Friday, June 25, 2010

The Aardvark Cottage Beautification Project # 1

We're renovating our 1920 built house. It has over the course of its life spent time in the hands of concrete-loving elderly Italians and a long string of renters. So there's lots to do! I'm going to post before and after shots...I love before and after photos!

The first one is our shed. It was asbestos (walls AND roof) with a broken old louvre window...a horrid eye-sore but it's huge and useful. We had a team of (actually, quite frightening...ex criminals?) burly blokes come and get rid of the nasty stuff and then we re-clad it in timber and painted it. It makes me so happy now!

BEFORE


AFTER


Of course the garden has also changed quite a bit...but that's for another post!

Ugly old bananas





It doesn't seem to matter how many bananas I buy, I always have a couple that end up going a more then a little sad and old in the fruit bowl. So I fling them in the freezer (my freezer is full of ugly black bananas). Every now and then they reach embarrassing plague-like proportions and I feel bad about them languishing in there, so I make muffins or a cake or smoothies...when they come out and are defrosted they are truly the most obscene sight in the world. Then they are transformed into far more palatable stuff.



Not necessarily related to this, we have rather unexpectedly got our first ever female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard (not to say that our old PM Mr Rudd was an ugly old banana or that Ms Gillard is a warm and sweet muffin).

I am a little conflicted. I am happy because she is a wonderful, strong, acid-sharp politician and a WOMAN! But I really hope the Labour party hasn't done themselves too much damage in the unprecedented process of ousting a sitting Prime Minister in his first term......we simply can't have the opposition and (shudder) Tony Abbot as our PM, now that's some hideous old bananas there!

Here's the recipe:

Banana Cake (or Muffins)

100g butter
300ml sugar (1 1/4 cups)
2 eggs
500ml plain flour (2 cups)
1tsp baking powder
2tsp cinnamon
1tsp ground ginger
2 large squashy icky old bananas
3tbls milk

Preheat oven 175C (350F)
Beat butter and sugar until light. Add eggs beating after each. Add all the rest and mix till just combined.
Bake in cake pan for 45mins to 1 hour. If making muffins, make that about 30mins.