20 dresses and 20 tomatoes but only 8 hours to cook

I've been a domestic goddess of late. Sewing, Gardening, Cooking and Meandering around Melbourne have all been on the agenda.

Sewing

I sent off 20 dresses to the Dress and Girl campaign today and am so excited. I hope Australia Post takes good care of them. I'll add some  more pics in a later post, but for now the one above of a few of the dresses will have to do. I'm relaxing away from the sewing machine (though feeling the urge to crawl back and sew some more.) I pretty much made one dress a day for the last few weeks. It is such a great cause, I urge you to visit the Australia website and check it out. Take part in whatever way you can, and make a difference in a young girl's life. It may seem like a small thing, but empowerment through the most trivial seeming things can make such a difference.

Gardening

Apart from sewing I've been gardening. The lovely other half has been helping and we've successfully potted up several of the balcony garden trees and large plants. We've also added a tonne of new plants, with full details available over at my other blog. The most exciting bit is the addition of, what will be, over 20 new tomato plants. Here are some of them:

Tomatoes have had a patchy history on the balcony garden. The first year they flourished, but the year after that they all wilted early (and not one of the usual wilts either, it was weird.) Last year I only planted a couple and they did reasonably well. However, this year I threw caution to the wind, and threw the the contents of my wallet at various nurseries and invested in about 10 different varieties. I only grow from seedlings, simply because that seemed to work the best (the year they all died, most were from home raised seeds.) Hopefully we will be eating delicious tomatoes in a few months time.

Cooking

Lettuce is in the garden too, but I won't be using it for tonight's meal. Lettuce and mint wrapped chicken sausages are on the menu tonight, though it is with store bought lettuce, until the other is big enough. It is an idiot proof meal, oven baked sausages wrapped in a lettuce leaf with some mint from the garden thrown in. Other meals have been a little more time consuming. For instance I made pulled pork two Sundays ago. Overnight marination followed by 8 hours in the oven, it was, for lack of any other terms, heavenly. The lovely other half devoured it willingly and I found it delightful both in rolls with BBQ sauce and in a stir fry. It was so good I'll be making it again this weekend for a few guests.

Meandering

We went up to the Dandenongs last Sunday with a dear friend. It was lovely, great food, great views, too many tourists but great company which made up for it. The lush green of the properties up there was really enticing but I'm still glad I live where I do.

And all without drinking a drop. In fact most days I don't even think about alcohol anymore. Well ok I do sometimes, and I tell people I miss it, but I don't think I really mean that.