food – Page 19 – helenthura.com

February 13, 2007

In my garden

One day I’m going to make me a big big star. Well I already am but only a few people realise that at the moment.

A large handful of years ago (2001) I used to have a little veggie patch. It wasn’t a big producer but I still enjoyed my little patch of soil except the snails and other bugs probably liked it more than I did. They saw it as very much their own little salad bar. At around this time I was listening to The Lion Sleeps Tonight a lot. For some reason or the other I decided to change the lyrics round a bit to suit the snails who saw my garden as a salad bar.

A-wimoweh etc

In my garden
My growing garden
The snails eat my peas
In my garden
The quiet garden
The snails eat my peas

A-wimoweh etc

Near the peas
The dying peas
The snails make their way
Near the peas
The dying peas
The snails eat their feast

A-wimoweh etc

Hush my garden
Don’t fear my garden
The snails will sleep tonight
Hush my garden
Don’t die my darlings
The snails will be gone

A-wimoweh etc

I remember rushing out to Mum as I decided on better words to suit rhythmic patterns and singing to her the most recent version of “In my garden”. I was changing a few things round on my desk the other day and found the piece of paper that it was printed on and thought why not post it 🙂 Though it also means that I think that a large number of my recent posts have been musically based.

Today is Pancake Tuesday(Shrove Tuesday). Matthew and I had pancakes for lunch. mmm yummy. Sunday night I roasted a duck for tea, though this duck must’ve been a duck on a severe diet as it was pretty meatless. Luckily I made heaps of roast veggies to go with it, which were perfectly roasted in duck fat and tasted like heaven. For dessert we had a Blueberry Sourcream cake that I made from a recipe which was in a BBC Good Food magazine a couple of years ago. The cake didn’t just taste like heaven, it was heaven. I should take a photo of a slice before it is all eaten (there is only two slices left).

I am going to get my hair cut this arvo before work 🙂

January 28, 2007January 28, 2007

Vegemite Gelato

Australia + Italy = Vegemite Gelato. Just for the Australia Day weekend. Just for the sake of it and the fact that someone in a kitchen said why not?

The colour was a lot lighter than I expected but I guess that is because not everyone likes their Vegemite as thick as I do and therefore not a lot of Vegemite is used in the process.

The taste was totally not what I expected. That also I guess comes back to the above statement that I will every so often grab a teaspoonful of Vegemite and lick it off the spoon when I feel like it.

My first tasting note is that it tastes like salted nuts as the first taste is quite nutty and you are left with a salty aftertaste.
My second tasting I started to notice how it tastes like a dark ale. I guess that would be the yeast extract part of the Vegemite coming though.

This isn’t Vegemite Gelato it is Pub Gelato! Beer and nuts in Gelato.

I managed to talk Mum into tasting a little, little bit of it and her comment was that very first taste you get is Vegemite. I then went for the itty bitty spoonfuls and you really do taste straight out Vegemite then.

🙂 I am more of spoonful girl though so I am eating a spoonful of Gelato and chasing it with a Vegemite lick. Now it tastes just like I imagined.

I am quite surprised that the Courier Mail did not have an article about it and instead I found out about via Slashfood and the Sydney Morning Herald. When I first saw it on Slashfood I thought for sure it would be in Melbourne or Sydney. I nearly dropped off my chair when I read Brisbane in the article.

Gelateria Cremona, I hope you have Vegemite Gelato next Australia Day as I will be back 🙂

Mum and I went up to a friends property for Australia Day for a bit of tree planting. The whole team which was probably easily 20 adults plus kids built tracks, planted 500 trees, cleared Lantana and other weeds. Mum and I each ended up with a mattock which we swung and swung and swung some more digging holes for the kids to come behind us and plant the native trees in. It was a nice day out “on the land” and we were given a very impressive spread for morning tea and lunch.

January 24, 2007January 24, 2007

Lunch

This was our lunch yesterday.

Simple, easy and oh so yummo.

I made the bread, not the best effort as I sort of forgot till it was too late the lack of gluten in corn flour. This meant that it was slightly lacking in the bread department and more in the chewy department. Nice but not what I wanted. Maybe next time.

I made the pesto as well (of course :)). I had been on the eye out for good looking basil at the fruit shop for quite a while now and it was always wilted and sad looking. On Sunday Mum and I went to a local farmers market where I picked up the freshest bunch of basil I have ever seen. The smell was gorgeous.

The grape tomatoes came from the markets for something like $2 for a large bag which was a total bargain.

To day Mum, Matthew and I are off to the Brisbane markets at Rocklea to explore and to pick up some gorgeous bargains in the way of fruit and veg. I know last time we picked up 5kg of cherries for $20 at a time when they were selling for $20/kg in the shops. 🙂

Tonight I am off to see Madeleine Peyroux. Ohh it will be a delight. I was so delighted when I saw the ad in the paper back in October advertising the tour. I bought my ticket the day they went on sale I think 🙂

December 17, 2006

Home Made Goodness

Mum bought a food dehydrator (EziDri Snackmaker) the other week. A couple of days ago I picked up 3.5kg of tomatoes at a bargain basement price at the local fruit shop. I came home, quartered them and put them on dry. Mmm the house smelt like tomatoes and now we have about 400g of dried tomatoes! I love putting some tomatoes and cheese on a slice of bread and putting it under the griller for a very yummy snack.

I also finally bought my self a pasta maker the other night when a local(ish) kitchenware shop was having 20% off and I have had a ball making tagliatelle and linguine. It also tastes so yummy and even after I have dried the pasta for storage it still cooks in an instant which is fantastic. I will have to take a photo of it later. Tonight for tea we are going to have Mum’s Bolognese with my pasta.

December 15, 2006November 17, 2010

LoftkÃ¶kur

Christmas is coming. The other night I heard a Christmas Beetle buzzing about outside and I rushed out to gaze at him for a little while, drawing on the memories I have of these little fellas. A Friday night at swimming club was rarely complete without someone catching a beetle or two and placing them on someone else’s back, knowing very well that those little legs would stick to the lyrca of our togs.

Of course Christmas Beetles are not the only sign that herald the nearing of Christmas. The most obvious thing in our house would be the baking that is done. All sorts of goodies picked up from the Christmases that Mum spent in Iceland when she was a new bride in a houseful of kids in a fishing village in Iceland’s Northwest Fjords. The first two recipes in our (Mum’s) biscuit book (which incidentally is in an Icelandic exercise book with stÃlabÃ³k on the front cover) are two Icelandic/Nordic Christmas biscuit recipes. One is Vanilla Rings and the other are LoftkÃ¶kur.

LoftkÃ¶kur are a quirky little biscuit that you either love or dislike, Mum falls into the dislike category but for as long as she has lived with Pabbi she has made them for the rest of the family to enjoy at Christmas.

LoftkÃ¶kur
Looking at the recipe Mum has written down in the book it is funny to see the mixing of Icelandic and English used either for measurements or the names of ingredients

750g icing sugar
2 large eggs
2 tsp hartshorn salt (Hjartasalt in Icelandic or Ammonium bicarbonate – you can get this from some speciality grocery stores or the chemist)
5 tbsp cocoa

This can easily be halved, and I would probably recommend halving it if you are making it for the first time as it does make a lot of LoftkÃ¶kur.

Mix the ingredients together and refrigerate the mixture overnight.
If you have a biscuit attachment for your mixer use that and ideally you would use the zigzag attachment. You would then feed an arm’s length onto your arm and then carefully flip it onto a well greased baking tray and cut it into thumb size lengths.

If you don’t have a biscuit attachment you will need to roll the mixture into sausages a bit thicker than your thumb and slice it every 1/4″. Then press down on the flat side with a fork to give it some decoration. This is also what we do with the leftover mixture that the mixer can’t process.

Place on well greased trays and cook at about 150Â°C. They are cooked when they slide on the tray when pushed. Probably 10 minutes or so.

They are best drunk with cold milk and if you are feeling adventurous have a LoftkÃ¶kur Slammer (just like a Tim Tam one).

This is Mum feeding the shaped mixture onto her arm, ready to be flipped onto a baking tray.

Look at that uniformity in size as Mum cuts the mixture to length, you can tell she has been doing this for close on 28 years!

With the leftover mixture Mum normally lets me “create” with it and this year I decided to make LoftkÃ¶kur Staws by feeding some of the mixture through the large mincer plate on the mincer.

December 4, 2006

3 months in a leaky boat

or perhaps I should say 3 months is a little late but then it is my party and I’ll cry if I want to.

Yesterday, I had a party. There was rain, friends, food, fairy lights and good times. Leading up to yesterday evening I knew it was going to rain at some stage but I was wishin’ and hopin’ that it would hold off. It didn’t and it rained as people arrived and it rained as we ate nibblies and it rained again as we had dinner. By then all I was wishin’ and hopin’ for was that it would clear for dessert so we could bathe in the speckled light of 928 fairy lights strung up on the verandah. It did clear and we then finished off the night in a magical atmosphere on the verandah under the sea of fairy lights. As we eat the leftovers and take photos of the food I will post them. I can say now though that I was happy with the food and Karl’s Sangria recipe is very very very nice indeed.

I wanna sit and talk and laugh with you all

sugar and spice and all things nice
This was my birthday cake, but we didn’t sing Happy Birthday so is it still birthday cake or just a celebration cake? Hailing from the wonderful pages of the Dec 03/Jan 04 issue of Delicious is this very yummy Rosewater Cream Berry Meringue Stack. Raspberries, Blueberries, Strawberries, Cream and Rosewater, need I say more?

Out on the patio we would sit…

We’d watch the lightning crack over canefields

singing hail, hail, the gangs all here
From the school girls to the Indo Girl, to the 2nd year girls and then the 3rd year girls, these are the girls (plus a few absentees) who have in some way or another had an in influence into me growing into who I am today.

side by side one for all together we grew
Five years in bottle green, soccer/cricket/football games, sitting on the hill, playing music, doing group assignments, laugh central. Where else but in high school do you form a group of friends where the girls all have boys names for nicknames and are still used today? Fred/Candy, Doug/Kaliope and Guido/Dina and myself as Bill, I don’t think those times will ever be forgotten.

Hey Joe
Concerts, Movies, and lots of chilling and chatting. One year of Indonesian together, four years and counting of fun filled adventures and laughs.

they’re fun to have around
Really where do you start? The sweet little Nural who is both a 2nd year and a 3rd year girl who can always say something cute or Andrea, the girl who is me but not me (in her own words) or Rachy Rach (Marky Mark/Richie Rich) who is always up to having a rant about something and a good time.

one and one and one is three
Some say she’s from Mars, I just say she does Law, Swinin’ down the street so fancy free, I just say she always has a smile. Clare and Georgie, the perfect pair to share my last year of uni with and the laughs have just kept coming since exams have finished.

It wasn’t so much a 21st birthday party 3 months late but a celebration of where I have come from and where I am going now, a celebration of the end of schooling for the current time, for the girls who have I have met along the way and for the old to meet the new and to kick back and have a nice time.

Well the clock says its time to close now
I know I have to go now
I really want to stay here
All night, all night, all night

(3 months is a leaky boat is of course a of course a play on the title of the fabulous Split Enz song Six Months in a Leaky Boat)

(and big props to anyone who knows any of the the songs where the captions come from)