Lighthouses & Anzacs

"Lighthouse girl" written by Dianne Wolfer and illustrated by Brian Simmonds
Written for children, this story is set in Albany in 1914. Using a diary style, it is based on an incident in the life of Fay Catherine Howe, the Breaksea Island Lighthouse Keeper's daughter.
Fay lives alone with her father on bleak, windswept Breaksea Island, at the entrance to King George Sound near Albany in Western Australia. Her isolated life takes a dramatic turn with the outbreak of World War I.
Fay collects the messages of lonely soldiers heading to the front-line in the Middle-East. She is their last hope of getting messages telegraphed back home. After their departure for the battlefields of Egypt and Gallipoli, she follows their fortunes and continues her long distance conversations with letters and postcards. Then one day, a single, sad telegram arrives, and the war is brought brutally home.
Drawing on archival material, newspaper articles & sketches, and interweaving fact with fiction, Dianne Wolfer deftly recreates this period in Australian history from the perspective of a young girl.
The story is further complemented by a series of fabulous, evocative charcoal illustrations by Brian Simmonds.

Breaksea light & keepers cottage by Brian Simmonds

Breaksea lighthouse 410km south-east of Perth, was built in 1858. Its elevation is 117m, and the tower another 14m. The original prefabricated cast-iron tower, located entrance to King George Sound, was imported from England, and erected by convicts. The octagonal granite living quarters surrounded the tower, are now in ruins. The new tower built in 1901, at elevation 119m, the tower is 16m, and was made of local granite. In 1926 it was automated and demanned, and is now solar-powered. The two keeper’s cottages have deteriorated significantly.

Breaksea Lighthouse today

#57 More recipes with Tastespotting

I needn't have included a recipe in my previous SmileBox post, 'cos this thing is about food & recipes too. Tastespotting is a delicious site of links to food blogs with lots of hyper-linked pictures of inspiring, crave-worthy food and kitchen items. Some are from everyday amateurs others from professional cooks. I did the usual - how American is it? not, there's 38 pavlova recipes! I particularly liked this one from New Zealand commemorating Anzac Day, though I'm not as sure about her Anzac biscuits which have icing dizzled on them (not traditional somehow)

Lamington Pavlova Roll

3 whole free range eggs
½ teaspoon of vanilla extract
110 grams / 3½ oz of castor / superfine sugar
75 grams / 2½ oz of flour, sifted
2 to 3 tablespoons of strawberry or raspberry jam
2 large free range eggs, separated, whites only
pinch of salt
75 grams / 2½ oz of castor / superfine sugar
½ teaspoon of vanilla extract
250 grams / 8½ oz of quality dark chocolate, chopped
½ cup / 125ml / 4¼ floz of cream
¾ cup of dessicated coconut, approximately to coat
1. Preheat the oven to 200°C
2. Line a swiss roll tin with parchment cooking paper.
3. Whisk 3 whole eggs, the first measure of vanilla and sugar with an electric mixer or beater on high until the mixture resembles a thick stable foam, and the mark from a spoon dragged through the mixture doesn’t disappear.
4. Sift in the flour, and very gently fold the flour in with a large metal spoon. Gently pour the mixture into the prepared tin and smooth out to the corners with a pallet knife.
Bake for 8 to 10 minutes.
5. Meanwhile in a clean bowl, with clean beaters, beat the egg whites to a foam, add the salt and beat until soft peaks form which fold over when the beater is removed.
6. Slowly beat in the second measure of castor sugar a little at a time.
7. Add the vanilla and keep beating until the mixture is stiff and the peaks stand strong when the beater is removed.
8. Back to the sponge; check it is cooked by carefully running your hand over the top, it is cooked if it feels almost firm to the touch.
9. Turn it out immediately onto a cake rack covered with a clean dry tea towel.
10. Peel off the cooking paper and roll up (start from one of the longer edges) while still hot to prevent the sponge cracking.
11. Unroll again and evenly spread the strawberry or raspberry jam over.
12. Lower the oven temperature to 180°C.
13. Place a clean sheet of parchment paper into the swiss roll tin.
14. Carefully lift the sponge back into the tin and evenly spread over the previously whipped meringue, to cover the jam surface.
15. Bake for a further 6 to 8 minutes, or until the meringue is lightly golden and feels firm to the touch.
16. Remove from the oven and sliding a palate knife under the sponge bottom, carefully transfer the whole cake back to the cooling rack covered with a clean dry tea towel.
17. Working quickly while still warm gently roll the cake with the aid of the tea towel into a neat log roll, again starting from the longer side.
18. Remove the tea towel and place the cake joined side down to cool.
1. Make the ganache coating:
2. Melt the chocolate in a double boiler (bain-marie).
3. Warm the cream in a saucepan or microwave, be careful not to scald.
4. Add the warm cream to the chocolate (still in the double boiler) and mix together until evenly combined with no lumps.
5. Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly.
6. Pour the ganache while still quite runny, but thick over the entire cake. NB: you may wish to place a clean tray under the cake and cooking rack to collect the excess run off.
7. Sprinkle the cake generously with coconut and leave to set before serving.
Serves 8
I love the idea of combining two Aussie staples - Pav and lamingtons, it's soo 'Possum Magic'

Smiling for food

Still with Smilebox, technically I started with this recipe card before the scrapbook, but didn't know the ingredients by heart, so I put this aside till I could access my recipe book. So now here is the much talked about old family recipe for Berlina Torta, complete with music!

Make a Smilebox recipe

#56 Smile for the camera

Smilebox is an easy-to-use application that lets you use photos and videos to create scrapbooks, postcards, slideshows, ecards, etc, to keep in touch and share your memories.
I found it more intuitive than Scrapblog though you can't add all the little borders and features, this is just dropping the photos in - quick and easy.
I created the embedded scrapbook below just by playing around (can't get rid of the adverts on the free version unfortunately), I need to read up on the instructions & tutorial to find what the site can really do, but the uses go beyond the cute family & friends, could be useful for kids the "Glitter Gal" or the "Sports Magazine" have possibilities, hours of fun just scrolling through to see what's available.

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

#55 SlideSharing

SlideShare is an online community for sharing presentations. It lets you upload presentations and share them online through a Youtube style interface. You can Share slideshows publicly or privately, and Embed slideshows into your own blog or website.
Like other social networking services, you can add tags to your presentations, and/or comment on others’ presentations.
For the Exercise I had to set up a free account with SlideShare, and search for and embed a slideshow in your blog then blog about the experience and what use you could find for SlideShare.
Obviously the sharing of conference presentations is the first use you'd consider (never have to actual attend in person anymore!). The 100MB limit will keep any presentation brief however, as I found if converted to a pdf file. I chose to also create a presentation (on something that interests me!) and it's embedded below. First attempt Blogger refused to allow it, but better luck second time.

A Heritage Of Bridges

View more presentations from SlipSliding.

Googling

Loved the change to the Google site a while back.
Using Eric Carle's images from everyone's favourite "The very hungry caterpillar".

#54 BookJetty

There are similar sites to LibraryThing (at Thing #11) that you can use to catalogue your own library, list books you want to own or read or review books.
Bookjetty is such a site where people can catalogue their books and list things they are reading, have read or want, review books, tag them, rate them and add a widget to their blog.
But here’s the difference: if you want an item, you can link to Amazon to buy it ,and you can search listed library catalogues, see if the item is available and reserve it.
I had to join, set up local libraries that you would like to search, catalogue a minimum of six books, install the Bookjetty widget on my blog then blog about the experience.
Well I found the site difficult to navigate, in that I knew what I wanted but working which bit controlled which action took some time. I added a few books & libraries (no Swift ones, suggested my local one - still waiting) and added the widget to my Sidebar. Overall I'd prefer LibraryThing now that it too can link to your library catalogue, even though it is still frustratingly slow.