Turquoise Eggs

Amazing as it may seem I have managed to reach the ripe old age of Over 40 without ever making any colored Easter eggs. That deficiency has now been rectified. I made these yesterday.

I used gel food colouring which is more expensive that the liquid but I am told it lasts a long time - I bought a set of 8 colours for the rainbow layer cake I made last weekend for my son's birthday. I managed to take no photos of its multi coloured amazingness but the colour was certainly intense I can assure you.


For these eggs I used the teal colour and also violet.  I soaked the gently hard boiled eggs for at least an hour, in water with a bit of vinegar.  (I have learned through experimentation that the way to hard boil eggs is to cover with cold water, bring to a boil then turn heat off and leave for 14 or so minutes -this seems to stop the shells cracking).


As is sometimes the way with these kinds of exercises I appreciated the result more than my family who said variously:


'Isn't that a waste of eggs?' (husband)


'I don't eat hard boiled eggs.' (daughter)


'Yum when can I eat them are they chocolate?' (son)


But I still love them.


We are down at the beach for Easter. Yesterday was boiling hot and we swam in the surf. Then there were windy storms, and today it is cold.  We will have the fire lit before Easter is over.


Happy Easter.  


xo

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Good Things Spring 2011

(pearl barley and aduki bean salad with char grilled asparagus and salsa verde dressing)

This salad, adapted from the book pictured below. This book is so amazing, I feel like stopping people in the street to tell them.    Brilliant warm salads, lots of wonderful baked vegetable dishes and everything in between.  You do not need to be a vegetarian (I am not).  But if you want to reduce the amount of meat in your life (I do) and need decent interesting recipes this is the book for you.  

For example, quinoa with parsley pesto, cranberries, toasted hazelnuts and mushrooms, a divine raw vegetable and avocado soup, parsnip and rosemary rolls, baked red onions stuffed with toasted, spiced couscous and oven baked pea, barley and broad bean frittata.  She also has instructions for making your own sprouts from any seed (sprouts are a great super food), labne, yoghurt and tofu.    Buy it! 

This Phillip Treacy hat worn by Dita Von Teese to Derby Day, in defiance of the black and white rule of Derby Day.   I like Dita, but I have to ask: why do we Australians persist in importing celebrities from 'overseas' to the Spring Racing Carnival?  Are we so insecure that we need validation by a non-Australian?  Or does it make it a truly international day?  The imported guests over the years have ranged from a charming Rex Harrison to a very bored Paris Hilton.    The celebritizing of the races generally is part of the reason I gave up our Victorian Racing Club membership this year.  Read Francesca Cumani's take on it here.  

This house at 58 Millswyn Street, South Yarra.    I played in this house as a little girl when family friends owned it. It is now renovated and on the market for (no doubt) A Bomb.

Beetroot cheek and lip tint from Ere Perez.  Yes beetroot.  Better on the cheeks than inside the tummy, raw, I think! Great organic Australian makeup.  I also have their mascara. 

This fondue set.   Doesn't ship to Australia, sadly.

(from Jenna at Etsy)

This artist.  I love her.  She makes me feel like a little girl again.    And who wouldn't like a tame fox sleeping on their head? 

(Marisol Spoon on Etsy)

I think I am officially the last person on the planet to get Etsy.  I have browsed many times of course but never bought.   In a possibly fruitless attempt to de-plasticise my life I have bought some non plastic lunch bags for the children.  And sandwich bags.  And snack bags.   Coming from all around the globe, and all really good value. I will show you when they arrive. 

Oh, one more thing.  The children are obsessed with Star Wars at the moment and in a moment of idle googling I came across many people with a similar obsession. To wit:

(sorry couldn't find source)

At that moment, TK-788 and TR-114 made a pact to never speak of this day again to anyone (from legomyday.wordpress.com)

xo 

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Rainforest

Location: rainforest north west of Mosman, in tropical far north Queensland.

Weather conditions:  warm and dry.  A bit of tropical rain at night, but what could be nicer. 

Lazy act of self indulgence: being woken up at 6.45 every morning by shouty son, putting him in front of ABC Kids on TV and going back to bed.  

Assignment:  lots of swimming, eating and sleeping.  And standing on rocks.  And running up and down the grass rather pointlessly. 

Participants:  two small wet children, one happy husband, one very happy me. 

Local natives:  Beware of screeching tropical birds in the night. And green tree frogs hopping from pond to deck.  And feral pigs, although the gunshots we heard early most mornings I suspect may have put paid to those piggies.   And watch out for koalas and bright parrots.  Oh, and the large black spiders which crawled into our luggage whilst we were there.   Luckily most of the local crocodiles seem to be quickly caught and sent to the nearby croc farm.   I have had this question a lot though 'Can crocodiles eat people?  Why?  Will they eat me?  Why not?'.

(little bird at our house) 

(A koala doing what koalas do best: snoozing)

(this is the only breeding pair of jabirus in the world. They spent 2 years courting and another 2 looking for the right place to nest.  Just like human beings.) 

Sustenance:  I only have one rule about holidays, and that is, I do not want to cook breakfast lunch and dinner.  Much as I love cooking, that is just too much standing around in the kitchen for me.  For this holiday, we had lunch every day in Port Douglas (mostly here and here).   

Crazy self discipline idea:   do you go on holidays full of good intentions like exercising in inappropriate locations, or not drinking alcohol, or going fat free?  I do.  And that usually lasts about 3 days.   As I have spent most of the last 6 months feeling hungover from the lovely chemo side effects, drinking has not been high on the agenda.   How nice it was on this holiday to enjoy wine.    Oh, and should I mention we had dessert every single day for lunch? With no guilt, no regrets and no second thoughts.   Otherwise what is the point?

 (pistachio kulfi with silver leaf and watermelon salad) 

(dragonfruit ice cream (how amazing is the colour) and creme caramel. Very 1970's!)

(at our fourth meal at this restaurant they supplied the children's honeycomb ice cream in an ice and rose petal bowl instead of a 'normal' bowl. )

Outcome: for some reason it seems as if the children always take some great step on holidays. Is that just because I am paying more attention, or because they relax into it?  The guilty mother in me would say this is because I am around the whole time, not working and not distracted with life.  But I think it is more that they have time to work on things with lots of pushy parental encouragement.   This time round, our son became independent in the water (with a foam noodle of course) and our daughter finally got the hang of diving (as opposed to belly flopping).   


Now it's back to the real world. 

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A Blackbird for Birthday Week

We have celebrated two birthdays this week.   Mine (age undisclosed) and the very next day, my son's (four). 

(bionicles in disarray, half cloned and cross bred)

I could uncharitably point out here that my son, by being born three days later than anticipated, rather manages to steal my birthday thunder every year , but the truth is that he makes the week more thrilling, excited as he is about his new age.   In fact, he has talked of little else for months - his new age, how big he will be, how he may one day be bigger than his sister, and so on and so on.

And having birthdays so close allows for some handy comparisons between our two birthdays. 

This was my gift  from my husband.  

Blackbird by Dean Bowen

Look familiar?  I have a Dean Bowen painting on the sidebar of this blog.  If my husband read my blog, which he claims not to, he would know how much I love Dean Bowen's work.    But he doesn't and yet he still picked this painting for me, which makes my heart sing just a little.

This is one of my son's presents.  Yes, Woody talks.  All the time. He has 60 sayings in fact.  And no, it is not annoying in the least.

And finally, birthday food.  This image captures both types:

I made the robot cake from the new Women's Weekly Classic Children's Birthday Cake Book which has just been reprinted.  (If you would like to see an example of the special place this book has in many Australians' hearts, see Melbourne Gastronome's post on this book).

The robot needs a bit of back support, but apart from that my son deemed him sufficiently robot like.   They are quite a lot of effort to ice aren't they?  I felt as if I had completed a particularly difficult test when I finished him up. 

In the background, grown up birthday food: Riesling and chocolate gingerbread.

I had mixed feelings about this birthday. I didn't feel a glorious rushing gratitude to be alive, but I did have a quiet and calm day, and thought about how lucky I am.

My allegedly so called bad chemo has now ended after 9 weeks and I have survived it apart from an endless cold \ throat thing almost certainly brought on by an in hindsight possibly foolish decision to fly to Sydney for the day for work last week.    

Next week I start 12 weeks of weekly Taxol and Herceptin, both delivered intravenously.   This is a disheartening thought, but apparently Taxol is largely bearable.  

Weird Chemo Side Effect No 1:  my freckles have come back.  It is no exaggeration to say that I have not put my face in the sun for 25 years.  Two weeks ago something must have happened to my skin pigmentation, and all those little freckles popped back onto my face. I guess they were always there, and must have just faded.    Makes me look a bit like Anne of Green Gables.  Or Tom Sawyer....

Interesting Chemo Fact No 1:  Taxol is not chemical at all.  It derives from the Pacific Yew tree.  Now who thought to see if that tree had medical benefits? 


xoxo 

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Salmon Ceviche and Babushkas for Christmas

Although my family is not large, this year I am having 20 people for Christmas lunch.   This intimidating number (for me) has had the rather nice unintended side effect of forcing me to get organised in advance.  

I have therefore had rather a lovely time looking at all the Christmas food magazines and pulling out my old Christmas cookbooks to plan the menu.  

My sole criteria is that at least half the food be able to be done ahead of time.  And I always do turkey.   And never an entree.   And given the insane variances of Melbourne weather, I want to have a menu which is traditional with a modern twist (ha, what a meaningless phrase) to allow for the possibility of a 40 degree day (as happened in 1999) and a 12 degree day (as happened in 2007 I think it was).

In between cookbook reading, I have had to attend to the important matters of the Santa List. 

This list was eventually produced by my daughter who initially said she didn't want anything at all. Nothing at all morphed into two pages of hilariously detailed requirements, including a babushka with 11 inside (12 total) (if you want to know where to find these, go here - you are looking at $380 for a babushka of this size) to lots and lots of Sylvanian family items.   

These creatures are called Calico Critters in the US and are made in Japan.  You can buy furniture for them, and houses, and cars, and food, and boats, and a windmill and a tree house. It's endless.   And they just keep creating new families, so it is impossible to keep up.
 

My son had some help with his list.    Somewhat scarily, he has put things on this list he already has.   This may be why the 'Santa won't come' threats are not working that well on him.    He knows that it doesn't really matter either way.  

We are having a small related problem which is that growing up my husband only received tiny things from Santa and presents from his parents.  My situation was reversed, a big present from Santa and nothing from my parents.   I prefer it this way because how can you use the Santa Bribe on the children if they know they are only getting a sparkly pencil or some other rubbish from Santa? 

In this time of rampant consumerism, you should take the time to read this story, about a little girl in the South of the US who received  a pair of shoes and an orange for Christmas.  This story has stayed with me ever since I first read it last Christmas.   

So, to food.
This is what I have in mind so far:

Canapes (all do-ahead)
Salmon Ceviche (see above image but not in those glass)
Corn and chilli cakes with avocado salsa
Blinis with sour cream

Main course
Roast Turkey with chestnut stuffing
Potatoes (plain roast or hasselback am undecided)
Chipolatas wrapped in pancetta
Ham (my mother does this)
Green beans with lemon
Some kind of green salad maybe asparagus with feta

Dessert  (all do-ahead)
Nectarine and Vanilla Trifle
Plum Pudding with Brandy Butter
Icecream Plum Pudding









Look at this trifle, on the cover of the Donna Hay Christmas magazine. Isn't it  divine? 

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A Fuchsia Pinata Party

If I could have conveniently timed my babies I would not have had one at the end of November (too close to Christmas) and end of March (bad timing in terms of school start resulting in him repeating 3 year old kindergarten).  But of course you can't plan these things.  At least I couldn't.   And for me the Christmas season can't really start until we get my daughter's birthday done and dusted.    I thought it would be pretty straightforward to do her 8th birthday party at home this year. 

I didn't count on having the flu at the same time.  Which made everything take 10 times longer to organise.  And whilst I usually forget something critical (like the date on the invitations or buying lemonade) this year it went off without a hitch. 

A tip if you are planning a party at home: don't.  Seriously, this is what I have learned over years of these events.    You can read and then make an informed decision!

(I am getting good use out of my pink tablecloth. 

This is the one I used for my Family Argument Lunch a few weeks back.)

First off, the games.  

Rule no 1: a game you spend ages preparing for takes 5 minutes to happen. Blink and it is over.   Even if you stretch out the pass the parcel to Lady Gaga for as long as you can, it still only takes 7 minutes.   Simple arithmetic tells you that if you have an hour to fill in, that is a LOT of party games (although technically musical statues and musical bobs are two different games, aren't they?)   This means that you need some activity which  takes up lots of time.  See Rule no 5 below. 

Rule no 2: every one's a winner.   So in pass the parcel, which in my youth was fiercely competitive because there was only one prize, is now a bit of yawn because there is a gift in every layer.

Rule no 3: 8 is a hard age.  They are not little girls and not into fairies and glitter.  But they are too young still for many types of parties.  Still, a couple of the guests turned down the offer of a balloon on departure.  Too  childish, I guess.  

Rule no 4: treasure hunts take 3 minutes and consist of Lord of the Flies style carnivorous screeching around the house looking for the little hidden packages.  See rule 1 above.  I think my treasure maps took maybe 20 times longer to make than the game took...

Rule no 5: everyone loves a game which involves bashing something half to death with a stick.  In this case, a flower shaped pinata.  These girls must have some stress going on in their lives, because the pleasure they took in beating this thing to a pulp was a sight to see.  Even when all the lollies inside had spilled out, they kept hitting and hitting until it was in tiny pieces.

(I strung up leaves and lamps from the maple trees. This is also where the pinata massacre occurred)

Now to the all important food.

Rule no 1: the food you have proudly taken ages to prepare will be of least interest to the party goers.  This year my meringues went weird (I blame the humidity) so I crushed them, mixed with strawberries and cream and made mini Eton Messes in shot glasses. They were amazing.  And no one ate them. 

Rule no 2:  simple and sugary is best.    Caramel popcorn (see above image) is universally loved.  And at the other end of the spectrum, chopped up watermelon is always gobbled up. 

Rule no 3: don't bother with the elaborate cake.  In my time I have made a Miffy, a giant cupcake, an echidna, an Ariel mermaid on a sea bed and a dinosaur.   This year I went round and simple (from Feast by Nigella Lawson).

Rule no 4: there is always one girl who complains there is not enough food and another one who eats nothing at all. 

Rule no 5:  serve frankfurters.  I know that these are barely food but how they love them. 

Finally.... have the party in the late afternoon so you can pass out conveniently when it finishes without having to get through the rest of the day.....

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Being a Recycled Baby Alien Plum

A lot has changed at my school in the 25 years since I left.  And I know this because my daughter now goes there so I can make constant forensic and slightly obsessive comparisons.   

To whit, check out these differences:

• they learn Mandarin, not French.
• they have a philosophy class where they learn to ask things like 'If 7/11s are open 24 hours a day why do they need to have locks on the door?' 
• they have values, which include respect and kindness and bullying is frowned upon.
• every week there is a gold coin day for an unheard of but worthy charity.
• they go on interesting excursions to places like the Footscray Market to buy Vietnamese vegetables and fruit which they then learn about, cook and eat.
• there are no winners in the house sports competitions.  There are 'finishers' and people who 'competed'.
• maths is studied on line at home and school by logging on to Mathletics which treats maths as a game.
• they have a market garden where they make compost, breed butterflies and harvest cauliflower.
• they have 'Nude Food' days where you have to rip the wrappers off the bars before they go into the lunchbox because everyone's lunch waste is weighed and tallied.
• they have groovy teachers who ride red scooters to school and wear leggings. 
• they are taught to give presentations to large numbers from an early age (I didn't have to do this until I was 25 which gave me a crippling case of the red and blushies).
• they have to wear their hats everywhere and noone has a suntan.
• the maintenance workers and gardeners are young surfie types not slightly creepy \ mad older men.

And nowhere are these differences more apparent than in the annual Christmas Concert,    which was held this week. Quite a long time before Christmas, you may say.  Well it may as well be, because the concert has nothing to do with Christmas. Instead, it is a Celebration of Learning.   This week's concert was about a baby alien who landed in my daughter's school and was amazed by all the things the girls had done.   Since starting school, my daughter has dressed up in a bewildering array of non Christmassy characters for her Christmas Concert:

• a plum
• a star
• a farmer
• the rain
• Autumn

I loved the concert.  It was touching and cute.  They were all so nervous, and so excited.  The dancing was sweet and slightly imperfect, and my reticent little girl stood up and spoke her line loudly and proudly, which I know was not easy for her. 

And like the last 5 concerts,  recycling and the environment were prominentlyy mentioned.   Maybe recycling is the new religion.   

But, and I say this as a largely non denominational person,  just a teeny tiny little bit of me would like to see either:

• a Christmas concert with Christmas Carols, and two children inappropriately dressed as Mary and Joseph with a local screaming baby as Jesus in the manger and the Three Kings in the background or
• a concert which looks at the way other cultures celebrate their key festivals or religious days..............

Is it just me?

(All images via Sarah Kaye)

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Some Food for Halloween Weekend

Halloween is not a big celebration here in Australia but this year it falls over the Melbourne Cup (very) long weekend, which is four days for us this year.  My daughter has a friend in her class from Chicago and she has become infected with the Halloween spirit and is desperate to go trick or treating on Halloween Eve (tonight).  I suspect this will involve us driving hopefully not too aimlessly around looking for houses with balloons.   

Anyway, we have done lots of cooking.   

If I did not have this largely random blog I think I would have a blog called Things on Toast, or possibly, and more depressingly, Demolished Houses of Melbourne.    Whilst they might seem like very specific topics, I don't actually think I would run out of posts for either!  

My current favourite thing on toast is avocado.  Not just any avocado. It must be perfectly ripe (to be honest anything other makes me feel physically ill) and cut into chunks and gently mixed with Greek feta chunks, chopped coriander, olive oil, lemon juice and salt.   And served on thick bread.  Complete and utter Thing on Toast heaven.

How can so much greenery not be good for you?

How great are these tiny skull biscuits?   Quite scary I think,   I found some Halloween cookie cutters in that Vortex of 20$ redcurrant jelly: Essential Ingredient.    The children have hysterics every time they eat them. 

Less successfully the kit contained a black cat and bat shapes.  Which is pretty apt because my Small Spiderman son has morphed into Small Batboy.  I had to buy him another costume so I could peel off and then wash the Spiderman one. 

I even managed to find a not-too-garish balloon or two.  I love this because it looks a bit like the spiders are trapped inside.  Which is on any view the best place for them. 

I have trouble persuading my daughter to eat breakfast.  Not surprising really when you learn she doesn't like eggs, butter, milk on cereal, 99% of the cereals available and porridge, fruit unless its wet and cold and most kinds of bread for toast.    But what she does like, which I found out accidentally when they were giving little cups of it away in the supermarket, is granola.    

Nigella Lawson's Feast has a wonderful granola recipe.  This one is the chocolate (ie cocoa) and peanut one.  I made a huge batch this morning and too my surprise it is exceptionally good.

In keeping with the creepy theme we then made chocolate cupcakes with black icing and little tombstone cats:

And finally, something grown up:  a roasted pumpkin, pine nut, raisin and rocket salad which we ate for lunch today with some roast lamb. 

Now for the dressing up...

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Happy Easter

HAPPY EASTER...

I love these little chocolate praline eggs which I found in Haighs (the best Australian chocolate maker by some margin).  They match the specklediness of our kitchen bench.  I prefer them to the brown chocolate eggs, I don't know why.  And I think they look quite becoming in my favourite green dish (etruscan glass) which was purchased on a long ago trip to San Gimignano. 

I hope you all have a fabulous Easter.

I for one will be trying to recover from my throat \ chest infection, watching the leaves turn orange (although hopefully not all at once, that would be a bad sign), eating roast lamb, green beans and garlicky rosemary potatoes and spending time with my beautiful children and divine husband.    

And maybe a glass or two of medicinal pinot noir.   And not forgetting some medicinal dark chocolate.   And some medicinal laughter. 

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February 2010 beach house round up

We Australians are reknowned for our love of the beach. 

I may just possibly be the only exception in this wide brown land to that rule. 

I loathe the sand sticking to me, the stinging bright sun, the blistering burn which I obtain from just half an hour in the sun and the salty wind.  This loathing may derive from the fact that my father got skin cancer when I was 20 but even before that, I had learned the hard way that I couldn't get a tan. In those days, the only fake tan available was something in a tin called Sudden Tan.  It produced an almost fluorescent yellow/orange glow a bit like a mango and stained your hands, zombie-like for days on end.  It is hard to remember now, with so many warnings about the dangers of the sun, but when I grew up people were teased for having pale skin.

Anyway, to look at, and to walk on in the evening or very early morning, there is nothing better than a beach.   And to see my daughter playing in the surf with such uninhibited delight a few weekends back did make me reevaluate my grumpy approach. 

January and February is the time when all the beach houses go on sale.

Perhaps the market is not as bouyant as people may have hoped given that the GFC has not been as severe in Australia as other places.  These places may prove the naysayers wrong.

Especially because in Victoria, with a shorter coastline, there is not such a great abundance of coastal beach homes as there is further north.

Here is my round up of the best I have seen.

A boathouse at Shelley Beach, Portsea (this sold for $455,000 over the weekend, to two families who 'wanted somewhere to store their beach gear').

And this is what you see from inside:

A Cape Cod style house in Wattle Grove, Portsea.


A house in Stonecutters Way, Portsea:

and with a pool - call me old fashioned but there is something wrong about pools at beach houses.  Isn't that what the ocean is for?



A house at Lorne, on the west coast of Victoria:




and the view from that house:




A cliff top eyrie, in the same family for many years, at Shelley Beach, Portsea, known as Inverary:



This has something of the Cote D'Azur (nice not gold plated ) about it.   And it was sold for $8.71 million on the weekend.  




(All Images: from RT Edgar and Kay & Burton)

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