Weeds.

What are weeds? And are they mis­un­der­stood? I am guess­ing that those out there that spend numer­ous hours and money fight­ing with unwanted pesky gar­den guests will be reach­ing with their shak­ing, blood­ied fin­gers through the mon­i­tor for my throat, but calm down, breathe, give this blog­ger a chance.  I will get to my point even­tu­ally, as labo­ri­ously as it may end up being.

We skip the vio­lence and move on the pleas­ant things.Flowers. Imagine a front yard beau­ti­fully scat­tered with emerg­ing flow­ers. Some more fra­grant than oth­ers. The new breed of white, small and gen­tle ones are fill­ing the air with the most mind-swaying aroma. Every time you walk there, it feels like nature’s scent mar­ket. That is what our yard feels like at the moment.

The other day the Dod walks up to me with a flower in his hand and hands it up to me. The smile on my face must have had an impact on him too, because he ran back out with Mr.Blab say­ing more…more…

Next, he comes back and greets me with a small, but wide-toothed smile and hands bulging with freshly-scented, white blos­soms. My heart can only take so much, but this I soaked up to its fullest. I took one of the best bou­quets I have got­ten from the clutch of the two of my favorite hands and buried my nose in the moment.

My new gift now has a prized posi­tion on my desk and its per­fume lingers all around the place.

Freesias.

Some of the most won­der­ful flow­ers I have had the plea­sure of see­ing and smelling. I was not sure what they were, but one of you (thanks, Mina) men­tioned the name and now I am well informed of our gra­cious lit­tle visitors.

Get this though. They are weeds here. Lets just say that when I read that, Mr.Blab and I basi­cally laughed. In our world, a flower that plants itself, grows and exists with­out an ounce of our effort, and to top it all off smells divine and looks more than pleas­ing is noth­ing short of the per­fect plant. THE per­fect plant.

That was part of how my visual and smelling senses were tick­led that day.

Later on I took care of the taste buds.

I am new to bak­ing, but its grow­ing on me. This could be good or bad, or maybe good and bad, but I guess only time will tell. For now I am giv­ing in every once in a while. Remember my burned up first attempt at choco­late tarts? I just had to go back and improve.

So for movie night, again, I made a sec­ond batch. I made more dough than I needed so I quickly made up a savory fill­ing for the extras. I had some old cream cheese and spinach leaves that were call­ing, no, beg­ging to be freed of their fridge mis­ery. The fill­ing ended up like that: a layer of gar­l­icy cream cheese with spinach and that was topped with caramelized onions and cap­sicums. I am not com­pletely sold on the com­bi­na­tion, but they were very pleas­ant and quickly disappeared.

The pièce de résis­tance were the choco­late tarts, though.

The idea for these had stuck in my head from the Master Chef series. Last time I used some recipe I had found on the net, but this time I went and got the infor­ma­tion from the source and the result was a success.

For the dough:

For the filling:

To serve we have been using straw­ber­ries and whipped cream, but the pos­si­bil­i­ties are end­less. I am think­ing it wont be half bad with some crushed nuts on top either.

The result left every­body happy.

The girls were inspired as well and decided to sur­prise us with their own ren­di­tion of a desert for movie night. Sweets buzz up any child and ours are no excep­tion, but their minds were not only fired up by the poten­tial sugar intake. Their cre­ativ­ity was impressed by the ideas of Heston Blumenthal, whos show we adore — Heston’s Feasts. We watched him put chicken in an orange jelly, instead of orange flavour into a chicken, amongst other things.

We got choco­late stuffed straw­ber­ries from our bud­ding chefs. Thanks, Heston!

And our move watch­ing plates were now complete.

With choco­late melt­ing in my mouth and belly, and the fine sum­mer scent of the best darn weeds melt­ing in my senses, I can safely say that this day is wel­comed to visit me again any time.

This, pies and flow­ers kind of day.

One of my favorite things to do, amongst many oth­ers, is to grab a loaf of bread, break it apart and dunk the freshly torn pieces in a gooey mass of hum­mus driz­zled with extra vir­gin olive oil. The best place to do it is while leisurely lean­ing on the kitchen plot, as though it hap­pened by sur­prise, I was walk­ing by and saw the invit­ing food there and stopped by to dip in its yum­mi­ness. Its not a word, I know it, but it should be. Cause it exists.

I have worked on my recipe for awhile now. Even though its quite sim­ple and straight for­ward, this is the one I have set­tled on and do every time. Yes, you can go with the much eas­ier and quicker option of using a food proces­sor, but even though I thought those chefs on TV are just snobs when they sang praises for the mor­tar and pes­tle, I am afraid, I have proven myself wrong along the way. Or maybe I have just became one of the snobs myself. Either way, I much pre­fer the result that emerges after ener­get­i­cally bash­ing and grind­ing the ingre­di­ents with my own hands. Same goes for pesto.

You will need - chick­peas, lemon, gar­lic, tahini. extra vir­gin olive oil, salt and pep­per — optional: cumin or cumin seeds.

If you are using the food proces­sor, you skip the whole rest of the post, put every­thing in the bowl, whiz it and you are done.

Otherwise:

I start with the gar­lic and salt.
If I feel like it, I may toast some cumin seeds and add those in as well.

After they are well mushed, I add the tahini paste.
I use unhulled paste and that is why its so brown.

Then its time to start to add some of the chickpeas.

You can use canned ones, but I soak the grains for 24 hours and then sim­mer them for about 30min or until they soften.

I add some chick­peas, bash and add some more.

As I go I smooth it up with adding the oil, lemon juice and water. Yes, water.

At first I used to do the hum­mus only with oil, but it took a lot, as I like the mix­ture to be soft, not hard and gluggy. Then I tried adding some water instead of the oil and worked well. Now I would guess that half of the liq­uid is water and it has not been at the expense of flavour.

It helps to have will­ing volunteers.

The process takes awhile and a lot of woman power.

As I am bash­ing and feel­ing the mus­cles in my arms start to give in, I dream of eat­ing the result and hav­ing no guilt. I have worked up for it, after all

My vol­un­teer has a dif­fer­ent out­fit now — I told you it takes awhile.

I cant really tell you the exact pro­por­tions and quan­ti­ties, as I never mea­sure. The lemon juice, salt and pep­per go in as the fre­quent tast­ings indi­cate for their need. The tast­ings are half the fun, dont skimp on them. Same goes for salt, make sure you put enough or else the result can be quite uninspiring.

I wanted to take a few fancy, yummy shots of the result, but Miss Fab exclaimed close to the end of the process some­thing along the lines of  „When will you stop tak­ing pic­tures, so I can shove some in my mouth?!”. And that is all I needed to just open the doors to all the hun­gry, heav­ily sali­vat­ing peo­ple in the room and declare a free for all hum­mus mor­tar on offer.

And that is pretty much the end of the story.

Cause not long after, the care­fully crafted dip was gone.

And only the fond mem­ory of it lived in our minds,

and full bellies.

Til next time, our dear friend.

This day, like many oth­ers, started with an activ­ity we like to call build­ing forts, but in real­ity its prob­a­bly more a case of bring every­thing you can to this one spot and throw the stuff that doesnt fit on top of the other stuff and then make sure you havent left any­thing in the other rooms, or else bring that in too and plop it on top. Then crawl through it. See! A fort! Not many peo­ple can get through it.

Dont for­get to park your horse some­where too.

Maybe because the start was all messy, or maybe because the house is beyond messy lately, as we have been try­ing to sort through long for­got­ten piles of things, but I was faced with more stuff later. Ok, we have col­lected an embar­rass­ing amount of clothes through the years. Not for me and Mr.Blab, but kids clothes. A lot of it has come in handy and been used on all the kid­dos, but it was in need of culling, so that is what we did. A bag for giv­ing away, a bag of there may be a buck in this , which hope­fully will raise our spend­ing bud­get for this trip that is start­ing to set­tle into our hearts in a way that will be hard to shake off lightly now. And a bag of there may be two bucks in this, which might go up on Ebay or some­where that dont rip you off for not being lucky enough to sell.

Corn was had too.

Bags of frozen corn and peas are a neces­sity here. The kids love them, some­times just frozen, other times slightly unfrozen, but never fully defrosted. Never.

They can be enjoyed walk­ing around in a con­tainer given to you by busy sis­ters, aka. what­ever they could grab in a quicky. This approach is rather leisurely and affords the con­sumer the abil­ity to sprin­kle the corn on the car­pet with ease, which extends the plea­sure gained from the activ­ity. Step one — shove in mouth. Step two — seed the carpet.

The girls, on the other hand, had given them­selves a lovely serv­ing dish. Genius, if you ask me. It was elon­gated with two com­part­ments and thus per­fect for both of them to enjoy AND reach the snack from the ends of the table. They spent most of the day play­ing games, after ris­ing out from the fort that is.

Since it was movie night, I had the ran­dom idea to bake some pies. Small pies filled with choco­late and topped with the fresh straw­ber­ries we had wait­ing in the fridge. The prob­lem was that I had never made such a thing, I rarely bake, really. This has never stopped me, so I dug some recipe out and went for it.

I blind baked, peo­ple, in some pan I found in the back of my pantry, since I have no pie pans…doh.

The girls enjoyed the play dough.

Sausage roll, anyone?

So, I burned the crusts.

I wasnt pay­ing atten­tion to the lit­tle fel­las and they turned on me. But let me tell you, the choco­late fill­ing was deli­cious, and so were the sweet flavour­some straw­ber­ries and the fluffy freshly whipped cream.

We enjoyed those with our reg­u­lar bowl of popped corn and Mr.Blab’s choice of movie — South Pacific.

I snapped a few screen-shots for you.

After awhile I noticed something.

This is an inspi­ra­tion board for future gay-parade cos­tume designers.

Its inter­est­ing how quickly tastes and aes­thet­ics change.

What was main­stream yes­ter­day is on the fringes today.
And vice versa.

During the long, 2.5 hour movie, I also man­aged to cro­chet the han­dle of a bag I was doing, as a birth­day gift for one of Miss Fab’s friends. I will get into that in a dif­fer­ent post, though.

After the movie, late into the evening, we dis­as­sem­ble the floor set up of pads, pil­lows and blan­kets, as we dont use the couch for sit­ting pur­poses — the couch is for climb­ing pur­poses only. I played the video that was opened on my lap­top „Dancing in the Moonlight” and Little B, in true for her style, went for it. She still has the free spirit to feel the music with­out any inhi­bi­tions and we love watch­ing her. It almost makes me feel more alive, wit­ness­ing her danc­ing spirit.

To com­plete the pic­ture, I have pro­vided you with the actual back­ground music

Have a won­der­ful day and lets all be a lit­tle bit less con­cerned with who is watching.

Watch out, here are a bunch of recipes from last post’s food attack. I admit, I was hop­ing you will chose one or two, but the greedy lit­tle peo­ple you are, you just could not stop your­selves, could you? Silvia is excused, cause she is preg­nant. I will even excuse the dad in dis­guise, cause we need more of those approach­ing the kitchen, but the rest of you — greedy. Just think of my bleed­ing fin­gers. Gosh, I do sound a bit whiny lately. Sorry about that.

We will start with the Swedish Meatballs, because I had to cook it again tonight, so you get pic­tures with it.

Swedish Meatballs

Ingredients:

1 onion, finely chopped
500g pork mince
1 egg yolk
1 tbs chopped dill
4 tbs lin­gonberry sauce (or whole berry cran­berry sauce)
olive oil
20g but­ter
1 tbs plain flour
3/4 cup chicken stock
4 tbs sour cream
Potatoes and beans to serve

Mix the onion, mince, egg, dill and 2 tbs of the berry sauce and sea­son. Using damp hands, form balls and put in the fridge to chill for 30min.

Cook the balls in some oil in batches. It takes me 3, cause I make twice the recipe for our clan.

The cooked balls wait patiently until its time for them to reap­pear again.

After all the balls are cooked, pour out any extra oil and then melt the but­ter in the pan.

Add the flour and cook for a minute or so.

Add in the chicken stock and bring to boil.

Simmer for a few min­utes, until thickened.

Add in the sour cream and left over sauce.

And then put back in the balls and sim­mer on low heat while you fin­ish the rest.

By now the pota­toes are boil­ing in salted water.

I put the beans in the metal colan­der and plop them in the boil­ing pan with the potatoes.

Just for a minute or so, to take the edge.

And they are ready.

Drain the pots when they soften.

Add in but­ter, extra vir­gin olive oil, salt, pep­per and dill to taste.

We like lots.

Mix and they are ready too

Serve.

And enjoy, or else come back and complain.

—

Roasted veg­gies warm quinoa salad

I truly loved this salad. If you like veg­eta­bles, do try this.

Ingredients:

1 zuc­chini
1 egg­plant
1 small but­ter­nut pump­kin
1 red cap­sicum
2 cups of quinoa
1 1/2 cups of chicken stock
1 cup of semi dried toma­toes
1 cup of mar­i­nated arti­chokes
4 cups of baby spinach leaves
100g feta

Bake the cut up and oiled veg­eta­bles in a pre­heated oven — 200C, for about 30min. Mine took a bit longer and I like them a bit toasty.

Cook quinoa in the chicken stock for 10min and then leave cov­ered for another 10 and fluff it up.

Put quinoa, warm veg­eta­bles and the rest of the ingre­di­ents in a large bowl and mix.

Voila!

—

Spiced apri­cot chicken

Ingredients:

1 tsp of cracked black pep­per
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
2 tsp ground cumin
600g chicken breast fil­lets, chopped
olive oil
1 brown onion
1 cin­na­mon stick
1 cup of apri­cot nec­tar
100g dried apri­cots
toasted flaked almonds, couscous/rice and fresh corian­der (cilantro) to serve

Mix chicken with the spices.

Cook onion in oil over medium-high heat. Add chicken and cin­na­mon stick.

Cook until chicken is lightly browned.

Add apri­cot nec­tar and 1/2 cup of cold water to pan. Bring to boil and then reduce heat to sim­mer for 10–12 min or until the sauce has thickened.

Add dried apri­cots — the agree­ment in our house was that this is not nec­es­sary, as they made the meal too sweet. If we ever cook this again, I will skip this step alto­gether.

Cook for a few more min­utes, until the chicken is cooked. Take out the cin­na­mon stick, spoon the mix­ture over the rice/couscous and top with the almonds and coriander.

—

Fresh veg­gies noo­dle soup

Ingredients:

Chicken stock
soba or udon noo­dles
selec­tion of fresh veg­eta­bles — cab­bage, car­rot, bok choy, mush­rooms, spring onions etc.

If you are mak­ing your own stock — boil the chicken with some onion, potato, cel­ery, bay leaves, black pep­per­corns; strain and its ready to use.

In the stock cook your noo­dles. When ready, bring the whole thing to the table.

Cut up in thin strips the veg­gies and have them on the table as well.

Everyone puts the veg­eta­bles they want and as much as they want in their bowl and then the nod­dles and soup is poured in on top.

Easy and yummy.

—

I cant find the other two recipes, but those should help for now.

Let me know if you try any of these recipes. I would espe­cially be curi­ous if you like the quinoa salad as much as I did.

Bön Appétit

Warning: If you are hun­gry, look away and come back after you have eaten something.

We are pretty fru­gal as a whole. We dont have cable, expen­sive phone plans, an inti­mate rela­tion­ship with all the take away places around here and so on. There is one thing we have not skimped on here and this is gro­cery shop­ping. Still, as we are now try­ing to save up cash for the pos­si­bil­ity of mak­ing our dream trip, I am try­ing to see if I can bring down the food bill a bit lower. The last few weeks the only thing that I have done is reduce the shop­ping to once a week. This has two pos­si­ble pos­i­tive effects on the wal­let — brings to a min­i­mum the impul­sive buy­ing of extras that sit at the back of the fridge until you find them all moldy and liq­uid (yes, I have had things like that there), and it forces me to be a bit more cre­ative with the ingre­di­ents the last one or two days of the week and use up what I have around the house. This approach also has one other very wel­comed con­se­quence: I have to go shop­ping only once for the week and this is like a breath of fresh com­mer­cial free air for me.

For those of you that are as curi­ous as me, I took a shot of every din­ner meal we had last week. Those are not staged at all, so excuse any mis­takes that would be obvi­ous to a food stylist.The menu had a few new meals in it, as we had a flip through some mag­a­zines and the kids and I picked some things that seemed inter­est­ing. We like to do that some weeks — food adven­tures are fun.

So, on a bud­get of AU$250 for the week, for all meals and no eat­ing out, here is the din­ners we enjoyed:

Monday — Tuscan Chicken

Chosen by Little B.

—

Tuesday — Japanese Teriyaki Rice

I believe I chose that up at the last moment.

—

Wednesday — Fresh Veggie Noodle Soup

This is a reg­u­lar in our house. I make the chicken stock and then cut up a bunch of veg­gies and put them in our bowls just before pour­ing in the noo­dles and broth. Yum.

The stock from this was used in two of the dishes that follow.

—

Thursday — Swedish Meatballs

Chosen by a few mem­ber of the family.

—

Friday — Grilled Veggies Warm Quinoa Salad

As cho­sen by me.

—

Saturday — Spicy Apricot Chicken

Served on brown rice and cho­sen by Miss Fab.

—

Sunday — Chili and Olives Fussili

A reg­u­lar in the house, plus very con­ve­nient for an end of week choice.

—

Three weeks down the road of once a week shop­ping and we are doing great. I was hop­ing that we could man­age on AU$200, but that would require a lot of change to our menu and not for the bet­ter. I think $50 per per­son, per week, is not too bad. Or maybe I am just kid­ding myself.

In regards to our din­ners, the final ver­dict on the new meals is — Swedish meat­balls rock! I fell in love with the quinoa salad, but I was the only one. The rest of the fam­ily just ate it, I looved it and bored every­one with my odes of joy. The apri­cot chicken was a bit too sweet and the rest were not impres­sive enough to enter our reg­u­lar din­ner selection.

If you want any of the recipes, let me know.

Peak over

Mr.Blab and I are night owls. Having in mind that we have din­ner at about 7pm, it should come as no sur­prise that we often have a mid­night snack of some sort. Usually that would be a heav­ily but­tered toast with some slices of cheese, but there was a period back when we had grits from the States and then I would mixes us up a warm bowl of grits with lots of but­ter and Parmesan.

Sometimes, though, I feel inspired by the night air and the stars I can­not see from behind the blinds. A recipe pops in my head from the depths of the big part of my brain that seems to love food a lit­tle bit too much, and I change up the snack.

The other night I remem­bered a lit­tle beauty of a recipe I had seen in the most glo­ri­ously saliva induc­ing mag­a­zine „Delicious” and went for it. Pulled it out of the cup­board where all the piles of cook­ing writ­ten mate­r­ial lives now and made us some of Nigella’s Baci di Ricotta or Ricotta Kisses.

Here is some love for your sin­ful snack­ing time:

1cup (200g) fresh ricotta
2 eggs
1/2 cup (75g) bread flour/plain flour
1 1/2 tsp bak­ing pow­der
1/2 tsp cin­na­mon
1 tbs caster sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Vegetable oil to fry
icing sugar to dust

Mix well the ricotta and eggs. Add the rest of the ingre­di­ents and stir nicely until you make a smooth batter

Fill a fry­pan with about 2cm of oil and heat over medium heat until 160C.

Drop rounded tea­spoon­fuls of the bat­ter into the pan. Turn them around to cook them til golden brown. Put on paper tow­els to drain and then when cooled dust with the icing sugar

I melted some dark choco­late and mixed it with some cream to make a choco­late sauce for dunk­ing, cause it wasnt fat­ten­ing enough you see.