This is what I made for dinner tonight. Partly cleaning out the pantry before I move next week, partly just feeling like a change. I was sort of inspired by the noodle soup that Nigella made on Nigella Express last night. The whole express thing was the best thing. I put a pan of water on to boil with a few strands of saffron and some vegetable stock, added some chopped up leeks, cauliflower and carrots, let that simmer and then added some broken up rice noodles, dried mushrooms and a dash of tamari. A few more minutes and then I had a lovely bowl of noodle soup (and two more bowls for lunches).
A perfect bowl of soup that was both light and full in flavour. Perfect to eat for dinner whilst reading the daily papers.
Is roughly how long it has been since I last saw Karl, my big full brother. I can’t really say he is my big brother because I have four of them and Karl is the youngest of them. To say I am excited is something of an understatement.
We have just picked up Karl from the airport, which was all very exciting and this is one of the goodies he brought with him. I keep on bringing the package up to my face and inhaling the delightful smell. mmmmm dried fish!!!!
The 2008 Christmas Spectacular aka all the family coming home for Christmas is fast approaching. My dear brother Karl arrives in 9.5 days (I am sooo looking forward to having Karl around for a couple of weeks) then in 10.5 days Toti, Anna and the girls arrive (kids to take photos of!) then a week and a bit after that NZ starts arriving and then Tasmania starts to arrive as well.
Today Mum and I made the Christmas Puddings, using Grandmum’s recipe. The recipe makes a big, big, big pudding (it uses 8 eggs). We split the pudding into two though, one big one with coins in for Christmas Day and then another smaller one as a back up in case we run out or to eat as left overs in the new year.
Tonight, I really cooked in my new kitchen for the first time. I made a leftovers quiche, the type of quiche that clears out the crisper drawer in the fridge and is really just a case of throwing it all in a pastry crust. I made some shortcrust pastry and as my pastry blender is at Mum’s I had to use my hands, I haven’t done that since oh Year 9 Home Ec, still it was good fun. When I rolled it out, I rolled it out nice and thick 🙂 I love a good thick pie crust.
The filling consists of capsicum, sun-dried tomatoes, eschallots, mushroom, eggplant and diced chorizo, along with a good handful of rosemary, thyme and basil. The top has slices of blue cheese and then chorizo slices that you can see in the photo.
One of my handy little gadgets is my oven thermometer, I played with placing it various parts of the oven and I discovered whilst cooking the quiche that it seems to be out by about 50 degrees! and it was very very slow to heat up.
Still once the quiche was cooked, I had a slice for dinner and it will give me meals for the next few days.
Tonight, my favourite store in Brisbane had it’s once yearly 20% off sale for newsletter subscribers. Since Taste open a few years ago, I have often popped in when driving past for a quick browse.
I arrived shortly before 1730 and managed to pop into the shop for about a minute before the closed the doors, myself and another lady had just enough time to confirm what colour KitchenAids were in stock and how many they had (seven and only one of each colour). When we were back outside we quickly formed a little posse at the door with two other ladies who were also in the KitchenAid quest. They were number 1 and 2 in the line, I was number 3 and the other lady was number 4. We started discussing colours and it turned out that lady number 1 and I both wanted Apple Green and number 2 and number 4 both wanted the Imperial Gray. Very democratically I decided that I would get the Ice Blue as that was my 2nd colour pref from what they had in stock (I had wanted Gloss Cinnamon, Tangerine or Yellow but there was none in stock). Number 4 decided she would get Empire Red. Once that was settled we then roped into our posse two other ladies, one who had bought her KitchenAid (Almond) a few months ago and the other who was also in the quest, her first preference was the Empire Red but she quickly settled on the Willow Blue as that would match her Le Creuset.
When they opened the doors, the five of us quickly made our way over to the table where the holy grail was and grabbed our new babies. We then made our way over to the counter where Jodie (the lovely owner) commented on how it was great to see that we had worked as a little team to get what we wanted. As we were walking through the shop some of the other Taste employees made comments as well about our little team forming to get our common goal.
The 20% off made the price very attractive! Taste retails them at $699 and you can get them from the online site round the $630 mark. The 20% off took it to just under $560.
Here is my baby (well my second baby as my first baby is my 5D)
My other purchase was a Le Creuset Multifunction Set in Cobalt Blue. I remember the first time I saw the multifunction mentioned on a blog, I thought “that is a very cool idea” over the last year or so I have danced my fingers over them as I have seen them at various places. Tonight I picked up my own 🙂 I had been tossing up between getting a 20cm Le Creuset French Oven as there are times when I find my 24cm too big but since the multifunction set is about the same size and it gives me a saucepan and frypan that works as a lid, I decided that this year that was a better buy. ‘
I’m so excited! I can’t wait to use my new kitchen goodies.
On Saturday when I went to visit Amanda and Madi they were just finishing lunch, it was chicken with salad. I eyed it off with desire. I had an avocado for lunch. It’s not that I don’t like having braces, I do because it means the end is near but it also means that all the things I like eating are off the menu for the current time.
The other day for breakfast all I could think about was how much I would love some poached eggs on toasted sour dough with mushrooms and tomatoes and a tiny side salad of rocket and mizuna. Of that combo I could eat the poached eggs and the mushrooms and the tomatoes, couldn’t eat the toast unless it was french toast and short of swallowing the salad I can’t see that going down my trap. Instead I had some french toast.
We had prawns for lunch for three days at work last week as the Woolies beside where we work had them cheap and they are soo easy to “throw on the sandwich press”. I will admit that they were hard to eat and mainly involved cutting them up in to small enough pieces that I could swallow them. As the days have heated up and the humidity is kicking in I just couldn’t say no to prawns and with all the family coming home for Christmas I can see us eating many many many kilos of prawns.
I made another soup last night for dinner which was quite tasty a mix of green and yellow lentils with sweet potato and capsicum but oh I would like a piece of grilled chicken with salad. I’m hoping that this week I might start making some light stir fries and see how they go.
My mouth is still saw, biting into anything is painful and now I have a tooth ache to add to the haul as well. gah!
