Day 27 - Roast chicken

It's nice to be able to cook again. I found it impossible with two babies, but now the girls are a bit older, often I can distract them with books or toys, or even get them to help a bit with prepping dinner.

We headed out in the morning to find a chook for dinner. So this afternoon, while Elisabeth napped, I talked Maggie through teasing the skin away from the breast and stuffing it with butter and tarragon.
Then rubbing the skin with olive oil, salt and pepper, before squeezing half a lemon over it and stuffing it in the cavity with some more tarragon and garlic.

I popped it on a bed of red onion slices and more garlic and into a hot oven. We baked some pumpkin as well, boiled some new pink eye potatoes and served it with asparagus and peas.


A Sunday roast, a day late.

I'm sure her namesake, Maggie Beer, would be proud!

Day 20 - Lemon linguine

I have written about this pasta before. So I won't repeat the recipe. Needless to say it is very easy to make, even with the girls about, and even easier to eat.

Day 13 - Granola

To be precise home made granola. We use a recipe in Nigella's Feast - she credits the recipe to Andy Rolleri of the Pantry in Fairfield Connecticut.

I had been experimenting with reducing the amount of sugar in it, but after a bit of a failure last time I decided to return to the original recipe. It is so good! I'll just have to reduce the amount I eat at breakfast.



My slight modifications to the original recipe in Feast

5 cups rolled oats
1 cup sunflower seeds
1 cup pumpkin seeds
175g (200ml) apple compote or apple sauce
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/3 cup golden syrup
4 tablespoons honey
100g (3/4 cup tightly packed) brown sugar
2 cups whole almonds (or hazelnuts or any other nut you'd prefer)
1 teaspoon sea salt
2 tablespoons sunflower oil
1 cup coconut flakes

300g raisins (or sultanas or other dried fruit)

Heat the oven to 170 degC.

Mix everything except the dried fruit and coconut in a bowl. I microwave the honey and golden syrup so that it's runny.

Spread out the mix onto two baking trays covered with baking paper.

Bake in the oven for 30-40 minutes. I watch it carefully as it can burn easily, after 15 minutes use a spatula to turn the mix over, and add the coconut flakes on top.

Allow it to cool and then mix in the dried fruit (which I inevitably forget so end up mixing in a handful each day into my bowl).

Serve with milk, greek yoghurt and fruit compote (today it was the rest of the apple compote I made for the mix).

Thanks Andy and Nigella.

Day 6 - Baked eggs with chorizo, and Lumberjack cake

Now we don't have the luxury of taking photos of our dinner anymore, so I'm afraid my Monday Menu posts have faded away. We count ourselves lucky if we get a moment to eat our dinner at a slower pace before having to clean up one of the girls sitting next to us in their high chairs.

But the other day when the girls finally went to sleep I had a moment to start cooking something for dinner (it was just going to be scrambled eggs) and I quickly grabbed the Blue Ducks cookbook off the shelf.



An Instagram friend Charlotte a publicist at Pan MacMillan has sent us a few generous boxes of books. Cooking, gardening and children's books for the girls. I haven't had the time to cook many things but I have poured over the pages, tucking away recipes to try.

The baked eggs are really a breakfast dish, but I love eggs at any time of day. We had some free-range eggs from a friend so I was set.

So easy, quickly fry a chopped onion and some garlic cloves in a pan. Add 250g of sliced chorizo sausage (I used a can of Manolete chorizo which locals can pick up at Bottega Rotolo), and fry until the onion is translucent. Then add a sliced red capsicum (I had some pre-roasted in a jar), a sliced chilli (I omitted this!), a 400g can of well rinsed and drained cannellini beans, a 400g can of diced tomatoes (or whole baby romas like me), a tablespoon of paprika, stir and simmer for 10 minutes. The mixture should be thick but still saucy, season and add a handful of chopped flat-leaf parsley. At this stage I paused to wait until dinner, but you can press on if you are hungry.


Preheat the oven to 200 deg C. Our fry pan is oven proof, so I just cracked 8 eggs in dents I made amongst the tomato/bean mix. Alternatively you could spoon the mix into the middle of individual terracotta bowls and crack an egg either side of the beans.

Place the eggs in the oven and bake for 6-8 minutes, depending on how well cooked you like your eggs (we like them runny). I served it with Pigeonwhole sourdough, and we all enjoyed it immensely.



I even got a moment to bake on the weekend, quickly making a Lumberjack cake. I used the Woman's Weekly recipe, but made it in a 20cm square tin and doubled the topping mix.


What's been on the menu at your place recently?

Monday Menu

Monday Menu

After a recommendation we borrowed Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage Veg from the library. Rob missed the butcher on Friday so he raided the garden and the pantry. The parsnip and ginger soup with toasted pumpkin seeds is a winner. The lentils were gobbled up too. The girls are certainly being exposed to a variety of flavours via my milk!

What's been on the menu at your place?

Monday Menu

A quiet weekend. Sleep ins. My first bath with the girls. They liked it. A perimeter walk in the late (well not actually that late given the day length at the moment) afternoon sun. Chatting with the girls. A new spiced fruit loaf recipe to try, perfect for afternoon tea, or breakfast. A traditional roast chicken dinner. Cold frosty nights. Punctuated by a super moon and dark Mofo's Spectra. 

Today's excitement included Rob's little car breaking down at the end of the road, ironically on the way to a service. It doesn't like the cold. Rob caught a lift into town. So at lunch I packed up the girls (including the furry ones) and headed into the city to pick him up to see if we could come back and get it started. Elisabeth was not pleased. She screamed the whole 30 minute trip. Both girls slept all the way back though, so we stopped for an indulgent pack of hot chips each before tackling the car. It wouldn't start, so we headed back down the road to buy jumper leads. Back again. After fiddling under the bonnet we got the little pug going and home. It's now booked into a French car specialist who hopefully can fix it's aversion to cold. The girls only woke as we pulled back up at the hut, thank goodness.

Our fortnightly menu, Rob's taking the paleo diet semi seriously, given the amount of meat shown here. I'll have to be back with a late 52 portraits series post.

Monday Menu

We are still eating very well, thanks to dear Rob. Come 5pm the girls hit full volume and seem to forget how to sleep until 8pm. So often Rob's lovingly prepared food is wolfed down, watching the girls waiting to see who will cry next. Or indeed holding one. On weekends we've been trying to eat our dinner at lunch as the girls are usually happier then (i.e. asleep).

Rob was very proud of his meatloaf yesterday, and he should be. One of those dishes I swore I'd never eat again, with memories of a soggy bread filled mix, with raw onions and those rubbery boiled eggs, had me coming back for seconds yesterday.

Rob's garden is still producing well (horticultural fleece was a good investment), we're enjoying leeks, garlic, carrots, parsnips, spinach, lettuce, broccoli and rhubarb.

Monday Menu

A big two week post. Yesterday I felt queasy and unwell. Still do a bit. So i wasn't that inspired by food if it wasn't a salada. Hoping the girls don't catch it. Rob came home early to look after me.

Pick of the week Roast Mt Gnomon pork, and THAT ice cream.

Monday Menu

On the menu:

M: Pasta carbonara.

T: Lamb chops, mash & salad.

W: Minestrone with bocconcini and pesto.

T: Stripey trumpeter, chips and hut salad.

F: Vermey's skirt steak wasabi special, baked potatoes and hut salad.

S: Cold roast beef, bread (for me), hut salad, French cheese and fresh figs.

S: Mother's Day pancakes and leftover roast beef, baked potatoes, hut salad and fried mushrooms, Steohanie Alexander's date and chocolate cake.

All so good even if eaten semi cold a bit later than intended! 

A belated Monday Menu

A busy couple of days with a child health nurse visit and yesterday a trip to hospital for blood samples. Leaving at 8am for a 9am appointment we still didn't get home until 11.45am!
The girls are so brave, the blood sampling is quite an ordeal, the initial needle prick in their heel then 5 minutes of squeezing blood into vials, doesn't make for happy babies even with a sucrose bribe. So at least they sleep all the way home.

The girls are growing well Maggie is 3340g and Elisabeth 3850g. Rob is keeping me so well fed, I am afraid that I do view food at the moment as fuel, but I still enjoy good tasty fuel!

M: Chilli con carne with baked potatoes and pumpkin.
T: Spaghetti alla puttanesca.
W: Pumpkin risotto.
T: Sausages, eggs and salad.
F: Beef curry.
S: Beef curry (always better on day 2).
S: Salmon cakes.

What was in the menu at your place?

P.s. still working on that birth story.

Monday Menu

Thanks for welcoming back this regular post. It was fun for us to go back and look at what we ate last autumn for inspiration, so I decided I wanted to bring it back. Thanks for sharing your menu too. Vegetables from our garden are featuring again - salad, carrots, parsnips, spaghetti squash, garlic, ruby chard and celery. We didn't grow potatoes and pumpkins so found some at our local fruit & veg shop.

M: Osso bucco and baked potatoes.
T: Pumpkin soup & cornbread.
W: Roast spaghetti squash, potato gratin, roast carrots and parsnips, and ruby chard.
T: Pumpkin, bacon and pine nut salad for lunch and blue cheese, pear and rocket salad for dinner.
F: Roast lamb and vegetables.
S: Toast, after eating too much pear and almond cake!
S: Chilli con carne & sweetcorn pudding.

Sorry I didn't photograph the cake, it was seriously good, so good I'd like to make it again this week.

What about you, did you bake Anzacs this week?

Monday Menu is back for 2013

I threatened to post and here it is. Rob is cooking up a storm while I feed the girls. He's particularly happy as the garden is providing parsnips, carrots, garlic, celery and silver beet. The tomatoes eggplants and basil are still hanging on, just. Although I did find a moment to bake some gluten free hazelnut brownies the other day, it felt good to be back in the kitchen. We even had two of the NICU nurses down to the hut for a roast beef lunch to catch up. I think they just missed cuddling the girls!

M: Lamb stew.
T: French cheeses for lunch. Roast lamb shanks with a quince jelly glaze and potato stacks.
W: Pumpkin soup.
T: Tomato, basil and mozzarella salad. Roast beef, with baked potatoes and roast parsnips, carrots and beetroot. Nigella's chocolate cheesecake.
F: Leftover roast vegetable risotto.
S: Beef stew pie, mash and broad beans.
S: Beef stew.

Also Sunday breakfast in bed was back. Buckwheat pancakes with poached quinces and yoghurt.

What's been on the menu at your place?

Monday Menu and the hut has got it's Christmas on

Sorry the blog was a little quiet last week. No real reason just time I guess.
We had a good weekend, on Friday Rob and I headed to the State Cinema to see Skyfall. I loved it. Although as the movie was over 2 hours long I did have to dash out mid way to visit the ladies, and I was fairly desperate to leave at the end too.

Because we'd picked the early showing (6.30pm) dinner didn't really work out very well, as it was too early before hand and then too late (for Hobart) afterwards. We did stop at Mykonos for some hot chips! Felt like an undergraduate student again.

The gale force winds on Saturday meant that we stayed inside, and so Rob got our decorations out of the loft and the hut was decorated in a few hours. We still love our homemade twig tree, and I've already spent the last two evenings gazing at the lights.


We've still been enjoying our veggies from the garden (although the wind totally trashed the peas and broad beans so they've been pulled out now and I spent several hours yesterday shelling beans and freezing them).

So our menu:

Monday: Real Shepherds pie with left over roast lamb shoulder, veggies with a topping of smashed pink eyes.
Tuesday: More Shepherds pie.
Wednesday: Salad with vegetables from the garden and bacon.
Thursday: Salad with peas, broad beans, bacon, avocado and parmesan.
Friday: ahem, hot chips!
Saturday: Some peas and beans from the garden.
Sunday: Rob made the best steak sandwich, with grilled bread, fried eggs, onions, tomatoes and of course steak.

All those veggies must be doing the twins some good, we visited our Dr on Friday, and when he measured them on the scan they were both measuring a week ahead! They now weigh an estimated 700g each.

Monday's Menu {Christmas baking has started}

The Christmas baking has started, with a sudden realisation that Christmas is only 5 weeks away I thought we'd better get our skates on.

So I prepared a double batch of fruit mince (started with a Nigella recipe then tweaked it a bit). We used lovely Amarena dark coloured glace cherries, golden raisins, Rob's home brewed apple cider, and hazelnuts in place of almonds.

While that was cooking away I soaked three separate batches of dried fruit. A double of our standard fruit cake mixture to make two cakes as gifts, the pudding mixture (my grandmother's recipe) and a Gourmet Traveller pudding mix that we used for our Christmas cake.

The Gourmet Traveller mix includes the following:

300gm prunes, chopped
150gm each currants, dried cranberries, raisins and chopped fresh dates (we used dried ones this time)
100gm natural almonds, chopped

These are all placed in a bowl with the rind of an orange.
Then I warmed 100gm cumquat marmalade (we always have plenty of our homemade marmalade), 60gm quince jelly (meant to be quince paste, but we always have an abundance of jelly), 125ml muscat and 60mL brandy (meant to be Grand Marnier) in a saucepan over low heat until the marmalade and jelly are combined. This is then poured over the fruit and left to soak.

On Sunday I made the pudding and our cake (I use Stephanie Alexander's recipe from the Cook Companion). It feels like Christmas now.

Our regular menu has included over the last week:

Monday: Asparagus, broccoli, peas and broad beans.
Tuesday: Silver beet, carrots, parsnips and cauliflower cooked with a little water and butter.
Wednesday: Antonio Carluccio's tuna linguine: with garlic, ginger, parsley, chilli, tomato passata and of course tuna.
Thursday: Penne pasta with bacon, with our garlic, fresh peas and broad beans, and Parmesan.
Friday: Vermey's BBQ sausages in squishy bread and our home-made tomato sauce.
Saturday: Mt Gnomon pork rack with carrots, pink eyes and broad beans.
Sunday: Pan-fried pink eye potatoes with our carrots, broad beans and peas.

It may look vegetarian, but we had been out for lunch a few times last week and eaten meat then, so only felt like vegetables in the evening.

What's been on the menu at your home this last week?

Monday's Menu megamix

I'm back. The cold is all but forgotten (except for the occasional annoying cough).

To be honest I can't remember a lot of what we ate the week before last, but looking at my collage, we enjoyed a spring vegetable risotto (peas and broad beans courtesy of our garden), an omelette, roasted lamb shanks and root vegetables on couscous with minty yoghurt, and home made lamb souvlaki the next day with the left over lamb, hummus and more minty yoghurt. We also headed out for lunch one day for roast duck, pan fried beans with pork and dumplings. They were good.

During the week I had off we enjoyed:

Monday: Steak with pumpkin, asparagus and mini radishes from our garden.
Tuesday: Mushroom, bacon and pumpkin risotto.
Wednesday: Chicken wings with sausages, sage and onion.
Thursday: Frittata with pumpkin, asparagus (from our friend's garden, it was so sweet) and walnuts.
Friday: Penne with cream, peas and bacon.
Saturday: A birthday dinner in northern Tasmania for Rob's father. We started with dips and bread, Rob made Nigella's marinated ocean trout (she uses salmon) with capers and gherkins. We moved onto roast beef fillet with Cafe de Paris butter, new pink eye potatoes, steamed carrots and parsnips, fresh broad beans and peas (the last four veggies from our garden) and a green salad. The birthday cake was a chocolate roulade with cream and raspberries.
Sunday: After snacking all day we ate a simple salad of rocket, pumpkin and pine nuts.


Rob sent me some gorgeous photos he took of the spring grass at the hut, with the dogs wrestling in the foreground. If I can I'll load up a movie made of the images...but in the mean time here is my favourite.

Monday's Menu

Thank you for all your lovely congratulatory messages on my last post. We chose to keep the sex a surprise (Friday's scan was the big 18-20 week morphology scan), well I did, Rob did peek, but couldn't really tell!

Unlike some of my Monday Menu posts from earlier this year when I felt ill just looking at some of the food, I am now enjoying most foods (just not spicy food or too much of any one thing).

Monday: Pumpkin, bacon and pea risotto with toasted walnuts and crispy sage.
Tuesday: Home grown broccoli frittata with a side of cheesy cauliflowers (again from our garden).
Wednesday: Creamy bacon, pea and pecorino penne.
Thursday: Nigella's one pan sage and onion chicken and sausage, with steamed new pink eye potatoes. We used chicken wings instead of a jointed chicken, which we love.
Friday: Egg and bacon pie- used Annabel Langbein's recipe but with puff pastry not shortcrust.
Saturday: Lemon, thyme and chilli chicken wings cooked on the Weber along with BBQ'd asparagus.
Sunday: Oxtail stew with rice and peas.

And those pancakes- a special request for the show day holiday, Rob's American style pancakes with buttered pecan ice cream, whipped cream, maple syrup (the real stuff a friend bought back from Canada) and toasted pecans.

What's been on the menu at your place this past week?

Monday's Menu

The curry from last week kept on giving this week. I think Rob would have eaten it one more time, but I'd had enough!

Monday: Beef curry with rice, steamed broccoli and yoghurt.
Tuesday: Beef curry with yet more silver beet and Naan bread.
Wednesday: Bacon, asparagus and pea risotto.
Thursday: Silver beet and parmesan omelette.
Friday: Porterhouse steak on the bbq with wilted silver beet.
Saturday: The first Lamb souvlaki mini Lebanese feast. We found some turkish bread from the newish Turkish cafe down the road, Rob slow cooked a lamb shoulder with rosemary and garlic, and we made hummus, cacik, sliced some tomatoes and lettuce. It was delicious.
Sunday: We ate leftover lamb at lunch and Pigeon Hole sourdough and cheese for dinner.

What's been on the menu at your house?



I don't want to but I think I'm going to have to turn on comment verification, I am getting totally spammed via the comment section, and whilst they don't show up on the blog it's getting really annoying. I hope blogger sort out the commenting thing soon, cause I admit that the fuzzy letter/number thing isn't the best option is it? Has anybody else been experiencing issues?

Monday's Menu

Loving daylight savings, but I struggled this morning to wake up.

This weeks Monday's Menu collage looks a little bare.

Monday: Mushroom, asparagus and bacon risotto.
Tuesday: Broccoli and potato frittata (our own broccoli) with a side of wilted silver beet.
Wednesday: I ate so many left overs for lunch I just snacked on some nuts for dinner. Rob, having been to the gym tucked into a big plate of you guessed it, cooked greens from the garden.
Thursday: We had dinner at my parents, my mother had made lasagne.
Friday: Rib eye steak with baked potatoes and asparagus.
Saturday: Beef curry with chickpeas, lentils, silver beet and carrots, with pappadums.
Sunday: Curry take two, with added steamed pumpkin and little waxy potatoes.

The curry is a winner, and I'm pretty sure we'll have it for dinner tonight, if not tomorrow night. I may sound like I'm sick of silver beet, but we're not. Harvesting greens just prior to eating them has totally changed my appreciation of them. They taste so much better. I know everyone tells you that, but it's true. Try it.

What's been on the menu at your place?

Monday's Menu with a side of our Spring garden and Cinnamon tea cake.

I like the ying and yang of this weeks Monday's Menu photo collage. Chocolate cherry cupcakes made with a jar of Bonne Maman cherry preserve right next to a very virtuous meal of steamed greens from the garden. The greens are starting to get going now, we ate three types of broccoli in our soup on Saturday, the ever present silver beet, as well as the tops of the Savoy cabbages.
I can not wait for the broad beans and peas to start. Yesterday we planted some more seedlings and seeds: lettuce, chives, sweetcorn, beetroot, rocket, radishes, and parsnips.

Anyway the menu:

Monday: Baked ziti with silver beet.
Tuesday: ahem, baked ziti with broccoli.
Wednesday: Steamed broccoli, silver beet and cabbage tops with soy sauce.
Thursday: Pork and fennel sausages on silver beet and fresh sourdough bread with home made tomato sauce.
Friday: Decided to live in the moment and headed down to Cygnet for dinner at the Red Velvet Lounge. Rob enjoyed a rump steak, with old-school chips and salad. I had the famous pork cotoletta. We shared a dessert of cherry ice cream and chocolate sauce, and we were back home by 8pm.
Saturday: The big grand final day with our annual consumption of footy food. We ate the footy franks in white squishy buns with mustard, tomato sauce and butter (that sentence confused a few of my international Instagram followers- they eventually worked out I was talking about a hot dog!) I'm afraid that they didn't make for a very photogenic food picture, but they were tasty. We used the remainder in a tomato and vegetable soup.
Sunday: Rob cooked us Patricia Well's Chicken breasts with sage and potatoes (parboiled, then sliced and cooked in butter).

My sister, her husband and my niece visited for afternoon tea yesterday, we had chocolate caramel and almond slice (similar to this recipe but with almonds), those cherry chocolate cupcakes and a simple cinnamon teacake. Which was probably the most popular! See the very simple recipe below.

Cinnamon Teacake {From Women's Weekly}

Ingredients:

60g butter, softened
2/3 cup castor sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup self-raising flour
1/3 cup milk
15g butter, extra
3 tablespoon castor sugar, extra
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Method
Preheat oven to 160deg C (fan-forced oven)
Grease and line a 20cm cake tin.
Beat butter, sugar, egg and vanilla until light and fluffy (about 5 mins).
Stir in sifted flour and milk with a wooden spoon, beat lightly until smooth.
Spread mixture into the tin, bake for approx. 30 minutes.
Turn onto wire rack, pour over extra melted butter, sprinkle with combined extra sugar and cinnamon. Serve warm with butter.

Finally Rob headed out when it wasn't blowing a gale or pouring with rain (not many opportunities over the weekend!) and took some photos of the flower and vegetable gardens with a real camera. I'll share them on Friday, but in the mean time I'll leave you with a photo of the dogs in the flower garden. Everything is starting to look very green and lush.