inner pickle

replete with gorgeousness

Swing with a view, at Taracoonee, Hawksbury River.

Taracoonee is the name of the house, a grand old thing, built in 1913 by our friend Roo's great grandfather. It's kept as a holiday place for the descendants of the original owner, and you can only get to it by boat. There's no electricty, just a bit of solar for a few lights if you really need them! So candle and firelit at night. Unbelievably beautiful. So with some fantastic company and lovely wine you can imagine, it completely rocked. 

View from the verandah, to the boatshed.

Divine. Will post more tomorrow, it's late! 'Night all!

xxx

cooking the books

Hello hello!! It's 10pm and I'm halfway through cooking a huge bolognaise and raspberry muffins and choc chip biscuits to take with us to a family holiday house up on the Hawkesbury River, tomorrow morning. 

The house belongs to our friend Roo's family, his grandparents I think, and there's no electricity or running water from what I understand. But apparently it has a fantastic kitchen. Awesome!

Our friends are doing the adult catering and I'm doing kids. 

So if this is disjointed, apologies: it's because I keep leaping up to take something out of the oven and stir a pot!

Anyway, I'm going to share with you another of my weaknesses. I know, I have so many. And this one is serious. 

Cookbooks. So many. And this is only the beginning...

It's a real problem. And in the spirit of full confession, this doesn't even include the ones I'm currently cooking from:

There they are, on top of the microwave. 

In the scheme of things though, cookbooks, although prolific, really only scratch the surface of my problem...

I love love love these gorgeous shelves, they go right to the ceiling, right up the stairs. And the kids and I spend a lot of time sitting on these stairs;

reading cookbooks, of course.

I'll be back Sunday night; have a lovely weekend everyone!

P.S. Please email me your kids favourite dinners so I can add them to the "REAL kids favourites" in the right hand menu.

Thanks!

xxx

home sweet home

We lived in Brisbane until recently and our Brisbane house has just listed for sale, which was a big call because we loved it and if we ever move back it would have been nice to go back to it. 

But Sydney being Sydney and all that, it seems sensible to let it go. 

The kids and I were looking at the advertising for the house online and afterwards had a skate around some old photos of our time there (we were there three lovely years.)

These were some of our favourites:

Hose play in the backyard

Cools you down!

There was so much outside play! And there's my herb garden at the back door.

Playing playdough in our kitchen. It was a very sunny house. 

The ringtail who lived in a tree in the front yard!

Anyone want to move to Brisbane?

xxx

bright copper kettles...

I've mentioned previously a few of my absolute favourite things: baklava (*sigh*), baked cheesecake, hirsute men named Adam... another is GOATS CHEESE. Oh yes. I remember when I gave birth to my first baby my darling friend Anita brought me into hospital not one but two jars of Meredith Dairy Goats cheese, the best ever. 

Don't laugh, but I've discovered the ol' budget Aldi does a pretty good goats fetta. Not quite Meredith Dairy standard but really pretty good!

So tonight I teamed a number of my favourite things on a pizza: Roast pumpkin, leek and goats fetta. It would have sung with a sprinkle of toasted pine nuts but as I had the optimistic approach that the children would eat it, I left them off. Foolish.

Roast Pumpkin, leek and goats fetta pizza

base: 

2.5 cups plain wholemeal flour

one 7g pkt yeast

1 tblsp olive oil (I use lemon infused)

1 tsp salt

200ml tap water

I confess: I use a breadmaker for this. I chuck it all in, and an hour and a half later I have perfect pizza dough to roll out and use.

Of course you can easily make it by hand, and I've done it this way too (pre-children.) You mix the dry ingredients together well first. Whisk the oil and the water together (and I'd use tepid water) till blended then stir all together, then knead. You'll need to knead it for a good 5 mins (at least) till warm in your hands (i.e. the yeast is now active). Sit in warm place, covered until doubled in size. Then beat down and knead again. It's ready to use now. 

topping:

I roasted some butternut pumpkin in the oven with some dried herbs (I thought I had sage in the fridge and I didn't. That would be better.) I cooked one trimmed leek in a tiny bit of butter for a couple of minutes. First I spread the bases (I made 2 pizzas) with tomato paste. Then I sprinkled some herbs, then a handful of grated cheddar. Over that I put the leek, then the pumpkin, then the fetta and cooked them for about 20 mins. Smelt amazing and tasted fantastic. 

Did the kids eat it? Nope. Tilly (2) ate the goats cheese only, Henry said, "I don't eat pizza." I did the whole 'this is dinner, you better eat it', for 20 mins. They're not usually that recalcitrant. They really didn't want it so they had tinned spaghetti instead. (I've never been able to let them leave the table without eating something, even if it's a really poor substitute like tonight. I know I probably should be tougher, but I just can't let food be a battle. I want them to relish good food.)

They happily tucked into spaghetti and a bowl of grapes while Adam and I polished off the pizza with a glass of wine. 

So I hope your family dinner was more successful than mine!

xxx

my friend the chocolate cake

Hello! If you've stumbled across this post doing a google search for My Friend the Chocolate Cake a.k.a David Bridie, you need this site, not mine. I LOVE MFTCC. And I love chocolate cake. Listening to the former while eating the latter is pretty much utopia. 

The reason cake is making ANOTHER appearance today notwithstanding all my talk of healthy, organic, sugar-free eating is because we had a special visitor today!

Our lovely friends Nell and Johnno (or The Captain) currently live in Reading, England. They have a six month old (divinely beautiful) baby, Charlotte. There's been a bit of a complication with visas while they were here visiting family last month and as a result Johnno went back and Nell and Charlotte stayed to wrangle with the consulate. Nell was due to come for morning tea today, for which we still had Carrot and All-Bran muffins to serve. 

At about 9am we got a call from Johnno, from the airport. Checking our address. On his way. BIG surprise. So Nell arrives, Johnno's out the back, we meet Charlotte, it's all marvellous, then he knocks on the back door and wanders in. His wife, a solicitor and a very adept talker, is speechless. There are tears, not just theirs. He's here for a week and let's hope the consulate get their arses into gear and they can go home together. 

After all that, what else was there to do but make a chocolate cake? 

Given that I don't have an 'open' kitchen and it's too far from the loungeroom to hear the conversation, I wanted the quickest cake I could make. 

Here it is:

Quick and easy chocolate cake

125g butter, softened

1 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

1 cup plain flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 cup wholemeal self-raising flour

1 cup cocoa

1.5 cups milk

(note: you can just use 2 cups white self-raising flour & leave out the baking powder, but the wholemeal gives it texture and I ran out of plain flour!)

Cream butter and sugar. Mix in the 2 eggs. Add one cup flour and the baking powder. Add the cocoa. Add half the milk. Then add the other cup of flour and then the rest of the milk. 

Cook for about 35-45 mins in moderate oven (depending on what type of tin you use.)

That's it. You can make it in 2 sandwich tins and join them with jam. You can make it in a ring tin (it'll cook faster). Or you can make it as a loaf. We ate it hot & (as you can see) didn't bother icing it!

I have to confess, the Breakfast Biscuits were no good for my two. Maybe if I try them again with more butter or another egg, lose the linseed and use more maple syrup? My friend Estelle makes muesli biscuits and has promised the recipe - let's try those!

On my mission to increase Tilly's fibre, I have increased the fibre-ness of the bread I make. 

I'll post some bread recipes another day. This had the desired effect though.

As I was photographing...

she was waiting...

and didn't even want it buttered. Better than a Breakfast Biscuit. FULL of fibre. All good now!!!

xxx

fibre is your friend (unless you're 2, apparently)

So I'm still on the kids & fibre thing, no movement there (content warning). 

Here is today's attempt to increase the fibre in a two-year-olds' no-fruit-thanks diet.

Actually that's not quite true. She ate one bite out of an apple today. And tidily chucked the whole remaining apple into the bin. Later had one bite of a banana, and (tidily).. I'm sure you get it. 

Besides, I have many weaknesses (baklava, cheesecake, dark hirsute men called Adam), but one of my biggest is CINNAMON. Spice of the gods. Good in milk late at night with a dash of vanilla and a teaspoon of honey. Excellent on buns. Fabulous in muffins. 

So here is the subtle snack I invented today:

Carrot, cinnanmon and ALL-BRAN muffins.

Carrot, cinnamon and All-Bran Muffins

1.5 cups wholemeal self raising flour

1 cup Kellogs All Bran

1 large carrot (which would have been about 1.5 cups grated)

1.5 teaspoons each cinnamon and nutmeg

2 tablespoons brown sugar

150ml canola oil

1 egg

1/2 cup milk

Put all the dry ingredients + carrot in a  big bowl and mix. Then whisk the oil, egg and milk together and add into dry ingredients

Bake at about 180 for about 15 mins.

These were really lovely, the All Bran gives it a lovely bit of crunch. Tilly ate 2 so here's hoping!!

As you may also know, per an earlier post, I have a lot of trouble getting my two to eat breakfast. So something else I tried today was, I don't know, let's call it a "breakfast bikkie".

Looks like a biscuit, tastes (a bit) like a biscuit, maybe they'll eat it!

Breakfast Bikkie

1 cup rolled oats

1 cup oat bran

1 cup wholemeal self raising flour

1 cup coconut flakes

1/2 cup psyllium

1/2 cup linseed (flax seed)

1/2 cup pepitas (pumpkin seeds)

60g butter, melted

1/2 cup milk

1 egg

2 tblsp maple syrup

Mix all dry ingredients well then add (make a well in the centre) the butter, milk, egg and maple syrup.

Mix well, form into large balls and flatten out with fork. Cook for 15-20 mins in moderate oven.

I made about 20, I think. 

In retrospect, the linseed has quite a distinctive flavour and if you were to leave it out and add one extra tablespoon of maple syrup they'd taste more like a biscuit and a lot less like muesli, but I want to see if they'll eat them as is. Flaxseed and psyllium is so good for them.

Will report back!

xxx

the humble tinned vegetable

Hello hello! Thanks so much for the lovely feedback I've had over the past week. Blogging is very new for me and I think it takes a little while to find your voice and figure it out. I said to my friend Nicki, also a blogger, that it feels a bit like writing into a vacuum; tap, tap, anyone there?

So thanks for your encouraging emails. I'm really hoping this is a conversation rather than a monologue!

Speaking of which, per earlier post, I'd really like to know your favourite recipe from your Mum or Gran (mine is Armenian Cake). Estelle's is Honey Jumbles (recipe please!) 

OK. So what is this about tinned vegetables, then.

I prefer fresh vegetables. Naturally. They taste better, they look better and they have way more fibre which I can tell you Matilda (2) needs. Oh yes. Still in nappies and I'm quite familiar with the effects of blueberries or pears or when she decides to snack on All-Bran. Excellent.

I'd love to only shop at farmers markets. Buy seasonal organic produce. Reap from my own fabulous vegetable patch and snip fresh fruit from the trees of a community garden.

But because I don't live in a parallel universe and my children run riot at markets and it's the best I can do to come away with a bunch of bananas, I usually have some peas and spinach in the freezer and some tins of corn and tomatoes in the cupboard.

Which brings me to tonight's dinner: Vegetable risotto. 

It might sound insane to cook this on a school night and maybe it is. But it's really pretty easy, it doesn't take that long, and I never stand and stir it without stopping. 

In fact, tonight I stopped to break up a fight about Mr Potato Head, to retrieve a banana Matilda had purloined and then, a major stop, to exile both children from the kitchen and sweep and mop up shattered glass and oil from an olive oil bottle Henry dropped on the stone floor. Just what you want when you decide to make risotto. Delicious though, with enough left over to make Arancini tomorrow.

Vegetable Risotto 

1.5 litres chicken stock

1 tblsp olive oil

1 tblsp butter

1.5 cups aborio rice

1/2 leek

1 cup finely chopped celery

1 cup finely chopped carrot

1 cup finely chopped zucchini

1 400g tin corn kernals

1 400g tin diced tomatoes

1 tblsp tomato paste

1/2 cup frozen spinach (defrosted)

handful basil/thyme/oregano or dried herbs are fine

1/2 cup grated parmesan

salt and pepper

Heat your stock in a separate saucepan and keep warm as you use it.

In a  heavy saucepan heat your oil and butter together. Add the leek (or a small onion) and cook for a minute. Add the rice. Cook for another minute then add a ladle full of stock and stir well. Once stock is absorbed, add another ladle. Add all your vegetables (these measurements are a bit of a guess, I used one large carrot and zucchini each which made about a cup each.) Keep adding ladles of stock at a time. You know the drill. Add the herbs near the end and the parmesan once it's cooked and off the heat. It'll take about 20 minutes to cook unless you have to take it off the stove to mop oil and glass off your kitchen floor which I hope you don't. 

xxx

desperate dinners; or thrash-cooking

So, you walk in the door at 6pm with two tired and hungry under 5s and you've got to find dinner in under 10 minutes before All Hell Breaks Loose. Eggs on toast? Henry won't eat eggs on their own. Shame, really. And I'm out of baked beans. I haven't bought them because I keep meaning to try a recipe for making my own. Not tonight though.

One thing I usually have in the pantry is long life noodles. I looked, they were there. Not the egg noodles I was hoping for, but udon, they'll do.

So here's what I threw into a pan and amidst Tilly sitting on the kitchen bench nicking grated cheese and Henry scooting behind me nicking sliced ham, the three of us got this on the table in about 7 minutes. And it may not have looked super pretty but it was totally delicious. And they ate it. Hooray.

Eggy Noodles In A Hurry

1 pkt longlife noodles

1 dessertspoon olive oil

1/2 leek (or an onion is great if you don't have leek)

about a cup of mushrooms, sliced

1/2 zucchini, grated

about 8 cherry tomatoes, sliced (or big tomatoes, whatever.)

about 5 slices of ham, cut up finely

3 eggs

1 tablespoon sour cream or fresh cream or natural yoghurt. Depends what's in the fridge.

about half a cup grated cheese (optional)

Boil some water, throw your long life noodles in - they'll take about 2 minutes. Drain.

While you're waiting for your water to boil, cook the leek in the oil in a deep saute pan (or frypan) for two minutes then throw in all the other vegies. Cook for another minute. Add the eggs and keep stirring till they're cooked (about a minute). Add the sour cream and the cheese and keep stirring until you have a sauce. 

Tip in your noodles, stir and serve.

Would love to hear your thrash cooking tricks - please comment!!

a post only partially cake-related, I promise

Cake making in Brisbane last December, before we left for Sydney.

Baking with small children is slow. Sugar gets spilt. Flour goes on the floor. And you often have to move the mixture out of reach of sticky roving fingers. 

But damn it's fun. Small children practice pouring and sieving and measuring and pressing and greasing and weighing and icing and so many brilliant things. 

And when we're over playing with real food we can play with the pretend stuff! 

My lovely mother in law got tired of holding her breath this week as Tilly walked around the house with real eggs, so bought us these play ones. Fantastic fun.

We're about to undergo a get-rid-of-the-stoopid-amounts-of-toys phase... My friend Vanessa used to say six toys, that's it. That's all they need. Any more gets in the way of imagination. She didn't stick to it, and neither did I. 

(But when the rest of the toys go, the play food stays.)

obviously i'm in cake mode

Henry and Tilly 

We don't usually have a lot of cake or sweet treats in this house. But this week we've had guests - Adam's parents have been here for a week - so that's my excuse. Nothing like a little bit of something with a cup of tea with my much-adored mother in law. 

Here is today's: Armenian Cake. My Mum used to make this. When I dug out the recipe this morning I saw it called for two cups of sugar which I couldn't quite come at, so I halved the sugar and of course it's not quite as yummy as the one I remember. 

But still a bit crunchy on the bottom and soft and spicy on top and frankly QUITE DELICIOUS. 

Armenian Cake

ARMENIAN CAKE

1 cup brown sugar

2 cups self raising flour

125g (4 oz) butter

Combine brown sugar and flour. Rub in butter. Divide mixture in half and press half into slice tin. To the other half add:

1 beaten egg

1 cup milk

1/2 teaspoon bicarb soda (dissolved in the milk)

2 teaspoons nutmeg

Pour onto base. Bake in moderate overn (180 degrees) for 45 minutes. 

Mum always made hers with nuts on top but I left them off. 

What was the thing your Mum or Nan or Gran or someone made that you loved? I'd love to hear!