Stationery joy

Today I unwrapped my new diary for next year.  It's the same as last year's, but royal blue instead of cornflower blue. 

The specs: A5, a week to a page on the left hand side, a page for notes and lists on the right hand side, ribbon to mark the page, loads of blank paper at the back, hard cover, pocket in the back, elastic doo-dad to hold it all together.

It does away with the need for a second book for lists, which had previously done away with a thousand pieces of paper on the kitchen bench, in the bag, on the floor, on the bedside table... 

Not cheap.  You could get multiple Collins diaries from the newsagent for the price of this one.  But it is worth every cent.

A page to a week is perfect for me.  I need to be able to see the whole week ahead - it helps me to plan for seven sensible and manageable days at a time.  There is enough room to record an event for the morning, one for the afternoon before school finishes, one for the afternoon after school finishes and one for the evening - four events per day if so needed.  And if I need more room than this for planning out my days I figure I need to reassess my life, not my diary format.

Thankfulness

 

Most merciful Father, we humbly thank you

for all your gifts so freely bestowed on us.

For life and health and safety, for power to work and leisure to rest,

and for all that is beautiful in creation and in the lives of men,

we praise and glorify your holy name.

But, above all, we thank you

for your spiritual mercies in Christ Jesus our Lord,

for the means of grace,

and for the hope of glory.

Fill our hearts with all joy and peace in believing;

through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen

 

(From An Australian Prayer Book p.36)

 

A letter to my friend

Dear Deb,

I know I have mentioned this before but every time I pull my slow cooker out of the cupboard I think of you and smile as I remember your public declaration that slow cookers are not for you, coming a week after I got one for my birthday.  I was quite struck by your post, in part because I value what you have to say and also because it followed my efforts of splitting my corner of the facebook community in half as they debated the merits of slow cookers over slow cooking in cast iron - and also the suitability of a slow cooker for a birthday gift.  Well, dear Deb, we are about six months down the track so I thought I would let you know what I think the old slow cooker now.

First up, the slow cooker is not for the most part, in my humble opinion, a time saver.  Where we all I went wrong ten years ago was thinking you could just throw everything in it in the morning, turn it on and come home to a delicious dinner.  That was a recipe for bland, broiled meat.  Blah.

When I use it now I take the time to brown things and get the sauces going.  As I like to cook in bulk where I can, it has taken up to an hour of preparation, frying off and creating at least the beginnings of delicious sauces before I reach that point of lobbing it all into the slow cooker and turning it on. So for the most part I look upon it as an electric casserole dish.  I do like that I can cook a casserole slowly, over eight hours, turning cheap, tough meat into something glorious.  And I like that I can leave it on all day.  One could argue that you can just slow cook like that in the oven or on the stove top.  For me, I don't really like leaving my oven on and unattended all day.  But I don't seem to mind leaving the slow cooker unattended while I leave the house to do other things.  

I got my men to get me a big one in order to do the bulk curries and casseroles.  Consequently it is a big item.  It takes up a lot of room in the cupboard.  It's heavy.  It's a bit unwieldy to clean.  I confess that I do have to pick my time and psych myself up to use it.  But when the time is right, it's a great thing.  I have used it maybe ten times in the last three months.

I've tried soups but I don't think I'll persist with this method for soup preparation.  It takes a very long time for all that liquid to warm up.  I'm happy enough with my big pot and going a bit faster for soup.  I should say though that a friend gave me THE most wonderful pea and ham soup recipe for the slow cooker BUT when I served it up one up one member of the family loved it, one tolerated it and one thought he was being poisoned.  There was quite some theatre.  We haven't had a scene like that at the dinner table in months.  Maybe years.  It was almost worth it.  Almost.  The recipe is not dependent upon a slow cooker.  I could recreate it in my soup pot if I was feeling like some dinner time amusement again some day.  I think my clan prefer the minestrone style of soup.  It may be a texture issue with the blended soups...they're not that keen on pumpkin soup either.

BUT dear Deb there are three recipes that are to die for.  And the lovely Jane has put them all on her blog.  Three recipes that are delicious and have had universal appeal at our dinner table.  Recipes that had me inviting friends over for dinner the first time I cooked them, so confident was I of their potential for dinnertime happiness.

Pulled pork.   I have already given this one the three hip hip hoorays on this blog.  And research indicates that there are recipes out there for doing it from scratch but the bottle of marinade seems to do the trick very nicely.  And this is indeed one recipe where you can just lob the TWO ingredients in, press the button and go.

Lamb's equivalent of pulled pork.  Oh Deb.  This is glorious.  Not cheap.  But it is absolute deliciousness.  It could be done in an oven.  But it works really well in the slow cooker.  I browned the lamb when I made it.  Despite what I said about taking the time to brown things, next time I make this I won't be browning the meat.  And again, like the pulled pork, this is a throw it in and leave it recipe.

The third one is Jane's recipe for beef stroganoff.  It's great for a family dinner with veg or pasta or rice.  It's great for a church feast.  It's great for leftovers, for freezing and for giving away to a family in need.  It's great.

And so to the $64 question.  Given what I know now, would I still get one given my time birthday again?  Well, I think yes.  I would maybe opt for the smaller version next time, although that wouldn't allow for leftovers.  I don't use it all the time.  But when I do I'm pretty sold on it.  Which is in no way meant to pressure you into asking for one for your birthday.  If you don't have a lot of space in your kitchen or you don't like to have an appliance that you only use occasionally I wouldn't get one.  And be warned too - not all recipes for the slow cooker will be as delicious as these three.  I have had some epic fails as well.  I am learning to know what will actually work and won't end up tasting like broiled, bland blahness.  It's not my favourite thing in the kitchen.  But unlike the one I bought ten years ago, I won't be giving this one away.  It has earned its spot in my kitchen.

Hope you are well and that you have great school holidays. 

Love Meredith xx

Adventures with the slow cooker

There are various topics that will comprehensively divide the Facebook community.  I did it once when I asked, tongue in cheek, if people thought it was OK for one's four year to drink tea.  (Leave no comments on this matter.  Truly, I have heard them all.)  And then there was the comment I put up at the beginning of January.

So, supposing I was going to suggest to my menfolk that they buy me a slow cooker for my birthday, any advice I should give them on brands, types, things to look for?

Thus began two debates running simultaneously over the merits of slow cookers versus a good cast iron pot (with a few people weighing in with pressure cooker comments as well) and also whether or not a slow cooker was actually an acceptable birthday gift. 

Eventually a brave friend gave me this answer.

Meredith I'm not sure if I'm brave enough to wade into this discussion but I love my slow cooker. I always brown everything first and use it endlessly in winter for curries and casseroles and mass quantities of spaghetti sauce. Would recommend one with low, high and keep warm settings and a heavy ceramic dish. Have heard lots negative about the new ones you can brown in - non stick surfaces that easily damage and leach funny taste/chemicals. Good luck and happy New Year! x

And so armed with that advice, off they went and on THE day I unwrapped one of these.

The irony of this post from Deb, appearing a week after my birthday was not lost on me.

So the new slow cooker sat there for a while and eventually I was ready to give it a go.  The first recipe?  Jane's pulled pork.  I sent a quick message to clarify what sort of BBQ sauce one would require.

Do I just use Masterfoods BBQ sauce? I couldn't see a BBQ marinade in Coles today...but it may be that I have whole new section of the supermarket to explore. What do you suggest?

Says Jane,

I'm sure Masterfoods BBQ sauce would be fine, but I've only used a BBQ marinade from the sauces section of the supermarket. I totally think regular BBQ sauce would work - just make sure you use about 375mls of it. The pork will produce lots of liquid throughout the cooking process as all the fat renders off - just let it drip on a wire rack over the slow cooker for a good five minutes before pulling apart and serving.


OK.  I have everything I need to know so off I go to the shop to find the marinade.  I walk up and down the relevant aisles and eventually I stop right in the middle of one and sigh a deep sigh.  The accompanying son asks what's wrong and I tell him I am about to have to go home and write a really silly email to someone because I can't find a bottle of sauce in a supermarket and therefore I am going to expose myself as a complete goose.

And as the word "goose" leaves my lips I see the marinade.

Anyway, to cut short what is turning into an unnecessarily long story, a few days later (because I needed to recover from the stress of the shopping trip before venturing into new recipe and appliance territory) I made the pulled pork.  And in my excitement with the ensuing aromas I invited people over for dinner.  New recipe.  New cooking method.  Throwing caution to the wind.  Outrageous.

And it was lovely.  If for this one dish only, I am sold.

Since then I have tried a beef dish that came in the recipe section of the instruction manual.  It was OK.  A beef casserole of sorts.  Too much thyme. Not really to our tastes.

Then I did a version of beef stroganoff very close to Jane's recipe.  I think Jane's addition of some tomato paste would seal the deal with this recipe.

And I am looking forward to having a go at this lamb dish - the lamb rival for pulled pork I do believe.

Somewhere along the line I worked out that the slow cooker is really just an electric casserole dish.  You can use it on high and it will cook in the equivalent time it takes to do a casserole in the oven.  And I am a convert to browning everything before placing ingredients in a casserole anyway, so this is no different.  The benefit is to be found in the slow cooking function that turns tough, cheap meat into tender deliciousness over a much longer cooking time.  So I am looking forward to trying out some of my tried and tested casserole dishes in the slow cooker and seeing how they go. 

And I have been told this is THE
slow cooker recipe book to own.

What I'm liking, which is new to my limited cooking skills, is the pulled pork/sticky lamb sort of genre.  So here's the call out.  If you have a great slow cooker recipe that isn't a casserole - I can do them - something really amazing and wonderful, can you please share it with me?  You could email me or leave the recipe in the comments section below and as I try them out I will put them in their very own post.  Complete with scores out of ten from my family if you like.  You could opt out of that last bit if you prefer...they are pretty tough judges, this lot.  Anyway, please, please, PLEASE tell me your "go to/it's not a casserole" slow cooker recipe.

And as for gift suitability, this one worked for me.  I like a practical gift although not so practical as to be a lawn mower, iron or vacuum cleaner. There's a fine line.  They landed on the right side of the line with this one.   

Done

Hooray!

 

And it was delicious.

Agapanth-oops

Once, long long ago last summer

 

 

And then there was the before...

 

 

And then there was after...  



 

...the whippersnippering.  Oops...

Just as well there is nothing like a hard prune to encourage growth.

Guess what?

It turns out my apple peeler, corer and slicer...

doesn't just peel, core and slice.  It makes apple slinkies!

All of a sudden I think I've become a kitchen gadget person. 

Food and fame

Part of the plan for this year was to try a bit harder with the cooking.  One of the things that helped me was a humble recipe magazine found at the checkout in local supermarkets called Recipe+. There were a few issues during the summer months that were especially helpful in overcoming the cooking inertia. 

So helpful that in an idle moment just after school had gone back for the year but before my year got too busy, I banged out an email (not even a letter!) to the editor about how helpful those summer editions had been and happened to mentioned (because I am such a clever cook) that the Thai style pork balls were equally delicious when made with chicken mince if pork mince was nowhere to be found and hey presto!- I notched up my next minute in the series of fifteen minutes of fame.  My email was published in the May edition.

And for my humble efforts I won a prize, which arrived in the mail today. 

There is an apple peeler (which peels, cores and slices), a lemon squeezer, those scissors (five blade scissors for chopping herbs), a cut and carve board (with an angled surface to collect crumbs and liquids) and a garlic zoom (which is a bit like my beloved happy chopper but garlic clove sized). 

Apart from my happy chopper, I'm not that much of a gadget person so I'm not sure what I am going to do with all of these things...but it was fun to win a prize and receive a parcel in the mail!

I think I must be doing OK on the cooking front because in my mother's day card back in May, one of my boys wrote a spontaneous acrostic poem using the letters of my name and for the "D" said "Does good cooking."  And everyone is certainly getting very good at trying new things for dinner in this household.

Have yet to make one of these, as per one of my aims for the year.

 But there is still time.

And I have recently discovered that this recipe for cheat's minestrone soup is even nicer without the pasta.  It takes things even further away from minestrone authenticity...but given it was already straying from the authentic whose to be worried?

And use as much fresh basil as bravery will allow.  The more the better.  Dried basil not so good.

Best ever cheats' minestrone soup

It's a cheat because it only takes 30 minutes to make.  Best ever because it is the best ever.  I cook lots of this every winter.  Thought I should share it with you.

You will need:

Olive oil
1 onion, finely diced
1 or 2 teaspoons of crushed garlic
2 or 3 carrots, sliced
2 or 3 stalks of celery, sliced
1 red capsicum chopped
1/2 cauliflower, broken into small florets
700gm bottle of tomato passata
A big handful of fresh basil, finely chopped
250gm of dried pasta (shells or macaroni)
4 to 6 cups of chicken stock
440gm tin of drained red kidney beans
Salt and pepper
Fresh parmesan cheese

1.  Heat the oil in a pot and saute the onions and garlic for a couple of minutes until soft.
2.  Throw in the carrots, celery, capsicum and cauli and saute for a couple of minutes to start the cooking process.
3.  Add the passata (a big tin of crushed tomatoes works as well), stock, basil and pasta and simmer until the pasta and veg are tender - about fifteen minutes.
4.  Add the kidney beans in the last five minutes - just long enough to heat them up really.  Season with salt and pepper as needed - will depend upon the stock.
5.  Seve with parmesan cheese and a bit more fresh basil.  No one will ever know it only took half an hour.

How many serves?  I figure that each cup of stock, along with all the other good things, equates to one adult serving.  This recipe doubles easily if you need a larger volume of soup and have a big cooking pot.

If you need to say that this recipe isn't vegetarian (does chicken stock help it to cross that line?) then frying some bacon or salami with the onion and garlic works well, adds nice saltiness and will cover that base.

And it freezes well.

The garden miracle

Peeking out from this photo is a small miracle.

It's an agapanthus in flower.  Which may not seem all that miraculous to you.  In fact lots of people don't even like agapanthus plants and some relegate them to the category of weeds.

But I have a soft spot for them.  They remind me of Adelaide - a city close to my heart - where they abound.  They remind me of Christmas.  I love their colour.

The thing is, I have had four attempts in four different gardens at growing them but have never managed to have one flower.  But our current garden obviously has the right soil. 

And behold, a flower!

Sand Art Brownies

These are called Sand Art Brownies.

I received one as a gift several years ago.  I'm not sure where the idea originated from but I just googled it and got a gazillion search results.  So I'm adding this post to the collection and apologise for not acknowledging the original source.

For one jar you need...

2/3 teaspoon of salt

1 and 1/4 cups of plain flour divided into two equal portions

1/3 cup of cocoa

2/3 cup of brown sugar

2/3 cup of white sugar

1/4 cup of milk choc chips

1/4 cup of white choc chips

1/2 cup of walnuts or pecans

Layer the ingredients in the jar as follows...

Salt

Half the flour

Cocoa

Half the flour

Brown sugar

White sugar

Milk choc chips

White choc chips

Walnuts and pecans

(The observant ones will notice that I didn't quite follow the layering instructions.  I lost concentration early on in the process and then had to improvise down the track!)

Seal the jars.  Wrap with clear cellophane and a bright, Christmas-y ribbon.  Attach a label that says...

Sand Art Brownies

1.  Preheat oven to 180 degrees

2.  Prepare a slice tray

3. Pour the contents of the jar into a bowl and mix well.  As an optional extra add chopped glace cherries.

4.  Add one teaspoon of vanilla, half a cup of vegetable oil and three eggs.  Stir until just combined.

5.  Pour mix into the prepared tin and bake at 180 degrees for 25 to 30 minutes.

We made these as presents for teachers this year.

Garden Update # 9

It was a very long, hot summer.  By December I had all but given up on the garden.  But about a month ago winter showed up.  The temperature dropped.  The rain started to fall.  And it was time to get into the garden.  So here are some before and after shots.

Before...

and after.

Before...

...and after.

A smaller variety of herbs this year - basil, thyme, coriander, parsley and mint.  No need to grow perfect sage when I don't use it!  But I would like another rosemary plant and look, there is an empty pot in the corner.  One more trip to the nursery. 

Before...

...and after.

Needs weeding...but I am loving the life and colour even so.

The thing about holidays and kitchen benches

It was back to school today after two weeks of holidays.  During the break we spent five days away enjoying a beach holiday.  We were treated to glorious weather - sunny days hovering about the 25°C mark - even though it ought to be cooling down by now.  Lots of swimming, reading on the beach, walking, good food and time together.

I like the uncluttered feeling of holidays.  There is no housework to do, no phone to answer, nothing pressing that needs attending to.  And I am most keenly aware of the lack of clutter as I survey the holiday kitchen bench.  Holiday kitchen benches are always bare.

And it's usually as I prepare meals on holidays that I resolve to return to normal life and simplify.  On holidays we have less props (toys, computers, books) and yet we have a great time.  On holidays we eat much more simply ("No, I didn't bring the soy sauce for your rice!") and yet we eat well.  And on holidays I seem to enjoy food preparation so much more than I generally do at home (despite the crazy assortment of utensils, odd saucepans and blunt knives that seem to haunt holiday kitchens) and I am sure that the clear, clean benches have something to do with that.

So I come home and clear the bench.  After about twelve minutes the first thing is dumped on my newly cleared surface and I groan inwardly (or outwardly!)  And then I remember.  I say I like food preparation on holidays so much more but the thing is, I have done most of the preparing at home and it is just a matter of cooking up some rice/pasta/potatoes and heating up the curry/bolognese sauce/stew and throwing a salad together.  I'm not actually cooking.

And the thing about the kitchen bench at home is, well, if it was left bare, where would you put all the mail, library books due back tomorrow, newsletters (of the school and church varieties), those little bits of broken toys that you promised you'd superglue back together, the keys, the various items of stationery that get used every day, bills to pay...? 

Sometimes I despair of my kitchen bench.  But mostly it's OK because the kitchen bench is the nerve centre of the house.  Holiday kitchen benches are uncluttered.  And holidays are uncluttered.  And that is great.  Normal life is full and busy.  The kitchen bench at my house is also full and busy.  And that is great.

And it's great to enjoy the contrast between the two.

120 biscuits from The $120 Food Challenge

Here is a great little biscuit recipe from the great The $120 Food Challenge.

Ingredients
500g butter
1 tin condensed milk
1 cup sugar
5 cups self-raising flour

1.  Preheat oven to 170°C and line a baking tray with baking paper.
2.  Cream sugar and butter in a large bowl with electric beaters until creamy and fluffy.
3.  Add condensed milk and flour and mix in thoroughly.
4.  Add your flavourings as required.
5.  Roll teaspoonfuls of dough between damp hands into a ball and place on baking tray. Press down slightly with a fork.
6.   Bake for about 10 – 15 minutes or until golden brown. The biscuits will harden once they cool.

This recipe will yield about 120 biscuits OR...and here is the really wonderful thing...you can divide the mixture into three equal amounts, cook with one portion and wrap the other two parts with gladwrap and freeze for use at a later stage. 

This is an excellent basic biscuit mix.  Today I created three sorts of biscuits out of one portion...


Jam drops

Slightly overdone
(because you shouldn't be taking photos of one batch
while the other batch is cooking)
choc chip biscuits

Iced apricot and coconut biscuits 

Forty lovely biscuits ready for lunchboxes, morning teas and suppers this week.  And the potential to make eighty more when these run out.  I am thinking coconut and lemon, fruit and nut, plain with a glace cherry on top...  They would work well stuck together with marshmallows - this biscuit mix isn't nearly as sweet as the Marshmallow Kiss recipe - or with nutella, as suggested at the $120 Food Challenge site.

Quick, easy and delicious.

The Garden and the Roast Dinner

Last year was The Year of the Garden. 

This year is The Year of the Roast. 

I thought it was about time I gave an update on both.

Almost exactly a year ago, amidst great fanfare, I put six plants in the garden bed.

I did a few other small bits and pieces but basically more plants were needed and that budget item never seemed to rise to the surface again.  The days turned to weeks.  The weeks turned to months.  And then it was Christmas.  And then it was the LONG, HOT, DRY summer.  Not a time to be establishing plants.  Then the rain came down.  Too wet to be outside.  Then the cold weather came.  Too cold to be outside. 

And all of a sudden a year had gone by!  However all six plants are still alive, with a few vincas on the edge and some winter weeds for good measure.

  100% of plants still alive after a whole year has to count for for some sort of gardening success. 

As for the pots of herbs...well, they didn't survive the LONG, HOT, DRY summer.

Feeling inspired last weekend with a free afternoon, a sunny winter's dayand  the promise of evening showers, it was off to the nursery to buy the next instalment of plants.

More daisies, more geraniums (can't believe I actually paid good money for geraniums...but I did get three different varieties and they look just lovely), lavender, rosemary and some new herbs.  And two strawberry plants chosen by the boys.

So the pots of herbs are reorganised and the garden bed is more fully planted out.  There's not much to see as yet.  The new plants are all pretty small.  Come back in spring for a peek when things are a bit more established.

As for The Year of the Roast, that has been humming along quite well.  I feel like I have the confidence to prepare and serve a roast dinner now however I have become convinced that it is not actually worth the bother my preferred style of cooking.  I like roasts - the veg and the meat.  But I'd be just as happy with roast lamb served with steamed veg and a baked potato.  And I quite like roast veg served alongside steak or chops.  But doing both together means getting started on dinner preparations at 4pm or earlier and that just doesn't fit in with our life here at the moment.  Or the fact that for almost all my entire adult cooking life, my cooking motto has been IF IT CAN'T BE COOKED AND ON THE TABLE IN UNDER 30 MINUTES IT WON'T BE HAPPENING IN THIS HOUSE.  So while I have worked out that I CAN do it, I don't think I'll be putting on too many roast dinners in the future. 

  

Interestingly, as I was reaching this conclusion just this week, I decided on one last tilt at the old roast dinner with a roast chicken - I've roasted chickens many times in the past and hey, roast chicken is the "bread and butter" of the roasts - but after the event I declared that I would never roast a chicken ever again.  Well, not while I live here anyway.  The end result was fine.  But I was reminded that I really don't like handling whole raw chickens with all that loose, flappy chicken skin where their necks used to be and having to deal with the stray feathers.  It turns my stomach just thinking about it.  (Sooky sooky la la, I know.)  And you see, we have a shop around the corner from us that cooks decent sized chickens over a wood fire.  They are the same size as home roasted ones, delicious, carve beautifully and come in at about the same price as roasting one at home.  It's a no brainer.

Really, to my mind, the best sort of roast dinner is the one that someone else cooks.  So it seems that The Year of the Roast has become The Six Months of the Roast.  And now I may just need a new project - but no, sweet Helen, it won't be quilting!

The Year of the Roast - 30th May 2010

I imagine I'll stop blogging about food at some stage but we had another roast this evening.  Roast beef this time.

It was easy.  It was no stress at all.  Hooray! The meat was slightly overcooked.  The vegies, while cooked, weren't golden and crunchy on the outside.  But it was delicious and on the table at the right time.

Things to think about for next time...

1. The vegies need to go in for a bit longer - probably the last hour.
2. When the recipe says to add a glass of white wine with the meat, don't think that because it's beef you can substitute white with red because if you do, your vegetables will have red wine coloured bottoms.  (Mine look like they are burnt on the bottom but no, it's the red wine.  Tasted fine but it's not a good look.)
3. The carrots need to be a bit more chunky.  Carrots don't shrink when you do them in the microwave but they do when roasted.

Mini marble cupcakes

Made from scratch.  Not a Betty Crocker box in sight.  For afternoon tea later on today.

Happy Mother's Day.

Meredith - Masterchef for the Month of May

Woolworths, one of our supermarket chains, puts out a food magazine once a month called "Good Taste", mainly featuring recipes.  Each month they have four members of the public who serve as their Reader Taste Team.

Towards the end of January,when I was feeling rested and relaxed and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound...around about the same time of the year I started this blog a year before...there's something about the end of January that makes me do reckless things...I sent "Good Taste" an email offering them my services.

A few weeks later when school had started and life was in full swing they replied to my email, asked me if I still wanted to play, attached four recipes and several feedback forms and gave me two weeks to complete my assignment.  They would then select a few pithy statements from my vast feedback and publish them with my photo next to the recipes. 

And I am in this month's edition!!!

So I did a Sweet Potato,Zzucchini and Chickpea Tagine (p.47) and the very delicious Rice Noodles with Chicken and Peanuts (p. 38), both of which were great.  But the favourites were Greek Meatballs and Pasta (p. 50) and Pears in Parchment (p.93) which were delicious AND amazingly easy.

The Greek meatballs were made by getting a 120gm jar of antipasto mix (which is hardly any at all - my jar ended up with about three olives, some small pieces of fetta, some capsicum, a little piece of artichoke and a small amount of sundried tomato), dicing it all up very finely (almost mincing it really), running it through 500gm of lamb mince and then forming it into meatballs.  I did this stage the night before so the antipasto flavours permeated through the mince wonderfully.  Then it was just a matter of cooking the meatballs in a frying pan (and yes, they held together despite no eggs and breadcrumbs) in a little olive oil and then throwing in a jar of tomato passata to be heated through.  And then mixing in cooked pasta. 

Meredith was quoted as saying, "The meatballs in this dish are easy peasy and the antipasto enriches the flavours.  It's great with a Greek salad."  As you can see, I am a very high tech food critic!!

The other lovely dish was Pears in Parchment.   This is so easy and so beautiful that it may just become my new signature dish.  You put a slice of lemon in the centre of a 30cm x 30cm piece of baking paper.  Place a pear on top of the lemon, having poked a few holes in it with a skewer (that little suggestion didn't make it in the recipe but my experiment with a second lot found that this stage met with good results) and then sprinkle a teaspoon of sugar around it.  Place half a vanilla bean, split lengthways, with the pear and tie it all up with string to be baked in a preheated 180 degree C oven for about 45 minutes.  Serve with thickened cream.

Said Meredith, "We all loved unwrapping our own dessert at the table.  Don't skip the cream - it ties all the flavours together."

Now, in addition to this being a fun thing to do (ie. one of those mad things you sign up for at the end of the long summer holiday when invincibility is as close to a reality as it will ever be in the space of a year) and the opportunity to have lots of people over for meals, you also receive a prize for your efforts.  Sometimes the prizes are not all that exciting but for May the prize was this...

It is a FANTASTIC Kenwood handmixer that comes with other attachments including a bread hook and a whisk.  It's a considerable step up from my old faithful Black and Decker hand mixer.  So, fifteen minutes of fame, four new recipes, name in print and a new appliance.  Not bad for a mad moment in January.

New Life

A few years ago, at about this time of the year, I received a letter from a dear friend who was residing in London at the time.  At one point she described the scene from her kitchen window of a window box and beyond it, a garden, that was coming to life now that Spring had arrived.  

As I reflected upon her letter I thought how wonderful it must be to live in the northern hemisphere at Easter time with such visible signs of new life all around.  It must be such a joy to celebrate new life in the risen Christ with gardens coming to life after a long, cold winter.  Noel Piper certainly thought so this year.  It is such a beautiful parallel to be found in nature. 

In my neck of the woods Easter comes in Autumn, after a long, hot summer.  Most gardens blessed to have me as their caretaker are fairly dry and crisp by this time of the year.  There are no parallels of new life to be found anywhere nearby!

This year was going to be no exception.  The garden bed that I famously started planting out last year was in a terrible state at the end of summer.  By mid-February I decided to prune back the daisies and the geraniums hard.  I figured I would reduce the stress on the plants, trying so hard to keep their few remaining leaves alive in all this heat and lack of rain.  So I cut them all back until they resembled small, brown stick plants.  I didn't know whether they would survive the pruning, but then they weren't going to survive the summer anyway.  I should have taken a photo of this appalling sight.  But it was just too miserable!

However things have turned out differently this Easter following a big storm that dumped 50 mm of rain in one afternoon nearly two weeks ago.  Since then we have had warm, sunny days - not unlike spring - and the spectre of brown that surrounded our house has turned to green.  Including the poor little stick plants in the garden bed.  They have all started sprouting and are giving the distinct impression that they are going to be in good form by the time spring really does arrive.  This was a real Easter treat for me.

So I have a little shopping list on the whiteboard on our fridge.

2 x daisies

2 x rosemary bushes - important for a roast lamb chef

4 x lavender bushes

Eight tough plants that will finish the planting out and will hopefully survive future summers of heat, little water and inevitable neglect.  I hope to go shopping soon.  I think there's almost enough in the piggy bank.

It was a joy to experience new life in the garden this Easter.  And I am glad to have new life breathed into the great gardening project as well.  More photos to follow, I am sure. 

The Year of the Roast - 30th March 2010

I have a friend who lives in a suburb where the blocks aren't square and the roads don't run east to west, north to south.  Her suburb features windy streets, cul-de-sacs and loop roads squiggling all over the place.  For one as directionally challenged as myself, it is next to impossible to navigate.  I go to her house quite frequently.  During the first year after she moved I had to check the street directory EVERY time before I left home and most times I would still end up getting lost.  One day she gave a me a piece of vital information. 

"When you reach the reserve, turn right.  And then it is the first left after that."

It's easy.  I go there now and I can't actually imagine HOW I managed to get lost.  It's almost embarrassing.  One piece of vital information was all I needed.

What has that got to do with The Year of the Roast?  Well, tonight I have experienced a similar phenomenon.  I cooked a roast.  And it was a snap.  And I can't actually imagine why I have thought this is a difficult thing to do for all these years!  It just took one piece of vital information...Sharon's advice to par-boil the vegies.

I decided to take the plunge when I was planning out the meals for the week last Saturday.  I looked in my diary to see what lay ahead for the week - when the evening meetings were on, when there were visitors, needing to factor in the evening when we are late from swimming and so on - to find that today is Passover.  So what better day than to cook a lamb roast.

4:30pm

1.5kg of lamb spiked with rosemary and rubbed with olive oil, sea salt and garlic, ready for the oven. 

One and a half hours at 160 to 180 degrees C.

5:00pm

Potatoes, pumpkin and carrots ready for par-boiling.

5:20pm

Par-boiled vegies in the baking tray with the meat.  Into the oven.

Husband on standby to look after the boys at 6pm when peas need to be cooked, gravy made and meat carved.

6:00pm

Knife stuck into side of meat.  Juices NOT running clear.  Don't panic.  Stay calm.

And I did.  It's OK.  It is my husband's day off.  There are no meetings for anyone to attend tonight.  The boys are big enough that if tea is a bit late it isn't going to ruin everyone's evening. 

Diagnosis of problem...temperature may be a little low but probably the oven rack is too low.  Move the oven rack up and boost the temperature a bit.

6:30pm

Juices still not running clear.  And we like our lamb cooked.
Still not panicking.  Clear-headed enough to make the decision to finish it off in the microwave for ten minutes.

6:40pm

Meat cooked and resting.  Vegies cooked and keeping warm.  Peas in the microwave.  Gravy on the go.

6:50pm

Carving the meat.  Boys beginning to show signs that they need to be fed and put to bed.

6:55pm

Dinner served.  Only an hour late...but not feeling stressed.

Dinner in Review

First up, everyone enjoyed dinner! 

In some ways it felt like a lot of time in the kitchen but that is probably because I am used to the "preparation to table in 30 minutes or less" routine.  And when I think about it, while it took two and a half hours to cook, I managed to supervise homework, prepare some fiddly props for tomorrow's Scripture lesson, write the text for this post as it was happening, do bath time for the boys and do various other jobs all while it was in the oven.  So in reality, it's not all that labour intensive.  Mind you, washing up is a bit labour intensive.

I think the slower than expected cooking time will correct itself with better placement in the oven.

Tonight's feast fed our family of four with leftover meat and only a couple of extra-to-requirement vegies.  The big aim is to be able to put on a roast for lunch after church.  (I figure I can dash home straight after church, turn on the oven, go back to church to chat and things will be all ready at a respectable time with par-boiled vegies and the baking tray higher in the oven.)  But there was no more room in the baking tray.  It's not the biggest of baking trays.  I think I could fit a bigger tray in the oven so I will need to go and find one of those.  And if I do a rolled roast rather than a leg of lamb, that would leave more room for vegies.  (And it would be easier to carve!!)

We had gravy made with gravy powder, although I did mix some pan juices into it.  I think in the absence of a sous chef, this is probably as good as it will get although the option is always there, if everything ran exraordinarily to plan, for real gravy made from scratch.  And if it isn't running to plan, the Gravox will be there!

Roast dinners seem within reach.  And it turned out to be a meal that everyone in this house enjoyed - a very rare occurrence.  So the next thing to do is try the rolled roast and then to get some sympathetic people over from church one Sunday for an attempt at the Sunday lunch thing.

I'll keep you posted.