On foot

“Where are you off to?” asked the husband, as I sat in front of the TV lacing up my sneakers. “Out for a run,” I said. And in response to his query regarding available lighting outside, “The moon’s full, it’ll be fine.”

One aspect of this plan that I hadn’t fully considered was the fact that the moon had not actually risen yet, and was present as a very faint glow on the horizon. My 5k loop from the front gate of our property includes one street light at about the mid-point, and otherwise goes along completely unlit roads. There are also various unimpressed horses, barking dogs, and the odd flock of ducks. This is rural running, yo. Which is fine at dusk, or when the moon is actually above the horizon, but that particular night was quite dark indeed.

My eyes adjusted a little, but everytime a car drove past not bothering to lower its high beams (thanks neighours), I would lose my night vision completely. At one point I nearly ran into a wheelie bin. I also spent some time glaring suspiciously at a pale patch on the other side of the road, which I suspected might be the bald guy who’s always running at night. I’m sure he’s perfectly pleasant but I wasn’t anxious to run into him on a deserted road in the dark. It turned out to be an innocent bit of paper, stuck to a post.

There’s a property on our street that gears up every December to win a prize in the Christmas lights competition – it’s a big property with two houses on it and a long street frontage, and at the moment it looks as if a giant elf has been overcome by Christmas cheer and exploded all over it. People come by of an evening, park on the street and hang around the fence, partaking in the blinding jolliness of it all.

By the time I came back on my run, the onlookers had mostly dispersed, and the house was blinking away in the dark, really faint Christmas music playing from somewhere, and glowing inflatable Santas and elves bobbing in the breeze and watching me. It was quite creepy. I was inspired to spend the last few minutes of the run mentally drafting the outline of a little horror flick about inflatable figures come to life, with KNIVES (come to think of it, a rather danger-fraught method of killing people if one is inflatable). I have now forgotten the major plot points, unfortunately – a tragedy for the movie-going public.

Sacred Kingfisher

One of the frustrating things about not having a super-zoom lens is not being able to get great bird shots – this little kingfisher isn’t really dominating the frame. Although I guess a longer zoom would mean dragging a tripod around everywhere, which I’m not anxious to do.

I waited for ages focussed on him waiting to see if he’d turn around so I could get the lovely blue-green feathers on his back, but no such luck – he wasn’t going to turn his back on the crazy human crashing about below his branch.

A wedding

My brother was married in October (which still sounds strange – my little brother, married), and I took some photos.

His wife-to-be looked beautiful.

I made the cake, with a fair bit of help putting together the tiers and the flowers. It turned out quite well, and after the happy couple left for their honeymoon we had quite a few very pleasant morning teas.

It was a gorgeous day, and lovely to see them both so tremendously happy. I particularly enjoyed spending some time with my extended family, my beloved tribe of aunts, uncles, cousins and babies. I adore them all, particularly the babies.

Gonzo

Gonzo the puppy came to the choir spring picnic on the weekend, played with his cow toy in the corner and was cruelly prevented from eating an illicit sausage passed to him by a couple of children who were being particularly generous with their lunch.

The choir I’ve been singing with for the past few weeks has worked out really well – conveniently close to home, and a repertoire I enjoy. I have really missed group singing, which I haven’t done since University. And I haven’t been a student for quite a long time now. Alas. Although it’s not really the studenty bit of being a student I miss but rather the great swathes of free time I didn’t properly appreciate.

The Great Wedding Cake Experiment

“Oh, we’re not planning on having a cake anymore,” said my brother. “But! Cake! Wedding! Cake!” I spluttered at him incoherently. And that’s how I came to be researching wedding cakes prior to his wedding, which is three weeks away.

I knew I didn’t want to do the traditional fruit cake under hard icing, because fruit cake isn’t really my area of baking expertise, and cake decorating really isn’t. I am of the rustic school of icing cakes (slap it on, she’ll be right). But thankfully for anyone looking around online wondering how to make a wedding cake, Smitten Kitchen baked a cake for a friend’s wedding and wrote a series of posts detailing the recipes, the experiments, and the grand feat of engineering that is creating tiers of cake. So in an honourable effort of plaigarism, I decided to follow closely in her footsteps.

This was the test run of what will be the top tier of the two-tiered cake – a vanilla buttermilk cake with mango curd and buttercream icing. Gloriously rich, with a tang of tartness from the mango curd.

Putting it all together with the icing was a bit more difficult than I anticipated. I think I may have overwhipped the icing, which was a little lumpy, and parts of the cake kept emerging from the smooth blanket of icing that I was attempting to create. But apart from lacking skill with a spatula, the rest of the construction went well, and I feel reasonably confident about doing it again (along with the bottom tier, which is chocolate cake with a ganache filling) in a couple of weeks.