Lucky-dip days

Today heralds the beginning of Thrift Shop preparation (for me, any way, actually they set up the gym yesterday).

You never know who Thrift Shop is going to give you the opportunity to spend time with, so it is a bit like a lucky-dip of a day for an extrovert like me. Of course by the end of four days of it the introvert part of me wants to run and hide, but I enjoy it while it's there. It affords a relatively rare time of seeing people in the community. Because most of us don't drop our kids off or pick them up, we only see one another at events like this, or at sporting or musical events. So times like these are precious.

Today I discovered that two of my friends have sons who are going to try wrestling this year. That's fun! Last year I was the only female supporting CAJ at all but one of the middle school meets. Hopefully this year I'll have a lot more female company, of course the high school team is quite a bit larger than the middle school team.

One of my favourite times of the set up of Thrift Shop is the twice-daily snack time, where almost everyone stops and chats. I also love it because it is one of the few times in my year that I can participate in a bring-and-share food time. I grew up on those at church, but they don't happen so often in our lives here. So, for Thrift Shop I usually bake or bring something to contribute to the snack time.

My Whole Orange Cake this morning.

This time I made a Whole Orange Cake in a spare 1/2 an hour I had the other day. I got home half an hour before the boys arrived home from school and didn't want to start in on something new at that point in my day). It smelt divine in the oven, it was all I could do to stop myself from having some right then. Recipe is here.

I love this cake because it is a little bit unusual in that it uses all the orange, rind and everything, so it has a little bit of fruit-cake about it. It was one of the few home-made items on the snack table this morning and was very popular. It's always nice to have one's cooking appreciated and not just by hungry boys! Someone said, "You bake like a mum of girls, not boys." I'm not entirely sure what she meant, because boys eat a whole lot more than girls, but then I did learn my baking in a family of girls.

It seems I'm getting a reputation for baking/cooking. I'm also getting a reputation as someone who wears hats: i.e. I'm a sun conscious Aussie! So, as we sorted clothes, every time someone came across a hat they called out to me. Ha! I guess there are worse things I could be know for...