floating world

chickpea and apricot cake (+ some links)

It was cold and grim this weekend, so perfect for baking. I made a huge batch of baby food for Ali, an apple and rhubarb crumble and this chickpea and apricot cake. It was really yummy, and since it has chickpeas in it I feel quite virtuous eating it.

125g dried apricots
300ml apricot nectar
2 cups cooked chickpeas (1 can)
3/4 cup brown sugar
250g sifted self-raising flour
100g (1 cup) dessicated coconut
50ml olive oil
4 egg whites

Preheat the oven to 170 C. Grease and line the base of a 10 x 23cm loaf tin.
Soak apricots and nectar in a bowl for 20 minutes. Transfer to a saucepan, and simmer over medium heat for 5 minutes. Add chickpeas, and cook for 5 minutes. Set aside to cool.

Place in a food processor and blitz until smooth. Add the sugar and blend for a few more seconds. Tip into a bowl, and fold in the flour, coconut and a pinch of salt. Add the oil and 100ml of water, and stir to make a smooth batter.

In a separate bowl beat the egg whites until soft peaks form. Gently fold into the batter until combined. Pour into the loaf pan and bake for 1 hour, until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. (If it browns too quickly, cover with foil.) Turn onto a wire rack to cool.

Dust with icing sugar, and serve warm with natural yogurt and honey. Or leave it to cool, make a drizzle icing with some icing sugar and warm water, and sprinkle dessicated coconut on top.

(This is from an old issue of Delicious magazine, but I cut the recipe out and stuck it in a folder so I have no idea which one - sorry!)

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Some Links:
I really like the colours and contrasts in Jan Vorman's work Dispatchwork... he fixed old Italian walls with Lego. So cool, see photos here.
And I finally finished reading Three Cups of Tea, which I loved. It's such an inspiring story, and I learned a lot about the culture and history of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the way that people live there. I highly recommend the book, and you can find out more work about Greg Mortensen and the Central Asia Institute here and here.

very good things

Some recent flickr favourites:

1. floral lingerie, 2. Ruby Red, 3. antelope et steak, 4. Liberty Spots, 5. Sisters, 6. progress., 7. plusquilttop, 8. they're lit, 9. Bondi Bay, Sydney, 10. Tabi and Zouri footwear, 11. pink weeping ume blossom inokashira.jpg, 12. yellow, 13. japanese anemone, 14. the first sakura at fukuoka castle, 15. sakura, 16. Hooty owl zipper pouch, 17. film.171, 18. Russian doll keyring for my sister, 19. upon reflection..., 20. Pencil Roll, 21. plum flower in snow, 22. kitchen, 23. mieze2.0_standing, 24. Radical Tree, 25. Peg Bears - Up Close

Based on these, it seems I am attracted to photos of flowers, handmade toys and patchwork. And bright colours.

Some other things that I'm enjoying this week and looking forward to:

1. New edition of Mixtape - mine came last week and it is fabulous. Small and light enough to read while breastfeeding, which is a distinct bonus.
2. I found a great new blog, I Heart Japan. Melissa writes about the kind of quirky, fabulous things that I really miss about Tokyo.
3. I love the Radio National First Person readings. This recording of Walking Life's Glorious Adventure by Tara June Winch (only available as a podcast until next week, but you can also read it online here) is beautiful. The way she writes about her daughter's first steps made me shiver: "From that first contraction, to that first step, to the end of our days - I will continue to let you go, to let you walk alone." She catches the bittersweetness of watching a baby grow up so perfectly... a good one to read/listen to for mothers' day.
   
4. The current First Person book is anthropologist Liza Dalby's memoir about living in Japan, East Wind Melts The Ice. I've been listening to it online while watching Ali or knitting. And the next one is going to be The Pillow Book, which I've been meaning to read for ages.
5. More stuff for Japanophiles - this exhibition on Taisho Chic starts at the AGNSW later this month. I can't wait.
6. The Hope Street Markets are on next weekend in Paddington. I haven't been before, but they look really good so Ali and I will be checking them out.
7. Kluster online zine. Such cool formatting! Great content too.
8. There is a Cat Rabbit exhibition  at Ruban Rat Newtown from this weekend. Another one I definitely want to have a look at. Based on the photos I've seen on Flickr it looks very cool.

That's all for now... hope you have a great weekend and that all the mums have a lovely mothers' day.

top stitching

I would love to be able to make things beautifully, but right now my sewing is very patchy. This is partly due to a slapdash temperament, but also because I have cobbled what I know together, rather than learning formally. I did a basic sewing class at Grace Bros when I was 13 (remember when they had fabric and haberdashery in department stores?), and Textiles at school in year 9 and 10, but mostly I've learned from my mum, craft books or just by figuring things out. This means that there are lots of simple things that I dread doing, like zippers, and other things that I don't know how to do properly. One thing I could never work out is why when I hemmed jeans or did decorative top stitching, the stitches kind of disappeared into the fabric. Hooray for the internet. Last week I found this post on Pink Chalk Studio via Whip Up, and after a quick trip to the monster that is Spotlight I now have a denim needle, top stitching thread, and can do nice visible top stitching. Yay! Reading craft blogs has definitely been a big help, not just for practical sewing tips like this one but also for inspiration. I don't know if I ever would have started knitting if I hadn't been tempted by all the gorgeous things I kept seeing other people make.

There are so many fabulous tutorials out there, but a couple of good ones I've seen lately are this bias tape one from Angry Chicken and this elastic casing one from Jade. And Collette has lots of really useful links and tips on the Tessuti blog, like how to cut delicate fabric. Hopefully one day I'll get to do a sewing class like this one and learn how make things properly, but until then the internet is my classroom. If you have any links to other good tutorials or sewing / knitting tips, please share.

hooray for chocolate slice (& links)

Good things from the internet:
Very quick to make and extremely yummy chocolate slice. Recipe from Sadie and Lance. Make some now! It's even quicker than the brownies, and as a bonus doesn't require chocolate.
Cool shoes from Andrea & Joen. I'm all about flats right now, and their Sunday range has lots of cute ones
Stick on wall decorations. I am considering this one for our bedroom. Or maybe this one
Two Thousand email magazine / Sydney guide
The lovely Icing blog
The Powerhouse Museum photo archive on Flickr
This gorgeous quilt, and this one too, found via Hop Skip Jump. I am extremely tempted to make one for my bed.
Beautiful prints from Yuki
Tapettitalo: gorgeous wallpaper from Finland. Can you tell I have decorating on the brain?

Ali and I are both much less snotty now, and it's a 4 day week here (Anzac Day is on Friday) so life is good.