What colour are you?

you are aqua #00FFFF

Your dominant hues are green and blue. You're smart and you know it, and want to use your power to help people and relate to others. Even though you tend to battle with yourself, you solve other people's conflicts well. Your saturation level is very high - you are all about getting things done. The world may think you work too hard but you have a lot to show for it, and it keeps you going. You shouldn't be afraid to lead people, because if you're doing it, it'll be done right. Your outlook on life is very bright. You are sunny and optimistic about life and others find it very encouraging, but remember to tone it down if you sense irritation.

the spacefem.com html color quiz

You know you want to.

I'm kind of surprised that I came up aqua. I've got an aqua obsession at the moment.

Based on colours I like, I could also have been crimson or darkorange - yellow if you push me. So where the aqua came from is anyone's guess.

Quasi instant soup

I hate instant packet soup. Canned soup doesn't do it for me either. So when I had a friend to feed last night, what'a girl to do?

Well in my case, you take ~1L of stock (in this case lamb stock for which I had no other plans - it was great, it was lovely, it wasn't uber salty, but it isn't called for very often in recipes!) and put in 2 piece of mince that you've packed previously into a hamburger press, so that 500g ish went into 6 patties (so about 85g mince each) and bring to the boil. Mush the mince up a bit to make it into balls if you can / want to. Add about a cup of frozen veges - I used a combination of beans, carrots and baby corn. Adjust the seasoning to what you want - I used oyster, soy, plum and a dab of chilli sauce, but you could also use tomato-y type flavours, or sesame and chilli, or sweet and sour, or anything you'd like. Add 250g rice noodles (vermicelli or angle hair) and boil some more. Taste and adjust the seasoning.

Eat.

Absolutely fabulous for:

• using up bits and pieces in the freezer and fridge;
• watching your weight;
• instant food any night of the week
• feeding friends
• impressing anyone you've brought home ;)
  

My house *doesn't* smell like vanilla!

The moron who lives across the road is a moron. He drives a revolting V8 which is horribly tuned and idles far too fast and in the morning, he gets up at 5am and moves the car outside his garage and front fence, to park in front of our house. How do I know this, when I don't willingly get up at 5am? Because his car is LOUD and rumbly and is so revoltingly EXHAUSTY that it gets into our place and makes my sinuses ache and my stomach clench. Which wakes me up, whereupon I ponder the meaning of life and the sanity of living across the road from him and plot his downfall.

He then leaves at 6:35am and goes to work. He returns at 2pm ish and pulls into his driveway a smidge, and leaves the car idling while he gets out and opens his gate and then his garage door before driving into it. He does this by planting his foot and accelerating fast into the garage then slamming on the brakes.

If I'm sitting on the couch with the front door open, I score a lovely house full of disgusting black grey greasy smoke. I usually get up and SLAM the front door while muttering under my breath because it is RUDE and it is gross and revolting, and because I have previously asked him not to frickin' do it.

In other news of neighbours I hate to live near - the guy down the road with the Land Cruiser that he doesn't warm up before driving off so it blows smoke, pings and chugs until it gets around the corner, people who are stupid enough to rat run via the maze of streets next to our house which doesn't get you anywhere because of the one-way streets that funnel cars around where people are trying to rat run. It's annoying. ManFriend and I are known to mutter "frickin' tourists" when that happens.

Oh while I'm at it - long trucks that try to do this and hit cars in the process of driving around back streets, I curse you.

AND - the light on the corner of the street near us? Annoyingly bright. And angled into our bedroom. Not impressed. Not owning a sling-shot means I can't shoot it out.

AND further: the council recently approved the moving of a business into a large house at the end of our street. This is a residential area. And now there are 20 cars parked on our street. So a normal back street street is now a parking area. And if one more of them park across my driveway, there will be words spoken.

It's a good thing I have a very cute kitty though - she cheers me up.
This is Zaria. She is 9 years old and has lived in lots of places with me. She is very pretty, is a character and a half, and is fabulous company. She is determined to grown bindies this year so I have to brush her every day. She has a couple of local friends because she's so friendly - neighbours stop to chat, people walking home visit with her, little children come to visit too. It's very cute.

More about me

I'm a late-20 something year old women from Adelaide. I live in a rented home (half a house and my neighbours annoy me) with my manfriend and a kitty. I have a bright yellow car and (currently) a scooter. I do a lot of crafty things. I am working towards being a midwife, which is truly my calling. I love dancing, the colour red, peppermint, coffee and lamb more than chicken.

In 2007, I had an accident that has left me dealing with lots of fun things like insurance companies, left shoulders, lawyers, university, surgery, the future, rehabilitation and everything else, so there may be some things about that on here.

At some point soon I will get married. We're not getting weddinged though so no bridal pr0n or bridezilla moments on here though! We're having a destination wedding to New Zealand but y'all not invited - it's more polite for me to say "we're eloping" but I still get to talk about things here, right?

Cake stands and so forth

I found a great post the other day for a cake stand making tutorial and wanted to archive it here for future reference. I have been working on my cupcake recipe and wanted to write that out here too! With some photos for decoration.

Basic vanilla cupcake recipe
125g butter (I use salted butter bought in a block)
3/4 C sugar
2 eggs
1/2 tsp Queen vanilla bean paste with vanilla seeds
1 1/2 C self raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/3 C milk
1T milk

Have the butter at room temperature then beat it with the sugar until it is paler than originally. Add the vanilla (you can use 1 tsp vanilla essence instead) and one egg and beat well. Add the other egg and beat some more. Remove the beaters and grab a spatula.

Sift in 3/4 C of flour with the extra self raising flour. Add half the milk and mix gently through. Add the remaining flour and fold in gently. Add the remaining milk from the 1/3C and mix in. The mix should hold a peak but not be too stiff - add a smidge more milk if you need to get it to "plopping" consistency.

Half-fill cupcake liners in your patty pan and bake at 180-190C for 10-15 minutes. Make sure you keep an eye on them - they are done when slightly golden brown on top. Remove from over, remove from pan, and cool on a wire rack.

Some notes on ingredients:

• I'll never ever go back to imitation vanilla essence. If you're going to bake, please use the best you can find. I love the paste I've linked to and while it's expensive, I use 1/2 the recommended amount for a recipe and it gives such an amazingly real, vanilla, homemade flavour. It also adds extra liquid to the mix which tends to keep the crumb happy.
• Use the best ingredients you can find. Cake making is about making love in little patty cases so don't scrimp on it. I use generic sugar, but I do use the best flour I can find at the time.
• Play around with patty liners and pans. I like the stiffer paper ones rather than the really cheap thin ones. I also love love love individual silicone ones that you remove afterwards - great for mini bite sized ones! I tend to fill 12 of the paper cases and then use the rest of the mix in the silicone cases.
  
• Use good eggs. I use free range ones locally produced and bought. I find that battery hen ones are pale, insipid, and watery. Yuk.
  

Icing: Ok I'm not the most sophisticated cake maker and decorator yet. But I love making them and icing them. I colour my icing because it adds something extra to the whole experience. My basic icing recipe:

1T salted butter
a dash of lemon juice
a dash of hot water
icing sugar
food colouring

Put the butter in a small bowl. Add a heaped teaspoon of icing sugar and mix in. Add a few drops of lemon juice and mix in. Add more icing sugar and mix in. Add a dash of hot water and mix well. Taste. If it's not sweet but it buttery, add more sugar. If it's sweet and only sweet, add more lemon juice. If it's too lemony, add a smidge more hot water. Colour and apply.

Contro-versial!

1. Do you have the guts to answer these questions and re-post as The Controversial Survey?
Yup - it's a new blog, no one is around to unfriend me, and meh I feel like a distraction.

2. Would you do meth if it was legal?
No - as a holder of 2 degrees in chemistry, I know far too much about how it's made, who it's made by, and where it's made.

3. Abortion: for or against it?
For it being available to anyone who wants or needs it. None of my business why that may be, but if it's not my body it's not my business. I believe that life begins at viability, and that that is when a babe is able to take a breath outside of its mother's body relatively unassisted... which puts it somewhere in the third trimester of pregnancy. I don't agree with the huge expenditure of resources applied to keeping extremely premature babes alive and think this kind of act will have to be rationalised in the future which is sad for people who don't agree but not something I'd change if I was in the situation.

4. Do you think the world would fail with a female president?
How much does this question say about the place that the USA thinks it has in the world right now????

Ahem.

If the first president of Australia was female, I would sell my body to get everyone I know to move to Australia. We would be a better place if we had more women in positions of power. It would also show that we as a country were a lot more progressive than having people like John Howard as our prime minister...

5. Do you believe in the death penalty?
No. As a holder of a forensics degree, I would be horrified if someone's life was taken because of evidence I processed. I also believe that life imprisonment without parole is much better punishment than instant death.

6. Do you wish marijuana would be legalized already?
I'd rather see this legalised and taxed more than tobacco.

7. Are you for or against premarital sex?
For. I think anyone who waits until they're married is missing out on developing a part of themselves that allows them to be good partners, and also true to themselves. There are so many things to be learned from negotiating that, and it shouldn't wait until you're already married before being negotiated. I'm not for "early teenagehood sex" and I may change my tune when I have children of my own, but I hope that they can always ask me about it and can work it out for themselves.

8. Do you believe in God?
No. I do believe in something spiritual and that we have more energy going out of us into the universe than just our physical existence.

9. Do you think same sex marriage should be legalised?
Yes. I think that, if two people want to make vows to each other, then they should be recognised legally as partners in law.

10. Do you think it's wrong that so many Hispanics are illegally moving to the USA?
No idea - not from the USA. Illegal immigrants here though affect my life in a way that is hard to explain. We're a large island in the middle of a big ocean a long way from anywhere. Anyone who has come here as an "illegal immigrant" has worked damn hard and taken lots of risks to get here. I would rather

11. A twelve year old girl has a baby, should she keep it?
Why are you asking my opinion - cf comments about abortion? In my (newish, not yet complete) role as a midwife I've already worked with 14 year olds who are having baby #3 and while I am disheartened that girls that age either don't have the sexual education to understand how to avoid pregnancy, or are in a position where having a baby seems like a good idea (baby bonus, welfare state, crap education, no employment opportunities, I'm looking at you), it's not for me or someone else to say that they should keep it or not. Adoption should be a lot easier in Australia, and fostering should be healthily rewarded.

12. Should the alcohol age be lowered to eighteen?
Mwahahaha trick question! It is here and really, I think education about alcohol should be increased in high school so children can make better decisions about these things.

13. Should the war in Iraq be called off?
Yes. Not sure what it is trying to achieve right now.

14. Assisted suicide is illegal: do you agree?
No I don't. I think it should be assisted under very strict circumstances.

15. Do you believe in spanking your children?
I don't agree with hitting children at all. Swatting children away from danger when they're too young to understand danger or "no" is one thing; inflicting harm or pain as punishment is not ok.

16. Would you burn an American flag for a million dollars?
No. Nor any other flag.

17. Who do you think would make a better president? McCain or Obama?
Obama. If I had a vote. I do wonder what is going on in the USA though that McCain is getting so many votes - he is portrayed quite differently here to what I suppose is being portrayed in the USA.

18. Are you afraid others will judge you from reading some of your answers?
Judge? No, not really. You're entitled to your opinion, and to copy and paste this one if you're brave enough. Well actually that's not true. I do expect to be judged because anyone who claims not to be judgemental is delusional instead. We are all judgey-judgey but it's whether people's opinion of me will change because of this meme. Probably, given that I have pretty liberal views on some/most things.

My house really *does* smell like vanilla today!

My oil burner in my study has the following in it:

• rose absolute (against the blues)
  
• vanilla absolute (anti-anxiety)
  
• orange essential oil (also anti-depressant)
  

and it is smelling its happy way through my whole house.

I should be doing homework. I have work to do on electronic fetal monitoring / cardiotocography at the moment, and exams to prep for. But I did hydrotherapy this morning and my shoulder is killing me so I am not overly inspired to do so. Heh I just realised the blend I've got is probably because I am feeling anxious and a little blue about school, life and money in general.

*tap* *tap* *tap* is this thing on?

I am eating a ham and cheese "toasted" sandwich that tastes vaguely of roses. I've just worked out that it's because the bread was sitting next to a ziplock bag of solid henna, which is kind of rose scented. Strange but true.

Hi. Welcome to my blog. This is a new blog bringing together a couple of other blogs - Knitting by Zen, and Midwifery is Catching. I'm moving house as I want to bring together a lot of things in my life under one roof, and it's easier to do that than to update the other places repeatedly. Plus I realised the other day that I am one person, not different aspects of the same person (woh deep and meaningful for this time of the morning) and 2009 should be a really interesting year.