Still life: mobile blogging test

Four weeks 'til I head off on my European sojourn. Excited. Very!

Not sure if I'll blog while traveling but trying the mobile app to see if I can be bothered with the one finger tapping on the itty bitty keyboard.

sparkling clean pantry

I'm guessing weevils aren't an acceptable addition to a vegan diet. A recent infestation meant it was time for the annual pantry purge. Oh boy do I hate food waste, in this case not much due to being past it's use by date but some recently opened items that the bugs made their way into. We lost 2 buckets of food from this small storage space.

The upside though is all items are easy to find, for once!

And a reminder that there's still more yuba to use up!

mushroom identification

When the mist cleared this morning, there were no gorillas.

Only 'shrooms.



With the garden bed rebuilt with a tonne of mushroom compost the odd fungi popping up is inevitable.



Can anyone tell me what they are and whether they are safe to eat?

report from the trenches

With a spate of chilly, grey and wet weather I’ve given up and succumbed to hibernation. The garden is barely noticed, dull light deters photography and my cooking has been almost as inspiring as the weather.

But eat? Yes thanks, starch, starch and more starch. Hijacked by a primitive brain that anticipates a winter famine.

Potatoes: roasted, fried or jacket. Forkfuls of fluffy, warm goodness.
Rice noodles: with stir fried vegetables and crispy strips of tempeh, almost candied with kecap manis.
Delicious vegan burgers and hand cut chips.

Oh yes!

Between showers, it's too cold and wet to garden with any real gusto. The cos lettuce is growing very nicely, the odd bug dropping by for a snack but there are plenty of leaves left for me to consume. The cavolo nero has been visited by the sneaky little cabbage butterflies and is requiring some manual grub squashing. Fortunately they’re not interested in the rainbow chard and it’s slowly doing its thing but waiting for a little more warmth before it will take off. Strawberries are surviving, even with the odd flower and fruit, though this cold snap will surely put the end to that unseasonal folly.

The seed project has had mixed success. The spring onions are hanging in there but the coriander has grown so slowly that I’ve bought some seedlings in frustration. Parsley has been the only no show, so that’s also been purchased.

Newly added are a row each of heirloom carrots and parsnips, as well as garlic (that’s already sprouting), sorrel and garlic chives.

How’s your patch looking?




Rather dull photos, it’s soooooo grey here in Melbourne at the moment.

hello winter- a quickie

I’m off food at the moment (see last post), am now in second week of feeling NQR (not quite right) digestively speaking

The above point makes any attempts at blogging a tad boring

Despite that – things I am loving right now

• Golden Kiwi fruit – from my homeland (slight guilt re: food miles)
• Mandarins – at least they are local!
• Buying the above fruit from a fifth generation Vic Market stall. Not organic but some is home grown and spray-free. You know the one, the fourth generation trader is often hanging out the back smoking err “herbal cigarettes”.
• Herbal tea – my tummy tea du jour is mint, chamomile and liquorice, very soothing
• Autumn colours. Ok I know its winter but the colours are still fab.

What’s are you loving?

Autumn light - a picture of satisfaction

So you like the light? Here is a less offensive image to feast your eyes on


Satisfaction!

Was - eggs fried in the middle of a slice of bread. According to the fried egg wiki it's called egg in a basket. I call it not toad in a hole.

How do you like your eggs?

still life with nipples

A well-meaning friend gave the Significant Eater an interesting gift last month. His mother is a bit of a collector and there was an item left aside that she had no use for, the friend thought it a perfect gift for the SE.

I was not so enamoured with the present. It sat on display in the living room for an entire month before I broke my silence and removed the offending parts.

The gift, you see, was a crockery cruet set of a reclining nude. The head and legs store salt and pepper, the middle section providing perfect receptacles for oil and vinegar. I’m not a prude, there are a number of nudes on the walls of the house, it’s just this was an all round aesthetic fail.

Though I’ve got to say, uncoupled from the rest of the female form, it did catch my eye in the morning light.



Oh the trials and tribulations of living in the first world!

All kinds of weirdness

Tapping on the keyboard, slicing and dicing in the kitchen, twisting tops off bottles, carrying the pot of boiling water off the stove to strain. These are all small acts in the daily life of someone who cooks, writes or has any normal kind of existence.

Until a week ago I never realises the relationship I have with my index finger. It’s as if my hands are dancers, with the odd digit doing ballet movements to perfectly balance mundane actions. A stupid injury to my finger has left me with some pesky nerve damage and in the meantime inessential cooking and blogging has been put on hold.

However when I get my digits working properly (or get used to a life of pain and strange sensations) I may share the story of the food blogger outed at work by a disgruntled restaurant owner, or then again I may not. Why waste digit power when there are tales of homemade beverages to share?

Anyone else pissed off anyone in the industry lately and would like to amuse me with their tales?

Reading is easy, it’s just the writing and cooking and cleaning (and who every thought an index finger was so important in hooking up and undoing a bra?) that are on a go slow for now.

Is it just the silly season or are their all kinds of weirdness going on in the world at the moment?

blogging when I should be cleaning and packing

I have been very remiss.

And I am sorry to report things are not quite back to normal.

There was this of course, quickly followed by this.

Sadly there has been a lot more that February has thrown at the SE and me. Between us, amongst our friends and family there has been: three deaths, one just-been-diagnosed-with-a-life-threatening-illness, one having-brain-surgery-and-in-ICU and the usual, mundane business and family stresses.

The effect of all this has been something I have rarely experienced.

I lost my appetite for a week or two!

Imagine that.

I’d like to report I am newly transformed to sveltness but as it has been coupled with major inactivity, that is not the case.

To remedy all this I am going camping. Unfortunately it is paradoxically in a part of the country that appears to be under water.

In the meantime – the tiny backyard keeps producing yummy morsels, despite the hell-on-earth weather god’s best attempts to thwart them.





Hopefully there will be more left to harvest, to sate my reinvigorated appetite, when I get back in a few days.

dolmades, friends and wine

I’m hiding. I’ve been doing a bit of that lately I must admit.

But right now there is the detritus that comes from having 30 of the SE’s friends/colleagues through the house for a barbecue, to be cleaned up. Having been the sober one to do the lion’s share of the cleaning last night, I reckon I’ve earned a little time out to tap on the keyboard.

While barbecuing en masse is a topic for another post, so too the story of the brand-new-second-hand-barbecue, it is another smaller gathering around the table that demands to be written today.

Back in October I threw up the idea of making dolmades with a few like minded people. There was a lush crop of leaves and surely, I thought, just coordinating three people’s diaries to find an afternoon to roll and sip would be no problem? It took to the New Year til we could all get together, I was a little worried the leaves would be tough by now but went ahead anyway.

So while I hear empty bottles clink in the background, I am going to do a dangerous thing – recount the recipe from memory.

Dolmades, stuffed vine leaves or “ricey-roll ups”* if you prefer, are made in four simple steps.

Prepare the leaves

If making them fresh, the leaves need to be picked and blanched. Soft, tender ones with shallow ‘fingers’ are best. They are blanched for a couple of minutes in boiling water then laid on a tea towel to dry.

You can skip this step and use a jar of preserved vine leaves (in Australia they are available from some deli's and foodstores.)

Cook and flavour the rice

I went back to my old friend Madhur Jaffrey for help. Her sturdy tome has a simple method and handy diagrams to follow. I used her directions to par cook the rice – a cup or two (depending on how many leaves and willing hands you have to roll them) of long grain rice cooked at a rolling boil for 5 minutes, then rinsed and drained.

We made two batches of rice mix. Both contained:
Finely sliced spring onions
Chopped pine nuts
Herbs – parsley and fresh minute also finely chopped
Salt and pepper

One batch had a large squeeze of tomato paste stirred through and the other a pinch of good quality turmeric.

Roll up your sleeves and get rolling

This is where the fun begins. With bowls of filling and another of blanched leaves the four of us sat around the table, a chilled glass of resiling at hand. There was Lucy, Docwitch and her daughter Moon. M is a wee girl, very enthusiastic about creating the ricey parcels and did a great job of wrapping hers in an origami inspired style. The rest of us took a teaspoon or 2 of filling and wrapped and rolled accordingly. We placed sliced of tomato on the bottom layer of my large iron pot, then packed the dolma in tight layers. This is a long process and one best shared with friends and other grape products.

Finally the pot was full; I’d guess there were close to 90 made in the end.

Create the cooking liquid

Whisk together:

1 part lemon juice
2 parts olive oil
4 parts warm water
I tsp sugar
Plus a generous amount of crushed garlic and salt.

Pour the liquid on so they leaves are covered, place a plate on to weight them down, then the lid on top. Simmer for an hour. By the time the cooking was done, heat off/lid on we left the pot while another bottle of wine was consumed.

Verdict – great day, pleasant tasting dolmades but still room for improvement.

Notes for next year:
Leaves a little tough, make earlier in the season
More salt
More herbs, less pine nuts
More tomato paste
More wine!


Docwitch offers M some assistance in rolling the vine leaves



Into the pot, nice and tight


Of course I meant to reshoot this the next day while...err..sober but that never quite happened. A rather haphazard photo but represents the rolling styles of all four of us :)

Can't wait to see Lucy's photos of the day!

Update: Lucy's photos and poetic account is up. Hurrah!


*TM Moon

Sunday pictorial: the making of food

It all begins here. This is the view from our 2nd toilet. In real estate speak this is a 2 bathroom, 2 laundry, 2 bedroom terrace house. While I’ve never had to rely on the outdoor amenity it comes in handy some mornings. I don’t mind a quiet sit out here, to gaze at the grape vine, lemon tree and tarragon while contemplating the universe.



Over the long weekend we finally cleaned out the junk that had accumulated in the outdoor bathroom - garden chairs, a wood burning bbq, cardboard boxes, an unused table. Things crammed into spaces without thought. Now the garden is up and running I thought it made sense to create some order so we can store the tools, pots, potting mix and move the worm farm out of the direct sun and into the shade of the shower stall.



We bung some nails in the wall to hang up the tools of the trade.



The seedlings we planted after the heat of the Indian summer had ended are starting to look like food.



Well, some of the bugs think so already.



This might be tabouleh when it grows up.


So how does your garden grow?