The process.

I bought a pre-mixed package of dry fruit from Charlesworth Nuts then topped it up with glace cherries, currents and figs.

Just the dried fruit.

The fruit, brown sugar, treacle and grog... a week later.

The pudding: bread crumbs, flour, butter, milk and lots of eggs.

The fruit and pudding briefly get to know each before getting married to each other.

Then they get 3 hours of alone time.

Confinement.

Five steamy hours in the sauna.

And here in the wine 'cellar' the pudding will rest until Christmas.

  If you look at the previous blog you will see a week of very hot weather. It actually shows the first 6 days of what turned into a 9 day heat wave, followed by 2 'cooler' days, then at 39C day, then this past Thursday the hottest November day on record, 43C.

The garden had been doing fantastic but has the heat continued the winter veggies did not fair so well. I have been unable to deal with the caterpillars because it has been too hot to spray and now it is wet. However a few things have been enjoying the sun and heat.

Chloe eventually ate the pig's ear.

A few things for a nice breakfast.

Fresh sardines I bought as a treat for David. (He cooked them).

Broccoli before the massacre.

This is all the broad beans managed to produce before the heat stressed caused some kind of disease or pest infestation.

We will thoroughly enjoy what was produced and is now in the freezer.

Grilled chicken on spaghetti with broad beans and fresh herb pesto.

Hot chicken salad.

Over-ripe bananas are great!

Chloe seeking some attention and as usual succeeding.

And then the heat hit.

To prevent further damage to the young veggies I put up an old bed sheet to provide some shade.

Citrus usually do well where we are but this tree is still getting established. I was hoping a good 2 months of spring weather would help good root establishment before the heat usually hits late December but the tree wasn't so lucky.

You should see how fat the caterpillars are.

Nikki, I still don't know what purple broccoli tastes like.

The beginning of the end.

There are dry, crispy leaves but the lettuce was saved.

However,

The tomatoes are happy.

So is the bay tree... it loves the heat!

And as long as the passion fruit has moist soil it is happy too.

This is the bed David and I dumped our worm farm into after all the worms died in the 15 day February heat wave. All of these veg are doing well from the rich organic soil. We even have an almond tree that started growing.

Chloe discoverd the toilet paper roll.

Hot weather means calls for home-made salsa... very refreshing with good corn ships and some beer.

Chloe got a cold marrow bone which she did not try to burry, instead she got stuck straight into it.

When the kitchen is hot the BBQ is a great place too cook pizza.

Here we made Ham & Pineapple and Mexican pizzas.

Avocado and sour cream finished the Mexi-pizza perfectly for that fresh cool hit.

They are very sweet when they are sleeping.

Finally, last night we enjoyed the cooler weather by making gnocchi.

Gnocchi in a sage, pumpkin sauce with sauage and broad beans.

Some for a late meal. 

It will be 2 years ago this coming summer that the hubby and I decided to venture out on a 40C day to look at some furniture, specifically a entertainment unit, coffee table and sofa table. The destination for this hunt was Furniture Design Australia, a company that manufactures all their furniture here in Adelaide. The furniture is of a very high quality in both hard wood and craftsmanship which means the furntiture was going to cost much more than that at IKEA. However, we both felt that the style would hold its own over time and as it is hard wood could easily be refinished when it begins to look tired.

However, it has not even been 2 years since we invested in long living furniture and our carefully selected sofa table no longer serves the purpose it was bought for. Last year we had a reverse cycle air conditioner (a unit that is mounted to the wall which heats and cools)  installed and we no longer use the portable gas heater which means the gas outlet on the wall is no longer used. The purpose of buying a tall sofa table was to allow for the portable heater to sit under it on that wall where the outlet it located.

So, this morning I thought I would have a look at the stores website to have a look at their buffets and to my delight I saw this one. It is very similar to our sofa table with cupboards underneith it (except the drawers are different). This leaves us with a possible option of taking our current sofa table back and asking them to add the cupboards so that we have a buffet instead.