Day 232/366

I promised you that I would post about my and Mr Honey Pie's op-shop crawl which happened on Thursday.

This little cutie was our first purchase, along with a one dollar poetry book from 1947.  We found both in the Bangalow Anglican Opportunity Shop.

Can you guess what the little contraption above is?

Well, I guess the cups are a give away.

It's a mini two-cup Irmel moka pot or stove top espresso coffee maker.

It was priced at fourteen dollars.

Funnily enough, none of the women working in the shop knew what it was and we had to tell them.

Mr Honey Pie needs another coffee maker like he needs a hole in the head.

This is his second two-cup stove top coffee maker, and his fifth stove top coffee maker.

And of course he has an electric espresso coffee machine too.

And me?  Well I hate coffee.

The only way I will drink coffee is served as an affogato (a scoop of vanilla icecream served with a shot of espresso coffee).

And it must be before noon.  Anything later and I'm awake until two in the morning.

What is special about this little machine is that it's (obviously)pink and anodised aluminium.

This morning Mr Honey Pie made two cups of espresso coffee with it just to try it out.

I don't think he will be making his coffee regularly with it, but I can see that he has a nice little collection of moka pots in the making. 

The poetry book is titled 

The Quiet Spirit An Anthology of Poems Old & New, Compiled by Frank Eyre.

Initially I intended to use it for my paper crafts but then I started flicking through the pages.

This poem caught my attention:

All look and likeness caught from earth,

All accident of kin and birth,

Had pass'd away. There was no trace

Of aught on that illumined face,

Upraised beneath the rifted stone,

But of one spirit all her own;--

She, she herself, and only she,

Shone through her body visibly.

In the book the title was a number: 98. 

I had to turn to the back pages of the book to find out that the poet's name is: COLERIDGE and the poem's title is 'Phantom'.

Well, guess who one of my favourite poets is?  Yes, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

'In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure dome decree,

where Alph, the sacred river ran through caverns measureless to man down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles... ' (From memory).

And who doesn't know the Rime of The Ancient Mariner?

I've decided to keep the book.

Inside the front cover, the following words have been handwritten:

'For Edna

March 3rd 1947.'

Day 231/366

When growing carrots in the garden, they need more potassium and less nitrogen for better growth.

Too much nitrogen induces forking while adding potassium promotes sweetness and solid growth.

Soil temperatures that are too low (below 5oC) will slow seed germination and temperatures that are too high may mean a wait of anything up to thirty five days for germination.
A soil temperature of around 10oC is best for germination.

Carrots are cool weather vegetables preferring sandy soils.

After our holiday, I think that a detox is in order.
So I made soup for tea tonight.
My carrot plot needed a further thinning out so I pulled the above tiny carrots to make a stock with some chicken carcasses I had in the freezer.
A nourishing stock was made by adding a bunch of fresh herbs from the garden, an onion, Celtic sea salt, filtered water and peppercorns which were all simmered for around two hours.
A light soup was made by straining the stock, adding two parsnips, the shredded chicken meat, the onion (chopped), two cakes of rice noodle,shavings of fresh ginger and  simmering again until the parsnip was cooked.
I served the soup with the addition of a dash of cream, freshly cracked pepper and slices of fresh lime (purchased yesterday from an op-shop in Bangalow).
Here is the result:

The soup was very satisfying and there's enough leftover for lunch tomorrow.

Day 229/366

Once again, it's difficult to choose just one photograph to depict the day's experiences.

On our way south, after stopping at Bangalow for morning tea, we went to Bexhill, to visit the open air cathedral.

The 'cathedral' is surrounded by a memorial garden with a beautiful array of Australian native plants.

The majority of the native plants are grevilleas. 

Grevilleas come in an array of colours, from ivory, to gold to red to pink to apricot.

Grevilleas belong to the family Proteaceae and are known for their quirky resemblance to a toothbrush.

Like this one:

After our visit to Bexhill, we drove to Casino where we went on an op-shop crawl.

We managed to pick up a few bargains which I will post about once we've returned home.

(Actually, our op-shop crawl began in Bangalow!)