Crackers!

Not Christmas crackers or bon bons, but plain old savoury crackers. With the nice warm weather we have been having we are eating more finger foods of late and the easiest, yummiest and cheapest dip I know how to make is by adding half a packet of french onion soup mix to a 500g tub of sour cream, stir and let sit to thicken for at least an hour before serving up. Anyway I went to buy some crackers the other day at the supermarket for the dip and my goodness what a challenge that is these days when I am trying to purchase almost all Australian made foods (excepting some spices and the like) most I found were made in China or Italy, or Australian owned but manufactured overseas or manufactured in Australia with imported products - honestly how hard can it be to get plain old crackers! After almost 15 minutes examining the labels of packets and narrowing my selection down to two brands, one got discounted as it contained a food colouring 150c (caramel) which my DS reacts to and he has enough energy at the best of times before giving him something which will send him absolutely hyperactive for a +10 hour stint. I've been doing this with different food items for quite a while - trying to purchase local produce or at the very least Australian grown & manufactured products, it started a couple of years ago when I first started reading about food miles and then the 100 mile diet, but also about the issues associated with disruptions to the food supply chain by political or climate change factors in cities and countries where they rely heavily upon imported food sources means we really should be taking an example from somewhere like Havana http://sustainablecities.dk/en/city-projects/cases/havana-feeding-the-city-on-urban-agriculture not bulldozing our own producing regions to build yet more houses and importing product from overseas. Imported product which might not necessarily be treated with the same standard of chemicals and fertilisers as we have in our own country. One example earlier this year that really annoyed me was that Australia now imports 22% of the apples consumed here - which is nuts when so many of our orchards are being bulldozed and family farms are being lost to bankruptcy as they can't get buyers for the produce. This coupled with the fact that the imported apples possible contain over 18 known pests and/or diseases that are currently not in our country further jepardises the shrinking local markets that we currently have. Don't get me wrong I understand that trade is good for the economy and brings in jobs and much needed income and skills as well as helping us develop culturally, but at what cost to our own children's futures - their jobs, health, environmental damage. Maybe limiting the importation of staple food items is an option? Or educating consumers about the sources of the produce they are eating - I am loving the tickets on food that were introduced a year or so ago in major supermarkets in the fresh produce/deli sections as now you can see where things come from and interestingly how one supermarket chain suddenly started promoting that they were selling Australian garlic not irradiated imported stuff or the Australian grown baby sweetcorn rather than the stuff imported from overseas as not exactly fresh! I guess time will tell...................


Creatively here are a couple fo things to share. The first is a very lovely and simple candy cane treat made by the very talented Charmaine (my SU upline) - how simple but lovely is that? Well I thought it was pretty darn nice, especially as she made one for me as a gift *grin* I made the stocking box, which was adapted from a template from a canadian SU demonstrator, Andrea Walford,  that made a flat stocking gift card holder and I CASEd (copy and share with everyone) the idea from Charmaine who made it into a box - albeit a much nicer one than mine, but I still liked mine too! If you'd like to see more of Charmaine's works then check out her blog http://www.l-ink-edtopaper.blogspot.com/ (one day I'll learn how to embed a link into a word instead of cutting and pasting hyperlinks!!!!)



On a soapy front, I think I have finished most of the Christmas orders now (?) and even got to have fun making some large cupcakes that were all pink and sparkly for a friend (very girly!!) unfortunately my photography is a lot like my computer skills, more functional than flashy and the glitter doesn't really show up well in the photo as being really sparkly - it was a silver rainbow glitter (bodysafe) that I used and it looks 100 times better in real life than in the photo below! Okay back to the kitchen for me - I'm making yummy little meringues for the playgroup party tomorrow, last week I made marshmallow candy canes for the toddler group party and they went down pretty quick too!