The Monday after the unblogged weekend

 I had plans.  I took photos.  I wrote lists.

I did some. 

Rainy Saturday Night thoughts

 Can you believe that there was thunder and lightning earlier today?

There was.  And rain.  Good thing that I left the clothes on the line, because we needed rain.

I have also hit upon the most delicious recipe combination today.

The brief was find a solution for:

• Excess sourdough discard to be utilized
• A discovery of a bottle of zucchini pickles given by 'Salina who had received it from one of her clients.  She is often the recipient of gorgeous craft projects by those thankful for her ministrations.  I know - can you believe that 'Salina is a grown up now?

(And Paris is so very close to 16 now.  She reminded me the other day that this year she will be able to get her learners permit.

I am duly concerned...)

Ahem 

• A need to run down supplies ; and
• Book club tomorrow - I always bake something for book club.

That gave me an idea.

Which then gave me the impetus to find many recipes on the internet, two of which I combined and then put my own twist on it.

I used the sourdough discard dough from Homegrown Happiness's "Sourdough Pull Apart Bread"- doesn't that look delicious? - and My Love of Baking's "Sourdough Cheesy Garlic Pull Apart Bread

But I did not make anything cheesy or garlicky (well, not so much)

I trimmed the parsley that we keep as an indoor plant in the front window to Opal's delight and added garlic salt to a 75% wholemeal dough, which smelled so amazing.

Of course I didn't take photos.  But trust me, with my current camera status, your imagination is far better at illustrating than my offerings.

This is a sourdough from several weeks ago to show you what I mean.

Anyhoo - so after a time of faffing around, and limited to the ingredients to hand, I then split it into two (as one lot for book club and one for home) and rolled it out.

I spread the zucchini pickles and then a light layer of grated cheese (or when you run out, some of that Cholula Verde Sauce that was once on special at the local Colesworth - sneaky beggars - have had to pay full price for it forever since, but you have to get your value with it before it is forced to flee the fridge)

Then after doing the My Love of Bakings amazing scroll work and proofing it again it got baked in a fairly hot oven and they smelled ah-maz-ing.

The final result is also all of that. 

Paris, my daughter just walked past and told me to go to bed.  I told her I was just blogging about these and she said to tell you that they were the bestest ever.

Oh no, she said to tell you that she was the bestest ever.

But that was not the sum total of my endeavours in the kitchen today.  Our lemon tree is currently at almost peak season, with about 30% of the tree's fruit becoming ripe this morning.

On the upside, I was actually home to harvest.

And also on the upside, I had time to make something that has unfortunately become a favourite of late.

The battle to remain focused on health when it tastes so good with flour and sugar and eggs is a continuing struggle.

Especially when the gooey lemon squares taste SO. DARNED. GOOD. (Preppy Kitchen's Lemon Bars)

Ahem.

By the way - the above representation of a lemon - yes, that 611g (1.3 lb) lemon above - that one is a hall of famer, being picked about a month ago.  It was used in a previous baking effort.

 This wasn't the post that I came in here to write - it was going to be about rain and childhood and stuff like that - but the food got in first.

Sweet dreams all. 

 

Bank rant part 2

I spent 1.5 hours in a bank yesterday trying to get my access to Dad's accounts sorted (back story below) (with the bank bloke who had set it up in the first place)

First, he said it was because I missed the text to verify - but I hadn't missed the text to verify

Then it was because I must have done something to the previous text to make it think it was spam (but it wasn't that)

Maybe Telstra was considering the texts that the bank sent were spam (I am sure that many of their customers would have similar problems if that were the case - and I receive many verification texts for work all day)

Finally we found the problem - although he had checked MY phone number and MY email address when setting it up, somewhere along the way it had made Dad's phone number the one for verification

I explained that the reason that I HAD to be given access in the first place is so I could download statements for the accountant and my Dad is basically tech illiterate - the only time he ever gets texts is when one of his adult children or grandchildren check his phone and advise him of the 30 or so waiting - as fair as he is concerned, the best thing about these new-fangled phones is you can see people's faces on them.

So hooray - fixed it, but as we had tried too many times we wouldn't be able to see if it worked as I would have to wait a half-hour before trying again.

With trepidation last night, I finally logged in.  Hooray.

I saw the accounts (which haven't been able to be accessed for nearly 9 months).  Hooray.

And I found that the mystery still hasn't been solved, as the credit card top-up that happens monthly must be coming from another mystery account...

Getting Dad and me into a bank takes a LOT of logistics - our next chance is October 22.

 On the upside, its Saturday and I am not driving in to town AT ALL today.

I might even bake something sweet for book club. 

Blatherings and a bank rant

 I awoke again at a god-awful hour - we were preparing to go on our trip to the US but I had to help harvest this bumper crop of capsicums and chillis from a tree first because we were going to give them to someone and then we realised it was a half hour before we had to board the plane and nobody had organised a taxi and THEN I remembered that we still had to put the cat into the cattery...

Thank goodness THAT was a dream.

18 days until my very well organised departure for our trip abroad - and the cat is booked into the cattery and the car is organised to be garaged by a friend and I don't have a chilli bush (any more - cue tears).

That was at 1:45am.

I went back to bed - but I have a rule, and that is if I can't get back to sleep in a half hour I pull the pin on the malarkey and arise.

You will be most pleased to know that my last 3 hours have been very productive, and I have a list for the rest of my day.

One of the things on my list is to go to a bank during my work lunch half-hour.  Given it is at least 10 minutes either way, I am counting on my work being flexible (they will be, I am flexible with them) because I am not holding my breath that the bank will rectify matters in 10 minutes.  I mean, it has taken them - what month are we in?  July 2025 - at least 9 months thus far.

Lets call them Star Bank.  Star Bank no longer have a branch in the little town that my parents come from.  

Mum used to be the best money manager, and my Dad didn't have to do a thing in relation to it except do stuff that got money in and spend it.

When Mum started to develop "memory issues" her team of children and children-in-law put in enough scaffolding to enable another few years of getting through tax time, but there came a time when simplification was required, and simplification means reducing the number of banks that were required to be dealt with.

One bank - the one that has a branch that Dad can go into locally - was to remain - however as we were unsure of what automatic payments were required on a credit card, and because Dad remained fond of his cheque book, a second bank - Star Bank - still had these accounts ticking over.

Star Bank has a part-time branch in a town about an hour away from where they live, and so it requires some logistics and holding your mouth right to get him to the bank with someone who can translate bureaucracy for him and his reactions for the bank.  We had that happen twice - the first time there was no online access offered to him but they cut off the access that Mum had previously used - which meant no statements or monitoring of accounts; and the second time when they gave an access for him to set up.

Unfortunately when it was set up, it only offered one of the two accounts, so he managed to see them while in that town again on a medical trip.   They flicked a few switches and made it whirr and assured him it was fixed. 

It wasn't.

On Wednesday when he was in my town for a medical appointment (I live 2 hours away) I took my lunch break to go to the bank with him.  They saw the problem immediately - he has 2 banking profiles, and the one he knows about wasn't the one with all the accesses.  When pressed, they were unallowed to tell me any details about that profile as only he was to know them.

In order for me to do so, I would have to become a signatory on his account, so we sat down with a johnny and did all the paperwork required for this to happen.  I was handed a card and advised I could set up my online access at home.

I received a text message advising it was set up, telling me I would get an email.

I did not get an email.

I tried to access at home.  Unfortunately I did not receive any verification codes to enable the setup to be completed.

So yesterday (Thursday) my lunch break was spent on the phone with Star Bank.  The first third of this time was going around and around in circles advising me that it would be easier on the app, just log in!  and then asking me for an access code that I did not have because (rinse and repeat).  

I hung up and eventually found my way through to the promise of a real person. So the next 10 minutes was spent on hold.  Finally a young man came on to "help" me.

Turns out - the number on the card that they handed me was wrong, and the only way to fix this is for me to go back into the bank...

Hoo boy.  Wish me luck!

(Picture of Dad holding court with (anti-clockwise) his brother, his sister, her daughter, Mum and my aunt)
 

Wednesday Morning Whirring

 My day started just before 3:15am, because 3:15am is when I finally said "bother" and got up out of bed.

I have the whirs going on in my brain.  Lets hope that there is a bit of whir left for when I get to work, because they pay me to use my brain.

Part of my whir is that this time in four weeks I will no doubt be whirring madly, as we will be about to board a flight to the other side of the world to visit V's family.

Part of my whir is all of the things that need to happen work wise in those four weeks. 

Part of my whir is all the family stuff that has to happen and that I will have and that I will miss.

Part of my whir is my to do list for the day before.

So instead I got up, made a cup of tea (ahhh, bliss), read a few blogs and applied for a quiz show.

 

 

This is not the photo that I ended up using, because all I can see in that photo is the mess of V's hanging above my head because the house that we live in has a storage issue.   

On the upside, there is no mess of all my sewing to do pile in the background because I did sort that after my whir on the weekend realising that it was my second to last "full" weekend at home before we go.

This falls in the "family stuff that I will miss" - and we will see if my phone photos work any better when I get to the "family stuff that has to happen" because it has really decided to do some retro 70s style stuff of late. 

Anyhoo - off to fix that whole "how to organise a Tuesday 27 days away" thing that got me up in the first place.
 

Any travel tips?