Simple Feijoa Muffins

This is a very basic feijoa muffin recipe and is quite nice. It comes from my mother's recipe book, so not quite sure where it has come from originally, but it is quick and easy to make. Depending on how ripe the feijoas are will determine how much milk you will need.

1 cup chopped feijoas
75 gram butter
2 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
2 cups flour
Milk to mix

Topping 
1 tsp cinnamon
1 Tbsp Sugar

Make up a cup of cut up feijoas either scooping out little bits  or peeling them and chopping them. You want pieces about 1 cm 'square'.

In a large bowl toss together the sugar, flour and baking powder. Set aside.
In a separate container melt the butter and add the feijoas.
Beat the eggs and add.
Add about half a cup of milk and then mix all lightly into the dry ingredients adding more milk if necessary to achieve a soft muffin batter consistency, but don't over mix. There can still be bits of unmixed batter showing. This is not a runny mixture - don't add too much milk.
Fill 12 well greased muffin tins.
Mix the topping ingredients and sprinkle on top of muffins before baking in a preheated oven at 200C for ten to fifteen minutes.

A Fair Isle Jumper

As I have mentioned in a previous post I have a Pinterest account and one of the boards is titled “Things I’d Like My Mum To Make.” Each of my daughters with children, adds pics to it when they see something they would like me to make.

I am slowly making my way through the requests and this is a jumper Jennifer wanted me to make for her daughter. The picture she chose is for a jumper that read...

“A cute little lopi-sweater for toddlers and kids. A traditional Icelandic yoke and high neck to keep warm during cold winter months.” 



It had a pattern named ‘frost’ that had to be purchased from America but I knew I would be able to adapt a pattern I already had.

Hunting through my huge selection of knitting books, pattern collections from magazines and old patterns from family and market sales, I was able to find a really old one that had actually come from my grandmother The smallest size was going to mean it would be a little big but it would be able to allow for plenty of growth and possibly two winters wear.


I then studied the design of the fair isle and graphed it out on some old maths books papers. These graph pages are nice and big and just great for this very purpose.

Then it occurred to me that being a yoke style there would be decreases every few rows evenly around the yoke. So I had to work this concept into the design hoping the decreased stitches wouldn't alter the design too much. Taking a bit of “knitting” licence I managed to work the design and decreases to suit me rather than follow the pattern precisely and still come out with a great copy of the pattern.

I found some wool in almost the same colours although the brand only had the dark pink and I prefer when knitting garments to stick to the same brand and type of wool so that if there is any shrinkage it will be the same.

I used 100% Pure New Wool actually grown and spun in Australia (much to my disappointment - no disrespect to my AUstralian friends, but we do actually have sheep in New Zealand!) Panda Machine-wash 8 ply crepe exclusive for Spotlight

Once finished Natalie was very happy to model it and I think she found it "quite warm thanks Nana."

(and 'no' the top right pic is not Natalie!)

Is Eight Enough?

Do you remember an American comedy series in the 1980's called "Eight is Enough"?

It was based on a real life father of eight children Thomas Braden who wrote a book about his life and sadly died at age 92 of a heart attack.

Now for some of you, you will think that eight is certainly enough - in fact maybe you think it is too much when it comes to having children - but for some of us the number of children we have is irrelevant to what anyone else thinks and really if we can and want to then, we just will.

We for one, have had five children and that is not counting the two we lost through miscarriage at twelve weeks. We believe children are gifts from God and we wouldn't turn down the blessing of them even to the extent that we stopped all birth control except natural control after issues with IUD's after our second. This was when we had our first miscarriage and we believe the damage done by the faulty insertion (and subsequent surgery for removal) of the devise was what caused the miscarriage. Natural Birth Control gave us full control of having (or not) children, which we allowed to 'lapse' for when our last two were conceived.

Mark 10:13-14
The Little Children and Jesus
13 People were bringing little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them, but the disciples rebuked them. 14 When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.

There are many famous large families around the world and one that is quiet 'famous' is the Duggar family They have 19 children and lost two as well. There are some in New Zealand to name a couple... Craig and Paulette Venables, live in a five-bedroom house in Whangarei with their 12 children; founder and CEO Jane McAllister of Dimples and husband Sam have 14 children.

We have a family in our church who have just welcomed their eighth child into their family and I thought of no better way than to bless them with some baking. So over ANZAC weekend I gathered up some recipes and tried some new ones I had found.

They are posted on my other blog My Julie/Julia Attempt.

There are two different Anzac Biscuits,
Chocolate Chip biscuits,
Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins and
an ANZAC Caramel Slice.
Bible reference from New International Version (NIV)

So Long Snow White

I was working in the garden and come across a white feather from the chooks.
But this isn't just any old feather, it is one from Snow White. I was going to take a pic but I could hear my children saying “Oh Mum…” so I didn’t.

Unfortunately Snow White is no longer with us. She had been ailing for a little while now and couldn't walk or stand. We brought her inside for a few of the cooler nights and left her squatting by the water trough while we were out during the day but one night she passed away.


















We have had her for some time now and arrived back in May 2010 with two other hens from a family who were relocating to the south Island and could not take them with them.



We have had hens ever since we ‘inherited’ Harry’s parents’ hens back in 1998. The four shavers we got laid well and then we just kept being given peoples hens that were either needing homes because they were moving, overcrowding or just not getting on with the rest of the broods.

Snow White was never much of a layer we soon discovered, but she would scratch at the weeds in the garden and help with fertilising it so we kept her on. Now she is buried in the old vegie path and will give her ‘all’ to fertilising deep in the depths as she slowing wastes away.