)
1 can condensed milk (390-400 gram) - my homemade condensed milk recipe is here.
1 cup sugar
5 cups self raising flour (or all purpose flour and baking powder)

With the dough already in hand, it was simply a matter of chopping the chocolate - I used the deliciously bitter sweet 70 percent dark chocolate with a small hand full of mixed nuts - brazils, hazels, almonds, cashews, macadamias.  Mixed together and flattened out with my hands on the kitchen bench, it only took a few minutes and they were in the oven.

Ten minutes later the house filled with the aroma of freshly made biscuits and Sunday was smelling the way it should smell.  There are two aromas that make a real domestic Sunday - baking biscuits or cake and roasting meat.  We had roast chicken for dinner.  Lunch was a tuna, tomato and onion pumpernickel sandwich and a still warm from the oven biscuit and black tea.  Delicious! 

Just after lunch, I planted some vegetable seeds and looked around my bush house where I put sick plants to recover, grow my orchids, and keep new seedlings.  There has been so much rain, moss is growing on the benches and all my watering containers were full of rain water.  Not that I needed to use them with the plants still saturated and growing wildly.  It was a real treat to be surrounded by new growth and the promise of new life.  So many things are made possible with abundant water.  I checked all the water containers and found cane toad tadpoles in one so I tipped them out and made a mental note to return before the week was up to use the water before mosquitoes have the chance to hatch.  This year has been the worst one yet for mosquitoes.

All in all it was a lazy day with things being done when I felt like doing them. The bed was made in the afternoon when I started to think about sleeping in an unmade bed, no floors were swept and the laundry stayed unwashed for another day.  In the afternoon, while the chicken started roasting, we watched a documentary about happiness.  Bliss!  I hope you enjoyed your weekend and that the week ahead is a productive and rewarding one for all of us.