Month: February 2013

The Local Grocer Delivers the Goods

The Local Grocer Delivers the Goods

This week I took a “preview” delivery of gorgeously fresh and mostly* very local fruit and veggies from new Perth business, The Local Grocer. It’s not available for orders until next week – I happened to have thrown an embarrassingly small amount of money at the business to help them start-up via the hot new(ish) concept of crowd funding – so they let me order a week early. They also asked me not to publicise their website until next week but I just couldn’t wait so please don’t tell on me.

Local Grocer seasonal box

It is chockas! The fruit and veg are fresh, cold and crisp and the local ham…lovely. It came at about 5.30pm so I whipped out a few ingredients and threw it together to make a ham and vegetable risotto.

risotto ingredients

It was all locally fabulous with a handful of frozen peas because the kids love them.

risotto local grocer

The box was $70 and will easily feed the five of us for the week. My box is a conventional box; the organic box is $90. I will have to supplement a couple of things – we eat a lot of apples here and we also have a beetroot, celery and carrot juice (Juice-Plus! we call it) each morning so need big quantities of those.

You don’t have to order a seasonal box. You can just pick and choose exactly what you like and in any quantities. I wanted to check out the seasonal box to see what is actually seasonal right now, and also to see if it would suit me as I like the idea of one-click ordering (are you getting how lazy I am yet?).

If you live in Perth and you’re interested in supporting Greg and Mary Winning and The Local Grocer you can jump on board to order as of next week. Just don’t tell anyone or give it away that you had a sneak preview this week, promise? It’s our little secret.

*While the business is newly growing, there are a few items that need to come from interstate. They plan within a couple of years to be 100% local. It’s a work in progress, as with any good idea.

Incredibly Easy Cake Everyone Will LOVE

Incredibly Easy Cake Everyone Will LOVE

When  a recipe starts with “put all ingredients in bowl” there is a very good chance it is going to get tried out in my kitchen. Today’s little winner is the Bimby Chocolate Cake. I only have one picture of it as it is so easy to make, it was prepped, baked and half-eaten before I had a chance to whip out my camera.

The other great thing about this recipe is the fact that the it makes either one big cake, two loaf-sized or loads of cupcakes. Today I made two. It is a thermomix recipe but any half decent food processor or a Kitchen Aid will cope with this. I have converted the amounts of everything to suit either. Just make sure your butter is very soft if you’re not using a thermomix. And use nice proper butter.

You can leave out the cacao and make a plain vanilla cake if you like, or throw in some finely grated orange peel for a Jaffa effect (I’ve done this and it is very good). Too easy.

chocolate cake

Bimby Chocolate Cake

Ingredients:
170g (3/4 cup) soft, good butter
4 eggs
250g (1 cup) milk
300g (1 1/4 cups) self raising flour
370g (1 1/2 cups) raw sugar
40g (3 tbs) cocoa/cacao powder
1 good splosh vanilla

Put all ingredients in bowl. Mix at a good speed for a minute (TMX sp6 1min). Bake for 45 mins at 180 degrees celsius in two tins or about an hour in one big tin.

Thanks to the wonderful Forum Thermomix for this one and especially to forum her “I Love Bimby” who kindly let me republish this here.

I did make a version of this recipe and simply left out the cocoa/cacao and it was just as good. I never got around to icing it before it was gobbled up:

chocolate cake without chocolate

Just for fun – here’s a photo of Tendercrisp doing what she does when out free ranging:

chicken tendercrisp

Do Nothing

Do Nothing

For two minutes.

Do you ever sit down at the computer with a coffee specifically to respond to work emails, sort out extra-curricular bills and dates for the kids, buy tickets for a Perth Festival event, just work generally…..and before you know it you have 15 tabs open (that seemed essential at the moment you opened them) on top of the ones you set out to do? You’ve had one sip of coffee and already you are viewing seven blogs, three recipes for green smoothies, Facebook (come on just admit it), and juggling the whole lot together.

It’s time to repaginate your mind.

I have just the site for you:

Do Nothing For Two Minutes

It’s like shavasana for the virtual yogi.

Noosa, Queensland
Noosa, Queensland
Balls, Peaches and Rock Stars

Balls, Peaches and Rock Stars

Late Saturday night nostalgia completely overtook me on the way to pick up my daughter and her friends from the Year 12 School Ball. The whole thing was also expensive, so nostalgia was followed closely by relief that we may be able to afford to eat again next week. I had spent the evening at Mrs Browns with the very girls I shared that night with almost thirty years ago at my own school ball. It was the year of dropped-waist dresses, silk taffeta, Molly Ringwald, INXS, Mondo Rock, Footloose, Bachelor Party…1984.

Oh I could write reams on this glory year, but ancient history needs to stay where it belongs, in the past.

This is her, the one who makes my heart skip a beat every time I see her image. I study her for clues to myself and am constantly bewildered by just how much she is her own woman, not mine.

Who would have guessed the song they danced hardest to would be Dexys Midnight Runners’ Come On Eileen? Hello again old friend The Eighties.

Year 12 School Ball "Befores" 2013
Year 12 School Ball “Befores” 2013

Sunday lunch was spent with my parents and our favourite priest Canon Frank Sheehan. I took a dessert I found while lying in bed in the morning instead of going for a run, letting the Internet take me carelessly from blog to blog. This one comes from The Londoner. I love her “anti diet” – a good one for mums to give their older teens who are worrying about weight, needlessly or otherwise.

The recipe’s been adjusted but if you follow the link you’ll get to the original:

Roasted Peaches

  • Some peaches (I had about 7)
  • butter
  • honey
  • black strap molasses (optional)
  • ground cardamom
  • mascarpone/creme fraiche

Halve and de-stone peaches. Put a knob of butter on each one on a baking tray. Drizzle honey and molasses (it’s a superfood you know), sprinkle cardamom and roast in a moderate oven for 20 to 30 minutes.

Reserve the melted sweet butter after cooking. Serve with a big dollop of  mascarpone and a good few tablespoons of the decadent sauce.

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prepared peaches

 

roasted peach with mascarpone
roasted peach with mascarpone

 

Finally a music recommend: Friday night my groovster live band buddy (Rob) and I went to see Father John Misty at the Chevron Festival Gardens and they were completely fabulous.

Josh Tillman of Father John Misty
Josh Tillman of Father John Misty

We went on the back of only having heard a single song of theirs and loved loved loved the whole set.

Slow Burn 1980’s Nostalgia followed up with brightly coloured loud Up To The Minute Cool: Perfect weekend.

 

Children of the Corn

Children of the Corn

Not one sensible friend joined Rob and I last night for the spectacular St Jerome’s Laneway Festival in the Perth Cultural Centre. If I find out anyone was instead playing Bridge or lawn bowls that’s it; you’re de-friended.

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Flume

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Alt-J who everyone went wild for.

Laneway 2013

Laneway Fossils
Laneway Fossils – Selfie

Here is a song from one of the artists (you won’t be able to click on the link if you’re reading this via email, you have to open it in your web browser). It’s young Sydney DJ Flume with Holdin On:

Those who were at the beautiful Leeuwin Estate picnicking with singer/songwriter Carole King are exempt because no matter who is playing at Leeuwin, it’s a glorious evening of wine, food, music and friends.

Unlike the crowd at Leeuwin Estate Winery, we never saw another soul our age at Laneway. As the sun went down to the tunes of Alt-J, with beautiful young things pumping fists in the air, I shouted in Rob’s ear, “Do you feel like we’re in a scene from Children of the Corn and we’re the only people who make it to middle age?” Next year I am buying group tickets for my 40years+ MSF’s.

Speaking of Children of the Corn, I smugly sent mine off to school on Friday with a (lightly steamed) corn on the cob instead of an apple, just for a little variety. I just this Sunday morning emptied lunch-boxes and there was the corn. One had a little tiny bite out of it. I will keep trying. One sensible friend actually grows her own. Right here in the ‘burbs in her organic back garden. Her kids just dust off the dirt and eat it right out of the ground. But hey; she wasn’t at Laneway last night so I still win. Alright, she wins.

 

Attention to Detail

Attention to Detail

Lunch at the  newly renovated Cott Hotel with two sensible friends last week and the conversation turned to the movies. One of them gets free tickets to Luna Palace films and often asks me along. This is because I am a very agreeable movie date:

I scoff my choc bomb before the main feature comes on, or I eat nothing, so there’s no crunching of the end of the cone during awkward quiet bits. I don’t talk at all during the film, not even an ironic glance. Unlike one of the clever men I know I also don’t drink from a water bottle which then creates a little vacuum, making a popping noise as air is returned to the bottle once the drinking has finished (there was no easy way to write that bit).

Sensibly, we decided there were some people with acute attention to detail and others without and how one behaves in the movies is a pretty good yardstick.

The chatter moved seamlessly from movies to parking (aren’t we the fun girls?) and again bewilderment at some people’s lack of attention to detail.

When you’re headed to your car and you can see someone is waiting to pull into your spot, you skedaddle into your seat, put your seatbelt on as you’re pulling out and hot-foot it out of there ASAP so the person behind you doesn’t have to wait for too long, holding up traffic and getting annoyed. Although you will never see them again in your entire life, you don’t want them thinking ill of you.

So why when the situation is reversed, do you find yourself sitting there with your indicator on while the person in the car leaving ambles over, hops in their car does God knows what for two or three minutes then reverses out slowly, visibly surprised to see you waiting there for their spot. Then while they are half out of the spot, slowly put on seatbelt, make another call, chat to child in back seat for a while….This isn’t reserved to beach parking – there’s the shopping centre, the theatre parking, Napoleon Street…

Lets not even go there with the pick up lane at the kids’ schools and the mothers in front chatting from car window to car window when their little one has been belted in already for a full three minutes.

Holier than thou Toyota Prius
Holier than thou Toyota Prius

At least I can sit smugly in those queues knowing I am helping save the world in my Prius (let’s just forget the fact I am driving when I live less than one kilometre from the school gate).

Many of my sensible friends are celebrating this week: kids back to school, house staying cleaner, no longer haemorrhaging money on a daily basis. In my family we have two landmark years with one daughter in Year 1 and the other daughter in Year 12. In the middle a son in Year 10. We’re at the pointy end of the education system, but hysterically it’s both pointy ends. What fun.

Have you, like me, been wondering what to feed the kids for brekky? Sensible friend Jane suggested an easy breakfast that avoids the cereal trap (cereal is easy but as you know, nutritionally so poor there is no point in it at all): Good quality yoghurt – we use Mundella (because it’s good quality and locally grown and owned by dear friends), some nuts roughly chopped, and some fresh fruit. It’s SO simple and so healthy. Maybe some nice homemade or Gaby’s Muesli and maple syrup spooned on top.

Yoghurt with fruit and nuts
Yoghurt with fruit and nuts

Below is a recipe I have adapted for the Thermomix and altered so it is almost completely Superfoods (superfoods I tell you!). It was originally a Curtis Stone recipe from a friend who dropped a slice of it in yesterday.

Don’t be alarmed by the number of ingredients, you just throw in what you have in your pantry. If you’re not a thermomixer, it’s basically a cup of flour and a couple of cups of ‘bits’.

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Superfood Slice

  • 130g coconut flour/other flour
  • 100g muesli
  • 30g each of sunflower seeds, goji berries, shredded coconut, chia seeds, coconut sugar, dates.
  • 50g coconut oil
  • 50g sun warrior protein powder (or whichever brand you like)
  • 20g maca powder
  • 40g honey (I used the McCall’s honey from the Margaret River Farmers Market!)
  • 20g molasses
  • 1tsp baking powder
  • 1 or 2 eggs depending on how dry your mix is.

Throw it all in the bowl, mix it up speed 5, and press it into a brownie tin. Bake 180 for 20 minutes. For non-TMX’s just throw it all in a big bowl and mix it up.

This version happens to be gluten-free but I have also made a batch with normal wholemeal flour and it was fine. Don’t expect it to be more than luke-warmly received by the younger kids, its ‘healthy’ tasting: No it doesn’t taste nearly as good as a Tim Tam okay? You could try melting some chocolate and butter and spreading it on top to dress it up, or add 30g cacao powder to recipe to turn it into a chocolate slice.

silver linings playbook weinstein company 900-thumb-615x372-105628
Silver Linings Playbook

Back to movies – you know who to ask if you want a movie date! It’s probably my most favourite thing to do. If you haven’t seen Silver Linings Playbook or Argo, do. Especially Argo.

“Argo fuck yourself!”

 

 

 

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