Around here, doing, going, cooking...

DOING:

A new roof rack and shade for the four wheel drive....

We are planning a trip across the Simpson Desert next year so are gathering together the things we will need...to see spectacular images of the desert go here, you will see why we want to go!

This is called a foxwing shade.

It goes out and around the vehicle...

There will be no comfort when we do this trip, just swags (bedroll) although I think we are going to get a tent that will adjoin the shade.

The will be 1133 big red sand hills to climb, I am a little nervous but excited too..

GOING: 

Some pics I took last weekend when we went for a drive through the hills to Quorn...

The wattles are looking beautiful this time of year...

A sea of yellow...

This is a lovely drive...

Devil's Peak in the distance...

Hills surround on both sides of the road...

Some happy campers...

Devil's peak getting closer...

Beautiful blue skies...

and bright sunshine...

This is Woolshed Flat, where the Pichi Richi runs (steam train mentioned in a previous post)

Devil's Peak... to climb this one day is on my to do list...

Due to fire hazard it is closed in Summer.

 Winding road most of the way.  This is the Pichi Richi bridge...

Pichi Richi Park 

(accommodation)

Hard to capture photos with hubby driving...

He loves the windy road lol! I do my best to hang on and snap...

Old house...

Tourists

COOKING 

I am back to eating healthy and trying to lose the weight I put on over winter...

I have been experimenting with some new recipes... 

  

Chickpea and tuna salad...

Asparagus, silver-beet and Ricotta frittata...

A few days ago I cooked up one of our home grown chickens (we had four roosters).

In the crock for 8 hours, using this recipe...yum!  

They taste is so different to the bought ones.

I chopped the meat up and froze to make up other meals, then made 12 cups of stock from the juices...

 We are picking a bucket full of these a day.

Quandongs only fruit in abundance every two years...

 Enjoying a homemade sponge roll...

 Yum!

 And hubby spoiling me again with a nice cup of Chai tea to have with my cake...

The warm weather is slowly getting here.  Tomorrow will be 35C (95F). I am enjoying the mild days before our scorching heat arrives. The veggie garden is taking off, I will post some pics tomorrow...Today I am going to plant some tomato  and pumpkin seeds in punnets and hopefully they will grow.  I struggle to grow tomatoes here because of the dry and heat, so hubby is looking at building a little glass house.  We will use clear plastic instead of glass though...

What have you been doing, going and cooking at your house?

Have a great day!

xTania

Comment moderation

Hello friends, 

I have changed the settings for leaving comments. Please let me know if you have trouble commenting.  

Hopefully I dont get any spam, only time will tell I guess...

Thank you Sue for your help.

Wishing everyone a lovely weekend,

xTania

Recipes by request :)

Thank you all for your lovely comments regarding the word verification setup.  I lost a blog reader yesterday because of this :(

*****

I found this recipe on the Down to Earth forum, it sounded so nice I had to try. Thank you joybelle from the forum :)

Easy Tuna Impossible Pie

Mix 4 eggs

one onion

1/2 cup parsley

1/2 cup SR flour

2 cups milk

125g melted butter (I used 1/2 cup of olive oil instead)

425 gm tin of tuna drained

salt and pepper to taste 

1/2 cup of grated cheese.

Beat all together lightly until blended. Place in a large well greased pie dish. I used a big, round, deep pie dish. Place in oven 180C (350F) until set and golden on top.

I think this would be nice with a bit of sweetcorn added :)

Vegetarian pastie recipe can be found here in an earlier post.

This recipe is one of those that are kept in my head.  I just throw any veggies that are available in my fridge into these pasties. They are a lunch time favourite in our house :)

Enjoy!!

xTania

Trouble with Word Verification

I wish to apologise to anyone who experiences trouble reading with the word verification set up on my blog. I did remove it for a while but my comment box became inundated with spam so I felt the need to put it back on.  I too have trouble reading some of the words and numbers, but I persist until I get one right.  It doesn't happen to me that often thank goodness.

Thank you to all my friends who continue to comment even though the word verification is annoying.

A beautiful day here today, so I am off out to the veggie garden to plant out my rhubarb.  For those that requested, I will post the recipe for Tuna Pie and Vegetarian Pasties tomorrow :)

xTania

What I did today...

So this is what I did today

Not very exciting unless you are a train fanatic...

 Hubby was working so I was asked to capture some pictures of these two...

Steam Locomotive on left, modern day diesel locomotive on the right...

 Quick change of lens...

 Mount Brown in the Flinder's Ranges in the background

 Here they come...

 Closer...

Clickety clack...

This was in celebration of  Trans Australia Railway Centenary. 

These pictures were taken from the railway crossing just around the corner from where we live.

Some very lucky school children got to take the ride... 

Waving to us as they go by, all excited by the experience...

I missed out on getting a full picture of the modern day train because the steam engine block the way...

There they go...

 Now jump into my car and head for the Port Augusta Railway Station in town.

Camel train?

I got stuck behind slow cars, 

so missed the arrival at the station...

 There were people everywhere. It was hard to get a good shot of the locos...

So I took this one looking down from the front loco...

 Local country singer Gabrielle Ballard entertaining the crowd.  

Maybe she will be a big star one day...she is 16 years old and goes to high school with our son. 

 NT76 on the left, diesel electric locomotive.

W 934 on the right, steam locomotive. 

A closer look at the old girl...

She runs every weekend and school holidays on the Pichi Richi Run...

One of the Drivers (with the safety vest on) of the Pacific National Locomotive 9305.

 Queensland Rail Locomotive 6022

 Pacific National is the company Hubby works for...

Hope this post is not too boring :)

My computer hasn't been fixed but I did manage to get this done...better get to and save my photos just in case.

xTania