Feijoa and Banana Loaf

 I do not claim this as my recipe. It can also be found on the food in a minute page

If you have to buy feijoas - I'm sorry
If you get given feijoas - enjoy
If like me you have trees and so many by now you are over them...
Try this. Its lovely and moist and I just have a bit of butter on it.
It would be nice served as a desert or just thicker with a hot drink and served with custard, whipped cream, ice-cream, yogurt or a combination.

Ingredients
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp mixed spice
1 cup raw sugar
¾ cup vegetable oil  (I used olive oil as I didn't have any vegetable)
1 egg
1 cup mashed ripe bananas (about 2 large bananas)
1 cup chopped ripe feijoas (about 3-4 feijoas)

Method
Preheat oven to 180°C .
Grease and line the base of a 13cm x 23cm x 70 (6 cup capacity) loaf tin with baking paper.
Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda and mixed spice into a mixing bowl.
In a separate bowl beat together raw sugar, oil, egg to combine.
Add banana in hunks and beat in.
Pour into the dry ingredients along with the chopped feijoas and fold in trying not to over mix.
Spoon into prepared loaf tin.
Bake for 55 - 60 minutes until cooked. A skewer inserted into the middle of the loaf will come out clean.
Leave in the tin to cool for 10 minutes before turning onto a cake rack to cool completely.
Cut into slices when cool to serve.

I Am Who I Am

The title of this post is NOT blasphemy or dis-respectable to God. In fact if anything it is honouring God.

Have you ever had a time when you think "I have had enough. I'm not going to preform anymore to someone else's script, do what everyone else expects, or be what everyone else wants"?

Last Saturday I woke and after wrestling with how things had gone over the last few weeks I really felt like that. I never seemed to have any real me time, and the demands from all directions often meant I couldn't do things I wanted to or to what I felt was the best. I'm not pointing my finger at anyone or any particular incident as it really comes down to what I let happen in agreeing or not, to requests, demands and expectations.

I was sleeping eight hours a night and it didn't seem enough. I was at work for an extra hour or so each day and I still didn't get everything finished. The love of doing all things to be 'homely' seemed lost and I felt angry, especially when I saw others doing the things I longed to be doing.

It was like I was being tied down and bound to what I had become. I didn't like it and it was making me grumpy at almost anyone or anything.

I'm reading a book by Shelia Walsh called "In the Middle of the Mess". I started it so many weeks ago i decided to restart it. A quote right at the start reached out to me. Shelia was interviewing Rich Mullins on her show and asked him a question.
"What are the most important things in your life?" 
He answered "At any given moment it might be slightly different, but I would imagine that nothing would be more important than becoming fully who you were supposed to be...."

To be who you are supposed to be - I wanted that. I wanted to be fully who I am. I didn't like how I'd been feeling and with a sort of freedom I broke from the ties and claimed "I am who I am". In God's Word, the Bible, we read in Psalm 139:13-16
13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. 
15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. 
16 Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
New International Version 

I am happiest when I am being who I believe I was fully created to be - a woman of God. And for me I believe that is a well-loved child of God, a wife, mother, daughter, nana, someone who can teach by example the roles God made for me.

So that day I put aside all that people were wanting and spent the day in the freedom of being who I am.

I spent time with God in His word. He showed me how much He continues to love us even when we grumble and complain. (Exodus 16 when the Israelite's started out in the desert and complained for food and water. God heard them and gave them quail and manna 12 “I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites.)






I baked - something I haven't done for ages for just us.







I fed the men in our home lunch of toasted sandwiches, baking and cups of tea, while they worked on dismantling a vehicle on the property.


I'd been rostered on do the flowers for church. Something I had to do, but I do enjoy arranging flowers. And even though I didn't think I had anything in the garden. I found enough to put two vases together.

And I just rested and read.

By the time I went to bed I had a sense of satisfaction of being who I am and also being who God wants me to be.

A Smile

I am lucky to have both my parents still living - Mum is 89 and Dad turns 90 next month. As they have aged, their bodies are slowing down and their minds are not as sharp as they used to be. The things around them sort of stay the same. Either because they don't change anything, they don't want to or they just don't notice the need to do so.

From the outside I see them living as they do, and how they see it all as being fine, but the truth is, they need more and more help for some basic things to help them cope and be safe and well.

As the years and months go by I desire to spend more and more time with them as I know the time of being able to do this is coming to an end. They would come and spend Christmas or some of the summer with us and a couple of times during the year but that is not possible now so I travel to them when I can.

I was tidying some of my kitchen cupboards a little while ago and actually shed a tear that my silver tea pot would not really be used much any more.
Dad loves his tea made with tea leaves in a pot and I would get it out along with what I called his special cup and saucer.

When I visit them I always love to make Dad his cup of tea, just a little bit of what I did for him when they were here.

Mum spends most of her days now sitting in her chair in the lounge. She doesn't want to watch day time television and can't hold long conversations so spends most of the day dozing. Mum was very talented with hand crafts and could play the piano and sing. Standing next to her in church I could always hear her strong voice and although it is not so loud now she still can sing the songs.

The chair she sits in is very near her piano but the space between has been full of boxes of 'stuff' that never got sorted or thrown out. We can all be guilty of keeping things because we will read them later, file them away or use or sort them for something else but the days/weeks/months go by and it never gets done. If this then blends into years and more and more piles and boxes collect, there is soon an area of hoarding being developed.

At then end of my last visit my brother, his wife and I got to work and cleared the space to the piano, cleaning and moving the boxes to another place. We tried to make the path from Mum's chair wide enough for her to be able to get to the stool and sit and play. I found some music  titled "It Is Time" and placed it on the stand for her to see.

In the morning both Mum and Dad didn't seem to even notice what we had done so I drew their attention to it and explained I chose the music because "Now is the time Mum, for you to get back and play some music" I wasn't quite sure how she would react or what she would say but when I looked at her, she turned from looking at the piano and smiled.

Whether she gets to sit at the piano again and plays or is even able to play, and whether I get to hear her, the smile just filled me with a joy that really can't be explained. Something in her liked the whole idea and I felt that we had made that happen by the tidying we did.





When I leave after each visit I often wonder if it will be the last time, or what it will be like the next time but this time I felt a smile forming on my face as I started my long 470 kilometer drive home.

A happy heart is good medicine and a joyful mind causes healing... 
Proverbs 17:22 AMP