This is One Of Those Posts About Writing and Why I Can't.

This is a post about why I can't blog right now:

My desktop is creatively stifling

I share a computer with my husband and business.

Children keep finding me and shouting demands.

I can't figure out how to do everything from my phone.

I bit my tongue so hard that I haven't been able to eat solids.

I keep having existential crises about pointless things like rollerskating.

Other people are more successful than me ( yes I am perfectly aware they set goals and work hard,so what?).

I will write after I clean the house and dye my hair and all those other things I am refusing to actually do OK? Sheesh get off my back.

I am hungry, or I have a headache or something.

Writing is hard work.

I have no clear direction yet.

I am going to buy a netbook so once that gets here I will write all the things.

Really.
All I have to do is get over the massive case of writers block.

I don’t Know Why I Blog, I Just know I Need to

On my Twitter feed I see my virtual and real life friends hashtagging their excitement about the Blogging Conference they are attending and I feel a bit jealous. .

I have blogged for years. I don’t know why.

I see people blogging for profit or to educate others. I see people blogging their way through grief and post natal depression, through weight loss and renovation. Not me. I just blog.

I don’t think I would want to commercialise the blog to the point where I am no longer writing for myself. I don’t know if I would want to narrow my blogging scope.  I wonder at my audience. I know you are out there even though my Google analytics fell over because my coding is terrible, I still know there are around 500 views a month but my comments fields area like a ghost town, complete with tumbleweeds.

This may come across as needy but as a prolific commenter I wonder at those who look at my blog posts and have a peep into my life and then wander off without feeling the need to comment. I wonder if I am boring, or shocking or…I simply don’t know as I have no feedback from the silent audience!

I don’t know why I need to blog, I write about jam and children, about business and pets, about books and property, I am not a niche blogger but I am me.

Sometimes I read other people’s posts and I look at the number of followers they have and the number of comments and I think “I don’t get it, why are they so beloved, why does this spark so much commentary?”

I know that some is clever, ceaseless self promotion, I know that some people have talkative wannabe hangers on but it doesn't account for it all. Sometimes I wonder if I am the only one feeling this way… Perplexed, but not bitter, I don’t begrudge anyone success in their chosen endeavour.

I don’t like posts on Social media purely designed to get comments (which are rife at present, is it just me who feels they are a trick and dislikes them on this basis?) , but I always engage if someone has a genuine question I can answer or a topic I feel I have something to offer.

I don’t know why I blog, I just know that I need to and I will continue doing so.

To my silent audience, I am glad you are there for whatever reason, but I will continue even if you disappear further into the ether.

How to be a perfect Housewife?

I started this post with a right Royal whinge about the weather coming over all cold when it shouldn't be this way until May but today we had beautiful weather so we went for a traipse to the Seaside and had lunch at Georgetown and saw some Penguin Burrows with Penguins in them and have fitted a (new- well one from the spare room to replace the awful one in the sitting room) woodheater and so now things don't seem so grim if it is cold from now on.

So I had to find a new topic to blog on.

Then I made a bread and butter pudding from one of the many old cookbooks I have collected over the years "Our Cooking"with Flora Pell. It was awful, tasteless bland soggy pap and not like the firm golden dense puddingsI have had of late. Does anyone know a good tried and true bread and butter pudding recipe?

I have found that although I can't stop collecting them, my old cookbooks are nearly useless when it comes to assisting you to make decent food. I did make a decent rough puff pastry from a turn of the 20th Century book but by and large the results are underwhelming at best and jolly abysmal at worst. This is partly due to the vagueness of many of the old recipes where you find a previously unmentioned yet vital ingredient popping up in the middle of a recipe method or omitting the amount of a given ingredient leaving it to your unguided imagination, or measurements such as one breakfast cup of milk, or cut up small. I love old books but I have to confess I think food is getting better so I find that turning to online resources with the added bonus of reviews rather than the One Shilling Mrs Beeton's (who by the way was never a Household manager herself and plaigarised much of her content...) is a more reliable method of finding recipes.

I use my Margaret Fulton cook books, a large expensive one called "The Cooks Book", a Mrs Beeton's cakes and baking (definitely not a Victorian era collection of recipes but instead trading on her name years after her untimely death probably from Syphilis) and my bread maker recipe book but everything else I regularly turn to is an online recipe I have pasted into my own recipe book.

I find online recipes can be a bit unreliable too, like a recipe for "Rich Tea Biscuits" which were claimed to be a British favourite- perfect for dunking so I started the recipe and then wondered why there was no sugar, or currants and realised to my horror I was in the midst of a batch of scones! North Americans call scones biscuits. Luckily I improvised and ended up making a passable oat biscuit (a proper biscuit) instead.

I like the fresh loaf for it's amazingly helpful bread obsessed forum members, Taste.com.au for it's variety of recipes from many sources and comments and any number of vegetarian and Indian food websites. And of course blogs, probably a food blog with step by step instructions and photos, so thank you to those who take the time to post such helpful things- you are better than a Mrs Beeton!

A year of Blog

I just popped into Kezz's blog to find that she had just passed the one year anniversary of her blog and have found that I have done the same but I am not as diligent as posting so often but I hope that my little group of followers enjoys reading the posts I do- I love reading your posts too- it feels good knowing there are other like minded folk all over the world and we dont have to be selling things to one another or have a hidden agenda, just sharing and enjoying reading!
Thanks for helping me keep sane-ish!
XX
J

Thankful for the Sanctuary of my Home!

It seems an eternity since I blogged but I suppose it hasn't been really.

 It has been a frantic and not very enjoyable two weeks but rather than relive the stressful minutiae of very jolly thing going horrendously wrong (oh and throw in a week long bout of dreadful gastro which made me miss a paid dancing gig:() I will focus on the enjoyable parts of life.

The garden is growing well, the hazels and apples are well in leaf so I am really sure they are proper trees now, one apple is even blossoming, rather unwisely I feel, as it is really nowt more than a stick. The second lot of peas are growing well but I did give them some compost today as they look a bit pale and acerbic to me... so far we have silver beet, spinach, broad beans, carrots mixed with radishes, beetroot, red ribbed dandelion, chamomile, calendula, little gem lettuce, sunflowers, violas, chives and probably something else but I can't think what all growing away in the garden. 

 The compost heap is a great steaming pile which for once is a good thing! It is full of worms and I am bandicooting spadefuls out of the side of the pallet bin for my plants....as long as I keep turning it I have every faith it will all be good soon. Out there front I am winning a battle against the evils of "lords and ladies" which have spread everywhere and I am reclaiming my land, I have rescued some root bound boronia shrubs with gorgeous hot pink flowers from  the discount table at the local hardware shop and bought a spanky grevillia which has a very ordinary person name (Robyn something...). Using some recycled bricks I made a little platform in between and have bought a birdbath from the auctions as well as a real treat for us, a deco kitchen table and chairs and a kitchen dresser pantry with lead lighting. We are delighted as they really add character to our kitchen as well as helping me with storage (the dresser has a pantry and a built in bread box) and the Formica table is easier to clean than the cheap stained pine table we had before so with shrubs and new (old really actually quite old) furniture and a birdbath I am feeling that the place is less of a squalid hole than before...next I am working on the bathroom which is really dismal but really the whole thing needs to be rebuilt and I am just not going to do that. Maybe a new loo seat, a shower curtain and paint the dodgy bath surround.

 I have discovered the joy of making my own fruit buns which (with a little bread maker help) and they are better than but nearly indistinguishable from bakery buns. My little man insisted I make them but he didn't like the sugar glaze I made and so the next lot has none. The bread maker gets such a good workout, today I have made fruit buns and multi grain rolls, the bread is much nicer than the cheap stuff at the supermarket. I have made naan, pizza, savoury scrolls- I am yet to master pita or focaccia but I hope to soon. I gave up entirely on sourdough, it was way too much work and I really prefer a plain yeasted "rustic" style bread like a ciabatta rather than a sourdough anyway.

Speaking of giving up we sent the ducklings to a wildlife carer as two suddenly died for no discernible reason (which apparently they do frequently) so we wanted to give the remaining two a fighting chance by sending them away.

The chickens however are earning their keep and although they are still a bit pecky they look much better than they did when they arrived. They are keeping us in huge golden yoked eggs and I am ever so grateful!

I really enjoy reading everyone else's blogs as they help keep me grounded and inspired even when everything in "real " (i.e. the world outside my house) is going wrong. Keep on keeping on everyone!