We had our first clear view of the snow this week! It's been flurrying up in the those mountains for the past three weeks, dusting them in powdery white much like the icing sugar on the vanilla almond cake I've been trying to make. We're excited about the snow & think we'll head up the mountain very soon. Zahra is spending the week up north with her Meme. We did a halfway stop & swap last Sunday at Jugiong's Long Track Pantry. I was too full up after my lunch to have any, but their vanilla almond cake caught my eye. It looked dense & moist & delicious. All this week I haven't been able to get it out of my mind. So I googled and found a tonne of recipes. I looked at the pictures mainly to find something that looked like the Jugiong cake. I need to see a picture of a recipe to entice me to make it. Just the recipe doesn't really work for me. I'm a bit the same with novels. I get sucked in by the cover. I only have one cookbook on my shelf that doesn't have pictures & I do make things out of it, but that book sat on my wishlist for a loooong time before it made it to my shelf. I ended up trying two vanilla almond recipes. The first was delicious but very light and fluffy. I was really wanting something with weight, like an orange & almond cake or like those almond finger biscuit things you buy in the tiny, tiny continental section of the supermarket. The sort of cake that gets more moist the second day. So I tried another and although it was more dense & had the flavour I was craving it was too dry. Think I'll make the same one again & take it out sooner. I've been super organised, except for today, with meals. Getting everything ready while Niamh naps in the afternoon. We've been doing a two course thing {sometimes three, when there's dessert}, ever since soup season started. Lately it's been cauilflower, or leek & potato or broccoli. I make a big, big pot. Enough for dinner, lunch the next day and some for the freezer. Having a variety of soups in the freezer makes a huge difference to the busy end of the day.
So I've got a list of things I want to get done this week. One of which was to paint some shelves and do a little make-over on Zahra's room before she comes home Sunday. Two coats down, one to go. I've crossed a lot of other jobs off already but I kind of ran out of steam today and just flopped. Niamh & I cosied on the couch & read & watched the crazy weather outside while the second cake baked. Sunshine, hail, dark grey clouds, heavy rain, sunshine, sun shower, gusty wind, more hail, more sunshine. We've had some beautiful days but mainly the lamps are turned on first thing & stay on most of the day. After William goes to work and Niamh wakes I lift the blinds & we lie in bed listenig to the birds, looking out into the dark, watching as the shapes of the trees become defined & the day begins. She runs off & brings me my uggies when she's ready to get up & eat. " Mama ooos, ooos " she says as she pushes them up on the bed. Oh my sweetpea chickadee. We have toast & oatmeal, eggs, always eggs. This girl loves her eggs. She potters while I get the laundry on or tidy up a little, then it's naptime & I hit my list like a willy-willy. One thing going on over here then I change direction & there's another thing going on over there. Paint, wool, homeschool prep, cooking. Tick, tick, almost tick. Onto the next thing. No time to stop until I hear her chirping from the bedroom. "Hello again my love, you've had a wonderful rest". We go to the window & say hello to all the birds, the passers-by & the digger over the way through the trees. We eat & play & read some more & if the weather's all sunshine we rug up & head outdoors. Then it's back inside, hands & noses chilled, back into the warm for some more window watching. Then it's naptime again & off I go whirling crazily through the house. Oh how I've loved this quiet week. One on one time with Niamh, talking to my big girl every day, missing her, looking forward to that cake on Sunday, dreaming of snow days.
