A parcel from France

Over on the Down to Earth Simple Living Forums we are currently having a bookmark swap and today my parcel arrived from my swap partner in France. It is exciting to receive mail from overseas as it usually only happens to me when the penfriends I made when I was a teenager send a calendar from Canada and England at Christmas.

The swap was for two bookmarks, a homemade card or postcard and a recipe but we could add extras in our parcel if our swap partner was happy with that as mine was and I wanted to include some brochures, etc. from Mt.Isa to show her what the Australian Outback is like. So she sent me some souvenirs from France.

As well as the very cute monster bookmarks in the top photo which sit on the corners of a page, she also made these bookmarks which are decorated with paper napkins. Very nice. This is one side...

...and this is the other side. My daughter mentioned that she uses paper napkins for some craftwork she does but I can't remember what it is now but I had a look on Pinterest and found this page showing craft items decorated with paper napkins. I particularly like the floral ones on there.

 There is also a postcard calendar which has some interesting photos on it and I am not sure what
' Les Landes' means....

...as well as a very sturdy fridge magnet which shows how resin was collected from pine trees up until a few years ago. Her 'department' which I guess is her State or Territory has the biggest forest of pine trees in Europe. What a fascinating country France is!

I also received a recipe for 5,4,3,2,1 cake. Doesn't that sound interesting? Well here is the recipe if you would like to try it out:

5,4,3,2,1 Cake

5 bulging (I think that means our ' heaped' ) tablespoons flour

4 heaped tablespoons sugar

3 heaped tablespoons milk

2 heaped tablespoons oil

1 egg

+ a pinch of salt and 1/2 sachet of baking powder. (Hmm, I will have to find out how big a sachet is)

Update: It sounds like half an 11g sachet would equate to a heaped teaspoon of baking powder if my calculations are correct.

Mix everything and cook in the oven at 180C.

It makes a small cake. For a normal sized cake, double the proportions.

I will see if I can replace the sugar with either Dextrose or Rice Malt Syrup.

So that was a nice surprise to find in the letter box today. Surprises are few and far between these days since I have retired and it made a nice change. I prefer those kind of surprises to the other sort though :-)

On a different subject, you may have seen on the news that John Nash and his wife were killed on Saturday when the taxi they were in was involved in an accident. You can read about the accident here.  If you don't recognise the name you would probably remember the movie 'A Beautiful Mind' in which Russell Crowe played the part of John Nash. He overcame the debilitating symptoms of schizophrenia and was an an inspiration and encouragement to others with the same diagnosis to not give up.

He will be greatly missed by his family, colleagues and students I am sure. If anyone reading my blog has a family member with schizophrenia, do find a support group for yourself like ARAFMI as there is one in each Aussie state and there are similar groups overseas or join the caregivers at schizophrenia.com where you will undoubtedly find many others facing the same challenges as yourself.

Have a great week everyone!