Friday 18 December 2015

Best wishes for 2016

Dear Readers

Wishing you all the very best of good fortune, health, happiness and peace
for 2016.

I guess it's obvious what I decided to bake for the festive season: gingerbread! These are deliciously spiced, with that special flavouring from golden syrup, too. They need to soften for a week or so, then they will be ready to eat. PfeffernΓΌsse are like that, too. They're like rocks when you first bake them, then they soften up beautifully after a week or two sitting in the tin. These are iced using royal icing.

Mr Biscuit and friends are putting their heads together to try and dream up a
peaceful New Year for everyone.

See you again in 2016, with more ideas and fun!
Image: Mr Biscuit and friends are dreaming up a peaceful 2016.
 

Saturday 12 December 2015

Biscuits - some thoughts

At the moment, I'm trying to decide what to bake for the upcoming festive season. We may get a visitor or two (or maybe not?), so I need to have something yummy to offer people with their cup of tea if they visit.

Gingerbread is a possibility. I need to get some different shaped cookie cutters. The second reason for baking gingerbread is to do with inventing a character for a series of adventure pictures that I've started painting.

But more about that in a later post.

The biscuits shown below were delicious jam-filled, bought biscuits. When this painting was displayed in one of my exhibitions, I put the same plate of biscuits on a plinth underneath where the picture was hanging in the gallery, and people could eat one if they wanted.

I'm glad to say that this picture, like most shown in my blog, is now in someone's private collection. I do hope they are enjoying those biscuits as much as I enjoyed painting them!

Image: Biscuits by Alisa Perks. Gouache on paper.
 

Friday 4 December 2015

Itchy feet!

Sometimes a feeling of restlessness is natural, and the desire to explore other places gives me itchy feet. I feel very lucky to be able to roam around the country, visiting towns, cities, national parks, lots of places, without having to  show documentary evidence of my existence to authorities.
 
It's great fun to decide where to go and explore, and so interesting to arrive in a place where I've never been before but have probably heard about many times.

"Get in the car!" has become the catchcry in the household lately, as those itchy feet make themselves felt. The places we choose to visit are often west of the Great Dividing Range.

When travelling in the car, the dashboard becomes a useful keep-warm facility for meat pies and other hot snacks to be eaten further down the road at a good stopping place. This facility is called the "Dashboard Bain Marie".

Image: To Mungindi by Alisa Perks. Gouache on paper.
I got the inspiration for this painting when we were heading north from Moree to Mungindi. Mungindi is up on the Queensland border with New South Wales. We had been enjoying the hot artesian spa baths in Moree, as we have done many times, and decided to take this side-trip as a bonus. We had a pie in Mungindi.