On a brighter note

Thank you for your lovely comments on my last post. What a beautiful community this is.

We had a very slow weekend – even if I briefly forgot about the time of year and got caught in stifling crowds on a Saturday afternoon (note to council: when you organise your excellent backyard chooks workshop again, please steer clear of shopping centres in the run up to Christmas).

We even booked to go away on a little camping holiday. Somewhere where Luca can finally sleep in a tent under the stars. Somewhere he can watch our very own campfire and toast homemade marshmallows. Somewhere where Sydney can swim in a mountain river and we can hire a canoe and spot the odd platypus. All the fresh air will mean the boys will nod off quickly and sleep soundly, and we can sit by the riverbank with a glass of red...

Who am I kidding? There's no point spinning it. It is what it is. Two nights away with our children. In a tent. Two nights.

Did I mention we're sleeping in the one tent? Or that we're somehow going to divide ourselves up between a double air bed and a single air bed?

The funny thing is I'm almost looking forward to it more than I did our Hunter Valley trip.

What do you think – do we need our heads read?

Now who hasn't entered my giveaway?





A figgy co-op

I am desperately trying to reduce our dependancy on the supermarket. It's a particularly soulless experience for me. There's something about seeing the masses of cheap food, sold very cheaply, and people loading it into their trolleys that leaves me feeling empty and a bit alone.

Every single week. I dread it. 

I try and try to make us go two weeks between supermarket shops, but it's always the milk that sends me back. I don't actually know how much we get through, but I'm guessing over 10 litres. Do other families go through this much? (It's why I made this plea.)

Very often I clear the shelves of the organic milk (they very rarely have more than 7 litres on the shelf), and most other times I just can't fit that much milk into the trolley on top of everything else. 

I buy what I have to at the moment. In the back of my head, I'm making plans to make a few things – our own laundry detergent (maybe), mayonnaise, tomato ketchup... I've already made a start on ricotta, except it wasn't quite right, so I must revisit the cheese-making. It's just about getting into the habit – and finding the time!

The garden has been giving us spinach, parsley and (very holey) rocket. The kale is almost ready and Luca picked our first pea pod yesterday. 

Our little Monday box scheme came to an end recently, so I had to find something else. 

I discovered FIG (Food Integrity Group Co-op). Well, the truth is, I'd heard about a co-op on the Central Coast a while ago, but I couldn't contemplate the half-hour drive when Kian was a baby.

I've been going and getting my box for the last couple of weeks now, and I'm happy.

Bit of a dicey drive (have I mentioned I don't like driving?), but it's worth it.

Watching other mums pile beautiful local (proper local) produce into their baskets makes me happy. I'm not alone banging on about free-range birds and eggs; there was a petition here this week along with plenty of information to inform us.

This week, I filled my bags with apples, potatoes, greens, citrus, broccoli and cauliflower. Plus I bought eggs (a member's eggs; $4 for a dozen!), celery, ginger, bananas, beetroot and sweet potato. Last week, there were carrots for $1 a kilo! Organic carrots. A dollar a kilo! 

The celery came home and was quickly sautéed in butter with onion and bay leaves, before joining the broccoli and the cauli together with a layer of breadcrumbs, crushed walnuts and parmesan in a creamy gratin. 

Graeme and I were home alone yesterday. And this is what we rustled up for our lunch. Figgy poached eggs.*

It's Thursday and I'm running out of veg already. That's the trouble when I have really good ingredients in the house. They disappear quickly. More to the point, there's a lot more care and respect that goes into the cooking, so I've been making some lovely meals. 

I made last week's mushrooms the star of the dish in a French chicken casserole. All the potatoes sat huddled next to a roasted lamb joint for yesterday's dinner and tonight, we have soup. 

A soup so good that Kian had two servings. I can't tell you how that made me feel given he hasn't really eaten a proper meal (lunch or dinner) for months. He eats porridge, a few prunes and spoonfuls of chocolate coconut butter.

Until today. 

This is what broke his fast: shallots, carrot and the leftover bunch of celery leaves (see above) sizzled very gently for a little while. Then I stirred in quite a generous knob of ginger and some orange zest. Red lentils next and chicken stock. Left to simmer until I picked Luca up from preschool. A blitz, then Luca added a can and a half of chickpeas ('two cans would be too much, Mummy').** 

Here's a list of other food co-operatives around the country. Another one here too.

More on FIG coming soon...




* I don't know if you've noticed, but this is a pretty good shot compared to most of the food photography on here (I wish I took it!). I've decided now that I've reached this milestone, I'm going to take my food shots a bit more seriously. No more slopping on plates and trying to take something one-handed with the phone (sometimes it's the only way if my little cuddlebug needs his half-hourly cuddle). We have a very good camera and I have a husband who knows what all the buttons do, so the food will start to look good now. (I half toyed with the idea of deleting some of my very dodgy food shots, but y'know what? They're staying. How else can I call it a journey?) Joy, if you're reading this, I'm hoping for some pointers when I see you next...

** I hope I'm not being annoying not giving you an exact recipe. I write lots of exact recipes. It's just that I love to inspire rather than prescribe. 

Pizza, burgers and cardboard boxes

Home from preschool on Friday and I realise there's half a batch of pizza dough in the fridge from the night before. Woohoo! (I get really excited when I put ingredients together in my head and come up with a meal. Don't you?)

I rush in and quickly sizzle some garlic in coconut oil (I've become a real convert to coconut oil - more on that another time) before emptying in the contents of a large can of tomatoes and a bit of dried oregano and rosemary. Some salt and pepper and I leave it to bubble away and thicken. Meanwhile, a bowl of frozen sweetcorn is out thawing, I spread the dough out on a tray with my fingers and I drain the tuna, grate the cheese and chop some beautiful organic spinach leaves.

The sauce looks ready so I dollop it on the dough, and hide the spinach amongst it (Luca will never see it once I pile everything up high anyway). On go the sweetcorn, tuna and cheese, and into the oven till the dough is golden and crusty.

Scroll down below to see what I did with the leftover tomato sauce 

And boy was it delicious. Think it must have been the rosemary and the garlic in the sauce that gave it a real savoury edge. 

It was a resounding success with Luca (and for once he didn't pull anything green out), but 'fraid Kian did what Kian has been doing for weeks now: throws the plate and everything on it across the floor. In one fell swoop. 

Every. Bloody. Meal.

I've seen a temper in me this week that I don't see very often. That's all I shall say on the issue.

On Saturday (to try and temper my temper and inject a bit of cheer into our week), we took boxes to grassy hills and did this:

Linking in with the Playlist at 1000 Homes of Happiness 

And made it a burger night. 

While the sesame maps were rising, I roasted whole beetroot and potato wedges. Made the patties with chopped
onion, and the same dried herbs from the night before!

Luca had fun making his towering burger with cheese, tomato, beetroot and sauce. Kian... well, he actually ate half a patty. And the floor got the rest.

Last night, I stuffed cannelloni with a mixture of crème fraîche, parmesan, spinach and nutmeg, poured the leftover tomato sauce over the top and baked for 20 mins or so.

The boys didn't touch it, even when I mixed it up and turned it all gooey.

Maybe there was too spinach this time. But this is happening so much at the moment that sometimes I feel like giving up and just giving them toast at every meal.

But I don't. I can't. Some mums wonder why I go to so much effort in the first place, but that's just what I do. 

I cook from scratch because it's like second nature to me. There are lots of reasons.

Lately, I've felt deflated. Luca will pick, and Kian loves seeing the whole lot fall to the floor.

I'm waiting for the next phase. The one where they can't pile it in fast enough, and then ask for more.

It's happened in the past, so I know it's possible.

Until then, if you need me, I'll be on my hands and knees clearing up the last mess.

Mini quiches and a roasted red pasta sauce

My food posts are few and far between. I know that. It's because my kitchen and I are not on very good terms at the moment. There's the fish tank, the new compost bucket, water cask, all the dirty dishes (yes, they certainly are a permanent feature around here) and everything else that gets dumped on the kitchen bench (if we don't know where something goes, or we just can't be bothered to put it away, guess where it ends up?).

So funnily enough, I don't feel inspired to cook there. I'm looking at it now and I can just about fit an A4 piece of paper in the space available. It drives me wild.

One day, I'll have a kitchen big enough so that when I'm rolling pastry out, half of it isn't dangling off the bench top. One day...

Anyway, I realised last night that I hadn't made any bread (see above for reason why), and the boys need a packed lunch today, so I decided to make some mini leek and cheese quiches in my A4-size workspace.

I whisked out some butter puff pastry sheets from the freezer and while they thawed, I softened a couple of leeks in some butter. No real recipe here. Sound familiar?

Three or four eggs in a bowl, beaten with a small tub of crème fraîche, a dash of milk, a sprinkling of nutmeg and salt and pepper. Plus a handful of grated cheese (I used a mixture of cheddar and parmesan). I probably didn't need the extra milk, but Mum always adds milk, so I do.


I pretended to leave the leeks to cool, then I mixed them into the eggy cheesy cream. Squares of the butter puff went into a muffin tray, followed by spoonfuls of the filling. I didn't half fill them, or put the tray in the oven and fill them to the top. Instead, because I think I know best, I wobbled over to the oven, and the mixture leaked out and caught some of the pastry.


Still, they look good. And I've just had one for morning tea.


I popped some cherry tomato quarters on top and baked them for around 15 mins at 180-200C. (Honestly, though, I just cooked them until they looked ready.)

Something else I did a while ago was a roasted red pepper (capsicum) and tomato sauce for pasta. I get so bored with Kian spitting things out and working out what he'll eat. He can't just survive on bananas and sultanas, so I often to resort to a good old purée.

I roasted whole garlic cloves (in their skin), red onion and red pepper (capsicum) with olive oil and a bit of seasoning for about 20 minutes in a hottish oven. (Don't you love how vague I am?!)**. I added the tomatoes towards the end, just so they soften and before they start to char.

Then I blitzed the whole lot with a stick blender (take the squishy garlic out of their skins first). A nice dollop of crème fraîche makes it deliciously creamy, and I know the flavours would be too intense without it for my little ones...

One more idea for your posse... I made some falafels for dinner one evening and served it with some tahini sauce, which I've never made for the boys before. Tahini made from unhulled sesame seeds is very good for you (yes, I know that's very erudite of me, but... well, I've never really been interested in how much calcium or magnesium something has.)

Anyway, it tastes good and it's rich in nutrients.

I made the tahini sauce by mixing a little tahini into some yoghurt along with a good squeeze of lemon. Add a little to start with and keep tasting. 

The boys loved it, especially for dipping their sweet potato wedges.

** I'm not being deliberately vague. This is largely how I cook. There are lots of badly written recipes out there; recipes that set out to give you all the information but end up letting you down somehow. I'm not setting out to give you precise measurements and timings. I'm just cooking for my family, and I'm telling you about it. It's meant to inspire. Because I like to be inspired too. 

Easy midweek family meals

I believe in food cooked from scratch. I believe in good ingredients. Those two things bring me so much joy and so I really do believe in the cliché that food is one of life's greatest pleasures.

That said, I still get stumped on what to cook occasionally. I don't spend enough time planning meals, so I do a lot of 'open the fridge/freezer doors and stare blankly for a few minutes', trying to create meals in my head with what we also have in the garden and cupboard.

Often, the blank stare achieves nothing more than a bolognese.

Sometimes though, much like when you come up with an absolute corker in Scrabble, my eyes light up as I realise I have the makings of something very nice for dinner.

A little while ago, I had some free-range chicken mince in the freezer. I did my blank stare and then discovered bacon in the fridge (I always have bacon in the fridge now that I can buy free-range!). 

I made some patties using the chicken mince, lemon zest, softened shallots, and some parsley and thyme from the garden. 

I wrapped the patties in the 'streaky' bits of bacon (or just streaky bacon, if you're English!) and baked in a hottish oven for 20 mins or so.

Now, before you scroll to the bottom to find the recipe, wait. There isn't one. You see, I don't really like recipes. In fact, I don't actually believe in recipes very much. Not for this type of thing anyway.

I've written hundreds of recipes, and edited dozens of cookery books, and I find recipes just mostly get in the way. 

They get in the way of cooking. And they bore me.

If I say 1 tsp of thyme leaves, I'm implying that 2 tsp will make it all go horribly wrong. Which it won't. 

Obviously, I follow cake recipes and the like because there is an element of science involved. But the more cooking I do, and the older (and the more impatient I get), I want to add what I want. I just want a vague idea of what goes in, and I make up the rest. It's so much more relaxing that way. Rather than traipsing up and down the kitchen checking your recipe and freaking out when you realise you haven't got as much as the recipe dictates, you add a dash of this and a dash of that. 

That's how my mum cooks.

And maybe, MAYBE, that's a load of twaddle. It could just be I've seen so many recipes that I just don't want to type out precise tsp and grams. Either way, you're not going to get a recipe. (But you get very good pictures!)

Chicken and herb patties

And last night, I was stumped again. The fridge and cupboards are crying out to be filled. I flicked through a book, saw the word 'pancake' and fritters came to mind.

A bag of corn in the freezer. A red pepper (capsicum) and avocados need to be eaten, and there's spring onions in the garden.

I will give you a vague recipe here, but it's just a basic batter. Beat together 100g self-raising flour, 2 eggs and around 100ml milk. Season, then add whatever you fancy. In my case, chopped basil and some corn, along with diced red pepper and sliced spring onion, both of which I'd softened in olive oil beforehand. Then just gently cook spoonfuls of the batter in a pan with some oil.

Corn and red pepper fritters

I cut the fritters into fingers for the boys and they had them with some sliced avocado drizzled with a bit of lime.

There. Two really good meals that you can rustle up and have on the table in less than half an hour.

Would love to know if you make this.

Weekend eating

I've been forgetting to post about the fish Graeme's been catching recently. I wonder if it's because I'm trying to block out his encounter with a shark?... Hmmmmm

Anyway, the red morwong and black drummer fillets were cooked with capers, lemon, butter and fresh tarragon. Simple but very very good. Especially with creamy parmesan polenta. 

Those pools are lemon juice, not butter...
OK, maybe a bit of butter...

The garden needs a bit of TLC at the moment. The layers have all sunk down, so a lot of the plants have suffered from not being exposed to full sun. Add to that all the rain we've been having and the tomato plants were a mess. Most of the fruit had split skins, and had started rotting.

I'm experimenting as I go along, taking herbs out of the garden and putting them into pots to make room for more salads. But I start one thing and often don't get to see it through, and before I know it another week has gone past, and it's a mess again.

While Kian will sit on the grass for a few minutes, he now thinks it's fun to walk around the beds ripping all the leaves out. He started with the marigolds, which I let him de-head, but then when I wasn't looking he'd pulled out beetroot, an entire coriander plant and one strawberry plant. So having Kian out there just makes more work.

But Graeme and I did need 20 minutes or so to clear the other bed, and build the layers back up, so we thought a bucket of water would keep him amused for that long.

Except he tried to climb into it head first and almost got stuck (with his head in the water).

We can't take our eyes off him for a second. So it just meant he stayed on my hip, while Graeme shovelled.

Most of the tomatoes this week were no good, but I still managed to pick a couple of baskets' worth.

Tomatoes and purple carrots ready to go into the oven...

And earlier that day some pitta breads for lunch...

I've picked up all the green tomatoes off the ground that must have fallen off in the rain. What would you do with a great big bowl of green tomatoes? Chutney?

Actually, Graeme's just picked four green chillies from his chilli plant, so a green tomato chutney might be just the thing. 

(In my head, yes. It makes perfect sense. A green tomato chutney with a nice kick from Graeme's chillies. Hey, I could even make enough to give away a few jars as gifts. Trouble is, I keep looking at these tomatoes in the fridge and saying 'I must do something with them'. I'm feeling lazy this week, and, well chutney doesn't offer quite the same reward as chocolate cake, does it? I mean, I'll leave Pinterest to make custard, even bread. But chutney?)

P.S. I've been beavering away over the last few weeks trying to finish my story. My blog is a big work in progress, but at least I've finished one page!

Chance encounters

This was supposed to be last week's grateful post, but it looks like I've missed a week.

I've been meaning to write this for a while, but it just hasn't happened. I won't be a slave to my blog, I keep reminding myself. I won't let it become a chore, or something on my to-do list, because then it won't be a creative outlet anymore.

Anyway, chance encounters... That's what's been on my mind.

Image from here

It's funny how life can change, or take on an entirely different quality because of a chance encounter.

I've always been grateful for meeting the friend of a friend years ago who insisted I come out to Australia on a working holiday visa and stay with him in Sydney. I did, and it led me to my husband.

And more recently, I bumped into another mum at the library whom I'd only met once before. Fast forward a few months and out of the blue, she emailed me to ask if I'd like to join a group of mums for an exercise class with a personal trainer. It just so happened to be organised on the day that I have to myself, so I jumped at the chance. How else am I going to shift 10kg??

And what a difference it's made to my week. Not only am I training with other mums, doing things I've never done before like boxing, but we're exercising outdoors – and the setting is pretty spectacular. It's a house on several acres with amazing views, so it's unlike any other fitness class I've done.

All from a chance meeting...

And this week, in particular, I'm grateful for having come across family daycare. If it wasn't for a colleague of Graeme's, we wouldn't have found someone I completely trust with my children.

For the first time, I decided that Luca and I could do with some time together on our own, without the koala.

Normally I might have felt sad that, unlike other families we know, I don't have my mum nearby to help out, or my sister, or anyone else in the family.

Instead, I just felt grateful. Grateful that I had someone whom I was happy to leave Kian with for a few hours where he could play and paint, be sung to and read to.

Grateful that I didn't need to feel any guilt (hell knows there's plenty of that!). Because he was happy, and Luca..., well, he was a very smiley little boy that day.

We went for a walk, baked jammy biscuits, made a bongo/shaker, pottered in the garden and we talked. No rushing off to change nappies, no 'I'm listening Luca but I need to sort Kian out'. My attention was all his.

All thanks to that encounter.

Is this really a food blog?

I know my blog cites food as its main reason for being, but really, when was the last time I posted about food?

I wanted to create a space where I could share my passions and until very recently my biggest passion was food. Well, it still is. Just that a few things have got in the way.

Children for starters. Nothing gets in the way of creating something lovely in the kitchen like a one-year-old whinging and whining, koala-hugging your leg all day long. Nothing.

Yes, I've been completely uninspired where food's concerned, because Kian has decided to take this separation anxiety thing to its very limit. We're at the point where I can't bare to be at home between meals, because if he's not asleep and not eating, it's moan moan moan. As soon as we go out, he's OK.

Even Luca held his hands up to his ears yesterday and shouted 'Kian, stop being so noisy. Stop whinging!'. If nothing else, it made me laugh.

And then there's getting stuck in a rut, sticking to a very dependable repertoire of meal ideas. Kids, bless their little cotton socks, don't only sap you of time and energy, I've found, but creativity gets lost too. So needless to say, I've been feeling a bit flat about this.

Until last weekend.

Suddenly, I wanted to be in the kitchen again and I wanted to eat great food. So after a morning of taking the boys swimming and fishing, I made a sort of fruit salad. Peaches, nectarines, mango and passionfruit. And the thing that made my tongue do a little dance: lots of lime zest.

Then we went down to the garden and picked lots of tomatoes.

Graeme made me a tomato and caramelised onion tart tatin years ago and it was divine. So I made that, and we devoured the whole thing. The entire tart between two adults and two little kiddlywinks. Kian hasn't been fond of popping cherry tomatoes like his older brother, but I had a feeling he'd eat them like this, and I wasn't wrong. Sweet, roasted tomatoes with softened onion and rich, buttery thyme-scented pastry - who wouldn't?

As for dessert... I had a can of condensed milk in the cupboard (still haven't got round to making dulce de leche), so I quickly made a batch of no-churn strawberry ice cream. Very easy and rather delicious.

A swirl of strawberry puree 

If that wasn't enough for one day, I made a loaf of sultana, cinnamon and pecan bread in the breadmaker (have I mentioned how I'd be lost without my breadmaker?), so we'd have something exciting to wake up to.

Lunch the next day was a glorious concoction of haloumi, mint and tomato (our first tomato glut ever!) on flatbread. All roughly chopped and in the oven until the haloumi starts to take on a bit of colour. I loved it, but the boys weren't keen. Oh well, you can't win 'em all.

It felt good to eat well, and to be inspired.

I'm going to try and make my food posts a bit more frequent than once in a blue moon. But it all depends if baby koala will ever let go...

P.S. Having a lot of trouble posting pictures lately, hence why they're floating all over the place!

Effortless family cooking

Like I said in a post recently, my cooking nowadays is very different to what it was when a) I slept at night, b) I didn't have a very vocal baby who developed separation anxiety very early on, and c) I didn't have a 3-year-old who values his space and screams whenever his baby brother comes near him.

So, it's all about food that doesn't take up too much of my time – for now, at least. That is, food that either I can rustle up quickly and put on the table within 20-30 minutes, or something I can shove in the oven – for hours if need be – while I take the boys out.

Effortless food based on good ingredients (some homegrown now, I'd like to add!).

That's what I'll be mostly writing about over the next few months.

I wish I planned my meals better for the week ahead. But somehow I always start the day wondering what I've got to do for the boys' lunch and dinner.

Yesterday was a case in point. We've had a lot of chicken and red meat of late, so I started thinking pasta and vegetable dishes. My plan was to pick Luca up early and have him help me in the kitchen. So I needed something involving a little light chopping and some mixing.

Sweetcorn fritters.

Corn from the freezer combined with some store cupboard ingredients make a very tasty fritter for children, especially with some avocado on the side. And they're a cinch to make.

I don't know about you, but I always have a particular book, writer or website in mind depending on what I want to cook.

Chocolate cake? Nigella.

My favourite roast chicken recipe? Hugh FW's meat book.

Food to whisk me back to life in the Middle East? Claudia Roden.

Fritters? It has to be the cool and breezy Bill Granger.

A fabulous recipe to cook with kids. Before I darted out to get Luca, I measured the corn, flour and spices into two bowls. When we got in, he took great delight in whisking the eggs, adding the corn and stirring it all together.

I heated a bit of leftover duck fat from our dinner a couple of nights ago (a little decadent for kids' food, but why not?), and Luca dolloped spoonfuls of the mixture into the pan.

We made a mess, but for once we had fun together from beginning to end (normally, it all starts well and then he'll go off in a sulk about something).

He even managed to flip them. While he waited for them to turn crisp and golden, he sliced some avocado (yes, he uses a knife in the kitchen. On paper, he's probably too young to be near a hot pan and a sharp knife, but he's incredibly sensible. And I think it's key to getting children involved in food from an early age; if they show an interest and can be trusted to listen, then encourage them as much as possible).

I was so proud of him yesterday. He served the fritters onto plates for him and Kian. What's great about this recipe is that you end up with a robust fritter, one that holds its shape well, so I simply cut it into fingers for Kian to hold in his gorgeous chubby fist.

I wish we could do this every day, but it's not always possible with Kian hanging off my leg.

The fritters were such a hit, I'm now wondering how a pea version would go down. With some parmesan perhaps, instead of the spices. I'll let you know...

Vanessa

P.S. I'm not going to type out Bill's recipe because, as I discovered today, the web is awash with mention of these famous fritters.