sallysetsforth

This week I started a small potted herb garden to see us through the summer. It's just a temporary one until we move, but it's definitely worth it. There's nothing like adding herbs from your own garden to a home-cooked meal - especially when it's to highlight the flavour of some freshly picked vegetables from the same garden :)

I've planted parsley, chives, thyme and oregano. I may also try to get some sage and coriander growing from a previous season's saved seeds.

In addition to these potted herbs, we're also growing basil hydroponically (along with tomatoes, etc. in the greenhouse). We have some very healthy rosemary plants in the front garden, and mint grows happily under the garden tap.



This summer's plantings certainly won't reach the glorious heights of my former herb garden, which I must admit I allowed to become overgrown and pot-bound (waiting to be planted out in the landscaped cottage garden that never happened). For several years I had the pleasure of growing lemon verbena, sage, tarragon, lemongrass, chocolate mint, lemon thyme, pineapple sage, tansy, lemon balm, coriander and catmint.

My absolute favourite herb is lemon verbena - the leaves smell like lemonade icypole when you rub them between your fingers :)



Lemon verbena photo credit to daveleb (found on Flickr).

This is a great little dessert for the warmer months. It finishes a South-East Asian meal beautifully, but goes nicely with most other meals too. The use of agar-agar powder makes it suitable for vegetarians, and gives it a different texture to jellies made from gelatin. If you've never used pandan essence before, it is a real treat! It's bright green in colour, and has a distinctive sweet taste. I've heard it described as Malaysia's equivalent to vanilla.

Pandan Coconut Milk Jelly
Serves 6

Ingredients:

• 150g pkt Maggi Coconut Milk Powder Mix
• Enough water to make up 1 litre of coconut milk
• 250g white sugar
• 1 slurp (a few drops) pandan paste or essence
• 13g pkt Rose Brand Finest Agar-Agar Powder

Method:

• Combine the coconut milk powder mix with warm water to make up 1 litre of coconut milk (this results in a slightly weaker coconut milk than the instructions on the packet). Add to a medium to large saucepan, along with 250g white sugar, a slurp of pandan essence (this is optional, but it really is more fun when it's green!) and the agar-agar powder.
• Stir over medium heat, making sure to remove any lumps (a whisk helps). Bring the mixture to the boil, stirring regularly to prevent the agar-agar sticking on the bottom of the pan.
• Pour into jelly moulds (I use individual metal pudding basins, but you could use a single large mould or a bunch of those cute little fancy moulds used for Malaysian sweets). Allow to cool for 10-15 minutes before placing in the fridge for about 30 minutes to finish setting.

If I'm being extra fancy, I serve the jellies surrounded by palm seeds, coconut gel cubes and balls of honeydew melon. But it's great on its own :)

Note: I've listed the brands of the ingredients that I used, but of course you can substitute other brands. You could also used tinned or fresh coconut milk. Just make sure that the proportion of agar-agar powder to liquid is about right (check the instructions that come with the agar-agar).

I've added this recipe to my Recipes page, which can also be found via a link from the Kitchenette page. For the most part, the Recipes page will contain recipes that I've either created myself or significantly adapted from someone else's recipe (in which case credit will be given).

At the moment, there are only two recipes there: the jelly recipe from this post; and a recipe for okonomiyaki (Japanese pancake). The okonomiyaki recipe is super easy to make, and really delicious :)

Tim and I decided that we have time to make a batch of home brew (and maybe even drink it all) before we move north. So today Tim dug the fermenter out of the garage and got started. He's sterilising the fermenting vessel and assorted paraphernalia as I type.

Once the ingredients are combined and the brewing process gets underway, we'll be ready for bottling in a week or so. It will be all hands on deck to sterilise, prime, fill and cap the bottles. A couple of weeks after that, it will be ready to drink :)

We've chosen Coopers English Bitter as this season's beer. In previous years we've made pale ale, wheat beer, stout and ginger beer (mmm, ginger beer). So far we've just stuck to can kits, but maybe in the future we'll get a bit more adventurous.

The fermenter came from my Dad, and I also have a nice little collection of books about home brewing that were his. Dad was a great help the first year that we did a home brew. We also had some help from a friend of Tim's who gave us a bench capper, and got some good advice from our local Brewcraft store.

Home brewing is a very satisfying activity. When you make a batch that comes out just right, it's such a pleasure to share it with friends and tell them that you made it yourself. It's also extremely economical. We recycle our beer bottles, so once you have the basic equipment, each batch only costs about $20 for the ingredients, caps and sterilising compound. It makes 23 litres, which equates to about 60 stubbies (375ml bottles). Once you home brew, you'll never go back!

I'm setting myself a challenge for December - an Advent calendar of blog entries! I'm going to write one blog post every day until Christmas. It may be a full blog entry, or just a short one with maybe a photo or a thought. But I'll post something here every day.

I got the idea from the title of a blog post by Dörte Böhner, who I follow on Twitter (@bibliothekarin). And since I first saw the link to that blog post on Twitter, I think Twitter would make a good subject for my first Advent post :)

I joined Twitter back in February. Like many people, I was a bit hesitant to sign up, wondering what the point of it was, and probably worrying that it was going to be a time-waster. Hearing about the use of Twitter by Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) and Lance Armstrong (@lancearmstrong) finally convinced me to give it a go. It didn't take long to find some personal friends on Twitter, and then I was really ready to begin.

Twitter has turned out to be a lot more valuable than I initially suspected. It has become a professional networking tool, a place to discover people with similar interests, a conversational forum, a sports bulletin, a comedy venue, a go-to place for the latest news and current affairs, a space for talking about what matters to people, an amazing information sharing tool, and a place to make new friends.

My latest tweets can be seen on the Twitter widget on my website, or you can visit me at @sallysetsforth :)

If you've visited my site lately, you may have noticed a new entry on the left-hand menu. It's called "Tumblr" and it links to a web page with my latest ten Tumblr posts.

In case you haven't come across Tumblr before, it's a microblogging site, but it's quite different to that most well-known microblogging service, Twitter. With Tumblr, you can quickly and easily grab interesting things off the internet - web pages, photos, videos, quotes, blog posts, etc. - and display them on Tumblr with a comment of your own. The Tumblr post retains a link back to the source of whatever you grab. You can also write blog posts directly to Tumblr or send RSS feeds to it.

I'd wondered for a long time about whether to use Tumblr. I try not to sign up to every cool web tool or service going around, so I needed a reason to join...

One day I was wandering through some of my favourite crafty sites, and I was wondering how I could capture all the interesting projects, patterns, blog posts and ideas that I see on my online travels. I'd bookmark or favourite sites or pages in my internet browser or Google Reader, and print or save pages or photos - but then I couldn't always find (or remember!) all the great ideas for new projects that I had!

It occurred to me that I could use Tumblr as a visual bookmarking tool! When I come across something that looks interesting - maybe instructions for a craft project, or a visual inspiration for something I'd like to try - I use the Tumblr bookmarklet to capture an image from the web page and send it to my Tumblr account. The result is a stream of pictures with links back to the original web pages. Voila! Visual bookmarking :)

To be totally honest, Tumblr could be a bit more user-friendly, especially with respects to the social networking aspects. Navigation is also a bit unwieldy. But for the most part it suits my purposes just fine.

Anyway, you're welcome to check out my Tumblr - you can even subscibe to an RSS feed if you like. I won't be posting any of my own crafty creations there (you can find those on my Flickr), but maybe if you're of the crafty persuasion you might find some inspiration there yourself :)

P.S. Many thanks to my friend Jenelle for first introducing me to Tumblr through her own use of it :)

Canberra is a city that seems to arouse strong emotions in people. Whilst a small proportion of the population may simply think it's 'okay' or 'nice', the vast majority appear to either love it or hate it. I certainly know plenty of people in both camps!

Me? I am firmly in the 'love it' category!

I lived in Canberra from 1999 to 2002. I moved there from Melbourne to take up a position with a large government department as part of their graduate program. I stayed for four years, working in a variety of jobs and work areas, and living in a couple of different suburbs. Aside from the expected pangs of homesickness for my family (and the stress of maintaining a long-distance relationship), I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Canberra, and would happily live there again.

Let me tell you some of the things that I love about Canberra (yes, another list!) :)

• the excellent job and career opportunities
• the beautiful outdoor spaces to explore and enjoy
• visiting national institutions for free - Parliament House, the National Gallery, the War Memorial, the National Library, the National Botanic Gardens, etc.
• blue skies in winter
• the weekend markets at Fyshwick, Kingston and Gorman House
• being close to everyone and everything else in Canberra
• the high quality restaurant scene
• walking or running around Lake Burley Griffin (exercise with a view!)
• regular fireworks events (just about every public holiday)
• the beautiful floral displays at Floriade each year
• only 2 hours to the coast / the snow / Sydney
• walking up Mt Ainslie and enjoying this view as a reward:

But the main reason I love Canberra is the friendships that I formed while living there. Many of my closest friends are people that I first met during the graduate program in 1999. Some now live in Melbourne or Sydney, but several are still in Canberra. They have established careers, bought houses and put down roots. And I am always happy to visit Canberra so that I can see them and renew my connnections with them.

On that note, Tim and I were in Canberra a couple of weekends ago, and had the great pleasure of catching up with good friends over dinner, drinks and coffees. We visited the Canberra Museum and Gallery, and enjoyed lovely meals at the cafes in Canberra's CBD. And given the season, we also went along to Floriade - always enjoyable! I've posted some of my photos to Flickr, and you can view them HERE.

A few weeks ago, a dear former supervisor of mine passed away. He was a good man, and I very much enjoyed working with him and learning from him in my previous career in the public service. He was someone who I considered to be a valuable mentor to me, although not in any formal sense.

My reflections on this sad event, combined with a discussion on Twitter at the time about mentoring arrangements, had me thinking about the mentors - in my case they were usually also supervisors - who have encouraged and supported me in my career and life.

I consider that I've had four or five mentors during my career. They have all been generous people who:

• believed in me
• fostered my skills
• encouraged me to stretch myself
• supported and encouraged my career aspirations (not just in the job/workplace I was in at the time)
• promoted me to others
• applauded my achievements
• kept in touch after I'd moved on

One day, I might gain the confidence to ask someone that I admire to be a 'formal' mentor, but in the meantime I count myself very lucky to have had these informal mentors in my life.

By the way, I attended a very interesting session at ALIA New Librarians Symposium 2008 regarding mentoring, from Jill Benn and Michelle Brennand. The accompanying paper is located HERE. This session really made me consider the benefits of mentoring arrangements, and the paper is well worth a read.

Ahem ... it's been a little while between blog posts, hasn't it? I can't believe it's October already! The time has been flying, but what have I been up to?

Well, at the end of July I went straight from work into full-time study. Surprise, surprise (not) I struggled to get back into the swing of it. Full-time distance study requires motivation and discipline, and I was lacking both.

One of the big differences between this time studying (to complete the Masters) and the last time (for the Grad Dip) is the reason behind why I'm doing it. Last time I *needed* the qualification in order to work as a librarian, at a professional level. This time around, it's an 'extra' qualification that I'm taking on for personal professional development. It's also partly to make it easier to work overseas (which is a big 'maybe' anyway). So the motivation is different, and it allowed doubts to creep in as to why I'm doing this at all.

What else was holding me back from throwing myself into my studies? Well, there are just so many other things I'd like to be doing too! There's lots of work to be done around the house - culling our possessions in readiness for moving interstate; repairing and renovating so that we can rent the house out next year. I'd like to spend more time with friends. And then there's all the interests that I'd like to devote more time to - improving my fitness; cooking from scratch; craft and sewing (those crafts that I already do, and those that I'd like to learn); playing music (or learning to play again, in my case!); building computer graphics skills; reading for pleasure ...

I was prepared to suck it up and be miserably tied to the computer for 4-5 months, but in the end I decided to reduce my study load to 2 subjects (out of 4) and live a little at the same time. This means that I can fit in all (or at least many of) those other activities over the next couple of months rather than cramming them all in at the end of the year. Oh, and the decision was also made easier by the introduction of a new course structure next year, which has lots of interesting new subjects that I think will make it more appealing to study part-time (1 subject per semester) whilst working.

In case that all sounds fairly simple, it took me 5 weeks to make that decision! And amongst all the to-ing and fro-ing, I didn't get a great deal of study done! So I have been head-down bum-up in assignments since then, and blogging has taken a back seat. Here's hoping that my study-life balance gets healthier from here on in :)

By the way, although I've not been writing full-blown blog entries lately, I have continued to "micro-blog" on everybody's favourite micro-blogging service - Twitter! Whether you're signed up with Twitter or not, you can check out my Twitter stream at -
http://twitter.com/sallysetsforth

This Friday is my last day at the special Government library where I work. My main role for 2 years has been a combination of conducting client (end user) training and reference duties, but I also spent 6 months selecting and indexing journal articles for an in-house database.

I've had such a wonderful time - I've learnt so much and gained confidence in my skills in several new areas. I'll be sad to leave this unique library and my first-rate colleagues, but I'm also looking forward to the next stage of my life.

I'm a bit of a listmaker, and I've been thinking about the things that I will and won't miss about working at this special library.

Things I will miss:

• Smart, dedicated, friendly colleagues
• Interesting clients
• Current awareness of events in the news
• Professional discourse with colleagues
• Gossip!
• The pay check
• Helping people find what they need
• Teaching people to find what they need themselves
• Developing customised training material
• Delivering training to small and large groups
• Shopping in the city during my lunch break
• Working in a beautiful heritage building
• Morning tea!

Things I won't miss:

• Commuting by train
• Wearing a lanyard every day
• End-of-workday exhaustion
• Human Resources (think of Catbert and you'll get the idea)
• Lack of recognition of the library's value within the organisation
• Internet Explorer 6
• All the footy talk ;)
• Lotus Notes
• Pay inequality of librarians compared to other staff
• Construction work during the day
• Rostered late nights

A few years ago, while holidaying in Darwin, I got chatting with another hotel guest in the pool (as you do). She told me about the book she was reading, Lance Armstrong's auto-biography It's Not About the Bike, and recommended that I read it. That afternoon, I saw Dodgeball at the cinema, in which Lance has a cameo role. It was a sign, I thought, and when I saw his book for sale after my return to Melbourne, I bought a copy.

I'm not usually interested in athletes' biographies, but Lance has an amazing story. By the time he was diagnosed with testicular cancer in 1996 at the age of 25, it had already spread to his lungs and brain. His chances of a successful recovery were slim. However, his cancer treatment was tailored to give him the best chance of returning to sport. And it worked.

I'm sure that everyone knows about his amazing comeback, culminating in his winning the Tour de France in 1999. Of course, it didn't stop there. Lance went on to win the Tour a record-breaking seven times in a row, before retiring in 2005.

Once I'd read It's Not About the Bike, I was hooked. Hooked on Lance Armstrong and hooked on the greatest bike race in the world, the Tour de France.

I went on to read many books about the Tour de France and its history, and borrowed DVDs of previous years' Tours to watch. It's such an amazing event, full of thrills and spills, and almost superhuman physical strength!

In recent years, I have loved watching Australian riders do well in the Tour and other big races - Cadel Evans, Simon Gerrans, Stuart O'Grady, Robbie McEwen, etc. There are many terrific Australian cyclists making their mark on the international scene. I've slowly converted Tim into a cycling fan too, and we barracked together for Cadel during the last two Tours!

Then came the big news that Lance Armstrong was going to return to professional cycling! So exciting! And his first event would be the 2009 Tour Down Under!

I had never thought I'd get a chance to see Lance Armstrong ride, so of course we travelled to Adelaide to see if we could catch a glimpse. We were also looking forward to watching the Tour Down Under in person, on its 10th anniversary and its first year on the ProTour circuit - the first such race to achieve that status in the southern hemisphere.

We did catch sight of Lance being interviewed before Stage 3 (just follow the crowds!), and it was wonderful to watch all the cyclists ride out of Unley.

We also got a great little spot to watch Stage 6, which consisted of 18 laps around a road circuit just north of the city. Um, no decent photos I'm afraid - the cyclists were going so fast that they were just blurs! But we loved watching the race, which Australia's own Allan Davis won.

Fast forward a few months to my favourite bike race - le Tour! So far it has been wonderful, exciting and unpredictable. The individual time trial showed how strong Alberto Contador is, the split in Stage 3 shook up the pecking order putting Lance Armstrong in a great position, and the team time trial (a discipline that I love to watch!) saw Team Astana blow the other teams away!

As an Australian, of course I am barracking for Cadel Evans (although he is in a tough spot at the moment). But it was Lance Armstrong that introduced me to the sport of professional cycling that I now love so much. So GO LANCE!!!