Blood Plums

This is the last of the plums. We've had good crops of cherry plums, green-gold greengages, and blood plums this summer. Blood plums, the last to ripen, are my favourite of all plums.

Mr Pip looked so hopeful

I shared it with him

Family lunch

A Sunday Lunch of special requests; rice noodle rolls for me, rice porridge for Yin, fried chicken for Jesse.

Organising the cooking tasks

Dogs aren't allowed in the kitchen. Never. But they can watch.

Rice noodle rolls

Cabbage and asparagus

Rice porridge with John Dory, dried beancurd and other goodies

Rice porridge toppings - preserved eggs

and crisp, deep fried you tee

Some tasting goes on.

It's good.

Yin's special fried chicken, always served at the boys' birthdays.

Lunch

It takes all morning to make, but it's well worth it.

Snowy walk

(Click on these photos - there is more to see)

My yearly wish is granted - in August, as usual, with the last fierce blasts of cold from the Antarctic.

Snow.

I was walking down Sturt St for a university event in the old Ballarat Trades Hall, when  the spatter of rain became a snow fall.

and as always in Ballarat when it snows, all the shops and cafes emptied of staff and customers, and people laughed and took photos of themselves and their friends.

I took lots of photos. Snow augurs a good year for me. 

The Unicorn Hotel in the snow from Camp Street.

Walking across Sturt Street to Camp Street

The Trades Hall, Camp Street. It is flying the Eureka flag, of course.

The snow got thicker. This is the old Masonic Hall.

People gathered outside the door of the Trades Hall and took more photos before we went inside for the signing - everyone had a phone out but I had brought a real camera and there was some envy.

The snow was softer when I left and went off to have lunch at the dumpling restaurant, 3 doors down in Camp Street.

.

Snow, green tea and dumplings. Bliss!

Cake dreaming

 

I can't resist books like this - and I didn't.

 

 These are the cakes you would find in the agricultural shows of the 1950s and early 60s

This was the cake that all the girls in my primary school class wanted for their birthday,

and those marvellous mothers of the 1950s baked and iced them in every Melbourne suburb.

Although not my mother, bless her, she preferred to read rather than ice cakes.
I didn't get the Dolly cake, but she allowed me to read as much as I liked, took me on the long tram trip to the library every week and bought me many books. 

Now I'm truly grateful.

In Lydiard Street, Ballarat

Lydiard Street, where the great old shady verandahs have survived the destruction of the 1970s.

And the art gallery,  a Ballarat treasure. Sometimes I pop in every week, but the past couple of months I've been a bit gloomy and inert.

Now, however, I'm warming up with the weather.

I didn't go in to see the latest exhibition. Instead I caught up with

works by Clarice Beckett, Rick Amor, Joy Hester, Bruce Armstrong and Criss Canning -

and the Eureka flag.
Because entry is free I have the luxury of going in whenever I feel like it and spending time with my favourites.

I wish the Eureka flag wasn't going off to a pay-for-a view place in the new Eureka Centre.

Now look at what I found in the street outside -

Weird how the light is so different in this image, but I like it a lot.

Then I had this to look at while waiting for the bus, just a block down fromthe gallery.

Finally  I bought samosas and milky, fudge-like sweets from Masala Valley near the bus stop.

I ate them  in the newly cleared and beautiful back yard when I got home.

Lovely lollies

Also from the Creswick milkbar.
I went a little crazy - all my childhood faves! Raspberries, mint leaves, milk bottles, caramel butters, musk sticks - and snowballs.

Musk sticks are particularly marvellous - they really taste pink. Not a bit of fruit flavour in them. God knows what makes that taste, and I won't ask.