Portugal - Independence Day

On the 5th of October 1143, or 868 years ago, the peacy treaty of Zamora (in Spain) was signed by Afonso I, known as Dom Afonso Henriques and his cousin Afonso VII of Leon and Castile, signalling the Afonso dinasty. Portugal became then an independent Kingdom and the oldest European nation.
For some unknown reason it's a date that is not overly celebrated in Portugal.


It's now been just over 4 years since I left Portugal and immigrated to Australia and although I do love living here I miss the charm of the old country a little bit, Australia's history is so recent compared with European history...


So I leave you with a few photos of Lisbon's old and historical buildings.
Happy Birthday Portugal.

Mosteiro dos Jeronimos -  Jeronimos Monastery, Belem

Praca do Comercio - Commerce Square

Torre de Belem - Belem Tower

Old Lisbon suburb in one of the seven hills surrounding Lisbon

Elevador da Bica - Funicular in one of the suburbs

My mom´s 2nd book was published today

I can proudly announce my Mom´s second novel was unveiled today - "Mae Preta" - "Black Mother"

The previous one was called - "O meu pecado"  -  "My sin" .
Both novels have been self-published as unfortunately it´s very hard to get a book published at her age, and being an unknown as well. But she persisted and fought for what she wanted to do.
I am proud of her, because not many years ago she didn't even know how to work with computers, now she  uses it on a daily basis, to  write her books, internet, etc
She is already working away at a book of poems and another novel.
Also just over a year ago she started a blog, long before I started mine which was just 3 months ago.
I have given her a little help lately with her blog because I have more knowledge about html coding, etc, etc, but the bone structure was originally there already, so all this is a great achievement for someone in her 70´s.

Both novels are in Portuguese, although she would love to have them translated into English one day.
They are both set in Africa, where we spent most of our lives.
Well done to you Mom!!

The bigger book is the one published today, the grey one was published 2 years ago.

50th Post and my first batch of Laundry Liquid

Two milestones to commemorate today!
The first being the fact that it´s my 50th post, since I started blogging 3 months ago. Not bad I think, I never thought I would get to this stage this quick.

The second one is the fact that I have officially become "green". Although I have for some time just used the "Earth" range of cleaning products, I had never attempted to make my own cleaning agents.

Thanks to Rhonda who has lots of home made Green cleaning recipes, I decided to try my hand at making my own Laundry Liquid..
I bought all ingredients on Wednesday when I went shopping, and bought a copy of the  "Women´s Weekly", which is actually the most loved Australian monthly (not weekly) magazine, and to my surprise there was an article about Rhonda and how to have a simple life and the laundry liquid recipe was in the magazine too.

The ingredients used

So here it is in case you would like to try it.
It´s simple to make, takes about 30 minutes and the ingredients are available in the supermarket.

Laundry Liquid
Ingredients:
1 1/2 lt water
1 bar of laundry soap, grated on a cheese grater or 1 cup Lux flakes
1/2 cup washing soda (not baking soda or bicarb soda)
1/2 cup borax

Tools:
10 litre bucket
Wooden spoon for mixing
Bottles to store the mixture

1 - In a medium saucepan add water and soap. Stir over medium heat until soap is dissolved. Add washing soda and borax and stir until thickened and remove from heat.


2 - Pour mixture into a 10 litre bucket then fill the bucket with water from the tap. Stir to combine the ingredients. The laundry liquid will thicken as it cools.


3 - Store in clean plastic or glass bottles, but do not fill to the top - mixture needs to be shaken before each use.


4 - Use 1/4 cup or 1 laundry scoop of mixture per load or monitor to see what works for you.
It´s suitable for top and front loading machines. This liquid will not make suds.
Cost: $4,50 for 10lt.

Boiling away

                                                                                 

The 10 litre bucket

The finished product

If you use fabric softener, you can replace that with 1/2 cup white vinegar in the final rinse.                                                    

Good luck to you all, I hope you try it, as we should all be doing something to help our planet as well as benefiting our wallets.

I cannot wait to try my new liquid on my next washing day.

Kings Park Spring Festival 2011

After the stormy day we had yesterday, I woke up to a sunny day. Because I had the day off, I thought it would be a great idea to visit the Kings Park Spring Festival.
As per my previous post about this festival held every year in September, the last day was today, so I called two friends and the three of us went to Kings Park. We had a wonderful day, the park was full of school kids on a day out, the wildflowers were beautiful, the colours amazing, the birds, the ducks and ducklings, the soft green grass, ...all added up to 70 photos in a couple of hours!!
Western Australia is the state with the greatest percentage of wildflowers in Australia, with over 12,000 species, 60% of which are not found anywhere else in the world!

View from the Botanic Gardens to the city across the River Swan

 Grass tree

Can you spot the bee?

Boab Tree that was transported 3200km from the North of WA to Kings Park

As well as flowers, there was Aboriginal music and dance too...

A variety of wild flowers

The little duckling in the bottom picture had a hard time jumping from the water to join his Mom, but he made it!

Vast expansions of grass and lots of school kids on a day out.

A lot of tree have these plaques honouring soldiers who died in the various wars.

Synergy Park - a Kids paradise -- lake, barbecue facilities, climbing frames, gigantic pre-historic animals in wood

Cookies Baking Flop

With all the rain we have had lately, it feels as if we are back in Winter and not Spring.
So feeling like some home baked goodies, I looked on the net for a Lemon Biscuit recipe using Gluten free flours. The ingredients included normal Gluten Free flour and Tapioca flour, but only after making little balls with them and putting them in a round baking tray, did I realize I had left out about half a cup of flour.
Anyway, I thought it wouldn´t make a difference as I had no trouble rolling the little balls, they weren´t too soft.

Well...half an hour later when I took them out the oven the batter had spread all over and some of it had fallen off the baking tray onto the oven, so instead of lots of cookies I now had a huge round cookie!!
This had never happened to me before, probably because I had never left out a major ingredient, but it still tastes  nice, although we will be probably be eating more than 1 cookie at a time.

I will leave you with a photo of my funny flop. I wonder if this has ever happened to any of you out there?
Next time I will certainly not forget to add all the flour and I will then post the recipe and some lovely photos of them.