Winter is Coming

The weather is cooling.  Lamb shoulder is back on the menu.  Rub the lamb with olive oil and some salt and pepper.  Slash the skin a few times, deeply, poke some garlic slivers in the slashes, sit the lamb in a roasting tray on top of a couple of rosemary branches.  Cover the roasting tray with tin foil, sealing well.  Crank your oven up as high as it will go, put the lamb in, immediately turn it down to 170 degrees, and leave alone for 4 hours.

Remove to a warm plate, cover, then make a gravy using the pan juices (pour off the fat), some flour, a couple of tablespoons of chopped capers, a tablespoon of red wine vinegar and some torn fresh mint.  If you want more formal instructions, I posted the recipe for the lamb and gravy HERE.

In the opposite end of the seasonal spectrum, I'm clinging to the last sighs of Summer with plenty of flowers around the house.  White roses with the strongest, most heady fragrance, lisianthus, white freesias.

The Daddy cooked!  He made an actual meal, and it was excellent.  Nachos, with a mixture of yellow and blue organic corn chips, homemade guacamole, and he fried up some onions, fresh tomatoes, and re-fried beans into a delicious, almost meaty sludge.  A bit of hot salsa, and some natural yoghurt instead of sour cream (full fat natural yoghurt - try instead of sour cream for dolloping on everything from soup to savoury pancakes to nachos, it's a winner).

In fact, writing that, I have a sudden craving for these wonderful nachos.  Perhaps I can ask him for a repeat performance on the weekend...

Oh, and I nearly forgot to mention - we sold our home.  On the weekend.  It sold under the hammer at an exciting auction, so we are most pleased!  Our new house, currently under construction, should be ready in the next few weeks or so.  Now, to prepare myself (mentally) for moving!

Playdough

Tabitha is really into playdough.

The above is an example of an understatement.

Tabitha can play with playdough for hours - unfortunately, this doesn't mean I can sneak off into the next room and put on a load of washing, oh no, Mummy is required to sit and observe the playdough fun.

Nevertheless, it has been a wonderful indoor activity lately, with all the mind-meltingly hot weather, and torrential rain (did I mention we live in Melbourne?)

I make my own playdough.  It is basically free, smells a million times better than the stinky brand name version, and is free of strange chemicals.  Homemade playdough also feels much nicer - silky, like bread dough - and you can create your own colours.  It takes less than ten minutes to make, and lasts for weeks.  Have I sold you yet?

There is an 'instant version' with boiling water, but it doesn't feel as lovely, and the cooked version - the traditional one - is still so easy.  The only 'hard' part is the final stage of the stirring, because you need to really use those arm muscles!  But it's only for a minute or two - and if you're truly a weakling, rope in a strong friend/husband/neighbour.

Playdough

In a medium saucepan, sieve together 2 cups of plain flour with 2 tablespoons of cream of tartar.

Add 1 cup of fine salt.

Stir in 2 cups of warm water and 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil.  Whisk together thoroughly, until there are no more lumps (you could sieve it again if you like).

Stir over low-medium heat for several minutes with a wooden spoon, until the dough thickens and becomes playdough - the last couple of minutes, you will need to really use your arm muscles to stir!

Carefully remove (it will be hot) and knead until silky smooth, on a silicone mat or similar.  Divide into equal sections (4-6), and knead in around 6 drops of food colouring into each ball, kneading well until nicely, evenly coloured.

Remember the basics - red and yellow make orange, red (or pink) and blue make purple.  Experiment!

You can also add a few drops of lavender oil, to fragrance the playdough, during the kneading stage.

When it's done, it will look like thick mashed potatoes:

The rough ball, ready for kneading:

Silky smooth:

Ready for colouring:

Make a well in the middle of each segment, and carefully work in the food colouring:

The colour will marble in - just keep kneading until the colour is smooth and even...

Green, Blue, Purple, Pink, Orange and Yellow.  Pretty - much nicer than the colours you buy, I think!

You can store each ball wrapped in clingfilm, or you can use small jars or buy little containers for the purpose.  Try to pack the dough away after playing, and if it starts to dry out, you can knead in a few drops of water.  But it's so easy to make, you might as well just make a new batch every few weeks - and you'll find that, despite the best intentions, colours do end up getting mashed together, and you'll end up with some attractive grey/brown dough eventually.

You can buy plastic cutters, generally made by PlayDoh, but proper metal cookie cutters work best.  I have a nice collection of coloured, metal cutters which I use for cookies - stars, hearts, flowers, people, bears etc.  Tabitha loves them, I also bought a small wooden rolling pin, and we do have a PlayDoh brand 'press' which produces fun tubes of dough in star/worm/triangles etc.

Afghans

I made Afghans last week.  I was in a hurry, doing something else at the same time, and accidentally forgot to add the baking powder.  I remembered, just as I was about to put them in the oven.  So I put all the mixture back into a bowl, sprinkled over the baking powder, and gently kneaded it through the dough by hand.

The cookies were slightly tougher than usual, because of the over-handling of the mixture, but honestly, no one else would have noticed.  It's nice to know that you can rescue such mistakes when baking.  Years ago, when I was learning to cook, I would have panicked and thrown them out!  

Have you ever saved a near-disaster when cooking?  I was once told that adding raw potato to a soup, and simmering for a while, then removing the potato, is a rescue for over-salted soup, but I've never had to try it.

HERE is the Afghan recipe.

Menu Planning

Firstly, an apology.  The blog is being quite buggy, and I have discovered that dozens and dozens of photos have randomly disappeared from past posts!  I am trying to fix it.  In the meantime, please excuse me if you look at any past posts and they seem to be missing pictures.

If anyone can tell me why this is happening, or how to fix it (the photos are still all visible in Picasa), please let me know!

Last Saturday, I mentioned the groceries, including market items, which I bought for the week.  In the comments, I was asked what meals I would make with those items.  Since it's quite rare that I buy a full week's worth of groceries in one go, I too found it interesting to see how the list correlated to a week of meals!

So I have reproduced my response to the comment here - you can see the rough menu plan for the week, based on that haul of groceries.  Did I stick to it?  Pretty much - although I did a lentil, vegetable and beef bolognaise instead of the stir-fry, and I haven't done the chicken soup yet - I'll do that tomorrow.

HERE is the post outlining the groceries for the week, and below is my vague meal-planning for the week:

Peaches, nectarines, apricots and apples are for eating, The Daddy will take some to work.  I’ll probably make a peach pie or cobbler or something.

Baby carrots (ordinary sort) and cucumber, capsicum etc. for snacking on for T and I.

The leeks will go into a fritatta for lunches.

Chard will be stir-fried with capsicum and go with steaks. (1 dinner)

The baby carrots were roasted and served in a salad with coriander, pine nuts etc., alongside lamb chops pan-fried with a spice rub. (2 dinner)

The veggie burgers will get eaten for lunches, with tomatoes from the garden, basil, coriander, grated carrot, some sliced capsicum or whatever I feel like. Maybe a fried egg as well.  Some of the veggie burgers will get frozen.

The eggs will all get used – hard boiled, frittatas, cakes and biscuits, pancakes etc.  Tabby loves eggs.

The pork cutlets will be fried with a mustard honey sauce, a side of roasted purple carrots, roughly mashed. (3 dinner)

The pumpkin, and some of the veg (carrots, celery, onions) go into soup. (4 dinner, plus some to freeze for a couple more meals)

There will be a stir-fry of veg, with the zucchinis, carrot, celery, broccoli and stems, capsicum, garlic and ginger.  I’ll include some beef mince, and serve with brown rice. (5 dinner)

Rockling goes into the freezer in small pieces for lunches and suppers for Tabitha and I.  I’ll dredge pieces with seasoned flour, fry in some butter, make a sauce with lemon juice and parsley, serve with some steamed greens.

Avocadoes will go on toast for breakfasts and into sandwiches for snacks / lunches.

Bacon will go into either a zucchini slice, a quiche lorraine or carbonara (dinner 6)

I’ll roast the sweet potatoes with one of the chooks, along with some shallots, regular potatoes, garlic etc.  I’ll make gravy and some stuffing (sage, thyme etc from the garden, bacon from the market).  The leftovers will do for sandwiches the next day for lunch.  (dinner 7)

The other chook, I’ll make some soup / stock (with an additional bag of bones, necks, wings etc) and with carrot, onion, celery, parsley stems etc.  I’ll make matzo balls, for lunch or light dinner, and most of it will get frozen (I like to stockpile frozen chicken soup in the lead up to winter and the inevitable colds).

Have I left anything out?  The raw milk will get drunk by myself and Tabitha, and used with porridge.  Breakfasts will be oatmeal, museli, eggs or avocado on toast.  Maybe some waffles.  I might make a compote / hot jam sort of thing with some of the stone fruit for weekend breakfast.

The chickpeas are for hummus.

I’ll bake an apple cake and some scones, maybe some chocolate Afghan cookies, for visitors during the week.

Spiced Lamb Chops and My Office

Last night for dinner, we had lamb chops with a dry spice rub and a roasted carrot, pine nut and coriander salad.  It was too easy for words, so I will share the recipe.

The lamb chop recipe is from Nigella Lawson's book Kitchen.  For the spice rub, just combine:

• 1 teaspoon ground coriander
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper (I'd suggest less if cooking for small kids)
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 2 teaspoons sea salt flakes

 This keeps well in an airtight jar for a good month or so, according to Ms Lawson, so I recommend making a triple batch and setting it aside.

I used Chump Chops, but I imagine any lamb chop would work.  Obviously, a Frenched cutlet or something will need less cooking time.

Take the lamb chops out of the fridge half an hour or so before cooking, if possible, and dredge well in the spice mixture.  Preheat a thin layer of garlic olive oil (or regular Extra Virgin) in a large, heavy-based fry pan, and cook the chops for about 4 minutes on each side, over medium-high heat.  You don't want the spices to burn but you need decent heat to get the deliciously crispy edges.  Keep it pink in the middle.

For the salad, roast some carrots (a dozen baby ones, pretty rainbow heirloom carrots, was about right for us) at 200 degrees, rolled in olive oil, for around half an hour or until cooked and lightly caramelized.  Larger carrots may need longer.  I did this a couple of days prior, because I had the oven on for something else.  I chucked them in the fridge, and took them out an hour or so before serving, to get to room temperature.

Cut up the roasted carrots into 1 inch pieces.  Toss them in a bowl with a large handful of torn-up coriander and some pine nuts.  I made a dressing from the zest and juice of half an orange, juice of half a lemon, three times the amount of olive oil, a dash of sesame oil and soy, and a couple of tablespoons of black sesame seeds (toasted white sesame would be nice as well, as would poppy seeds).

Tabitha still turns her nose up at most fruit (she loves watermelon, apples, pears and blueberries, and will eat all berries or banana if they are in a smoothie or mashed with yoghurt).  It seems that she dislikes the texture of fruits like peaches, banana, plums etc.

So when I keep offering a variety of fruits, she keeps trying them and spitting them out, and thus we continue.  I don't make any fuss, just keep offering them so they don't become foreign to her, and I hope that one day she will try them and actually like it!  I have no concerns re. nutrition, as she does eat some fruits, and eats all vegetables.  I trust her body to know what it needs - and, truth be told, I'm not a huge fruit fan myself, nor is my father, so perhaps it's hereditary.

Here is Tabitha's packed lunch for Occasional Care this morning (she goes for three hours, which includes morning tea fruit time and a lunch at 11:30).  She has, for lunch, avocado sandwiches on wholegrain bread, some cheddar, and for morning tea she has peaches, apple, pears and dates.

This is her favourite lunch box.  It's a cute little Bento box, the pink part is glittery and it has pictures of pigs on it.  What's not to like?!  It reads, "Life of Natural Pigs" on the lid and bag.

In other cute animal news, my newest pair of Marc Jacobs Mouse Shoes arrived yesterday.  Mouse shoes are just the most comfortable flats in the world.  These are made of super-soft leather, with gold studs.  Biker mice perhaps?

Someone asked me, last week, whether I had an office at home.  No, I do not.  This is my 'office', below - a corner table at a gorgeous cafe around the corner from Tabitha's Occasional Care.  I get quite a bit done (Breastfeeding Counsellor training and my work as a Committee member for the Occasional Care).  You can see my regular cafe breakfast - a pot of Earl Grey, a croissant with apricot jam and my laptop to the left.

All Food is Good Food

All Food is Good Food - this is the message in our house.  There are no 'bad foods'.  This approach is recommended by almost all dieticians and child rearing experts these days, to help avoid food issues later in life, and to prevent attributing values to food.  Since I love food - all of it! - this comes naturally to me.  Someone asked me recently, "but how about all that processed crap?  Don't you want Tabitha to avoid that?"  My answer is, yes, of course, but I don't consider that sort of thing to be 'food'.  It's more like a food-like-processed-product.  Sure, I eat weird processed food from time to time, but I don't consider it to be proper food.  So perhaps the statement should be, All Real Food is Good Food.

Here is roughly 4kg of American-style, slow smoked barbeque meat.  Pork ribs, lamb ribs, pulled pork, pastrami, pulled chicken, pulled brisket, chicken wings, pickles.  We also had hand-cut chips (none for Tabitha, she has still never eaten a chip, she doesn't know they exist for now), beef chili and coleslaw.  All the meat rests on slices of thick bread, which soak up the delicious, homemade barbeque sauce.  We get out BBQ from Big Boy BBQ in Caulfield South.  I thoroughly recommend the place - the owner imported a smoker from the US after becoming frustrated that he couldn't get good BBQ in Australia.  Having eaten a lot of BBQ in the States, I can tell you that this comes pretty close.

As with all things, moderation.  A mountain of BBQ is fine for dinner occasionally - a trip to the Farmers' Market helps swing the pendulum back.  I needed my enormous cane washing basket to haul up all my purchases from the car:

2kg peaches, 2kg nectarines, 2kg apricots, a bunch of skinny new leeks, a bunch of chard, baby colourful heirloom carrots, larger purple heirloom carrots, a few fun types of zucchini, coriander, 3 dozen eggs, 2 litres of raw milk, 16 veggieburgers.  Also in the fridge, some bacon and pork.  Later in the day, a trip to another market, bringing home 2 butternut pumpkins, apples, potatoes, onions, more carrots, celery, lamb chops, 2 whole chooks, organic mince and steaks, 3 avocados, some rockling fillets and assorted capsicum/lemons/cucumber/sweet potato/ginger/garlic etc.

Add to the above, a trip to the IGA for yoghurt, butter, cheese, chickpeas, matzo meal, bread, oatmeal, and we have a full week's worth of groceries.  It's rare that I do a full week's load of groceries in a single day, so it was quite fascinating, to me, to see what our weekly diet includes!  No doubt, I will need to buy something or the other during the week, and the above is supplemented by all the ordinary cupboard supplies and what is in the garden.

I have found that the only way to keep stone fruit from going mouldy while it ripens, is to sit them out on the bench, not touching any other pieces of fruit.  So I have my 'army of fruit', neatly marching along the bench.  As soon as a piece of stone fruit is ripe (by touch and suddenly smelling strongly gorgeous), I put it in a tupperware container in the fridge, taking out what I need for the next day, the night prior.  This is what the stonefruit-selling lady at the market tells me, and it seems to work.

 Since I lugged home two whole butternut pumpkins (on sale and looking irresistible), I made a double batch of pumpkin soup.  Now, pumpkin soup, like bolognaise, seems to be the sort of food where everyone considers their own (or their mother's/father's/grandmother's) to be The Best Recipe.  I would like to throw this recipe into the ring - it is from my father, and includes cumin.  You must roast the pumpkin pieces first for the best flavour.

Roast Pumpkin Soup 

(large batch, makes 3.5 litres or so)

2.5kg of peeled, chopped butternut pumpkin

2 large brown onions, diced

4 teaspoons ground cumin

2 large carrots, peeled and sliced

2 celery sticks, sliced

2 litres of vegetable stock (I use Massel cubes)

Toss the pumpkin in olive oil, then roast at 180 degrees for around 40 minutes, or until softened and lightly browned at the edges.

In a very large saucepan, cook the onion in a little olive oil until just softened, then add the cumin and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes.

Add the carrots and celery, and cook for a further 3 minutes stirring.

Add the roasted pumpkin and stock, then bring to boil.  Reduce to simmer, and simmer for around 40 minutes, half covered, or until the carrots are cooked.

Allow to cool a little, then either blend in a blender or food processor (in batches) or use a wand immersion blender.  A standing blender will get it the smoothest.

Season to taste with salt and a decent amount of pepper.

Serve with a big dollop of natural yoghurt or sour cream, and some chopped parsley or coriander.

This soup freezes well.  It's quite thick - if you want a thinner soup, simply add a little more vegetable stock.  If you don't have a very large saucepan, just make a half batch.

Here is a bowl with natural yoghurt and coriander.  It's not super-smooth, as I blended it in the food processor.  It is so filling!

The old mini-garden is going quite well.  I thought that everything was winding down, as the plants got hit with some major heat and not much water for a week or so, but a good water and feed seems to have given everything a second wind.

The tomato plants (the foliage) is looking a bit worse for wear, but they are nonetheless producing masses of lovely tomatoes:

My thyme and parsley are bushy, despite major harvests of late:

I am shocked by how well the basil is going.  Just two weeks ago, I completely stripped the plants.  Bare.  Just stalks (for making pesto, you remember?).  Anyway, with a good feed and some sunshine, they are looking fuller and healthier than ever.  Something tells me I'll me making more pesto soon...

My little jewel strawberry plant (not sure what variety, the berries are very small but amazingly sweet) has come back from the near-death, and is covered with a dozen or so pretty pink flowers and even more new strawberries:

Speaking of pretty flowers - my awe will never tire for the spectacular passionfruit flowers.  What a wonderful plant to have in the garden.  Masses of these at the moment:

And thankfully, a reasonable number of these (despite The Daddy hacking the vine back to a third of its size, because it was threatening to pull down the fence):

Here it is, post-haircut, along the back fence:

Aren't toddlers hilarious?  They are always up to something, and guaranteed to make you laugh a hundred times a day.  Here is Tabitha, in a t-shirt and nothing else, with her baby 'swaddled', finishing up her game of golf in the yard:

While we are lucky to have plenty of pretty flowers in the garden (snapdragons, petunias, star jasmine and strawberry and passionfruit flowers) I tend to buy-in my house flowers.  I dream of one day having a large enough garden to grow my own flowers for cutting.  In the meantime, I put freesias or jonquils in the bathroom, white lisianthus in the living room,  peonies in the bedrooms, herbs in the kitchen, and roses in the living room.  

Because roses are expensive, I get more bang for my buck by buying very short-stemmed roses, then trimming them down to around 10cm, and popping just 4-5 each in little jam jars.  I can get a few lovely little jars of roses this way, from a single bunch.  It's best to buy varieties which are very full, because as they open out, you might find you can get away with only 3 per jar, transferring the extras to yet more jars.  If you change the water every day or two, and add a dash of small bleach to the water, you can easily get a week or so from the roses.  A few jars of roses, grouped together, look so pretty.  I save any attractive jars - in particular, from my Rose's Breakfast Marmalade.

Do you have any other flower arranging tips for me?  I'm always looking for ways to display flowers that don't cost a fortune!