A new job title......

My Mother is an incredible woman. Actually she is my hero a wee bit. She was reasonably young for a modern day mum when she became pregnant with me. Yet despite the circumstances being far from convenient ones, she chose to not only to continue with the pregnancy but to raise me as well. That’s a big decision for a young woman to make. I respect her for that alone, but I do respect her for much more too. She was a good mum. She was honest and open yet able to bring correction well, she let me be my own person and took the time to learn who that was every time I decided to change. She taught me many things like how to dance to the radio and how to hypnotize a garden lizard by stroking its belly. She also taught me how to make healthy meals on a shoe-string budget and sparked my passion for beautiful homes and decorations.

I say all this because what I need to clarify that she was(is) actually a very good mother.

I say all this because what I am about to say next may have alone painted her as something else.

She’s a lousy housewife.

My Step-father once bought her a copy of Mrs. Beeton’s book on Household management, I still haven’t figured out whether it was a joke or he actually wanted her to get inspired….probably a little of both.

Okay, okay, ‘lousy’ might be a bit harsh, but household management certainly isn’t her strong point. However, to be fair, it’s a trait I too have taken on. My house does have the deception of being cleaner and more organized than hers, but for one reason and one reason only……I have less stuff.

 I’m catching up fast.

There have been so many changes these last few months; it’s been hard to keep up with it all.

I am no longer working and earning which firstly leaves me with more time but less money. And where the general running of the house has been a shared responsibility, the cleaning now falls to me, as does the paperwork, bill paying, emailing, errand running and while, ‘of course still the cooking’, it’s now on a much stricter budget which means more function less creativity in the kitchen.

Oh what will I ever do?? This is potentially a disaster waiting to happen.

 Everything is changing.

I am now in the training process of becoming a mother and household manager.

Pray for me.

Breaking the silence

Im going to tell you a secret, a secret that is going to change this blog at least for a little while longer. A secret that has lead me to quit my job, avoid my kitchen and despise even the thought of cooking toast.

I’m all knocked up.

Im also all spewy and bawled up on the couch watching day time tv.

Its great news really and im very excited. My husband and I have been just a twosome for almost five years, now we will be three. The downside is that it looks like I will be out of the kitchen for a few months till the morning sickeness clams down. Till then we are living off pre-made meals and banana sandwhiches. Thankfully there are some really great little shops and deli’s around our current dwelling that make some half decent premade meals for the husband and as for me, I’m living off what ever will stay down.

We found out about the same time we were looking for a new rental which was a rather intense journey in itself. Did you know that looking for a rental property in Perth is fast becoming like trying to win the lottery? It’s insane. Most houses we looked at we were competeing with around 25+ other couples per property. One property we viewed shuffled through over 100 people in less than 15 minutes. On top of that people bid on the rental price to up their chances. I began to fear we end up in one of those cockroach ridden super-flat-stacks. Id rather live in a tent in the bush. Despite the stress we did end up with a very clean little house near the river…cant complain about that.

So we have been a little distracted by life the last few months. Added to that I have been starring at this blog wondering how on earth I am meant to write about the one thing I am struggling with the most?....Food. I can’t cook, I can’t eat out, I can barely eat in for Pete’s sake. Why I cant even sit and watch a tv show about food. Even the thought of food is nauseating. So how do I write about it? Truth is I just haven’t been able to hence the long scilence.

Things are improving now though thank goodness, oh there is still a long list of foods I must avoid, chicken being at the top, and cooking is about the last thing I desire to do. but may be there is hope. At the very least, when this baby comes out, it will be like releasing a monster….a big, hungry, mummy, monster cook. I think the first thing I’ll do is bake a big apple pie and then may be a red velvet cake, then….the world my friends….the world will be oyster once again.

Discovering the Summer Roast

I realise that it is summer and that roast dinners really have their moment in the spotlight during winter, but every now and then a situation calls for more than a simple salad. The last six months have been a real adventure of uncertainty and in the short time Teej and I have been camping out at our friend’s house the three of us have shared both the good and bad parts of that journey. The one thing we really hadn’t shared much of though was food.

A decent meal.

This is surprising considering Hazel (the friend in question) and I head the kitchen at our church. That’s more than 60% of our relationship right there. Despite the different ages and the diversity of our individual cooking histories, we make a stellar team. If I were to ever open a restaurant, there is no one I would rather partner with to do so.

Thank God for Hazel who this month decided to finally end that lack of communal feasting.

Inviting around some Kiwi mates we all partook in a summer roast meal or perhaps I should say a summer banquet. Frankly put, the woman knows how to entertain guests.

 I have a lot to learn from her.

Starting with dips, then onto to prawns, we began to feel like royalty moving from course to course. The star attraction being a summer roast platter served with a light gravy and lime chutney.

As I watched the boy’s reposition themselves from the dining room table to the lounge room floor groaning with over satisfied stomachs, I re-pondered the place of the traditional roast in the different seasons. It appears I have really been limiting the roast all these years. Unconsciously confining it in one room of the house and not really discovering its full potential. Of course, winter will always be its time to shine, but I can tell you I am truly looking forward to a year long friendship with the roast dinner.

Thanks for everything Hazel <3

Change

I’m aware. It’s been a while since my last published blog entry. I say ‘published’ because I wrote many times. At least I tried to write many times. I have twenty or so half written blog entries saved on my hard drive, mostly the same words, just in different order. I don’t think it was writers block or a lack of desire to cook. I think mainly it was the lack of camera and the lack of time. I can’t seem to get my head around writing a blog about food and not being able to show you what I am doing at the same time. I guess that’s part of being a very visual person.

It’s been an interesting few months. 

A few weeks after I returned from my trip to the states, I attempted to call my Oma (Grandma) several times before finally trying my Father on an old number (He lives up north so my contact with him is very limited). Turns out she had been in hospital for almost a month.  I have to thank God that I was not working because it meant that over the next two months I was able to sit with my Oma as much as I wanted, as much as she needed, as much as I needed.

 I really cherish that time. We talked about so much, her life, my life, everything we’d missed (I didn’t grow up around this side of the family, hence the odd distance in relationship between my father and I). Most of all though, we talked about food.

When she passed away she organised with my father to pass all her recipe books to me. Then that was that. It’s very hard for me to write about this. As time has passed I have found it harder and harder to not have her around. I feel like I’ve lost more than I can explain.

So much has happened since that but it all seems a little insignificant. We moved out of our inner-city town house, put all our stuff in storage and rented a room in a house in suburbia. My car broke down and my sister lent me her car as a long lender till I can afford another. My husband took out a loan, quit his job, and did a bit of training and heading back to the welding industry. He is currently driving one hundred kilometres a day for to new job.

Most recently, I got a job cooking in a newly opened cafe. No qualifications to cook, just experience and a blog. Yep, in this rather downward slanted blog entry, we finally have something to lift it up again. The owners read this blog and consequently I had the strangest interview for a job I’ve ever had;

“So, do you want to work for us?”

“Yes”

“Yay!”

My Oma would be so proud.

So in everything that has been happening, I am sad to have lost my Oma and I know it looks like not everything is moving up and forward, but it all just feels like change.

Honestly, that’s kind of exciting.

It’s a refreshing word....”Change”

.........Oh, I didn’t mention, my Christmas present this year was a fixed camera! J

I heart recipes

Well, as promised, HERE is my little scrapbook. There are still a few bumps and hiccups that I will being trying to sort out but hopefully they will all work out along the way.

Hope you enjoy it.

Also if you guys get anygood recipes you want to pass on to me, email me! I believe you can see my address on my profile....hmm, better double check that.

New Blog: Recipe Scrapbook

Well that's it folks, I've had enough of this blog and I'm starting a new one!

Okay, okay, That's not really true, actually I love this blog, but I am starting a new one. A side one. Crazy full of recipes! I have noted that finding my favorite recipes via blog entries is actually quite hard. So, to save you the search time I've started a recipe scrapbook that I will be uploading all my favorite recipes onto. That way if you want to just look at the recipes, you can!

Also because (major disaster!!) my camera is broken(!!!), I think it will be the perfect time to put this idea into play. Just hope it will actually work :) The first recipes I will be uploading are to ones I promised long ago on the 'Babies, Bumps, Breasts and Baguettes' blog entry. So look out for the link which I will put up over the next week.

(Meanwhile, I'll work on getting my camera fixed and a new cooking based blog entry for you.)

Till then folks..........

Poached Egg and Bacon Tarlets (or Open Pies)

When it comes to going out for a meal, my most favourite meal of the day to do so is always breakfast. I wouldn't say I’m a morning person really, may be a forced one due to six years as a tradesman, but certainly not naturally.

Then again, who said breakfast was about getting up early?

It’s about getting up leisurely and slowly heading out for a late breakfast or brunch. Taking it slow and enjoying what’s left of the morning before you race off to do whatever it is that you need to get done for the day. It’s also the only meal of the day where a ‘comfortable silence’ is a welcomed thing. At dinner silence’s always lean more to the awkward side, but never at breakfast. You can sit for almost half an hour without a word and it would be okay. Your partner will be reading the paper whilst you are watching the world wake up and roll out of bed, (and let’s face it, Australia has an amazing birdlife, all of whom go pretty insane first thing in the morning, even in the city) it’s beautiful really.

Actually I love breakfast so much I often eat it for dinner! There is also here the fact that I like to eat all my meals ‘backwards’, it suits my appetite. Dinner for breakfast, dessert for lunch and breakfast for tea......I’m not joking, I genuinely do this. Heck, I did it last night!

After two reasonable cooking failures recently I decided to something a little more ‘safe’. Not because I’m scared of more failure, oh no, I’m a big fan of kitchen fails! Not only are they mostly hilarious, (I recommend cakewrecks.com by the way - thanks mum for the heads up on that site) but you never learn from success the way you learn from failure, especially in the kitchen. However dear friends and readers, I would not want you to believe that I am completely useless in the kitchen and it would be nice to cook a recipe that is actually worth passing onto you.

Today’s recipe I have pulled from my most favourite magazine, which sadly ‘passed away’ late 2010. I believe that ‘Notebook’ magazine was so awesome it self combusted, a very sad story indeed. This recipe is also very easy both to make and to eat, which was good for me because it meant that it was sort of like the coffee beans you have between the wine tastings; palate cleansing for my desire to try new recipes. All in all refreshing really. There is also a really good method for poaching eggs in this recipe.

So now ill stop my babbling and give you the recipe already, because I know that what you came here for. Enjoy;

POACHED EGG AND BACON PIES

Filling:

20g of butter

5 rashes of bacon, diced

1 brown onion, diced

4 green onions, trimmed and thinly sliced

2 tablespoons of thickened cream

1 tablespoon of white vinegar

6 free range eggs

Baby rocket leaves to serve

Sour Cream Pastry:

2 cups of flour

100g of butter

½ cup of sour cream (125g)

1 egg yolk

2 teaspoons of iced water

Method:

To make the sour cream pastry, place butter and flour in the bowl of a food processor (if you have one, other wise work through with a knife or fork - refrain from using your 'bare hands' as much as possible) and process until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs.

Add the sour cream, egg yolk and water and process till mixture comes together. Turn onto floured board and gently need until the mixture again comes together. Wrap in glad/clingwrap and place in the fridge for 30 minutes (this may need longer if you used your hands a lot, which one shouldn’t do because one should never use their hands a lot when making pastry of any sort, I’m just saying, if you did....)

Preheat your oven to 200°c (392°F)

Divide pastry into 6 portions and roll each portion out to a 12cm disc. If you are using fluted tart tins (as the recipe recommends) then line the sides of six 10cm fluted tart tins with the pastry (I didn’t have tart tins, let alone six of them, so use what you have and divide appropriately).  Trim pastry and refrigerate for a further 15 minutes.

Line the cases with baking paper and rice or beans and bake for 10 minutes, remove paper and rice and bake for further 5 minutes.

Meanwhile fry butter, bacon and onion in till a frypan till they begin to brown, add ¾ of the green onions and cream, cook for a further 2 minutes and remove from heat.

Fill pastry tartlets with bacon mix and return to oven for another 5 minutes

Eggs:

Place vinegar and enough water to cover an egg in (deep) frypan and bring to the boil.

Break 1 egg into a cup, then using a serving spoon, create a whirlpool effect in your frying pan, carefully slip the egg into the centre of the whirlpool (you can gently..... very gently continue to swirl the whirlpool around at a slower pace once the egg is in). Poach for 1-2 minutes or according to the firmness that you prefer then remove and repeat with other eggs (you may need to top up the water to make sure the eggs remain covered by water every time. A boiled kettle near by is good for this)

Place tartlets on a plate with rocket, then serve poached egg on top of tartlet with salt, pepper and remaining green onions.

P.S.  just as an end note; the apple crumble and custard I had for lunch was pretty amazing too ;)