I love food!

I love food. I love growing it, cooking it and eating it!    And that is just what I did this evening....
I grew it, cooked it and ate it.  The entire dinner came from the garden - potatoes, cabbage, brussels sprouts, kale, shallots and garlic.  (OK there were a few extra ingredients - olive oil, salt and pepper and a few spices.)  Food miles - about 10 metres!  It was a simple dinner but delicious.  It was a recipe from
 Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstal's - River Cottage Veg Every Day. (Curried bubble and squeak).

 I love this cookbook.  I am trying to work my way through it - I made lots of soups over winter and there is still so much I want to try!

PS it isn't all healthy vegetable eating here....while I am at home eating vegetables the boys are off camping -eating sausages, marshmallows and beer....

Sunny makes Sun Bread

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I haven't been doing much of this blogging lark this year - i kind of lost interest, but I am feeling a resurgence.  I do like looking back over it - it is a good reminder of life lived.  Sometimes it feels like I've done nothing different or interesting to write about, but actually it is all these little everyday simple  moments that make  life what it is.  Nothing amazing but important nonetheless.  These days at home with Sunny (and the boys) are not infinite and I would like to remember how we spent them when I am old!

Anyway I was looking through the photos and found these cute ones of Sunny and thought I'd put them up.  We made Sun Bread.  It is from a very cute book -
Sun Bread  by Elisa Kleven.

I just read a very good thing (i don't know what to call it - opinion piece perhaps?)   The intellectual benefits of a real old fashioned summer...

(Even though it is the middle of winter here!!)
That is all for now, time to get out in the garden!

Vietnamese Coleslaw

 

This is (one of) my latest favourite foods - Vietnamese style coleslaw (as opposed to coldsore which is what I thought coleslaw was called when I was a kid!).

All picked fresh from the garden - cabbage, carrot, shallots, Vietnamese mint, coriander, mint.
Then mix up the dressing:
* 2 tbsp lime juice
* 1.5 tbsp fish sauce
* 1 tbsp rice wine vinegar
* 1 - 2 tbsp brown sugar
* pinch salt
* clove of crushed garlic
* 1 hot chilli (optional)

I have also been wrapping this salad up in rice paper rolls - yum! Unfortunately the cabbages are coming to an end for this season...I wonder what else i could put this dressing on? Cucumbers perhaps....

I have also been picking a bit of beetroot and recently made this yummy Indian pickle (recipe courtesy of an Indian restaurant in London - via Liz and Claire).  

 

 

As you can see I am no food photographer .
(Also unless you like it very hot I would put in only 1 tsp of chilli.)

This is my favourite song for this week....rock n roll... 

I love the passion in his voice....

Honey Snaps

 

 

Today I finally made Honey Snaps.  I have been wanting to make these for ages.  I used the honey I was given for my birthday from some lovely neighbours.   I often fantasize about bee keeping myself but why bother when we have very generous neighbours and we can buy our honey from here.    Maybe one day I'll do it too.....

 Anyway these were super easy to make and very yummy (perhaps a little sweet.....)
Ingredients: 3 tbspn honey, 2 tblspn sugar, 50 g butter, 1/2 cup plain flour, 1 tsp baking powder, 1/4 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp cinnamon (or ginger)

Preheat oven to 180.  In a saucepan heat  butter, honey and sugar until melted.  Take off heat.  Mix all dry ingredients into the saucepan and mix well.  Drop teaspoons of mixture onto cold tray.  Bake for 10 mins.

There have been some cold and frosty mornings lately.  Brrrrrr.

I finally finished these presants.  I did the fronts ages ago but had to finish off the backs.  I should really make more of an effort to actually finish things.  It does feel good when you do.  I am definately a starter.  I was about to start a new knitting project but resisted - i should finish Sunny's dress first!!

 

The oranges are good at the moment.   Check out how big one of them is - they are all from the same tree!   An orange a day keeps the doctor away - well I hope so anyway! (It hasn't worked for poor Django who has been very sick these past few days, but he usually only eats half an orange, maybe that's the problem???).

MMMMM Food....

When I'm not sure what else to do, I tend to garden or cook.  That always needs doing and I do like to do it.  Today I picked the last few masssive Zuccinis from the garden.  Tonight I am going to cook this....

It is Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Zuccini and Rice Filo pie - recipe is here.

For breakfast I have been making this Nut and Seed Granola (recipe from Soule Mamma's blog)  for the past few months. I love it, especially with some good vanilla yoghurt and blue berries or strawberries (I have to wait for them to come back in!)

My other latest  food  fad is cream cheese with Sweet Tomato Chutney on sour dough bread with lettuce. I could eat it every day (and I have been!!)  I made the chutney last week and there is not much left - it is from the food of India cookbook.

A Cubby Picnic

 

 

 

 

Sunny asked me to make her a cubby.  So instead of making an excuse and doing all of my jobby jobs,  I made her a cubby and we had a lovely picnic of kiwi fruit, water and a Cowboy biscuit that  I made yesterday (without the M & Ms and with coconut and sunflower seeds instead - they are very yum!), then we dragged the rug into the sun and read some books together.  It was a very nice morning  and a good reminder to hang out together and  enjoy the day  instead of always doing stuff.

Around here...

We got some new chickens a  few weeks ago and it is great to get at least two eggs a day.  Unfortunately we  have had some chicken disasters with fox (we think) attacks. It was the fluffy little silkies that were eaten again.  We don't have much luck with silkies, our first lot were eaten by a snake.   Oh well,  we have four beautiful robust hens left.

A large python shed its skin.

Sunny is hanging out her washing.  She loves to imitate and do everything i do.

 I have been making lime cordial....ready for coctails at my party!!

The boys have been hanging around in the hammock.  I still  haven't been up in the high one.  Trisso and I both gave each other hammocks for christmas.  How funny - great minds think alike!!

 

This is my one of my favourite foods at the moment - i just had it for lunch today - pasta, fresh tomato and basil, some black olives and feta cheese.  YUM.  Today is preschool day, i went for a bike ride -(it is so easy to ride a bike when you are not towing a trailer!!), did some gardening, picked the remaining eggplants to make an eggplant curry for dinner, made this pasta for lunch, I had a bit of a blog browse, came across this one  Homemade rainbows,  now i am writing this and eating Turkish delight. Next i am going to go and lay down somewhere and read 'Howard's End' before I have to collect Sunny and do the next round of afternoon things.   That is what I call a good day.

Honey Makes you Funny

Apart from having your own bee hives is this not the best way to buy  your honey?

Then  you can make these yummy Stephanie Alexander Honey cakes. 

Lime Syrup Cake and stuff

This is our lime tree and it is full of limes so yesterday Sunny and I picked some  to cook a Polenta, yogurt and lime syrup cake.  I got the recipe from Trisso's mum and it is delicious and easy to make.

  
Ingredients
1 cup polenta
1 cup yogurt
1 tsp grated lime rind
250g butter, softened
1 cup caster sugar
3 eggs lightly beaten
1 cup SR flour
 Lime syrup
3/4 cup caster sugar
1/3 cup lime juice

1.  Combine polenta, yogurt and lime rind and cover and refridgerate for 2 hours or overnight.

2.  Preheat oven to 160 `C (fanforced) and grease a 23 x 14 loaf pan.

3.  Mix butter and sugar - add to polenta mix, add eggs and flour.  Put in pan and bake for about 50  mins.

4.   Lime syrup - stir lime juice and sugar over low heat until dissolved then bring to boil.

5. Pierce cake all over with skewer and pour hot syrup over hot cake in pan. Leave for 15 mins then turn out onto plate.  YUM.

 

 

 

It must look like all we do is  eat cake and biscuits!!  We do do other things!  Lately I have been busy taming the wild and weedy garden.  All that rain over summer meant less gardening and an overgrown soggy mess.  It is quite tidy now which feels good and I have been planting lots of autumn veggies.

 

 

 

 Other stuff I do is with Sunny, the good old waterfall, always a hit!

We made a colour sort activity.

I did finish this quilt which was a presant for Kim who just had a baby girl on Friday.  Yipee.  We need more girls in the valley!

 

Django caught a fish which we ate for dinner.

Trisso has been welding and fixing the slasher.

The boys are getting ready for soccer this year.  They love the shin pads!