Growing

Sweet Chili Chicken Balls, Potato Salad and Garden Trends

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SWEET CHILI CHICKEN BALLS

It’s suddenly quite chilly by dinnertime in our part of Western Australia, so my thoughts turn to hot, tasty dinners. This time I made Sweet Chili Chicken Balls. Try them, they’re quick and easy and taste great.

INGREDIENTS

To make 16 balls, you need

500g chicken mince

2 finely chopped cloves of garlic

I tspn ground ginger

1/4 tspn of each salt and ground pepper

4 tbspn chopped spring ( green ) onion and some more to serve

1/3 cup breadcrumbs

1/4 cup sweet chili sauce.

METHOD

Mix all the ingredients together until well combined. The chicken mince I used must have been very moist as I eventually added half a cup of breadcrumbs to get a good, firm consistency. Roll to the size of golf balls and cook in 160°C F/F for 20 minutes. Pour 1/2 cup of sweet chili sauce over the chicken balls and return to the oven for 5 minutes.

I served the chicken balls with roasted potato cooked in duck fat with rosemary and sea salt plus cauliflower and beans. Very nice dinner.

I microwaved the potato wedges for 6 minutes, added a little more melted duck fat, rosemary and sea salt then roasted them in the oven.

NOTE I used spring onion in this recipes as they are growing enthusiastically, but chives would be nice, too.

POTATO SALAD

This easy potato salad can be served warm or cold but I like to leave it to cool so the potatoes really absorb the flavours. Potato salads made with mayonnaise always seem more appropriate for warm weather meals. I’ll serve this tonight, slightly warmed, with German sausages and fried cabbage. It is a cold night dinner.

To make this Potato Salad boil about a 1.5 kg (3lbs) of any potato cut into biggish cubes. Add a generous teaspoon of salt to the cooking water once it is boiling. After about 10 minutes cooking, insert a knife to test if the potatoes are slightly soft, but not mushy! While they’re boiling gather a handful of herbs. I used basil, chives and a small leaf parsley, but just finely chop whatever you have on hand. Dice half a red onion ( I store the remaining half in the fridge in a glass jar)

Marinate the potatoes in 3 tablespoons of vinegar, stirring every now and then for about half an hour. The potatoes absorb most of the vinegar and this adds to the clean flavour of the dish. Then pour half a cup of extra virgin olive oil into a jar, add 3 tablespoons of Dijon mustard and 2 tablespoons of vinegar, screw the lid on and shake until the dressing is amalgamated. Strain off any remaining vinegar. Pour the dressing over the potatoes, stir in the onion and herbs and let it sit for a while before serving.

Heat slightly in the microwave before adding the dressing if you prefer to serve the salad warm.

NOTE. I used 25 %food grade acetic acid, known as essig essenz, to marinate the potatoes, which is what would be used in Germany. It breaks down the cell walls and is absorbed effectively into the potatoes. Readily available overseas, harder to access in Australia. This recipe works with ordinary white vinegar too.

Delicious!

CHELSEA GARDEN WEEK NEWS

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The main message from the Chelsea Garden show this year seems to be WEEDS are good! Yes, I reeled in shock, too, especially as I had a massive weeding session planned for the weekend. We’ve been away for two weeks and returned to a tsunami of weeds. Apparently, bees love weeds, they are an important source of nectar. I think it will take me a while to digest this news!

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Another feature noticeable in many gardens is the inclusion of dead wood. Pieces of dead wood, normally tidied up and burnt, should be left to create insect habitats. Insects are key species in healthy ecosystems and need our support to thrive. They are threatened by the removal of trees around houses which are bulldozed to allow high rise apartments. This is particularly relevant in Perth where multiple old houses on big blocks are being bulldozed along with every feature of the landscape. These are replaced by huge blocks of apartments with no gardens.

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The plot-to-plate theme continues to gain popularity. Many of the gardens incorporated herbs and other edibles in their designs. These edible ornamentals even have a name; they are called edimentals. This trend is easy to achieve, too, and the benefits are enormous. Fresh herbs and vegetables are delicious. I also have a couple of quite compact blueberry bushes, too, along with lots of herbs. Nasturtiums as edimentals were big too. I have lot of orange and yellow nasturtiums but have never eaten them. Have you?

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Another trend is growing your own mushrooms. I have done this a few times in the past and not been overly impressed by the harvest. Also, I am the only one in the family who eats mushrooms but I think I’ll try it again this year. My favourite self grown mushrooms were oyster mushrooms. They look like baby aliens when they first germinated but they taste great.

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Do you have any special gardening plans?

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Preventing Breast Cancer, Tarts and Mystery Chicken Dinner

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GARDENING, OTHER EXERCISES AND CANCER PREVENTION

An article I read last week makes some interesting comments about exercise, gardening and the prevention of breast cancer. We know what we eat and how much we eat, how active we are and how much sleep we get are fundamental aspects of our well being.

The article from The Journal of Physical Activity and Exercise, published on the Mail Online News site summarises a study of 48 000 women in the UK and concludes daily light exercise, such as gardening, housework and walking can reduce the chance of developing breast cancer by 21%

a woman in a blue top and leggings is on a pink exercise ball

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Being active for 5 hours and 45 minutes seems to have the most impact on preventing breast cancer. The 48 000 participants wore fitness trackers to determine their daily activity. The researchers also considered age, weight, alcohol consumption and smoking histories, all contributing factors in developing breast cancer. It is not clear if genetics such as a family history of breast cancer were considered as part of the research.

Before feeling overwhelmed by this amount of activity consider the steps taken getting to and from work, at work, doing the shopping, cleaning and generally attending to daily activities. Add some weight bearing exercises and you will be close to the daily target. To determine the amount of exercise suited to age, weight, health and current fitness level just search online. There’s a wealth of information.

woman in blue dress shirt and blue denim jeans standing beside brown wooden chair

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Recognising gardening as being good for your health is great! I like gardening. I wander out the back first thing in the morning to have a look around, I often do some tidying up during the day and water in summer in the evening as well as walk around out there talking to my Mother on the phone every night. My minimum step goal each day is 12 000 steps, some in the high intensity range but a lot are accrued incidentally.

So now that gardening is identified as a healthy activity, here’s a brief update of what’s happening in our garden.

This frequently blooming canna continues to please with brightly coloured flowers. I’m often asked what it is called and I don’t know! My mother grew it at the farm and she has it at her new house, I grew some , too. It was growing in a garden bed but it was so vigorous I dug it up and put it is pots. So pretty.

The hollyhock seeds have germinated as have the stock seeds, planted in a recycled dip container. I will plant them soon and add ranuncula corms to entice bees to the garden. We enquired about ‘hosting’ a beehive in our garden and were told it was too crowded. Shame, it seems bees need a bigger runway than we can supply.

PUMPKIN, FETA AND CARAMELIZED ONION TART

Needed to take finger food to an At Home movie night so decided to make a tart. Roasted some butternut pumpkin, caramelized some onions and crumbled some fetta. I had intended to use crumbled stilton but decided it might be too rich. ( So I ate it instead) Lined the tart tin with pastry and blind baked it, then added the other ingredients plus beaten eggs and milk, sprinkled fresh rosemary on top and baked it. Delicious.

How something that tasted so wonderful could look so unattractive is a mystery but I think it’s the caramelized onion which looks black, not luscious brown and richly flavoured.

Turned the leftover pastry, feta, onions and butternut pumpkin plus eggs and milk into a smaller, rather rustic pie to eat on the weekend.

What is the difference between a tart and flan? Both are open topped and generally pastry based but a tart can have a savoury or sweet filling but a flan is generally sweet. Despite finding agreement in these definitions I have seen both terms used to refer to both sweet and savoury dishes.

CHICKEN DINNER

I thought I was pretty particular about labeling leftover food before I put it in the freezer. Apparently not, so the container of chicken I thawed to make something for dinner was a bit of a mystery. I added leftover roasted butternut pumpkin, leftover caramelized onion and half a cup of peas. Turns out the chicken had a slight curry flavour and went well with the other flavours. Mystery dinner was great but I’ll never be able to repeat it as it will never taste quite the same. And I’ll be sure to label containers before I put them in the freezer.

CINNAMON SCROLLS

Then the weather changed and it really started to feel like autumn even though winter is only a month away.My thoughts drifted to cosy, warming afternoon tea food. I made cinnamon scrolls. The soft, satisfying dough, kneading and adding cinnamon and sugar and rolling them out resulted in fat little scrolls.They smelt so good while they baked. When they were cool I added drizzled icing. We fell on these cold weather treats. Luckily there were some left for breakfast, too.

Did you watch the coronation?

This frequently blooming canna continues to please with brightly coloured flowers. I’m often asked what it is called and I don’t know! My mother grew it at the farm and she has it at her new house, I grew some for my son and of, course, we have some. It was growing in a garden bed but it was so vigorous I dug it up and put it is pots. So pretty.

The hollyhock seeds have germinated as have the stock seeds, planted in a recycled dip container. I will plant them soon and add ranuncula corms to entice bees to the garden. We enquired about ‘hosting’ a beehive in our garden and were told it was too small. Shame. A lot of alysium seedlings have have self seeded in the same area.

An article I read last week makes some interesting comments about exercise, gardening and preventing breast cancer. We know what we eat and how much we eat, how active we are and how much sleep we get are fundamental aspects of our well being.

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Surprising New Packaging, Ripening Fruit and Growing Bay Trees

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REDUCING PLASTIC PACKAGING

I’m a big fan of grazing platters as there’s always something to appeal to everyone. There’s so many flavours and colours and textures. Cheese, crackers, nuts, grapes and strawberries, cold meat and of course, dips! Dips are packed with flavour but usually they are packed in plastic, too. I’ve made dip using fresh ingredients and cream cheese packaged in foil wrap, but I really like the variety of dips you can buy so easily but not the plastic packaging.

So a big surprise for me at the supermarket this morning. A good surprise, too. I found a dip called NUFFIN Chive & Onion Dip made from natural ingredients and packed in a biodegradable and compostable tub with a kraft paper label. It’s made in Australia from 99% Australian ingredients, so ticking all the boxes. Pretty keen to try it. It was really good. So good it was all gone by evening.

Just fresh ingredients.

Dip is really versatile, too. Not just on crackers but also in baked potatoes, on toast and even stirred through pasta. I’ll be looking to see if this product comes in other flavours, too.

Rinsed out the tub the dip came when it was empty and poked holes in the base using a skewer. Why? Instant seed planter.

Filled it with potting mix. added stock seeds, covered the seeds with more soil then watered them in.

Added a label using a recycled bamboo fork. Eventually the tub will end up in the compost.

RIPENING ORANGES

A few weeks ago I tried ripening not quite ripe lemons by putting them in a bowl next to a window so they got the morning sun. The lemons with yellow on them ripened, the two which were mostly green didn’t change at all. So I picked two nearly ripe oranges and put them in a bowl in the sun, too. I picked them because a cyclone was forecast and the orange skins split in heavy rain. We had massively heavy rain!

After two weeks both oranges looked ripe, so I made an orange cake. Like the window ripened lemons, I felt there was less juice, but enough to make the cake and icing. I also grated peel to add to both.

The peel felt quite thin when I was trying to grate it to put on the top of the cake so I grated leftover Crunchie solid Easter eggs and scattered that on the icing. I only thought to take an ‘after’ photo of the cake when I was cutting it! It tasted very good.

Lovely orange cake with orange flavoured icing and grated leftover Crunchie Easter eggs.

PROPAGATING BAY TREES

My son wants a bay tree so when a friend mentioned she grown one for her son I decided to try it, too. I snapped five small branches from a tree. I prepared them by stripping off all but three or four leaves, cut the ends and squashed them before putting them into rooting powder.

Then I poked them into well drained soil, watered them and covered them in a little greenhouse. Actually, the greenhouse is a thick plastic bag held up on recycled chopsticks which needed further tethering when the cyclone came down the coast. No signs of growth but the cuttings are still green and healthy.

Bay leaves feature in so many recipes from all over the world. To dry them, pick leaves in summer and discard any with holes in them. Choose the best then wash them in running water. I dry them on baking trays lined with paper towel left somewhere well ventilated for about seven days then turned over and repeat the process. When they are dry the colour will be faded and the leaves feel brittle.

The leaves can also be dried in the oven. Place them in a single layer on a baking tray lined with parchment paper and put in a slow oven. Turn them over after about 20 minutes and check again after 20 minutes. They may take longer, just keep checking until they are brittle and fragrant.

Although I have only ever air dried bay leaves they can also be dried in a microwave oven. Place them in a single layer and cook for two minutes, then turn them over and cook again in 30 second bursts until they are brittle. Store the dried leaves in an airtight jar.

In other gardening news, the gardenias are beautiful. I have several gardenia bushes and they are covered in blooms. What’s blooming in your garden?

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Gardening on a Small Plot

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garden things

Autumn has arrived so I’ve added bentonite and water crystals and new soil to all the pots and most of the garden beds. We live near the coast and our soil is grey beach sand. It is not plant friendly! Unfortunately, the dreaded chili thrip has reappeared so I’ll have to spray the roses, something I’ve avoided but finally resorted to doing to prevent the roses from dying.

One of the problems with chili thrip is everyone with roses in the neighbourhood need to treat them to prevent further outbreaks. I have friends who have given up on eliminating chili thrip and have taken out their roses. I want to avoid that as I really like cut roses in the house! Some of my bushes are very old, too.

In other gardening news, an end of season roundup.

LEMONS

Two weeks ago I wrote about bringing unripe lemons in to see if they would ripen on the end of the table where they got the morning sun. Some branches had to be removed to allow room for the new umbrella so I cut off the lemons before disposing of the branches. The lemons with a touch of yellow ripened, those which were green didn’t ripen at all. I think they also had less juice than usual but this may also reflect the seasonal changes.

Day One

Day Eight

CITRIC ACID

I’m a big fan of citric acid as it leaves the toilets really clean without using perfumed products. I buy a kilo at at time (it’s very economical) and keep it in a large screw cap jar.

To use as a flower preservative, add half a teaspoon of citric acid to a litre of water. Stir to dissolve.

I tried using it to preserve the freshness of cut flowers and the water they were in. It worked really well! The water stayed clean for four days, then I changed it and added more citric acid and the roses looked fresh for ages. These are bought roses, a lovely gift, which are now bred to last and last. They don’t fully bloom like a garden grown rose.

BLOOD LILIES (haemanthus coccineus)

Belonging to the Amarylidacaea family and originating in Southern Africa, these bright orange lilies appear towards the end of March every year. The bright orange colours really pops! Later, when the blooms are spent, a pair long, thick strap like leaves will appear.

CANNAS

I don’t know what these cannas are called! I dug them up years ago from under a kitchen window at the farm. The flowers can be yellow with red speckles through to entirely red. My son has a pot of them in Kalgoorlie where they thrive and bloom for a much longer period than here in Perth.

HYDRANGEAS

The hydrangea hedge is still blooming. Hydrangeas look beautiful all summer and are so easy to propagate. Big fan of them as cut flowers, too, as they last for ages and ages. The leaves are beginning to look a bit sunburnt.

OLIVES

There were about 150 olives trees growing on the farm where I grew up. They were very old. Italians from Brunswick, a nearby town, used to come laden with fruit and vegetables for us, then they would pick the olives and shoot some birds. The olive trees were two different types, one sort had complex branches cris-crossing one another and narrow leaves. The other type had branches that grew out and wider leaves.

I propagated one of each and potted them up. After about ten years of repotting them in bigger and bigger pots, I planted them big ceramic pots and kept them closely clipped, almost like a bonsai, to keep them compact and neatly shaped. About six months ago I dug out a wedge of the soil in each pot. It was hard work as the soil was full of thread like roots. I refilled the holes with new potting mix and fed both trees. I also cut out the dry, grey twiggy dead bits. This one must have liked the attention: it has grown an olive! Just the one!

DID YOU KNOW?

Before Australia was settled, about 55 to 65 000 years ago, Australia had mega flora, three metre high kangaroos, horse-sized ducks and seven metre long goannas.

Much later, the kangaroo and emu featured on the Australian Coat of Arms. Not only are they animals peculiar to Australia, but neither can walk backwards, one of the reasons they were chosen!

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Making, Cooking, Growing

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making

Last week I made a new sourdough starter. It took seven days to develop and is now ready to use. I followed a ‘no knead’ recipe from (here) to make the first loaf of sourdough. The loaf had very little rye flour in it as I will increase the amount slowly. I’d sprinkled the top of the boule (round ball) with fennel seeds and caraway seeds and really like the burst of flavour when you bite into it. I have fed the starter to make another loaf in the morning as we couldn’t stop eating it so it only lasted two days. This is good bread!

Also made more bruschetta. After trying several recipes, our favourite is on bbc good food site (here). The only change is that I drain the chopped tomatoes before adding them to the other ingredients.

Do you feel the supermarkets make it hard to buy tomatoes, or any fruit and vegetables, without plastic? Normally I shop at a green grocer but had to dash into one of the big supermarkets for a few more tomatoes and they were on trays sealed in cling film!

cooking

Motivated by the availability of fresh summer vegetables I made Ratatouille. Originally from the Provence region in France, Ratatouille traditionally has tomatoes, eggplant, onions, capsicum, zucchini, garlic and olive oil. I know authentic ratatouille has capsicum/peppers in it but we’re not very keen on them but I like the dash of orange in the mixture, so I added two diced oven roasted sweet potatoes. There’s no eggplant/aubergine in the ratatouille I make either, because I am the only one who will eat it regardless of how cleverly it is disguised!

This is my own take on Ratatouille and we like it! My husband and I had already shared a cob of corn, so I simply poached an egg to put in the middle the of the vegetables in each bowl. Not at all authentic either, but it tasted just right. What I hadn’t expected was how good the leftovers tasted the next day, eaten cold!

I’ve made a second loaf of sourdough bread because we’ve eaten the last loaf. I am impressed by the recipes I have used to create the new starter and for this ‘no knead’ sourdough loaf on Feasting At Home. (link above)

While I was waiting for the bread to cook I made a chocolate fudge slice, too, which went into the oven when the bread came out. We were expecting our son later in the evening after a seven hour drive from Kalgoorlie. He would have stopped somewhere for dinner but I wanted something to offer with a drink when he arrived.

I don’t normally buy basil as it tends to self seed. I only realised it hadn’t when I needed some and the pot was bare. Bought three stalks with about 20 leaves on them, encased in plastic. Wont be doing that again! I quickly planted two well established basil plants to use in summer dishes.

I now have a lush pot of basil.

Prepared a few pots to plant other summer herbs. Our grey beach sand needs lots of additional products to support plants. I start with bentonite and water crystals and add compost and really good potting mix. Later I’ll add a rotted manure fertilizer. Finally, I planted coriander seeds and some sage, too. They’ll germinate in about 18 days and will need protection from the blazing heat.

our new umbrella

We’ve just bought a new outdoors umbrella to protect the potted plants and the table out in that area. The last umbrella, bought for its canvas fabric and timber frame, was so romantic and so useless. The timber warped and the canvas tore and shredded in the wind and sun. The new umbrella is made of powder coated aluminum and polyester fabric and will withstand the heat, rain and wind.

I have removed all the cording used to put the old market umbrella up and down and will harvest some of the timber, soon, too. The canvas was too shredded and worn to reuse which is disappointing.

The new umbrella is slightly larger so the lemon tree needed some branches cut back. I’ve cut off the almost ripe lemons and saved them. Some online articles say they’ll ripen if stored in a bright place, others says they wont ripen at all! I collected lemons already showing yellow, some still a bit green and a few very green ones. Time will tell (and fingers crossed they do ripen!) I’ll let you know next week.

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Artistic Occupations, Cooking and Creating A Sourdough Starter

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artistic occupations

Enjoyed two workshops this week. The first was marbling, using Japanese inks. Like other marbling, the inks are drizzled onto water, then stirred to distribute the colours and make patterns. I do this at home to make front and back inside covers for my journals. I’ll also use the pages I made at the workshop in my journals. Interesting to watch how other people created patterns. Fun afternoon!

The second workshop was making a collage. I’ve always liked Matisse’s collages in bold, bright colours and simple lines but I’ve never really tried to do it myself. Collage involves cutting shapes from coloured paper and gluing, stitching or otherwise attaching them to the backing sheet to create a picture. We were directed to pick one of artist Sally Bower’s artworks from her exhibition on display and recreate it using coloured papers.

Good exercise to make you really look at artwork. We were then instructed to used the leftover, negative pieces to create another piece. Although I probably wont do many collages, I did enjoy this evening, both for the inspiration and the company.

cooking dinner

One night we had slow cooked, slightly smoky beef for dinner and decided we wanted more slow cooked, meaty dinners. Too many salads! So my husband donned his mesh butchering glove and I began gathering the ingredients for slow cooker Beef Bourguignon (here) Should I include a trigger warning for vegetarians? Very meaty!

This is a wonderful dinner. You don’t need to use the very best beef as cooking it slowly results in fall apart, delicious meat. I made double the usual amount and cooked it in a slow cooker. It took five and a half hours.

Dinner for two nights in a row with different added vegetables and the rest went into the freezer.

Recycled food containers. They stack well in the freezer with little wasted space.

It’s actually better to label the containers using stickers, but I just wrote on the lids this time.

Fresh head of broccoli and a little leftover beef, sliced very thinly, and lovely broccoli and beef for dinner one night, too.

sourdough starter and LEFTOVER BREAD

I like to eat rye sourdough bread so I make it regularly. To save time, I started making two loaves at a time, then three loaves. The starter obviously felt neglected. Then we went away for 10 days leaving the unfed starter in the fridge. Back home and keen to make bread. The starter smelt like beer. I fed it and put it on the table where it got warmth from the sun, waiting for it to bubble. It didn’t. It was exhausted.

Following the instructions on this blog, Feasting At Home (here) I began a new starter. Sourdough starter , called ‘wild yeast’ is a mix of flour and water plus yeast from the air. It grows and is fed, over and over until it doubles in size. It took six days and was very easy to grow. Half a cup of the starter is fed flour and water every day until at the end, it doubles in size. The leftover starter is called ‘discard’ but I didn’t want to throw out the frothy mix! I’m aiming for minimal food waste.

A quick look online revealed so many recipes based on sourdough discard. There’s recipes for scones, pancakes, tortillas, biscuits, waffles and even pretzels. I made pancakes. While they cooked my husband went out the back for fresh lemons. So, delicious pancakes, with a sprinkle of sugar and a squeeze of lemon juice for a breakfast. It was good! And every time I feed the starter I will have enough ‘discard’ to make something else.

The next lot of discard became scones. I followed a recipe by someone who claims to descend from scone royalty and they did taste nice, but were a faff to make. I usually make scones by rubbing butter into flour, adding milk and a pinch of salt, kneading, cutting, baking. The recipe in this case had a few stages and also had sugar. I never put sugar in plain scones! Interestingly, this scone maker kept emphasizing the need to feed the sourdough starter every week, even if you weren’t using it. Lesson learnt!

leftover bread

What to do with leftover bread? I’m trying to avoid food waste. Bread, especially, seems to get dry before we’ve finished the loaf. The easiest thing is to dry it in the oven when your baking something else, then blitz it to make breadcrumbs. Similarly, cube the leftovers and make croutons! More a winter thing than a summer thing in Perth when the only soups eaten are cold but you can add them to a Caesar salad. There’s an Italian summer salad using dry bread, too.

To make croutons, cube stale bread, toss lightly in olive oil and seasoning with chopped up garlic and bake, spread on baking paper, until the cubes are browned and crunchy. Panzanelia Salad, a traditional Tuscan salad is a mix of stale torn up pieces of bread with chopped up tomatoes, some cucumber, red onion and lots of basil all mixed together with a generous splash of extra virgin olive oil and a splash of balsamic vinegar. (This is optional)

Did you know modelling predicts it takes 559 years for a disposable nappy to decompose?

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The Week Before Christmas

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Christmas Cooking

We celebrated Christmas with our wonderful neighbours before the big day. My husband made Glühwein which smelt so amazing. I cooked and made bags of shortbread as gifts. We took a plate, an Australian expression meaning to take a plate of food to share and we all met for an evening together. This is a lovely chance to hear everyone’s news and plans and just relax together, sharing delicious food and stories. Best way to start the Christmas Week.

What’s in the pot? Gingerbread men! Gingerbread dough smells so good.

These dear little men look a bit rough but it is years since I have done any decorative icing. Decorated birthday cakes are a thing of the past. Even finding the nozzles and icing bag was a bit of a challenge. They don’t look elegant but they taste great!

Some other little treats, too. Pre Covid our Christmas holidays were often overseas and I loved being given marzipan mice and pigs. No trips to Europe now, but a wonderful delivery from overseas to remind me of those precious times.

Then it was time to cook the ham. I like a leg ham with the bone in. I have tried many glazes and prefer a sticky mix with a citrus base. The glaze for this leg of ham is an aromatic mix of maple syrup, mustard, brown sugar, marmalade, cinnamon and allspice. For a similar mix with exact measurements, look at recipetineats.com.

Glossy, delicious glaze. Back, brown sugar, front marmalade, cinnamon, Dijon mustard, allspice and maple syrup.

Still picking tomatoes and spring onions plus masses of herbs including mint, parsley, chives, basil and rosemary. Love the smell of herbs. Did you know you lose less flavour if you snip your herbs with scissors rather than chopping them? Next time you chop herbs look at all the colour and flavour left on the chopping board.

All this cooking is the result of a lot of shopping. Shopping at this time of the year is a bit fraught. First trial is finding parking but not too bad if you set off early. The next challenge is the gaps on some of the shelves. Flooding in the east and a train derailment are the reasons given, also the favourite reasons given by Australia Post for snail like delivery times of anything ordered online. The next shopping drama is the checkout queue. It can be long. It’s that time of the year. Being cross with the checkout person doesn’t make the process any quicker.

Grumping at the checkout person reminds me of one my rare shopping excursions in the early days of Covid. I was in a long line, standing on my safe social distancing spot when the man going through the checkout was mouthing off loudly about social distancing, wearing a mask and the lack of checkouts operating. The girl operating the checkout looked about 17, probably a student. Did he think the board of this Australia wide supermarket had sought her opinion on safe checkouts? Did he think she had any say in Covid rules?

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Which makes me think about all the people who work hard around Christmas time to make everything happen and keep us safe. All the retail workers, the nurses and doctors and masses of support people in hospitals, the police, the rubbish collectors and delivery drivers, the farmers getting the highly sought after products picked, packed and off to the shops along with all the meat we’ll consume. Thank you, too, to the plumber who solved a problem three doors down our street, all the careworkers assisting their clients and all the people I’ve missed.

Louis

Last week Louis, our groodle, was very fluffy and very hot. We’d made a grooming appointment three months ago not realizing it was going to get hot so quickly.

BEFORE

This week Louis is trimmed and cool. He is very pleased with his sleek new state and very active and playful.

AFTER

Wishing you a joyful holiday break with lots of good food and good company!

merry christmas !

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Cleaning The Silver and Other Jobs

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cleaning the silver

Christmas preparations are much the same each year in this house. Apart from cooking and decorating I like the silver to be polished! I know, who cares? Well, I do! So I filled the sink with sheets of aluminum foil, a good shake of baking soda and hot water then dipped the tarnished pieces, leaving each piece for a minute then taking it out. Rinsed, then polished. Some of these pieces were so tarnished we had to clean and polish them with silver cleaner.

This was a good opportunity to wash all the bits and pieces I keep in the silver bowl. Time to refine the contents! The pebbles I’ve collected all over the world went back in and also my collection of miniature birdcages remained. Other bits and pieces went out! Also cleaned and sorted a long neglected cupboard. Little steps and so much more to do to declutter.

The discarded decorative pieces and lots of other things were all dropped off at the Salvation Army depot in town. Still more ‘treasures’ need to go but I find the process quite hard. Been loaned a very motivating book but I lose momentum rather easily.

dosing the cake

I made two Christmas cakes a few weeks ago. Three days ago my husband used a skewer to poke holes in the top of each cake. Next he poured the remaining port from macerating the fruit onto both cakes. Smelt wonderful. Moist, delicious and very popular.

I make the cakes using an old, photocopied, stained recipe from my Aunt, via my Mother. The ingredient list is very long although once everything is gathered and measured the process is actually quite quick. Every now and then I tear a recipe for Quick and Easy Christmas Cake, or No Fuss Christmas Cake or something similar from the paper and without fail, they have been mere shadows of the cake made from this treasured family recipe. Lesson learnt. Now I just plan a day for cake making as it takes at least four hours to cook! And weeks to macerate the fruits in port.

adding a pocket to a shirt

Had this light summer shirt for a while but I’ve only worn it once. The sleeves are very full and flappy so it felt too big. The other problem was it doesn’t have a pocket, so I’m always having to carry my phone or keys when I go out for a walk. Solution became obvious when I looked at it this morning.

I cut the sleeves to elbow length and folded and pinned a hem on the remaining, trimmed sleeves.

Trimmed one of the cut off sleeves to create a pocket. I left the existing cuff on the piece then turned and pinned the raw edges before pinning the now ironed pocket to the shirt.

Left the existing cuff from the sleeve as an edge on the pocket. The fabric is lawn and is quite thin so the cuff creates extra strength for the pocket.

I put the shirt on and pinned the pocket exactly where it was easy to access. Also ensured my phone fitted comfortably.

Ironed the pinned edges, then sewed them on place. Checked the sleeve length was right. Ironed the shirt, been wearing it all day. Considered making two pockets but I don’t really need two and I have a long TO DO list, anyway.

making biscuits

This time of the year is party time and many invitations ask you to ‘bring a plate’. This is an Australian tradition and involves taking a plate of food to share. I have a few invitations this week where I need to take a plate. This can be tricky when there’s no fridges available as the gatherings are outdoors. My solution is shortbread biscuits!

They don’t need refrigeration, cutting up or extra sauces or topping. You don’t need napkins and you don’t need to wash your hands afterwards. Easy!

saving seeds

The heat of summer has begun so it’s time to reduce the number of pots needing hand watering. I’ve also saved the ranunculus corms and red poppy seeds for next year. I intended saving the tulip bulbs, too, but only found their skins. The wild life had enjoyed a feast of tulip bulbs!

I store the collected seeds in brown paper bags pegged up high in the cool garage until it is time to plant again next year.

wrapping gifts

Printed this paper using brown packing paper, acrylic paint and a stamp. I smoothed out the paper and ironed it before printing on it. If you want to try this but want perfectly smooth paper, lightly spray it with a mist of water, then iron.

I hope all your holiday plans involve wonderful food and fun get togethers, plus lots of sleep!

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Six Things In Seven Days

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exercise

I go to the gym twice a week. I occasionally remind the sports physiologist who did my initial assessment and supervises my workout that my goal was to feel healthy and flexible, not to prepare for the next Olympic games. She just laughs and ups my weights and repetitions.

Image Pexels. Not me but I use this equipment at the gym. I don’t look like this super fit person!

Although I usually exceed my daily goal of 13 000 steps I am now more conscious of how often I am in the cardio/peak fat burning zone. An hour at the gym twice a week exceeds this goal. An hour of yoga each week offers no zone points but is wonderful for flexibility and relaxation. The recommended amount of time in the cardio zone for a week is 150 minutes.

blooming

Spring! Our flowers are wonderful. The roses have all recovered from chili thrip and are in full bloom. Roses, ranunculas, hippiastrums, alstromerias, geranium, nasturtiums and arum lilies plus clivias ar all flowering now. I have yellow and orange nasturtiums growing together and found I now have yellow nasturtiums with orange centres and stripes. The bees have been busy.

I also cut back the 22 year old spring onions for the second time since I planted them. They get a bit straggly after about ten years so I cut them down to the white bits and they’ve all regrown. Sweet, healthy little spring onions. So handy to add to so many things. Still picking snow peas, too, and a few tomatoes.

driving gloves

No, I am not going on a long journey, nor taking up rally driving! My husband recently came home after a long drive on a hot day and said his hands felt burnt. He decided to get some driving gloves to protect his hands during the heat of summer. As a fully paid up member of the melanoma family, I wanted some, too. I’d tried cotton gloves but they didn’t grip the steering wheel very well. Although I uses masses of sunscreen all the time, I also wash my hands a lot, so very little sunscreen remains.

Bought online, our gloves arrived quickly, fitted perfectly and do the job well!

painting

When we lived in China I learnt about the Chinese style of painting from a man we called The Master. Typically, he trained Chinese students to be artists. It was like an apprenticeship where he loaded his brush in a particular way, then the student copied. He’d make a mark on the rice paper, again, the student copied. This was very much the approach he took with his three or four “gweilo” women, too, which was very different from the way we were used to painting.

Until the last thirty years, Chinese painters often did an apprenticeship with a master, a recognised artist, then graduated to their own works, mostly in very traditional styles. These were often annotated with comments about the leaves, the mountain or other subjects. Recently I’ve seen a lot of Chinese artists’ work online and it is very different from the traditional themes and styles. Bold colours and often social commentary feature. I wonder what The Master thinks?

Last week I began a Chinese and Japanese painting course. I have worked with this tutor before, drawing from nature. She is very talented! Unfortunately, whatever I learnt in the past has disappeared. My bamboo leaves were fine, my bamboo stems not so good. Needs more work.

eating

Despite wanting to eat simple food this week I jumped at the opportunity to make Authentic German Frikadellen, German meat patties. Why? I’d accidentally bought bolognese mince, a mix of beef and pork and had no idea what to do with it. It’s just what this recipe required, so I gathered all the ingredients. We also had the required two slices of white bread bought to make curried egg sandwiches for visitors and promptly forgotten about lurking in the fridge. No waste! The only thing missing was marjoram, a spice. I try not to buy spices I’m unlikely to use again as I don’t think they last very long so I’d have to throw the remainder away. Tasted good without it, anyway.

Soaked the bread in milk for a few hours, then began the process. Fried the onion and garlic, added it to the other ingredients. My husband blended the mix by kneading everything together, as suggested in the recipe. We shaped nine quite generous sized patties from the mixture and browned them on high heat, then left them to cook through on a gentle heat. It was not included in the recipe online, but I used the pan juices to make gravy to serve with the patties.

We ate these wonderful patties with spicy Chinese cabbage and potato salad. A dab of mustard on top. We’ll have these patties again.

reading

Richard Osman has written three books The Thursday Murder Club, The Man Who Died Twice and the latest one The Bullet That Missed. It’s another wonderful tale about the inhabitants of an old peoples’ home who like to solve murders. All a bit improbable but very entertaining. Apparently he’s already working on number four. Good.

Do you have an author you really enjoy and eagerly await their next book?

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Making, Cooking and Growing

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Isn’t spring wonderful after a long, cold and wet winter? Every season has features I look forward to but spring brings an explosion of colours and scents into gardens everywhere. Shrugging off coats and jumpers and boots feels so liberating yet I remember feeling excited when the change of season led me to wearing those boots!

Apart from clothing the other element that changes with the season is food. What is available, particularly fruit and vegetables, dictates what we eat as the temperature changes. Salads and other meals served cold appear often prompted by what’s available at the green grocer. Usually we go there with a few staples on the list but then allow the freshest, most attractive fruits and vegetables to dictate what we eat for the next week.

We go to green grocer which has been run by a family of Italian descent for jas long as I remember so we can buy sheep and goats milk cheeses and yoghurts, a selection of cold meats and some other items. I love their olives.

We couldn’t resist the first of the locally grown mangoes! Armed with a damp cloth we slurped our way through three. Pretty colour, great taste, a bit sticky.

making

TOMATO and CUCUMBER SALAD WITH MUSTARD and CRESS DRESSING

This week I was looking for a Lebanese cucumber to make a salad. I also bought tomatoes, but they’re always on the list! When we got home I washed, dried and diced the cucumber, tomatoes and three slices of red onion then mixed the vegetables with two heaped dessert spoons of bought mustard and dill dressing. I didn’t add any salt as it draws the juices out of the vegetables and makes the dressing watery. Into the fridge to chill for dinner. Served with a small sprinkling of salt and some grated pepper it was delicious!

BLOOD ORANGE SORBET

Blood oranges were also on display so I immediately knew I was going to makes sorbet. I put the icecream maker insert from the Kitchen Aid in the freezer overnight to chill. The next day I made the sugar syrup and put that into the freezer, too, until it was very cold. Washed seven blood oranges which resulted in two cups of juice, just the amount required to make the sorbet. Put the juice and sugar syrup into the chilled icecream maker and set it to stir for 12 minutes. Then we had blood orange sorbet!

BLOOD ORANGE CHOCOLATES

Meanwhile, I had sliced some of the peel from the blood oranges into thin strips after I’d scraped out the remaining pulp. I microwaved some 70% cocoa dark chocolate in a cup after I’d broken it into small pieces, checking every 15 seconds. When it was glossy and melted I tilted the cup and dipped the strips of peel, one at a time, into the molten chocolate. Then I left each strip to set on a sheet of baking paper. Of course, we had to taste one! There’s no point making something fiddly if it’s not great, is there? Very hard to stop at one each, but they needed to dry. I’ll be making theses citrus strips dipped in chocolate again!

The blood orange and chocolate strips look a bit gruesome but tasted WONDERFUL!

cooking

OVEN ROASTED MEATBALLS

Not everything I cooked this week was served cold. I made OVEN ROASTED MEATBALLS following a recipe from recipestineats.com. We like meatballs but I don’t like the splatter on the stovetop from frying them. Obviously I was attracted to a recipe where the meatballs are suspended over the tomato sauce made from tinned tomatoes, Italian herbs, onion, garlic and. Then it all went into the oven for about 25 minutes.

This recipe made two very generous sized meals for two people. Dinner one night was served with the Tomato and Cucumber salad in Mustard and Cress Dressing, a new favourite. The next time the meatballs appeared I served them with just picked and steamed snow peas and potato mash.

As usual, also made three loaves of rye sourdough. It takes three days to get the dough to the cooking stage but three loaves last a couple of weeks. While I’m feeding the starter I measure out the flour I’ll need later and set it aside.

Keep the flour in a plastic crate. I make three loaves at a time as it is a bit of a faff preparing the starter/sponge, then waiting for the dough to double in size , ready to cook.

growing

Using my newly sharpened hedge clippers I have reshaped a big rosemary bush. The way the blades cut through the woody bits and the soft regrowth without much effort is very satisfying. This particular rosemary bush was grown from a piece of my Mother’s bush and is very aromatic and strongly flavoured. She also propagated a bush for our son who felt the one he’d bought from the nursery wasn’t strongly flavoured nor really aromatic.

So as I almost effortlessly snipped off pieces of rosemary I collected the soft, new growth cuttings, stripped off the lower leaves and trimmed the growth off the top a little. Into water then on the end of the table which gets morning sun and soon little thread like roots will form and I’ll pot them up to share.

Beautiful spring weather, I hope you are enjoying the weather where ever you live!

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