On Friday, Sandra and I had to go to Nambour to visit Sandra's mum in the hospital. She had just had knee replacement surgery. She is recovering quite well and seemed in good spirits when we went to see her. We stayed a little while and chatted about this and that and I opened a package I had received that morning from my good friend "Haggis" in Scotland. The package contained Scottish Sweets. Some "tablet" which is a very sugary confection made from condensed milk and icing sugar. It is kind of like caramel fudge, but much much sweeter.
Scottish Tablet (front) with
Macaroons
I also got some Scottish Macaroon Bars which is another very sweet Scottish Confection which, surprisingly, is made of Mashed Potato mixed with icing sugar and coated in chocolate and coconut.
Scottish Macaroon Bars
Haggis had told me she was sending me macaroon and I had a completely different idea of what it was, because in Australia, Macaroons are small coconut cakes.
Coconut Macaroons
As well as these lovely, yummy and fattening treats, Haggy had enclosed a lovely pendant and earrings made from sterling silver for my birthday. They have cubic zirconias set in little hearts and they're absolutely gorgeous. I don't have the camera handy at present to take a picture of them, but I will try to include on in the next post.
She also enclosed some DVDs for me to watch and I have watched one of them already. It was a horror movie called Devour starring Jensen Ackles who is a favourite actor of ours and appears in the television series "Supernatural." The movie was quite gory and there was a lot of blood, but it has a very good plot. I won't go into it too much here, because I have a lot to cover in this entry.
After we had looked at all the things in the package and stayed to chat for a little longer, Sandra and I took our leave and headed off to the show. In Australia a "Show" is like a county fair kind of thing. I had been looking forward to going, because for one thing, I love looking at all the exhibits and for another I had heard that Annette Syms was going to be there. Annette has written a series of cook books that we use a lot. They are called "Symply Too Good To Be True" and have many delicious low calorie and low fat recipes in them. Annette used to be very overweight, but she lost all the weight and has kept it off for 14 years, just by adjusting recipes to be low fat, low calories and with a focus on being quick and easy. We have a few favourite recipes from her books.
Annette Syms in front of her
display at the Woolworths Pavillion
The photo in the background is how
she used to look before she lost weight.
Annette cooked three of the recipes from her books and we got to taste test them. She made French Onion Dip, Mango chicken, and a dessert called Cherry Heaven. All three courses combined only had about 12g of fat! and it only took her about 20-40 minutes to prepare all three.
At the end of her demonstration, she asked how many people there liked coca cola. She took out a 1.25 litre bottle of it and asked how many teaspoons full of sugar are in one bottle. Then she got out a bag of sugar, a bowl, and a spoon and began spooning sugar into the bowl while we counted. She didn't stop til she got to 32.
No wonder I lost 15kg just by cutting coca cola out of my diet!
There was a lot to see at the show, and we hadn't thought to bring any cameras along, but I had my mobile phone with me which has a camera built in, and I used that to take some photos.
One of my favourite exhibits at any show is the cake decorating exhibit and this show did not disappoint.
My favourite display was a Christmas scene made from icing.
The note on the top image says: Everything made out of icing, including the grass and chimney. (Chimney not shown in photos)
I also liked the below cake, because of the unusual design and the colors used.
It definitely was worthy of first prize in its class because of the beautiful detail. Even the lacework on the sides is made from icing.
We also went to the budgerigar, poultry and cattle pavillions and saw alpacas and llamas.
In the budgerigar (Parakeet) pavillion we were treated to see a rare variety of budgie called a "Feather Duster" This is a genetic throwback and is a rare sight because they don't usually live beyond a few weeks. The one we saw was 7 weeks old, and the oldest one that the breeder knew of had lived to be 14 weeks. This is no hoax, this bird was real. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen for myself, but the bird is born with some genetic mistake which makes its feathers grow continuously. It doesn't moult like other birds and the feathers grow very long.
A "Feather Duster" Budgerigar (Parakeet)
As I understand it, these birds are sterile and flightless and the lady we talked to about it said that the length of life depends on how much effort the breeder puts into feeding them. They need extra attention she said, and probably extra feeding because so much energy is spent in growing the feathers that not enough is absorbed to keep the bird alive.
I felt privileged to see such an amazing little creature. She was lovely.
So our day at the show was almost at an end. We went to buy showbags and then got a plate of Pofertjes to share before the drive home to Nambour.
I hope you enjoyed reading about our day!
Love and Light!
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