plant and pet problems

 Socks has an annoying habit of meowing at 3am and patting us with his paw, walking all over us or scratching at the door. Last night he even managed to push the door open and made such a ruckus that we were woken up several times during the night. He's been doing this every night we've let him stay in.
Because of this we've had to put him out because we need our sleep and can't entertain him at 3am.
What should we do? We've tried tiring him out during the day by ensuring he doesn't get much sleep. but who has the time to spend 10 hours everyday entertaining him when we're both working people? How on earth do cat owners sleep at night? Any tips?

 Our big tomatoes aren't doing too badly and we've harvested quite a few this season.

 However, our cherry tomatoes aren't faring so well and a lot have rotted before even maturing, like these ones.

 Our chilli plant has a weird disease that i don't know what to do about.

 little black spotty bits appear under the leaves.

 another immature rotted tomato. what a pity!

 also, they're not quite ripening. is it bad that I've got them in the ground with grass all over?

 it's my first time growing tomatoes so I've no expertise on this.

 However I wonder if i'd grown them too close together? or did they need pruning? what was I supposed to prune out?

 more unripe tomatoes. it would be such a pity if they never ripen!

on the bright side, the walnut tree has been dropping heaps of walnuts which I've been happily collecting. Hulling and shelling them are hard work though!

Jiaozi and abalone

When we had heaps of carrots and celery leftover and i didn't want minestrone soup, i decided to make Jiaozi instead. These chinese dumplings are traditionally filled with pork and chives, but really you can use any sort of vegetable as it'll be chopped up into tiny pieces anyway so you wouldn't be able to tell what's in it. I used 200g of pork to make 25 dumplings.This is a great way to stretch meat if you're on a budget! 

The wrappers were quite easy to make, surprisingly, but time consuming. Basically it's just bread flour and water that's kneaded and left to sit for awhile before being cut into pieces then rolled out into circles. They're really tasty pan fried or boiled, and dipped in a vinegary soy sauce. However, since they're labour intensive, these are best left to those Saturday afternoons where you're not in a hurry and want something fun to do with friends.

 above is an abalone our friend caught. I'd never had abalone in my life and wasn't sure how to cook it. I didn't even know what parts were edible ! anyway, after some internet and youtube research, we managed to sort of clean it and cut away the black bits.

 Gav stir fried it with chili and garlic, and we had it with rice and stir fried asparagus. It was kinda tough....dont know if it's meant to be? maybe we should've pounded it with a mallet to tenderize it. Ohwell, so that was my first abalone ever!

and, our "baby". He's turning 1 this month!

blackberry crumble

When I saw a punnet of blackberries for $4 a the Moonah Island markets last week, I had to get one! I did try picking them off a big bush nearby a few days ago but I got pricked every time I tried to get one, and they weren't very sweet. Anyway, I made this scrumptious blackberry crumble with them. I sprinkled some sugar and lemon juice over the washed berries in an ovenproof dish, then topped it with a mixture of butter, flour, sugar, cinnamon and oats, then baked it till browned. [I'm not putting the quantities here coz I sort of winged it, but anyone can search online for proper recipes]

It's great with a bit of cream on top!