Holidays!

We are off on holidays tomorrow morning, for our annual trip to Palm Cove.  We go at the same time every year, with my parents, sister, friends of ours and their gorgeous little twin girls.  It's great travelling with other families, because we all do dinner nice and early, the kids play together (ages spanning from 2 - 10), and we can even alternate the odd babysitting night with each other to allow for a romantic dinner.

I don't imagine that I'll post while we're away, but I'll be sure to take lots of pictures!  I have just looked back at the holiday photos from this time last year, and it's crazy to see how much she's grown (not to mention the fact that she's now a completely talking, opinionated little girl, as opposed to a teeny little toddler).

Here is Tabitha the first year she came with us:

The second year she came:

And here she is, now, 'helping' me pack (in reality, trying to wear all of her holiday clothes, bathers, sunglasses and accessories at once):

We have bought a 'Trunki', one of those cute little children's carry-on suitcases that you can pull along, while they have a ride.  It is packed full of toys and a couple of snacks for the plane (3.5 hours), and Tabitha is incredibly excited about having her 'own' suitcase.  It can carry up to 50kg of weight, so in theory two little kids can happily sit on it and have a ride.  I picked one up cheaply from Peters of Kensington, and I think it will be a fun and useful item this holiday!

Happy Birthday Tabitha!

Tabitha turned two on the 16th June!  It was a really busy day - we sold an investment property at auction, we'd only been in the new house for a matter of weeks, plus I was very sick, and The Daddy was working that day - but we had a lovely early family dinner, followed by chocolate cake, and I took her to the park with family in the morning.

For her birthday, we bought her a beautiful dolls' house - a 'Mayberry Manor' from the fantastic Le Toy Van company - with pretty wooden shutters, little window boxes and a lift-up roof.  She was every bit as thrilled as we'd hoped, and immediately ran to fetch all her small dolls and small toy animals to play in the house.  We then only saw her bottom and feet for the next hour or so, as she enthusiastically introduced all of her toys to the new house:

Here is a quick snap of Tabitha with her cake - she became quite confused when I got out plates and tried to cut up the cake, saying "No but it's my cake!  It's mine, Mumma!" and I realised that she thought she would get to eat the whole cake!

Not the whole cake, but a very large piece with a nice glass of milk.  She was happy with that!

Two days later, it was my birthday (28) and The Daddy took the day off work to take us all to the Collingwood Children's Farm.  We had an absolutely fantastic time - the weather wasn't great, so the Farm was near deserted, but we rugged up and had fun splashing around in puddles and cuddling all the animals.

A week later, we had a birthday party for Tabitha at home.  I wanted to take it pretty easy, so we went with a 'snowflake' theme (being a winter baby) and The Daddy and I spent the week prior cutting out snowflakes from plain white paper.  It took us much longer than expected, and we ended up spending all our evenings snipping snowflakes, but it was actually quite fun!  I stuck them all over every window in the house.

Work in progress all over the dining table:

Some of the windows - these snowflakes actually looked best at night, with the black outside as a background, and we kept them up for a couple of weeks!

Tabitha wore a beautiful little gold sequined dress from Big by Fiona Scanlan, with a gold hair clip and cute gold ballet flats.  She loved her 'party dress' (would you believe it even came with a champagne-coloured silk slip?!  Too cute!) and I could barely keep her still long enough to take a few pictures!  She ran around with her little friends for three straight hours at the party, and had the time of her life, surrounded by 50 or so of her friends and family:

Smile or grimace from Mumma?!  I nearly killed myself with the party - being on my feet cooking for the few days prior was really quite a crazy endeavour in hindsight, but I'm glad I did it, because she had such a good time at her party.

We had a few tiered plates of chocolate crackles, cupcakes with 'snow' sprinkles, and freshly baked chocolate chip cookies: 

I also made plenty of real egg nog with grated nutmeg to tie in withe the winter / snowflake theme, and served it in babycino sized cups.  This was a hit with the children and adults (I made it non-alcoholic):

Knowing my limits, I outsourced the cake.  Tabitha loves a profiterole, so croquembouche was the cake of the day.  Plus, so easy to cut and serve for a crowd!

Mini smoked salmon, cream cheese, caper and red onion bagels were popular - we had the party at brunch time (10am) to work around the nap time of all the toddlers.

Lots of little nibbly bits for the wee people:

We also had fairy bread (with non-dairy spread, this catered for some children with allergies), a few types of sandwiches, some cheese and some nice homemade sausage rolls.

For take-home treats, I baked gingerbreads in the shape of snowflakes (tracking down a snowflake cutter was surprisingly difficult!) and iced them with white royal icing.

I have to say, I'm quite pleased that our new baby is due in late November or so, since it gives me a nice amount of distance between the two birthdays to manage two parties.  Although I know that children's birthdays around Christmas time are often challenging, trying to find a date for a party and manage the celebration in the midst of Christmas preparation.  Plus, both of my parents' birthdays are in mid December - so it's always a busy time in our family!

Homemade Ice Cream and Steamed Sponge Puddings

Two of the things that I cook which seem to excite people the most are also - conveniently - two of the easiest to make.

Proper homemade vanilla ice cream with a custard base is, oh, roughly a billion times better than anything you can buy in a tub, even the really fancy stuff, and you don't need a top-of-the-line ice cream maker to create it.  I use a simple Cuisinart churn, which retails for around $100, and it produces brilliant ice cream.  You can spend several hundred dollars on a more high-tech one, the main advantage of which is that you don't need to freeze the bowl overnight first.  You can even - as shown by Heston Blumenthal on the Martha Stewart Show, and forever burned into my memory as a 'must try' - make voluptuously smooth ice cream using just your regular KitchenAid / standing mixed and a tub of dry ice.  Check it out HERE.

All you need to do is make vanilla custard, chill it in the fridge overnight (pop the churn bowl in the freezer overnight too) then churn it for 20 minutes in the morning, then just pop into the freezer in a container for at least a few hours to finish freezing.  It will happily keep for at least a month, though I can't imagine it lasting that long!

To make enough for around 1.5 litres of ice cream, here is the recipe:

Vanilla Ice Cream

500ml full cream milk

500ml thickened cream

10 egg yolks

250g caster sugar (vanilla-infused if you have it)

2 vanilla beans, split in half lengthways

In your widest, heavy-based saucepan, add the vanilla beans to the cream and milk.  Heat slowly until just about to boil, but not quite.  Leave to sit for about 20 minutes.

Beat the egg yolks and sugar together until pale and fluffy / they form thick ribbons.  In a KitchenAid this is at least a few minutes, I'd say.

Add the cream-and-milk mixture, now cooled a little, to the eggs, beating while you add, and throw out the vanilla beans (scrape the seeds into the mixture first).

Wash and dry the saucepan, then return the mixture to it, and cook over low/medium heat, stirring constantly, for about 10 minutes or so, or until slightly thickened (you get better at judging this with practice - you want to be able to run your finger down the back of the wooden spoon and leave a clear stripe).

NOTE - if you are nervous about this part (overcooking can cause it to split, that is, the eggs start to cook and you get little flecks of scrambled egg in the mixture), I recommend filling the kitchen sink with cold water and ice, and if the custard looks like it might split, dunk the saucepan into the sink and beat it like mad.  You can then strain it through a sieve to remove any curdled bits.  Nigella Lawson recommends, just once, cooking custard deliberately to the point of curdling, just so you can see when that happens.  This is actually helpful, if you ever feel like fiddling in the kitchen.

Once the custard is cooked, pour it into a large jug, cover the surface with cling film (to avoid a skin forming) and chill overnight or for several hours in the fridge.

Once chilled, simply churn according to the directions on your ice cream maker (for mine, 20 minutes) and store in the freezer in an air-tight container.

Bowl of chilled vanilla custard:

Here is the churn I use:

After the 20 minutes of churning, the ice cream is sort of semi-set:

And here is the finished product after some time in the freezer:

Vanilla ice cream is the perfect filling for homemade chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwiches!  Bake a tray of chocolate chip cookies, and serve them straight from the oven, on a plate, with a large bowl of ice cream and several spoons.  Let everyone make their own ice cream sandwiches with the hot, malleable cookies and plenty of ice cream.  It's a surefire way to reduce even the rowdiest table of guests to complete and total silence!  HERE is my favourite recipe for chocolate chip cookies - an absolute winner from the Milk and Cookies Bakery in NYC.

My favourite late-night snack:

Homemade vanilla ice cream is also divine on its own, or served with rich chocolate fudge sauce, or topped with roasted almond praline powder, or with some fresh berries.  Even with some store-bought, rich biscuits, this would be a completely adequate dessert for guests!  But it really goes well with a traditional Steamed Sponge Pudding.  Although this sort of old-fashioned pudding is laughably easy, few people seem to make it anymore.  Such a shame - it's too delicious for words.  I most often make a golden syrup version, which I will describe below, but you can easily make a jam version (substitute the golden syrup and lemon juice with good jam instead) or a chocolate version, or a ginger version.  I will post recipes for the chocolate and ginger versions one day soon.

Steamed Golden Syrup Sponge Pudding
From Nigella Lawson's How to be a Domestic Goddess
Serves 6-8


175g very soft butter
175g self-raising flour
175g caster sugar
3 large eggs
zest of an unwaxed lemon, and the juice of half
3 tablespoons or so of milk
250g golden syrup
juice of the other half lemon

Put the butter, flour, sugar, eggs, lemon and milk in a food processor or blender and whiz together until well combined. Add a little more milk if needed - you are after a thick but pourable texture.

Butter a pudding basin (between 1.5 - 2 litre size) and put the golden syrup and other lemon juice into the bottom.

Pour the batter over the top, and seal the basin.


You can use a plastic pudding basin with a lid - too easy - or you can just use a regular ceramic pudding basin and cover it with baking paper and foil, pleated to allow for swelling, and tied firmly with string (you can find more thorough instructions HERE about half way down if you've not steamed a pudding like this before, or a video of the process HERE but really it's very simple).

Once the pudding is ready for steaming, place the basin in a large saucepan, on a trivet, steamer rack or upturned saucer, with enough boiling water to come 2/3 way up the sides.

Put the lid on the saucepan, and gently boil the pudding for around 2 hours, although longer won't hurt it, topping up with boiling water as needed (probably a few times during the cooking).

Remove the basin from the boiling water and leave to rest for a few minutes before turning out onto a dish (with a bit of a rim or lip to it, as there will be some sauce).


NOTE - the pudding can be refrigerated and microwaved happily, by the slice.  So even if there are just two or three of you, go ahead and make it, and enjoy the leftovers the next day!

Here is how the mixture looks before cooking - a fairly thick cake batter, with bits of the syrup and juice spilling up around the edges:

Here is the pudding when it has finished steaming - beautifully risen, fluffy and spongy:

A slice of beautifully light, syrup-sodden steamed pudding with a scoop of ice cream:

Tabitha trying her pudding - 'Do I like this? Hmmm...'

'Why yes, yes I do!'

If you can't even be bothered to make a steamed golden syrup pudding (or want to eat one in less than a few hours!), there is an even easier one HERE.  Still a serving of cakey, warm, syrupy goodness...

Chook love!

Our three new family members are fluffy, tiny, busy little balls of feathers named Dolly, Sweetpea and Lacey.  Pekin Bantams are incredibly popular as pets / backyard chooks, and for good reason.  They are exceptionally friendly, curious, engaging, gentle and hilarious - every time we glance out the window, they are up to something gorgeous or funny.

Pekin Bantams are also a feather-footed breed, which means (as well as having very little feet, due to being a miniature chicken breed) their feet are covered in splayed feathery 'spats', so you cannot see their feet at all - they appear to be shuffling around just on feathers!  This also means that they are much less of a menace in the garden - they just don't get in there and dig up things anywhere near as much as a standard, normal chook.

Weighing in at about 500g, they appear to be about 1/3 the size of a regular chook, and much rounder!  They are so fluffy, they look like a large pom-pom with a head, and another tail pom-pom stuck on the back.

Can you tell I'm in love?!

They were a birthday present to me from my parents.  I've always wanted chooks, since I was, oh, around Tabitha's age, so when we moved house and could accommodate them, they were first on my To Do list.

Here are the babies when we first got them - around 12 weeks old, quite small, and shaped more like pigeons than hens.  We brought them inside to sleep each night, in a box lined with straw, for the first month or so we had them, because it was very cold overnight.  It was also a nice way to get to know them, handling them in the evenings when they were drowsy and agreeable.  Here they are sitting with The Daddy on the kitchen floor:

And having a bedtime snack with Tabitha, also ready for her bedtime:

We bought them through the fantastic Book-A-Chook company, which provides rental and sales chooks and houses to families and schools all over Melbourne.  The package I got included a beautiful, solid wood house.  If you are interested in seeing if chooks would work for you, you can rent a pair for a couple of weeks - and I believe that similar companies exist in other states of Australia.

Although the eggs are small, I think that the payoff, so to speak, is pretty good - the eggs are around half the size of regular chook eggs BUT the chooks themselves are much smaller, requiring less food, and do much less damage to gardens.  Also, the eggs have a greater proportion of yolk to those of regular eggs - and I love yolk!

The girls began to lay eggs about 10 days ago now, and after finding the first egg, there was no stopping them - we collected more than a dozen in the first week.  I believe (though could be wrong!) that all three girls are laying.  I think that Lacey is laying every day, and I think that Sweetpea and Dolly are laying every couple of days each.  I think this because there seem to be three types of eggs - a medium brown one every day, and then larger brown eggs on most days (which I am sure that Sweetpea is laying, because she carries on like you wouldn't believe after laying her eggs - dancing around, singing like a flock of magpies, tapping on the windows etc) and then there is the odd smaller, pale egg with white mottles on it, appearing every 2-3 days, which I suspect Dolly is responsible for.

Here are the first five eggs we got, collected over the first two or three days:

Here is nearly a week's worth of eggs:

The Daddy found the first egg, and rushed it inside with excitement.  Then later, he said he felt a bit bad because he hadn't stopped to acknowledge the chooks or say thank you before running off with their egg!  It got me thinking, and now I make a point of stopping to pat and chat to the chooks when they lay an egg, and I also try to give them some yummy food scraps when I collect their eggs too.

Tabitha is very excited about the eggs, and we've had to monitor her with them, as she wants to carry them all over the house, which I know would lead to quite a few broken eggs!  So we have a look at each egg when we collect them, a quick feel, and then they get tucked away safely in a bowl on the bench.  She tells people that "Dolly and the chooks are making eggs!  Outta their bottoms!"  I thought it was quite sweet, the other day, when she tried to carry the eggs outside to the chooks.  I asked her what she was doing, and she looked at me strangely and replied "I giving the eggs to the chooks!  The chooks made the eggs, these are their eggs!"  I realised that she found it quite strange that we take the eggs away from the chickens and don't give them back!  I wonder if we have a vegan in the makings... It did make me stop and think about it, though, and reinforced my practice of giving the chooks plenty of praise and treats in return for their eggs.

Strangely, I initially found the idea of actually eating the eggs to be quite confronting.  I am a big egg eater, so this really surprised me.  I just felt a little squeamish about the idea, to begin with.  Perhaps because they are smaller, they don't look exactly like 'regular' chook eggs, so I couldn't separate them in my head from the funny little feather-balls in the backyard.  I wonder if other people find this when they first get chooks?

We ate the first dozen or so soft-boiled on beautiful Pane Toscano toast with salted butter, and plenty of salt and pepper.  I test-boiled an egg first, as I had no idea how long to boil these small eggs for, to achieve a nice soft yolk.  The eggs we had were all between 18g - 25g, and I found that lowering them into boiling water (room temperature eggs) and boiling for exactly three minutes was spot on.  They were surprisingly easy to peel, considering how fresh they were, and the yolks were a really glorious, golden colour.  Two bantam eggs is about right for one piece of toast.

I have been told - and have observed for myself, through my aunt's chooks - that plenty of green leafy vegetables make for beautifully rich, golden yolks.  So I try to give them lots of bok choi and parsley and rocket etc.  

What else do they eat?  Well, the main staple of their diet is 'layer mash' which is a mixed, bought food that includes all the essential nutrients and minerals that laying chooks require.  You can feed this dry, or mix it with some warm water or warm milk.  I have sourced a feed that I'm really happy with - it's certified organic, soy-free, from a company called Country Heritage.  It's just their 'certified organic soy-free layer mash' and is available at some of the larger pet supply stores, and several stock feed stores.  My local place was happy to order it in for me.  It just looks and smells really nice, and the hens seem to love it.

Apart from their layer mash (which is available to them at all times - and they seem to eat a lot of it), they get a mixture of kitchen scraps every day, throughout the day.  Basically, whenever I have something that I think they might like, I walk over and give it to them through the back door.  So they have learnt to come running whenever they hear me coming out!  They will mob anyone who goes outside, hoping for something delicious, and usually they are in luck.

Here they are this afternoon, working on their avocado:

They didn't have a huge interest in kitchen scraps when they were younger, but I'd say from about a month before they started laying, their appetites for fresh food increased, and now they demolish scraps all day.  Green leafy veggies are great, as are cooked root vegetables, and natural yoghurt (excellent for their gut health).  A typical day (yesterday) might include:  some warm porridge with whole milk, coconut and pecans (leftover from Tabitha's breakfast), some bits of bok choi, garlic and snow peas from last night's dinner, some watermelon and half a soft pear, some leftover natural yoghurt with LSA and seed topping, the leftover bits of an avocado (they adore avocado and will pick the skins completely clean), some roast pumpkin, some peas and corn (they much prefer the corn to the peas!), some parsley scraps and some cheeky crumbs from a lemon poppyseed cake.

Overall I avoid giving them bread, except for the odd scrap of nice grainy bread as a treat, because it's a bit like 'chook junk food' apparently, and they sure do squabble over it!  I also avoid too much asparagus, broccoli, cabbage etc. as I've been told it can lend a slight sulfurous flavour to eggs.  Salt is a no-no, so things like bacon, baked beans or processed foods are best avoided, and likewise treats such as pancakes, date scones, cake etc. are saved for a small treat, just once or twice a week.  I can't quite bring myself to ban these delicious snacks altogether, after witnessing the sheer joy that a leftover pancake or half scone brings!

The chooks also need a source of calcium, which can come from either bought 'fine shell grit' or you can give them crumbled-up, cooked eggshells (e.g. from boiled eggs or roast the raw eggshells in an oven for a bit).  You need to crumble them up until they don't resemble eggs anymore, otherwise you risk the birds becoming 'egg eaters' who will try and eat freshly laid eggs.

Chooks also need a constant supply of fresh, cook water - it's best to hang their water up, so they don't tread in it and fill it with junk.  If the weather is very hot, the water might need to be changed a couple of times a day, and it's worth popping some big chunks of ice in it to keep it cool.  One of the biggest killers of backyard chooks, apparently, is heat and dehydration.  On a terribly hot day, I've been instructed that I should plan on bringing them inside or at least into the garage.

Of course, chickens do not have teeth - like all birds, instead, they grind food up internally, using bits of grit and small stones that they eat.  I've noticed the chooks running down the side of the house to an area with gravel, where they spend a few minutes each day picking through the stones, eating small ones!

Apart from this, I also worm them (once every three months, or the start of each new season to make things easy) and sprinkle some 'derris dust' over their perches and nesting area, to keep away mites and pests.  I also add a little apple cider vinegar and fresh garlic to their water sometimes, as these are good natural worming methods.  So far, no trouble with any pests.

It's also nice to provide chooks with somewhere to dust-bathe.  They like to wriggle themselves right down into dry, dusty soil or sand, then groom it off their bodies, as a way of keeping clean and pest-free.  They have claimed a large terracotta pot (which used to house rhubarb before they decimated it) and spend quite a bit of time each day bathing in the dirt.

Speaking of rhubarb, the chooks have eaten two complete plants of it.  Leaves, stalks and roots.  Now, it was my understanding that the leaves were highly toxic, but the girls love them, and have stripped them completely with no ill effects at all.  So there you go!  Likewise, I've always been told that avocado is toxic for birds, but Jackie French's brilliant 'The Chook Book' dispelled this myth for me - her chooks eat avocadoes in massive quantities, as the main protein source in their diet, and my chooks only wish they were so lucky, instead making do with about 1/4 of an avocado each day.

Without any real effort, the chooks are incredibly tame and friendly.  Part of this is certainly the breed (Pekin Bantams are generally known to be tame and friendly birds by nature) but I think that a major factor has been their proximity to the house and our family - our garden and decking are very small, and are adjacent to the main living areas of the house (living room, dining area and kitchen) through around 8m or so of glass bi-fold doors.  So all day, the chooks are just meters away from our family as we go about our business.  They spend lots of the day watching us through the glass - in fact, as I'm sitting here at the dining table typing, they are just on the other side of the glass from me, peering at me (probably hoping for scraps!)  As such, they are completely used to our movements, voices etc. and are not at all fazed when we go outside or handle them.

Tabitha is generally pretty good with the chooks, however occasionally she gets over-excited and a bit rough.  So I always supervise her, and if there is any roughness, she comes inside straight away.  Overall she's getting much more reliable though, and I think that by Summer, she'll be fine to be outside playing with them on her own - which will be a fantastic way to keep her amused while I tend to the new baby!  She likes to pick them up, and unfortunately the easiest way (for her size) is to grab them by their two wings, so we've had to be very firm about this.  We have a 'no picking up, only patting' rule that we have to enforce quite a bit - but as I mentioned, she is definitely improving with age and experience.  She will happily spend a good hour outside with them, chasing them around (they are not fussed by this, as she doesn't run very fast!), patting them, trying to get them to eat out of her hands and just chatting to them.

Here is Tabitha trying to coax them out of their dust-bathing pot, to eat some scraps in a bowl:

Officially, Dolly (the smallest, white one) is Tabitha's pet, Lacey is my little sister's, and Sweetpea is 'mine'.  Lacey is certainly the top of the pecking order, and Dolly is firmly on the bottom, standing back and waiting her turn when any scraps are offered.  She is also the easiest to pick up and the calmest.

Lacey and Sweetpea are similar in appearance (both mottled black/grey/white) but we can easily tell them apart at a glance, even from a distance.  Lacey is larger, more 'solid' and Sweetpea has a golden/brown band of feathers around her neck, a larger comb, and is also sleeker in shape.

I look forward to writing more about the chooks (like all chook owners I've met, I've become impossibly boorish on the subject of poultry!) and sharing more photos.  Unfortunately (perhaps due to the eyes?) chooks don't seem to photograph well in my opinion.  You can't seem to capture any of the personality and gentle natures of them in photos.  But I will continue to try!

Oh and as a final note - the two books I've found absolutely essential have been Jackie French's The Chook Book (a wonderful read even if you don't have chooks, I think!) and also Backyard Poultry Naturally (which has lots of great information about medicinal herbs etc for chickens and ducks).  Both books are Australian, both are available at Readings bookstores and from various online retailers.

Look at those beautiful pom-pom tails!