o frabjous day!

o frabjous day! books, recipes & other things

  • Belated Book Round-Up for 2012

    I read less in 2012 than I have in a long time, for obvious reasons – infants are not conducive to uninterrupted time with a book. 61 books in total – in comparison, I read 85 in 2011, 70 in 2010, 135 in 2009 and 183 in 2008. Apparently you get less free time that…

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  • Adjustment

    Edward was just over six months old when I started back at work for three days a week – 28 weeks, although I don’t think of his age in weeks anymore. For the first month at least, he’s spending those days with the husband, so I wasn’t nervous in the same way I would have…

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  • 50 new recipes

    I decided not to make resolutions for the new year, and instead decided on a few projects (from small to somewhat ambitious) that I would try and complete in the next twelve months. One of those was making 50 new recipes, with the goal of making different things to my usual recipes – not just…

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  • Things to make with too many apples

    We have been experiencing a glut of apples recently, as each week we don’t get through the large number in our fruit & vegie box. Making apple cakes and apple pies just doesn’t use up enough of them for my liking, so I made apple sauce instead. Apple sauce – or, to be more precise,…

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  • Spiced Apple Sauce Cake

    I made this for my 31st birthday this year, because I had plenty of apple sauce, and I love cream cheese icing. You can tell two things about my baking methods from this photo -I can rarely be bothered sifting icing sugar, and I’m lazy about cutting lining paper for cake tins (so I just…

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  • Ginger Beer

    This is such a simple way of making ginger beer in your pantry – it stays relatively well carbonated, and has a lovely bitey gingery taste. You will need a clean and empty 2 or 2.25 litre soft drink bottle and a plastic funnel. I used a soda water bottle so I didn’t worry about…

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  • Granola

    I’ve read quite a few recipes for granola, and never really understood the point of it – is it a breakfast food? A snack? Now that I’ve made it, I realise it’s a bit of both, and an excellent way of using up some of your homemade apple sauce (if you’re like me, and have…

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  • Apple Sauce Pie

    This is a beautifully simple pie, ridiculously easy to put together, and has a spicy apple-custard-ish flavour. You’ll need to make a pie crust (or use store-bought pastry) – I used Smitten Kitchen’s recipe, as I’m going through and making things from her new cookbook. (Pie recipe adapted from here). ingredients: pastry for a single…

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  • 4 months

    I see my little update posts on parenting ground to a halt at 7 weeks. From memory, that’s when things started to get easier (more sleep, less time spent frantically jiggling Edward to keep him happy), and I think I started doing other things and not focussing entirely on the baby. Four months old is…

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  • Lack of space

    I feel like I only have room in my head for so many thoughts at the moment, and no room at all for writing those thoughts down. My plans for writing diary entries about Teddy so I would remember these early months don’t get fulfilled very often, as if I have time and mental space…

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