Tabitha's tricks and 50s magazines

Have I mentioned that Tabitha and our youngest cat, Possum, are Best Buddies?  They practically wear BFF necklaces!  I know, it's very strange to have a cat that tolerates, let alone enjoys, a baby.  Luckily for us, Possum is no ordinary cat.  When we are being unkind, we say that he is 'a few sardines short of a tin'.  But the truth is, while he is a supremely stupid and uncoordinated cat (walking into walls, falling off the couch, that sort of thing), he is kind and gentle and endlessly patient.  He's barely one year old, a chocolate Burmese, and he's actually very small for an adult cat.

He always goes to stand a foot or so in front of Tabitha, then waits for her to lunge and throw herself onto his back.  He then lies there (purring!!!) while she lays on TOP of him, pulling his fur, squeezing his ears, and chewing his fur.  For ages, we worried for him, thinking he would get hurt, but every time we helped him escape, he just stood in front of Tabby again, waiting for her to pounce.  So we have decided that he actually enjoys these maulings.  Perhaps he lacks a pain gene.  Along with his missing balance genes and IQ points.  Anyway, we love him dearly, and are incredibly grateful to have a cat with whom Tabitha can play and cuddle.  The older cat stays away from her!

Oh - and Possum also enjoys fetching items from around the house, and bringing them to Tabitha, dropping them in her lap or in front of her - mostly small cat toys, which are a choking hazard!  So I am always taking them away.  But it is really gorgeous, the way he brings toys to her with such an earnest expression on his squishy little face.

Here they are having a cuddle this morning:

My little sister taught Tabby to 'high five' a couple of weeks ago.  Now she does it non-stop!  She initiates them herself - I'll be sitting in the living room, and she crawls over with one hand outstretched, smiling, waiting for me to high five her.  Then she giggles.  It is a very endearing new trick.  Except she loves to do it all through her meals, so I have to high five her greasy hands, covered in sardines or pesto or mashed up banana!

Here is Tabitha waiting for a high five during lunch.  She is eating a date scone.  There is some raw mushroom caught in her neckline:

 I love vintage magazines - primarily American women's magazines from the 1940s - 1960s.  I mostly buy them on eBay.  They are expensive (generally $20 - $30 delivered, for the good ones), however they are SO much thicker and more text-rich than modern magazines, so they take ages to read.  Plus I spend hours pouring over the ads!  I don't really buy regular (modern) magazines, so these are my 'trash reading'.

This is one of my favourites from my collection.  It is Ladies Home Journal from March 1955.  It cost 35c.

This is an advertisement for air travel - can you believe how they are sitting?!  This would be so lovely if you were travelling with friends or family.  Not so much if you were stuck dining with grumpy strangers.  Look at the curtains, the spacious table!

These magazines have loads of ads for canned and convenience ingredients, generally with a questionable 'recipe':

Yes, even the old magazines are filled with ads for face creams promising to remove wrinkles and years - no breakthrough ingredients, no Pitera or white tea or snake venom, just emulsified oils.  So it seems the claims are always the same, regardless of scientific advances!

Here is half of a double-page advertisement for that scary American yellow cheese, brought to you by the American Dairy Association.  Lots of lovely recipes involving frankfurters and chopped pickles.

I adore the fashions - this coat makes my heart sing!

I would be so thrilled to wear an outfit like this tomorrow.  I am a particular fan of white gloves (this is why Season One of Bewitched is my favourite - Samantha always wears white gloves when she leaves the house!):

The mothers in the advertisements are all SO young.  Their faces look like teenagers.  But their hair adds a few years to their look, generally!  I may be a boring traditionalist but I adore all the pretty photographs of mothers tending to their chubby, smiling babies:

The lingerie ads are a real highlight - gosh the underwear was a little scary back then!  The pointy bras fascinate me.  You can see that this ad hails from an age when having a 'Gay Time' meant something different to what it does today:

Dish Hands are a common concern in these magazines - thankfully, there is always the perfect cream available to cure them.

Twin beds anyone? I must say, though, I am loving that plant arrangement in the middle, so modern.  Is that a lamb at the bottom, or a poodle?  I can't tell!

I would love some gay sparking tiles!  They sound like a lot of fun...

This era really took its silverware seriously:

An age when every woman aspired to own a mink coat.  I cannot think of a modern alternative?  There doesn't seem to be any universal status item that is currently on the wish list of most women.

Gee whiz, that panty girdle DOES look comfortable!  I must say, though, for 5+ years of my life, I wore suspenders (proper 4- or 6-clip ones from Secrets in Lace or What Katie Did, not flimsy fashion ones) and nylon or silk stockings almost every day.  I hate pantyhose.

I can't decide whether these little kids are incredibly sweet or a little creepy:

This is the start of a brilliant article written by a 'manly' 50s dad, who actually enjoys caring for his son - even *gasp* changing nappies and chatting to his baby, despite endless mocking and derision from his friends.  It's actually quite a bittersweet article, as he struggles to justify why he chooses to care for his baby, rather than leaving the 'women's work' to his wife.  It makes me glad that we live in an age when men are actually considered to be equal parents.  I spoke to a man once, whose children were born in the late 50s, who recalled being yelled at by a nurse in hospital for trying to bathe his baby - apparently men weren't to be left alone with their babies lest they break them!

I am always on the hunt for a 'new' vintage magazine.  I used to also collect vintage hats and dresses, however I got rid of a lot of them when we were cleaning out before the arrival of the baby.  Hopefully they found new loving homes!

Our day, our week.

 I caught up with a friend on the weekend who asked me, "what do you DO all day?"  She didn't mean it in a rude way - quite the opposite.  She said she found the idea of entertaining a baby all day, every day, really daunting.

My mother said to me that when I was a baby, her days were long and lonely - no car, no television, no internet.  None of her friends had babies.  There was no Mothers' Group in her area.  Her local ABA only met once a month, and most of the other mothers were a fair bit older than her.  Dad was working and studying.  The highlight of her day was when the mail came!  That sounds so sad and boring - babies are gorgeous and fun, but they aren't generally enough to keep you busy all day.

I think there is a fine balance to reach, between doing enough to keep yourself and your baby entertained, but not so much that you are both tired and overstimulated.  Of course, this depends entirely on each individual mother and baby - some babies (and mothers) thrive on activity and social interaction, whereas others need plenty of quiet at-home time.

For us, I find that we need to get out of the house most days, however if we are out all day, we both crash and burn.  In each day, I like to include some time in the fresh air, some walking, some interaction with people (and ideally, babies or children), and some free play time.

So our week is roughly as follows - I hope that this is interesting or useful to others with young babies.  I find it interesting to hear what other people do to entertain their little ones!

Generally, Tabitha gets up at around 7:30am, then naps at 10am - 11am or 11:30am, and naps from 3pm - 4pm or 5pm.  She goes to bed between 7pm and 7:30pm.  Before each bedtime and nap, we read one or two stories.  Current favourite naptime books are Hairy Maclairy series, Green Sheep, Ten Little Fingers and a baby animals book.

Tabby eats breakfast at 8am, lunch around noon, and dinner around 6:30pm.  She has breastfeeds at roughly 6am, 10am, 2pm, 6pm, 10pm and 2am, with some extra little ones in between sometimes.

This routine is fairly new - for the first 6 months, things were very loose and unstructured, which suited us both.  Now she really prefers a predictable routine, and it suits me too, as it's easier to plan the days.

Here are our daily 'main' activities.  Aside from these, it's mostly quiet play, errands, walks, and meeting people for brunch / lunch:

Mondays - Swimming

Tuesdays - Food shopping at the market

Wednesdays - Gymbaroo

Thursdays - From 2pm - 5pm (including her nap), her Godmother Sophie takes care of her, while I do some ABA study at a local coffee place or the library.

Fridays - ABA local group meetings in the morning (every fortnight), as well as Mothers' Group every Friday afternoon.

Saturday - Farmers market in the morning, or my dad over for a visit and play.  Catch up with friends during the rest of the day around her nap times.

Sunday - Normally a big walk with The Daddy, then nap then yum cha or out to brunch with friends.  Quiet play in the afternoon while we clean the house.  Early dinner out with family or friends.

So it's not mind-blowingly exciting, but it's certainly not a boring week for me.  I don't really like television (particularly not when I'm tired), so while she naps, I normally knit, read or bake.  I get some 'me time' when her Godmother takes care of her for a few hours on Thursdays, and in the evenings (and Sundays) when The Daddy is home.  I don't really exercise, since we do plenty of walking.  I generally make dinner in the evenings with Tabitha wrapped onto my back, so she can watch me cook, but is out of harm's way.

On a side note, here is a strawberry and rhubarb lattice pie going into the oven.  Soon, I will do a post on making lattice tops - they are incredibly easy, and make pies look so pretty!

Recipe Fail.

So, I had a tin of condensed milk (minus two tablespoons) to use up.  Of course, one option would be to pass it to The Daddy, with a spoon - I'm sure it would be gone in minutes!

Instead, I decided to try a baked slice recipe from my latest favourite baking book Ladies, A Plate.

Sigh.  I suppose there is one in every recipe book - a recipe that Just Doesn't Work.

Here is what went wrong:

In the book, the cake / biscuit part of the slice was a rich, dark chocolate brown.  Despite following the exact ingredient measurements, my cake / biscuit part was a soft tan.  No discernible chocolate colour.

Despite being a slice, this recipe called for a size cake pan that I do not have - and that is saying something.  If I don't have a particular tin, sorry, I don't believe that it's a standard size!  I have over two dozen tins!  I made do with a standard slice tin.

The method is just plain strange and unworkable.  Generally, a slice like this includes a biscuit/cake type base, which is pressed into the base, followed by a gooey layer, which is poured on, followed by an icing layer, which is poured or spread on.  This slice has two cake layers, one on either side of the gooey layer - now, obviously you can't press a cake layer over a molten, gooey layer.  So the recipe instructs you to roll out both cake layers, then lay them in the tin.  Okay - well, the dough is waaay too soft to roll out.  And it's too soft to move without breaking if you do manage.  And it's near impossible to cut it to the correct size, then lower it exactly down.  So this caused me great frustration!  

Now that I've done it, here are my tips (none of which are included in the recipe!) - firstly, you need a whole lot of flour when rolling it out.  I'm talking a couple of tablespoons on the bottom and top of the dough you're working on!  You need to roll it into a rectangle larger than the tin, then measure the area, and cut it out with a sharp knife - it needs to be pretty exact.  Then to lower it on, I recommend using the method of gently draping it over the rolling pin to move - don't try to move it with your hands, it will break!  Even with all this, my top layer tore a little as I put it on.  So I just patched it with some scrap dough - you know what?  This is okay.  Once it's baked, the whole lot is covered in icing anyway, so it won't show.

If you use the icing recipe that is suggested, it will crack while you cut it, ruining the smooth effect, even if you use a hot knife.  So I recommend using melted chocolate instead of icing.

To be honest, once I had assembled the layers and baked the slice, I still wasn't optimistic, and was about to dump the whole thing in the bin.  But I went ahead and iced it, allowed it to cool, and sliced it up.  And I'm glad I did!  It doesn't look like the picture (the colour of the cake is worlds apart, they must have used a different amount of cocoa from the recipe!).  But it does taste really good - and after discarding the dodgy pieces from the very edges (by discard, I mean give to The Daddy), I was left with around 24 decent little bars of slice!

Ultimately, I will make it again.  I am shocked to say this.  But I will.  Next time, I'll use more cocoa in the cake part, and use melted chocolate on the top.  I'll use more flour when rolling it out.

Here is the recipe as I made it:

Chocolate Caramel Fingers

Preheat oven to 200 degrees, and line a slice tin with baking paper (including up the sides).

Prepare the caramel filling by combining in a small saucepan:  1 tin of condensed milk (minus two tablespoons, in this instance!), 100g golden syrup, 115g butter, 100g sugar, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract.  Combine over low heat, stirring, until it all comes together in a thick caramel.  You don't need to boil it or anything, just stir it over the heat for a good few minutes.  Set aside to cool.

For the cake layers, cream together 170g softened butter with 115g caster sugar until light and fluffy.  Beat in an egg and a teaspoon of vanilla extract.  Sift together 250g plain flour, 1 tablespoon cocoa and 1 teaspoon of baking powder, and mix into the creamed ingredients to form a soft dough.

Divide the dough in half, wrap each half in plastic wrap, and chill in the fridge for about half an hour.

Roll out the first half to fit the tin - lay it in the tin, then pour over the caramel.  Roll out the second layer, then carefully lay over the caramel layer.

Bake the slice for 20 minutes or until it feels firm on top.

While hot, ice with a simple chocolate icing (I used 120g icing sugar, 3 tablespoons of cocoa, 30g melter butter, and boiling water to get an icing consistency) or spread with melted dark chocolate.

Let cool, then carefully lift out of the tin (using the baking paper lining).  Cut into roughly 30 small fingers.

I'm not happy with the batch I made (above).  But I think I can fiddle with it and get it right.

Do you get disappointed when a recipe doesn't work?  Do you ever give it another go, or do you write it off in disgust?  Maybe you are the sort of person who NEVER has a recipe failure?  I would like to learn your secrets...

Highlander Biscuits

I have a fascination with recipe books put out by food manufacturers - you know the sort, '100 delicious meals with cream cheese', 'Pork for all occasions', 'Tomato soup in every course'.  Those sort of books.  They bring me great amusement - there are normally one or two good recipes, and then dozens that are really scraping the culinary barrel.

These sort of books were especially popular in the 1950s - 1970s, when processed and packaged foods were introduced and gaining popularity.  Manufacturers were keen to extend their reach, so often distributed free booklets full of (questionable) recipes utilising their products.

One particular feature that these books tend to share is their inclusion of recipes requiring only a tiny portion of a package on ingredients - for example, a sauce requiring one tablespoon of mushroom soup.  I suppose that they hoped women would purchase a whole stack of cans, to ensure they always had a tablespoon available for their brilliant sauce!  Or maybe it was less sinister - perhaps they simply ran out of recipes requiring any decent amount of the product, and therefore tried to sneak a little in to all sorts of normal recipes, without any genuine impact on the taste of the dish.

You will understand, then, that I greeted the Highlander Biscuits recipe (from the Highlander Condensed Milk Cookery Book, c. 1913) with some suspicion - these seem like fairly ordinary butter biscuits, with the addition of two tablespoonsful of Highlander Brand condensed milk.  I was dubious as to whether the small amount of condensed milk would add anything to the recipe, however the photograph of the cookies (found in Ladies, A Plate) looked appealing, so I decided to give them a go.

Well - I am thrilled that I tried this recipe!  The cookies are dense and short in texture, pleasingly solid without being heavy, and indeed, the condensed milk has imparted a delicious, subtle caramel flavour to the otherwise simple chocolate-chip cookies.

Apparently, with the chocolate added, these are not officially 'Highlander Biscuits' - they have become 'Kiwi Crisps'.  No matter.  They are delicious, and a nice example of the 'product-specific cookbook' genre.

Highlander Biscuits / Kiwi Crisps

Cream together 115g softened butter with 55g caster sugar, until light and fluffy.

Beat in 2 tablespoons of condensed milk (note - these are NZ metric tablespoons, so 15ml each), and 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract.

Sift together 170g plain flour and 1 teaspoon of baking powder, and work into the creamed mixture, along with 60g of dark or milk chocolate chips.  Once you have a 'crumbly mass', tip it onto the bench and quickly, gently knead together into a rough ball.

Roll teaspoonsful of the dough into balls, and place them, spread apart, onto a baking tray lined with baking paper.

Press each ball down to flatten somewhat with a fork.

Bake for 12 - 15 minutes at 180 degrees (because I have a powerful oven, I tend to err on the side of caution with cookies and biscuits, so I baked mine at 175 degrees for 12 minutes, and they were spot on).

Cool on a rack, and store in an airtight tin.  This made around 25 small cookies for me.

I took a tin of these to my friends who run the Wondoflex Wool Shop in Malvern - we have a pretty good arrangement:  I bring in baked goods, regularly, and in return, I am always given a nice cup of tea while the talented Jill fixes up any knitting mistakes for me (shh!).

Now, of course, I have a tin of condensed milk, minus 2 tablespoons.  So I suppose I will go and bake something else requiring condensed milk...

They're called rissoles, love.

In the eternal quest to give Tabitha lunches that are a) nutritious b) varied and c) easy, I made an enormous batch of rissoles tonight.

Generally, if we are out at lunchtime, I buy Tabitha's lunch - a sushi handroll, a sandwich cut into pieces, some fishcakes, dumplings, or stirfried vegetables are all regular lunches.

However, if we are at home, I prepare something just for her - I am a grazer, nibbling at food all day, so I normally share Tabitha's little lunch with her (and then eat another mini-meal a couple of hours later.  And another, a couple of hours later...)

I keep a stash of lunch foods in the freezer - lamb chops, schnitzel strips, ravioli, veggieburgers, dumplings etc.  My freezer stash is getting dangerously low, hence the mega-rissole prep.

These rissoles are good because they are high in protein, iron, vitamins and minerals and fibre, with moderate fat, and low salt and sugar.

I use the grating disk on the food processor to grate the vegetables - it makes them beautifully fine, so they mix in with the mince very well, and cook quickly.

Healthy Rissoles

In a large bowl, mix together:

• 1kg mince (I use medium-grade mince.  That is, not too lean, nor too fatty.  Some fat is important for flavour.)
• 2 large carrots, finely grated
• 2 large zucchini, finely grated (for both the carrots and zuccini, I use organic, and do not peel them, since most of the vitamins are in the skin layer)
• 1 medium onion, very finely chopped
• 4 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 cup of fresh (stale) white breadcrumbs
• 1 tablespoon of mixed dried herbs
• 2 tablespoons of tomato paste

(I also added about half a cup of mashed up roast veggies, since I had them leftover.  It's not essential!)

(You could also add some stewed apple, some sultanas, or other stewed fruit or mashed veggies)

(You could use chicken, turkey, lamb, pork or another mince, or a combination)

Make sure everything is well combined, then form into small rissoles with your hands.  Place on a couple of trays, freeze, and once frozen, pop a couple in each small container or plastic bag.

Take a couple out of the freezer the night before, then pan-fry in a little olive oil.  I serve them with some cheese pieces and salad vegetables (cut up capsicum and cucumber, for example) and for myself, I eat one in a sandwich.

Just Do Something

Most people with young children and babies will agree that it is easy to let the house get out of control!  I find that it can be spotlessly clean one day (scrubbed floors, dusted sils, toys all away, clean benches) and within 24 hours or so, can be back to complete chaos (sticky spills on the floor, rugs covered in dirt, toys everywhere including the bathroom, washing all over the house).

I am the type of person who gets both panicky and miserable when the house is chaotic.  I am not a neat person by nature, but I get anxious if things get beyond a mild state of disorder.  I find it overwhelming to look at a room, covered in stuff - where do I start?!  Will it ever get tidy?!

So I have a policy of 'Just Do Something'.  It is SO hard to find a block of time to really get stuck into cleaning, so instead, I just chip away at it all day.  Every time I open the fridge, I try and throw out five things.  When I was making lunch, I threw out an expired yoghurt, a near-empty tub of ricotta, some medicine, half a limp cucumber and a forgotten lamb chop.

Every time I walk from the living room to the bedroom, I take a few things with me - some clean washing, a book, a pair of shoes.  When I walk into the bathroom, I change the towels or the water in a vase.

It never seems like I'm actually doing much - but these tiny things, combined with a single "burst" (I often race around for ten minutes in the afternoon and do a speed-clean, including a vacuum), mean that things really do stay under control.

So when it all seems too much - I suggest you Just Do Something!

PS - I have to share a bit of hilarity.  Look at Tabitha's passport photo.  Doesn't it look like a baby mugshot?  She has her Very Serious Face on:

The Meal Rotation

Are you a regular meals person?  Do you serve the same thing each Wednesday, and do you find comfort and rhythym in a predictable routine?  Or do you have a looser rotation - the same large handful of meals, appearing regularly but in no particular order?

I have been torn in the past - I love the idea of a structured rotation (easy to plan ahead, shop ahead, you can look forward to a specific meal) but since I love to cook, and like to cook a real mish-mash of dishes (from oyako don to paella to lacquered duck to bolognaise), I quickly worked out that I could never commit to a weekly rotation. Choose just seven dishes?  Impossible!

For a while, I tried a monthly meal-plan.  I know, it seems crazy to me now too!  Each month I would sit down and plan every meal for the following month - I'd need to schedule any nights out (such as a planned dinner with friends) and would try and schedule meals so that leftover ingredients would be used up (for example, risotto on one night, then a couple of nights later, another meal requiring a little chicken stock).

It sure was fun to plan (for a weirdo list-nerd like me), but it proved unsustainable.  Inevitably, plans would change, and we'd go out for dinner on a night when I'd planned to cook something specific.  Ingredients went to waste, favourite meals were missed for the month, and there was no room for whims - "gee whiz, I really feel like a massive plate of chili con carne and cornbread tonight!" sort of whims.

So now, I am back to drifting.  I do have an extended list of meals I like to cook, which I keep on my iPhone when I need some inspiration, and there are certainly dishes which we eat more often than others, but I prefer the freedom of being able to decide what to cook on the day, or to wander around the market and buy whatever looks particularly good at the fishmonger, poultry man or butcher.

I love hearing about what other people eat!  I like peeking at other people's menu plans, shopping list, shopping trolleys, and I always ask my friends what they are having for dinner when I talk to them during the day.

So in the interest of sharing, here is the list of foods which appear on our dinner table - regularly or just occasionally.  Tabitha can easily eat all of the below, with the exception of soups.  When we have soup, I dip fingers of toast into the soup, and she eats it that way.

Poultry

• Green curry
• Paprika chicken and nokedli
• Coq au vin
• Chicken and mushroom pie
• Teriyaki chicken
• Oyakodon
• Udon noodles with sesame poached chicken and bok choi
• Chicken Kiev
• Lemon chicken
• Chicken schnitzel and vegetables with Israeli couscous
• Chicken Provincal
• Roast chicken
• Southern-style chicken and dumplings
• Duck breasts with orange / soy / ginger glaze
• Congee
• Chicken risotto
• Pot roast chicken
• Yakitori
• Hainanese chicken rice
• Soy sauce poached chicken
• Chicken satay
• Fajitas
• Chicken and corriander quesadillas
• Chicken and cashew stir fry
• Chicken rice
• Pan-fried chicken with thyme, cream and mustard sauce
• Chicken marylands with spiced skin, potatoes and lemon

  

Seafood

• Teriyaki salmon
• Salt and pepper grilled fish
• Tuna and zucchini pasta
• Salmon kedgeree
• Tuna mornay
• Garlic prawns
• Spaghetti marinara
• Salmon Patties
• Paella
• Hot smoked salmon pasta

  

Meat

•  Roast pork / beef / lamb
• Baked ham
• Lasagna
• Bolognaise
• Chilli con carne
• Pork chops with apple cider
• Osso bucco
• Lamb shanks
• Sausages with mash and onion gravy
• Meatloaf
• Beef burgundy
• Beef and vegetable stew
• BBQ pork ribs
• BBQ steak with salad or vegetables
• Shepherd’s Pie
• Homemade rissoles with grated vegetables
• BBQ Pork Fillet
• Char Sui Pork
• Beef stroganoff

Vegetarian, Pasta and Vegetable-Based

• Pita pizzas with roast veggies
• Agedashi tofu
• Spinach quiche
• Potato salad
• Roast vegetable frittata
• Carbonara
• Pesto
• Polenta corn fritters
• Vegetable lasagna
• Bubble and squeak
• Baked potatoes

Soups

• Roast pumpkin
• Lentil
• Dad’s Healthy Soup (veggie / bean / bacon)
• Chicken and matzo ball
• Winter chicken soup
• Pea and ham soup

If I don't feel like cooking, we get take-away, generally a few times a month.  We are fortunate to have lots of great takeaway options in our area, including some healthy choices.  Our favourites are:

• Japanese from Ocha2Go
• Thai from Sukhumvit
• High Tech Burrito (amazing healthy burritos full of Spanish rice, beans, salad etc.)
• Charcoal chicken (our local uses free range chicken)
• Hainanese Chicken Rice from Hawker's Cafe
• Baked potatoes from Spudbar
• Indian from Bombay Beat or Tandoori Den
• Chinese from Choi's or Chun's
• Indonesian from Kedai Nasi Uduk
• Pizza from Mojo's Weird Pizza

Granny Boyd's Biscuits

We had a friend over this evening.  I made chicken marylands using a recipe from Faux Fuchsia's blog (baked marylands, the skin rubbed with oil, salt, pepper, paprika, chilli flakes, cumin, in a baking dish with cut up potato, lemon wedges and garlic cloves, with some stock in the bottom).  It was excellent, and will certainly become part of 'The Rotation' of regular dinner meals in our house.

I like cooking with thighs, marylands and drumsticks because they are incredibly economical.  I love darker meat - it is more tender and flavoursome - and it is so much cheaper than breasts.  A free-range maryland is generally around $3.50.  For the same reason I use a lot of blade and chuck steak.  Then I have more monies to spend on things like high quality cocoa powder and organic garlic!

After dinner, my friend and The Daddy inquired about dessert...  I hadn't prepared anything, so I decided to quickly bake a batch of biscuits to eat, warm, with ice cream.  The simplest biscuit recipe I know is from Nigella Lawson's brilliant How To Be A Domestic Goddess book.  The biscuits are smokey, short in texture, and although they feel solid, they crumble and melt away to nothingness in your mouth.  They are the perfect biscuit for eating with a glass of cold milk.

Granny Boyd's Biscuits

Sift together 300g self-raising flour with 30g cocoa.

Cream together 250g soft unsalted butter with 125g caster sugar (I use vanilla caster sugar, because it's what I keep in the house).  Cream until light and fluffy.

Work in the dry ingredients - "It might look like it needs liquid, but keep working the ingredients in and it will form a dough."

Roll the mixture into walnut-sized balls, and space apart on a baking tray lined with baking paper (the cookies will spread a little).  Lightly press each ball down with a fork.

Bake at 170 degrees for 5 minutes, then turn the heat down to 150 degrees and bake for a further 10 - 15 minutes - "It's hard to tell by looking when the biscuits are ready since the dough starts so dark, but they should feel firm on the top, although not hard."

Remove the cookies to a cooling rack - they will harden as they cool.

Pain and blogging

Yeowch!  I've been knitting like mad, working on two gifts, and my right hand is really sore.  While I was pregnant, I was working on a few things for the baby (blankets and a jacket), and in the last month or so of the pregnancy I developed dreadful carpel tunnel syndrome, and couldn't finish everything.  Thankfully the nice women at the wool shop I go to offered to finish sewing up my work, which I am very grateful for!

Here is one of the blankets I crocheted for the baby, pale green and cream:

However the lesson is - if you're pregnant and knitting or crocheting, please allow lots of time to finish, because carpel tunnel and bad swelling is common at the end of pregnancies.

I wanted to share some links to a few of my current favourite blogs:

Faux Fuchsia - an incredibly glamorous lady, whose style I envy, and whose gardening, DIY and cooking skills I am frequently inspired by.  FF is expecting a baby Any Day Now, and no doubt her baby will be gorgeous like her.

Fat Mum Slim - a lovely, hilarious and cheerful mother who takes beautiful photographs.  Also lots of great recipes, and her daughter is a sweet little gem.

PepperSaltSugarSpice - a gorgeous couple, both foodies, one trained as a chef, who explore regional food destinations, post beautiful photos of things they have cooked, and also post from overseas destinations with enticing meals they have enjoyed.  A really nicely written blog!

Paprika Chicken

When we have fresh sesame bagels from Aviv in the house, all is right in my little world.  They are such a superior bagel - chewy, sweet and dense.  They must really be eaten fresh on the day they are made, or else toasted the next day.  Beyond that, they get stale.  I like mine with loads of full fat cream cheese and a layer of smoked salmon.

It also makes me happy to have fresh flowers in the house - no matter how clean the house is, it never feels truly finished unless there are a few vases of flowers.  I like 'fluffy' white and pastel flowers such as peonies, lissianthus, ranunculus, sweet peas, oversized chrysanthemums, hydrangeas, gardenias and David Austin roses.  In the bathroom, I keep vases of freesias or stephanotis - they are clean and crisp and have perfume the bathroom with a lovely fresh fragrance.

We had my family over for dinner today - I made Hungarian paprika chicken with nokedli, and a spiced warm apple cake for dessert.

Serious cooking required serious equipment.  Do you think that my current KitchenAid situation is overkill?

I am a huge supporter of mis en plas.  Starting to cook anything even vaguely complex is always best when you begin by preparing all of the ingredients, measured, sliced, ready to go.  It helps keep the kitchen clean while you go too - I prepare everything, clean up, then begin cooking.

Here is my mis en plas for paprika chicken (minus the chicken, which remains in the fridge).  You can see 3 cups of sliced white onions, 2 1/4 cups of strong chicken stock, 2 bay leaves, 3 tablespoons of plain four, 3 cloves finely sliced garlic, 1/2 cup of sweet paprika (best quality you can find), 60g butter.  In the fridge, I had 10 chicken thighs (skinless) and 1.5 cups of creme fraiche (you could also use sour cream).

Here is the mis en plas for the nokedli - 3 eggs, 1 cup of milk (in the fridge), 420g plain flour, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, 1/2 teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg (dry ingredients mixed together).

To make the paprika chicken, you need to brown the chicken thighs in some olive oil in a large frypan.  Do this in batches of 3 or 4 thighs.  As each batch is nicely browned (a few minutes each side), set them aside in a large bowl.

When all the chicken is browned and set aside, add the butter to the fat in the pan, and melt.  Over medium-high heat, add the sliced onions, and cook, stirring, until the onions are well softened and lightly coloured (around 10 minutes).  At this point, sprinkle the paprika and the flour over the onions, and cook, stirring continuously, for a minute - it will look like this:

Add the bay leaves:

Add the chicken stock and garlic.  Bring the mixture to the boil, stirring continuously.  At this point, I transfer the mixture to a large enamel cast iron pot (26cm Le Creuset).

Add the chicken and its juices to the mixture and cook over low heat (so that the mixture is barely bubbling), stirring occasionally, until the thighs are cooked and the meat is tender and comes apart when poked firmly with a wooden spoon (20 or so minutes, I'd say).

Remove the chicken pieces to a clean bowl, and discard the bay leaves.

Leave the sauce for a few minutes to settle, then use a large flat spoon to skim most of the fat off the surface - the fat will appear as a dark red oil.  Discard the fat.

Boil the sauce over high heat, stirring occasionally to stop it sticking, until very thick - almost like porridge.  Remove from heat, and add the creme fraiche, stirring through until combined.  Return the sauce to high heat, boil until thickened, then add chicken to the pot and heat thoroughly.

To make the nokedi, add the beaten eggs and milk to the dry ingredients, and stir GENTLY (too much stirring will make tough nokedli).  You will have a runny yet elastic dough - a little thicker than thick pancake batter.  It should fall from a wooden spoon, but not be runny.  You can add extra milk, a tablespoon at a time, if you need more liquid.  Leave to rest for 15 minutes.

You then need to drop tiny pieces of the nokedli into a large pot of boiling water.  I use a special nokedli maker (also called a spaetzle press), however you can use a large-holed colander and push the mixture through with a wooden spoon.

The little nokedli are cooked when they float to the surface (a few minutes).  You are best to do this in a few batches - scoop out the cooked pieces with a large slotted spoon, and sit them all in a colander until they are all cooked.  Then, toss them through with a little butter and salt.

Tabitha loved the paprika chicken - I had worried that the flavour might be a little strong for her, but she adored it, grasping a piece in each fist and cramming lots into her mouth, making 'mmmmm' noises.  She also ate some green beans (which I served with the dinner).  My little sister (9) also loved the paprika chicken, so I would say that the dish is very child-friendly.

In fact, the first times I enjoyed paprika chicken and nokedli were when I was very small - toddler and primary school aged - at the house of family friends of ours, who were Hungarian.

Look at her, all shiny - she is covered in sauce from the chicken!

After dinner, I made a nice warm apple cake with a cinnamon and demerara sugar topping, which we ate with ice cream.  It's handy having two mixers for big cooking days like today - however the green one belongs to my friend, and sadly has to go back to its home soon!

This was several hours ago, and I am still so full that I feel queasy thinking about eating breakfast tomorrow.