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Showing posts from March, 2012

The Falie

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I've copied and pasted the following information from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This is basic information. Career (Australia) Name: Logger (1919-1922) Falie (1922-present) Owner: Spencer's Gulf Transport Company (1922-1982) South Australian government (1980s-present) Completed: 1919 This next section is more extensive information. General characteristics:: The Falie is a 46-metre (151 ft) ketch that traded for many years in Australian waters. Originally built in 1919 as the motor schooner collier Logger, she was purchased by the Spencer's Gulf Transport Company, renamed, and used for coastal trading in South Australia. The vessel commissioned into the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) as HMAS Falie during World War II, serving first as an inspection vessel, then as a stores ship. Returned to her owners in 1946, Falie was used to transport explosives around Australia before resuming the South Australian coastal trade in 1968. She was retired in 1982, t

hello Friday afternoon

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You're looking pretty good for this time of year. Sunny blue skies with a few clouds here and there, temperature around 30C, cool breezes. Very nice. Friday's are my day off, (weekends don't count, almost everybody gets those) and I usually sleep in a bit, potter around doing some washing etc, but not today. Today I had an appointment with the dentist. So I still had to be up and go catch a bus, then another bus, just like a work day. Because my dentist is right next to my workplace. After the dental torture was over (it wasn't so bad) I popped in to work and had a look at the photo album of my friends wedding. Such a pretty wedding! Held in a park, with the bride looking all gorgeous (I made a joke with her and said "hey who's the pretty girl in the long white dress?") and the groom with hair. Last time I saw him he'd shaved his head. The bridesmaids were lovely in hot pink and the flowers were mixed bunches of white and hot pink roses. T

another soup recipe

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This tomato/bean soup is my version of Minestrone. It's quite thick and very filling, so often I don't even bother with bread, and I never have dessert after this one.  Which doesn't mean much since I rarely have dessert anyway. These are the ingredients. Naturally I don't use the whole bottle of olive oil, nor do I use the whole packet of small shell pasta. It's just a splash of oil and about half to one cup of small shell pasta. Uncooked measure. I like a lot of pasta so most often use a full cup measure. The soup is a can of condensed soup, I empty this into a jug and straight away blend in a can of water. The four bean mix is drained and rinsed. The above chopped ingredients can be found again and again in my soups. The same ingredients are the base of most of my spaghetti sauces. One onion (two if it's a beef soup) One or two sticks of celery One or two carrots One crushed clove of garlic two if they're small. Not shown here i

whimsical wednesday

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Whimsical Wednesday # 16 Banana Dog. I have actually eaten banana dogs, which are just peeled bananas in a hot dog bun with a little chocolate sauce drizzled on them, sometimes a little whipped cream.....but I haven't had one for several years now. It's quicker to just eat the banana. Thank You Google Images.

losing weight, aka the skirt challenge....

......doesn't seem to be happening. In the beginning, I lost 2kg fairly quickly. Since then, nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. I know that I wanted to lose the weight slowly, but this is ridiculous! In spite of eating sensibly and eating much less in the form of smaller portions, I'm stuck at the 2kg loss mark. I may have over-indulged a little on the icecream, (more than once), but surely all of the other smaller food portions should be helping? It's not like I'm eating icecream at every meal, not even every day. A little frustrating for sure. Still, I'll keep at it, my original goal was to fit back into that skirt by next summer, and that gives me another nine months. I'll probably stop buying the icecream though.

and so it begins

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winter soups 2012 I love winter foods. cabbage, dried parsley, (homegrown and dried from two years ago), parsnip, celery, carrots, potato, turnip, leeks and garlic in the middle. I'm going to use the big chopper today. I prefer the smaller one, but it's getting a little blunt. I've had this carton of Chicken Style stock (it's vegetarian) in my cupboard for over a year (use by date is next November), so I've decided to use it for today's soup. I don't want the flavour too strong, so I'll add one and a half or two litres of water to it. while that is gently heating up, I'll put that chopper to work. Leeks first, they're sweeter than onions, so better in a light stock such as vegetable or chicken. I'd use onions for a beef soup or a casserole. Then carrots. Tip them into the simmering stock with the leeks. Stir it up, then keep chopping. Turnips to the left of me, parsnips to the right, here I am, stuck in

Sunday Selections #62

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It's Sunday Selections time again! Time to post photos that have been languishing in your files, forgotten, never seeing the light of day. Brought to us by the newly shorn Kim of the Rocking Frog Ponds, this is a great idea for showcasing old photos that might otherwise never get seen. The rules are simple. Post your photos under the Sunday Selections title, link back to Kim, then add your name to the linky list at her site before leaving Kim a comment. I mostly choose a theme for my Sunday Selections, but not always. This week I'm bringing you a selection of lights and shadows. I may have used this one before somewhere... I like the way the light in this one is broken up as it travels along the fence corrugations. Electric lights casting shadows on the walls, near-dawn light brightening the sky. The yellow painted downpipes add an overall golden tone to this early morning photo. I'm just a shadow of myself. A lights and shadows "

you'll never guess where I've been

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Ta-daaa!  Ikea! You're probably not at all surprised. I went there to get a few measurements and just generally look around to see if there was any new stuff that's not in my catalogue. I saw a chest of two drawers that I positively drooled over. Why? Because it was the exact shade of blue that I'd love to paint my current bookshelves. (I'm going back with paint charts to see if I can match it to a shade on them) This was the only furniture item I could see in the entire store that was this particular shade of blue. Everything else is white, birch, black, or black/brown. If they sold bookshelves in this particular shade, I'd buy them tomorrow and damn the cost! The real reason I was at Ikea? I was shopping for a 5 litre pot to make soup. You see, in my previous home, I had a very large pot. A 10 litre pot. With a pasta insert and a rice steamer insert. I rarely used the inserts, but the pot was on my stove every winter making gallons of soups a

what does the "S" mean?

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Penny; a Marathon? Wow, how many Superman movies are there? Sheldon; you're kidding, right? (she wasn't) It just so happens that I own all four Superman movies, and I've been having my own Superman Marathon. For years I've assumed that the "S" logo on the front of Superman's nifty little flying suit stands for "Superman". Probably the rest of the world thinks so too. Or maybe it's just me. Aaaanyway.....near the beginning of the first movie, we see Marlon Brando as Superman's father, Jor-el, in that whiter than blindingly white suit, with a very similar "S" logo on the front, while the rest of the Kryptonians * , also wearing blindingly white suits, have different logos. So now I'm wondering just what exactly this "S" stands for? Profession? Senator?  Shopkeeper?  Shoemaker?  Scientist? Family initial? Smith?  Scott?  Stanfield?  Sheldon? A Kryptonian version of "$&quo

look! a jelly fish

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and a few other things...this is the Birkenhead Bridge. It opens in the centre so that tall masted ships can get through. Walk across this bridge, follow the road around to the left, keep going and you end up in Semaphore. On a good day you can look into the water and see jellyfish. See that translucent circle just bottom left of centre? Jellyfish. Some days the water is so thick with them, I could stand and watch for hours. The last small dock before the bridge. Barnacle crusted pylons and concrete supports. Maybe these were left from the old pier before the new  bridge was built? the signal arm on top of the bridge tower, you can see those in the first photo. Lastly, sunlight on the water.

whimsical wednesday # 15

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Here it is, Whimsical Wednesday, a day to smile at these cute images I found at google. Sunny side up, just how I like them.

the way of the river

I have a few blogs on my list that take quite some time to load, mostly those with lots of photos. I don't mind this at all, although I used to. I'd click on the link, the page would start to load and several minutes later I'd be finger-tapping the table and muttering....well, you don't need to know what I was muttering. But now, I have a different approach. Kim, at Frog Ponds Rock,   often has a lot of photos, so I'll click her link, then go and sweep some floors while the page loads. Then I'll come back and read her post. Melissa at Suger Coat It has a blog that takes a while to load. Click the link and wander into the kitchen to put a frozen dinner in the microwave, or make a sandwich, cup of coffee... Come back and read the post. Tiffany at Three Ring Circus also has many pictures, mostly of her gorgeous kids. Click the link, go off and wash some dishes. Come back and read the post. Red Nomad travels Australia and takes amazing photos o

a little closer to the lighthouse

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here's a few photos of things right up close to the lighthouse, taken while looking down from the viewing deck, more properly known as the observation deck I suppose. The shade sails between the lighthouse and the empty block next door. In the top left hand corner the lettering reads The Port. These flags are attached to the lighthouse. looking down, to the left of the shade sails, along the wharf. a little further left is the ticket booth where you can book a ride on the Dolphin Explorer. This is the biggest of the tour boats and goes way out by the top end of Torrens Island to an area known as Dolphin Sanctuary, where dolphins can be spotted if you're lucky. The Dolphin Explorer just coming back in. She's wide and high, with three viewing levels. This is the one I've been on, but sadly I didn't see any dolphins that day. Since I didn't own a camera back then it didn't really matter. I'll be going out again. This is the ro