Slow Cooker Sadness - Desperately Need Help!

The slow cooker in the picture above is the one we were given as a wedding gift.  It's nearly 27 years old, but it's not been used that much.  As you can see, I make chicken stock in it.  And I recently succeeded with a vegetable minestrone.  But that is the extent of my slow cooker successes.

I really want to love my slow cooker.  I want to sing its praises and be totally in love with its ability to calmly cook my dinner.  But I don't.  Any time I cook meat in this thing it comes out dry, compared to cooking the same thing in the oven.  The meat has not ever come out tender and juicy.  Tender yes, juicy no.  The last casserole I did left me with some carrots that were cooked perfectly, and others that were still crunchy, and that thing had been going for 8-9 hours.

My Mum tells me not to get rid of it, because she thinks the old slow cookers do a better job.  Their low setting cooks at a lower heat than the new ones.  She has a new one and she misses her old one, but she was unable to replace the lid when that broke, so she was between a rock and hard place.

The other problem I have is that most recipes have a 6-8 cooking time, and I'm out of the house for about 11 hours, so that is just never going to work.  I know, I know, I could get a timer thingy like what you use to turn lamps on, but with all the other issues I have going on, it just doesn't seem worth it.

So, what am I doing wrong?  I want this thing to be my best friend, and at the moment it mocks me from the bottom cupboard.  Surely I'm not the only one who is yet to fall in love with this busy-mum's-best-kitchen-friend device?

I don't know what I was thinking

I've raised two children to young adulthood, and a third who is mere year away from officially, legally joining them.  We've parented and trained and disciplined and talked and guided and shepherd these children through the past 21 years.  Mostly they're really great people to hang out with, and certainly for everyone beyond our picket fence that is still totally and absolutely true.

But yesterday I blew a gasket.

I am tired of fighting with these people to have them do their dishes job after dinner.  Totally and complete done with it.  So yesterday, after asking one child to empty the dishwasher before they went out in the morning I ended up just doing it myself.

Me:  Could you please do the dishwasher before you go?
Child:  But Mum, I have to go, because I need to get in some hours at work and I have an appointment and I'm about to leave....
Me:  What, you can't take 5 minutes before you go?
Child:  No, because otherwise I'll miss out on time at work
Me:  Fine.  I'll do it myself.
Note:  Child works for their Dad and when they go and how much time they spend there is very fluid.  It's not a normal "start at this time" kind of job.

So I emptied the dishwasher.  And refilled it.  And cleaned the disgusting microwave that is above my head height, so I can't actually see in there or clean without standing on a chair.  I did the dishes, and dried them and put them away.  And the dish rack (no one seems to remember it has a place in a cupboard!).  I wiped down the bench and put all the bits and pieces away.  Then I decided I will just do the stupid dishes myself, for the rest of my life, and give up on arguing with all the people in my house.

Yesterday's episode came on the heels of another Child throwing a hissy fit because they didn't want to cook dinner.  That child got to stamp off to their bedroom and I had to figure out cooking dinner.  After I got home, so wasn't able to start dinner til after 6pm.  I have been known to tell these people they are free to move out....

I wonder when I get to throw a hissy fit and just choose not to do things...and then have them magically be done for me?

For now.  At least I have a clean kitchen.

New Routines - An Organised Freezer

Chicken ready for flash freezing

Recently, Frances (from The Lefthanded Housewife) talked about ways she was tweaking her daily routines and how that might be the trick to getting on top of things like her infamous attic.  Although I will miss the odd post here and there about her attic woes (they make me feel better about little spots in my house, like the dining room), it made me wonder if there were things I do that could be changed to help me be more efficient?

One possibility came to me as I was preparing dinner tonight.  It's such a long time since we've had oven-baked orange chicken**, because anything with "stations" to get meat prepared is low on our list of weeknight dinners.  However!  This week marks the beginning of my four-day work week, with Wednesday's being my day off.  I decided I would go to the effort of making this chicken recipe because it's really yummy, but also because I can prepare the chicken and then flash freeze it, and then bag the prepared, frozen drumsticks in single-meal quantities.

And this is my routine game-changer.  I hope!  My Wednesday's can be my prepare-ahead night.  If I choose meals that take just a few extra minutes to get a little extra prepared (freezing meat in marinade, making two lasagnas etc) and into the freezer for another night I may just find we manage better with conquering Idon'twannacookdinneritis.

This has certainly been my most productive half hour in the day.  The first 8 hours involved filling out forms for Miss Mischief's Youth Allowance application, getting documents from the accountant, and sitting at Centrelink for over an hour to submit said forms before the deadline for her application.  I had hoped to get some rhubarb relish made.  Well, the day's not over so it's still a possibility I guess.

**  Recipe adjustments:

1. Used chicken drumsticks instead of breasts 
2. Juiced two oranges for about 3kg of chicken
3. Skipped brushing chicken with butter - dipping in the orange/honey liquid is plenty
4. Preheated an oven tray with a little olive oil before putting chicken in the oven

Enjoy

Productive Kitchen Day - Busy Term Protection!

I was watching episodes of Rachael Ray's "Week in a Day" yesterday morning and I was completely inspired to cook some meals ahead.  Off I went to do some grocery shopping and got myself organised.  Then I got to work.  Above is a photo at about the mid-point of my cook-fest.

Can I just say, cooking ahead in one day = very hard work.

Despite my sore feet and back and needing a nice long nap afterwards I now have in my freezer:

• 3 meals of chicken burgers + 3 extra patties for a light-on-people night
• 1 roasted vegetable lasagne (I made two, only one made it to the freezer!)
• 1 vegetable pasta sauce (from making the lasagne)
• 3 meals of sloppy joe mince

After getting all that together I was too tired and sore to make the risotto I had planned on, so we ate one of the two lasagnes for dinner.  It was so much better than I imagined it would be!  You know when you take ideas from a few places and then make it up from there to suit yourself?  Yes.  That was my lasagne.  I'll post a recipe another day because it was just beautiful.  The best part is that I managed to hide eggplant and red capsicums by finely dicing all the veggies instead of leaving them as thin strips or rounds.  All together you just got a beautiful rich veggie sauce.  Any other way there would have been complaints and picking things out.  I am the winner!

As much as I love the protective layer that meals in the freezer gives me I think doing so much in one day is probably not my favourite way.  I suspect I would rather just double and triple recipes on the day I intend to make them.  Which is good to know about myself.  Or I could just sit on the other side of the bench for all the chopping, rather than be on my feet for hours.

What I am looking forward to?  A term's worth of "Fend for Yourself Friday" meals, courtesy of the burgers and sloppy joe meat.  I stopped planning Friday nights because two of the kids would be gone before I could even think about getting home so they had toasted sandwiches or eggs on toast or leftovers.  Or nothing.  I have no idea!  This year I'll be able to get home by 5pm, but they'll still be dashing off not long after I get home.  This way they'll have something they can pull out and when they need it and there will be food for others who come along later.

Chinese Feast (as good as take away)

This is about my favourite Chinese cookbook - full of authentic recipes and great pictures.  A winning combination if ever there was one.  It was the starting point for our dinner tonight.  There is a very tasty recipe for "Three Cup Chicken", the internet equivalent for which seems to be quite elusive.  The other recipe I tried, from a recently acquired library cast-off (one should hang about libraries when they are culling their stock!), was a steamed pork rib dish, such as you would have if you were enjoying Yum Cha.

Neither dish contained any kind of vegetable so I quartered a bunch of baby bok choy and steamed those in with the chicken.  I had no idea, but two of the kids informed me they don't like bok choy.  Well, I just think that's not allowed, so next time I would chop them up and make it part of the dish, proper.  The flavour of bok choy is far less bossy when it's all mixed in and you get small, tender bites throughout.

~ Our Better-than-Take-Away Chinese Feast ~

Steamed Pork Ribs

Three Cup Chicken

Steamed Bok Choy

Basmati Rice

I wish I could find recipes that are closer to what I used tonight, but alas the internet is not being helpful this evening.  What I will say, is get yourself some good books with recipes that are authentic, and then be adventurous.  Or ask a friend who might be willing to share some hints and recipes with you.  What I learned tonight?  The sauces are so, so simple.  The chicken?  Dry sherry, soy sauce and chicken stock.  Liquid stock, I'm sure, made all the difference.  I normally wouldn't bother with the expense of buying stock in liquid form.  I now have a whole bunch of stock ice-cubes freezing for posterity.  And because I was smart, and measured, I know they are each a 15ml tablespoon's worth.

What is your "better than take away" meal?

Operation Freezer Stash Is Go

I have plans in the works to spend a day with my sister-in-law (also a teacher, also works full time, also a mum) to get our freezers all stocked up and prepared for the school term ahead.  But being the driven, overachieving type I've already begun my quest for a well-stocked, family-protecting freezer.

My biggest issues around meals and motivation is the preparation.  Well, besides coming up with the ideas, and shopping, and putting everything away, and then figuring out that the meal I had planned needs to be switched a bit and getting it done.  I just still don't get it - these unreasonable people need to be fed every day.  Every.  Day.  On my worst days I think just once a day would be fine, but no.   Mr Busy has even told me it's illegal not to feed children, to which I responded that the law only tells me I have to (not neglect them, you know), not how often.  Our GP laughed at that and agreed that I was right.  There was no stipulation for how often.  So once a day then, right?  Secretly though?  I get hungry too.  Darn!

The other night when I went to buy chicken thighs for dinner I did something brilliant.  I bought three bags of thighs (from Aldi) and did the preparation - we ate one meal and I froze two more.  All prepared and in the marinade.  All that is left to be done is defrost and throw in the oven.  My kind of busy-day cooking!  Last night I was bread crumbing chicken fillets.  I made four fillets go two meals for the five of us by slicing off the tenderloin and then placing the fillet flat on the bench and slicing horizontally - two full-sized half fillets just like that.  Once prepared, those were flash frozen and bagged.  Again, nothing to do but defrost and cook.

Kicking goals all over the place!  So far I have two Forbidden City Chicken's, one chicken schnitzel, one homemade pizza dough and sauce and....I think that's it.  But I'm on my way!

A Smug Homemade Pasta

Not the best photo, I'll grant you, but this will be the best lasagna!  I am beginning my mission to protect our family from a life of pretend meat, take away and other unhealthy meals for the sake of lack of time and energy.  Tonight I'm feeling a little smug.  Homemade lagasne noodles and two full dishes of lasagne to boot.

Sunday's are slow days in our house and slow days sometimes means slow food.  The kind that takes time but tastes so good.  And feels a little bit like love on your plate.  With any lasagne the time it takes to make means I want to make two because all that time should could for more than one meal.  But today I gifted myself a glassware baking dish that can also go in the freezer.  This is going to be a kitchen game-changer!  Oven to freezer to microwave or oven again?  I think this stuff is going to be my best friend!

I pulled out my "Chicken Plan" (by Kim Tilley) yesterday and perused recipes I haven't made in quite some time. This is my school holiday job; stocking the freezer with pre-prepared meals that the kids can pull out and cook on days when I won't be home til tea time.

So far:  pizza dough and sauce, lasagna….I wonder what else I can get stocked away this week?

What are your crockpot and cook-ahead favourite meals?

Pffft to Metal Kettles

We were in the market for a new kettle last weekend.  The old one wouldn't let us open the lid anymore.  Indeed there was something rattling about in there that we couldn't get out.  And then it stopped turning itself off.  A little dangerous in a house where boys are forgetful and/or inattentive.  It's the boys who make the cuppas most often, so this became a thing.

Dh and I set off in search of a new kettle, to settle on our bench in its special little spot.  I think he thought we'd get another metal one, but I'd heard plastic ones are quieter.   As we looked, and compared, and did little internet searches on the best quiet kettles (because phones these days let you do such things!!) we discovered that I was probably right.  Apart from one fancy shmancy kettle that boasted "whisper quiet".  But this thing was so high maintenance with all the things you had to do to make sure it stayed quiet.  We are not into high maintenance.  We are lucky to maintain ourselves, our kitchen and our laundry.  We don't need bossy appliances telling us they need emptying and cleaning and hugging and loving and whatever all else that thing needed.

So we're back with a white plastic kettle.  Miss Sunshine was away at the time, so she was unimpressed when she returned.  Dh and I are thrilled.  We don't need to turn the TV up 5 clicks to hear over the kettle anymore.

We have ourselves a quiet kettle again.

Quick and Easy.....Oh the Love!

This is the meal I have not been able to make for six weeks.  A quick, simple, no-thought, done-in-moments kind of meal.  It's not that I think pre-prepared chicken schnitzels are so magnificient, it's more that they have not been an option when I have had it up to *here*.  Like at the end of a day in a Prep classroom, for example.  I have cooked almost every single meal, apart from one weekend away where that was impossible.

And so tonight we re-enter the world of my version of not cooking.  A packet of chicken shnitzels that take 20 minutes in the oven.  The only prep?  Putting them on an oven tray and putting them in a preheated oven.  The coleslow is those four ingredients.  I toss together the precut coleslaw (whole bag), grated tasty cheese and pineapple which I cut into small chunks (the tins of chunks are too....chunky).  I mix some of the juice from the tin with some mayo so it's thinner and it all gets tossed together. 

So easy.  And that's what I've missed.

Dinner is done!

Productivity Breeds Contentment

Lemons from my tree

If you've read here for a little while you might remember me mentioning my prosperous lemon tree.  Yesterday it was citrus tree day here at the Picket Fence.  We trimmed some suckers off the base of the trunk of my kumquat tree.  That poor thing hasn't fruited for a couple of years now.  I've time for marmalade making so I'm hoping all the little flowers will now have the energy to produce fruit.

Dh then went for the lemon tree.  He's a very heavy pruner and has gotten himself into miles of trouble of the years for being a little to enthusiastic.  Like the time he pruned the kumquat tree when it was flowering.  The children wisely warned him but he went ahead with his heavy-handed ways, and the poor man hasn't lived it down yet.  In any case, the lemon tree has been dragging its branches all winter and autumn with the weight of fruit so Dh thought a little trim might help it.  He brought me a bucket of fruit he'd gathered from the trimmed branches last night.  This afternoon I finally braved a look at the tree.  Even at half the height there is still a mountain of fruit out there.  The tree doesn't look too nude either.  Relief for us all!

What to do with a bucket of lemons?

"Maggie's Harvest" comes to the rescue

 

I'll take some to the friends will be New Year's Eve'ing with tonight.  The rest I might just preserve.  Maggie Beer's "Maggie's Harvest" book is the place to go for such a recipe.  I'll need some nice large preserving jars, which I think I can get up the street here in Our Town, and some salt.  That's it.  Easy peasy.  

Since tonight has been designated a dessert night, by our NYE hosts, I made a lemon polenta cake (thank you, Nigella) to take with us...more lemon usage.  Miss Sunshine was a bit stroppy because the cake has almonds and she can't eat nuts.  But there'll be other desserts to be enjoyed and one cannot live completely nut free if it isn't necessary.

As well as dealing with the lemon bounty I also needed to use some leftover pork today before it was headed for the bin.  I'm in the process of making Asian pork buns, which will reside in the freezer to be reheated as desired.  The dough requires a three-hour rise.  I'm sure that's a little over the top, but who am I to argue?  I've made a cake and now get to sit with my recipe books and computer while my foot has a rest (plantar faciitis, I think).

 

With lemon curd, onion chutney, fruit mince and pork buns stashed away and preserved lemons on the horizon I'm feeling quite content.  And the children are keeping up with my dishes.  Because that is why we have children...to clean up after us.

Post Christmas Entertaining and Cleansing

Image Credit

It seems that, with Christmas, additional entertaining tends to be the way things go.  For us it comes in the form of family members who travel down from interstate.  In our desperation to eke out a extra little time with people we love and rarely get to see, we invite them over for an impromptu meal with very little notice.

Enter Nigella.

I knew that with only a couple of hours to shop and cook Nigella would have some kind of answer for me.  Actually, it was Miss Sunshine who suggested fajitas, and I knew Nigella had a great recipe.  So we sat down to a meal which, apart from the colour of the dishes, looked exactly like the one pictured above.  Simple, easy and not too time-consuming.  Two children hate capsicum.  Three children love it.  One child didn't care.  There was some picking out and some gobbling up, in equal measure, on that score.

For dessert we had watermelon and nectarine slices.

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Today I decided it was time to find out what lies beyond my kitchen window.  Four years of build up meant a dusty, somewhat moldy view.  This morning I took out the fly screen and hosed it down, and then cleaned the windows.  Wow - there are really pretty trees, and rosemary, and chives out there.  And now I can see it all very clearly.

I could be persuaded to do a little window cleaning here and there and find out what lies beyond all the other windows too.  It might take some time.  Between reading.  And sleeping.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Do you get to the end of all your Christmas celebrations and find yourself unable to digest a single morsel more?  I didn't quite get to that this year, but a day at my parents saw me nibble my way through more sugar than I eat in a month.  Well....my pavlova, my Mum's apple pie and a mango twist on a tiramisu...what's a girl to do?  And sugar coated peanuts embody my childhood and I simply cannot leave them in the bowl.  It wouldn't be right.  And homemade shortbread.  You can see how the day went.  

I'm finding it very easy to nibble on small tidbits rather than sit down to a full meal.  Unfortunately the boys in the house don't quite agree.  I'm sitting here trying to figure out a menu plan so I can go grocery shopping (in the Aldi store that opened in Our Town just before Christmas.  Hallelujah and Praise the Lord!).  You know what?  I can't think of a single thing I feel like eating.  Because I don't feel like eating at all.  And then my tummy rumbles and I know something has to keep it quiet.  But what?

It will be 37C and 39C (around the 100F mark) on Friday and Saturday so I image something cold will need to happen.  Who wants to cook on days like that?!

What do you eat after Christmas when your tummy is tired of digesting food?

In which I plan to overcome the tyranny of the urgent...

I posted about a week or two ago about how we were limping to the end-of-term finish line.  We made it.  Just.  And now my family are rebelling and my husband is complaining about "take away...again?!".  I need to plan to do better because without obsessive organisation and planning absolutely nothing will improve in the next few weeks.  I have four weeks and three assignments to go and I already know that I go into a kind of assignment lock-down.  I get so engrossed in the most urgent things (assignment due dates) that I could easily forget I even have a family, except they are noisy and demanding when it comes to things like food.  They are just so unreasonable!  Really, who ever said they had to eat every three hours anyway?

I looked in my freezer last night and it is practically empty.  This is a distressing realisation for this bunch of food-motivated people.  So I have a plan.  Well, I'm playing fast and loose with the term 'plan', but from 8.30 this morning we'll have no electricity, so I can actually construct a solid plan and then we'll be good to go.  My plan is to put lots of stuff in the freezer so that over the next four weeks I can pull out good food rather than junk.  It will be my buffer between my time constraints and our need to eat better than we have been.

Today I will sit down and think about what I'll put in there and how I'll go about it.  For example, this week I have a casserole and a lasagna planned so that I can freeze half and voila I'll have two meals all ready to go on a whim.  Maybe I'll even do a whole-month menu plan for the first time in forever and assign the kids to cook meals.  Although with Miss Sunshine entering her final Yr12 exam period and Miss Mischief preparing for Yr11 exams just after that I think it'll be Mr Busy and the freezer stash I want to have there.

Alright....let the planning begin.

In Which Mr Busy Cooks a Two-Course Dinner

Mr Busy's homework this holidays, apart from some maths, was to plan, shop for and prepare a two-course meal for the family.  His menu was a green chicken curry and chocolate mousse.  I couldn't help but laugh every time he asked me what to do next, when making the curry.  It was a recipe he'd made at school and didn't bring the recipe home.  My response, a constant "what did you do when you made it last time?"  In any case, with my experience and his scant memories we got through.

Dh was so impressed with the results he kept asking if there was more to be had.  Mr Busy made a small, easily fixable error in making the mousse do Dh suggested he should try the recipe again...you know, to get it right.  Guess who would happily offer to be the official taste tester?

There is only one really dilemma for a budding chef of Mr Busy's calibre:  cleaning up the overwhelming mess at the end of all that fun!

In Which Mr Busy Learns to Cook

 

Tuesday night was a momentous day in life on this side of our picket fence.  Mr Busy has officially begun the journey to independent cooking.  He has been baking on his own for quite some time now, and he's been pestering incessantly about cooking a meal.  Well, he's 13 and this is the prescribed year in our Program of Gradual Release.  I decided pasta bolognese is pretty tough to butcher so that's the meal he will master.  I was with him the whole time and instructed him in every step, which he then completed himself.  The only thing that stumped him was chopping onions.  I did  one half to demonstrate and then insisted he would only learn to be independent if he did it himself.  And he did a pretty fine job for a novice.

At some point this week I will type and laminate the recipe and instructions - all of which reside in my head at present.  And then he will be all set to have a go with me sitting on the other side of the bench to engage in some relaxed and more distant supervision.

The verdict?  A very fine meal.  No one would have known a novice had produced it had they not been told and the event celebrated with exuberance and praise.

Sorry there is no spiffy, artistic looking photograph to go with this - I only remembered to take a photo as Mr Busy was putting the leftovers away!

Wrap 'n Roll

Today has been incredibly productive in many, many ways.  It's nice to get to the end of a day and feel that satisfied tired that comes from working hard.

The day began with more sushi, wraps and gluten free sandwiches.  Dh is moving his business premises for the second time in 10 years because he keeps growing out of places.  The newest place is much further away than the previous two, which have been 2 minutes and then 7 minutes from home.  The kids have all gone off to help with moving and cleaning and I offered to bring lunch.  Fortunately Dh has a small staff of five, plus our three kids.  So I wrapped and rolled sushi, rice paper rolls (I ran out of seaweed sheets), sandwich wraps and gluten free sandwiches for myself and one of the staff who also avoids wheat.  It was a long morning!!!!

I abandoned the warehouse to come home and do some cleaning of my own.  My front living room - the more formal of our two living areas - has now not a speck of dust or dirt anywhere.  I dusted and then wet-wiped and dried every surface before vacuuming behind all sorts of things.  All the furniture got moved and the carpets should have not a speck left on them.  I even vacuumed the bricks around the fire place.

And after all that cleaning and because of the septic tank man's frustrations with the cleaning chemicals people use I've ordered a couple of Enjo bathroom mitts so that I'm not using any chemicals.  Good for my sensitive skin and the septic tank!

Now I need to sit down for a bit and relax before everyone comes home and wants dinner!

PS.  I have maintained my average of Distinction for the semester, so far.  I have one result to come because my exam papers were returned late.  YAY!!!  Nine subjects left to go!

Kitchen Night Shift

I awoke this morning to a funny smell.  Given our septic adventures I sniffed a little more to determine what it was.  And then I remembered.  While I had been sleeping somewhat peacefully my crockpot was simmering away with carrot, celery, onion and the bones of the two chooks we've had this week and voila!  This morning we had stock, with almost no effort on my part!  Look how beautiful and golden that stock is.  And it tastes as good as it looks.  I have two ice cube trays plus the two containers of stock.  I am ready for a chicken stock hit in sauces and stock for soups.  I keep looking at the liquid stock containers in the supermarket and balking at the ingredients.  This has no yeast, sugar or maltodextrose - a stock I am happy to use.  I knew those Lilydale free rangers would spoil me and indeed I was correct.  They taste soooo good and there is very little liquid from them while roasting.  I usually buy the most affordable chooks I can find and they are full of extra 'water' which also seem to wash out the flavour.  Darn!

My girls and a friend of Miss Sunshine's have reaped the benefits of my holiday cookfest today.  There were pancakes for breakfast and after a couple of hours of study they were so determined for sushi rolls to be their lunch that they took themselves up the street to buy an avocado and some tuna.  So more slow food.  Simple.  So simple.  But again, one of those time consuming things I tend to avoid when life is on full speed. 

And we have decided what meal Mr Busy will learn to cook independently.  Pasta Bolognese.  We'll begin this week and then he will have lots of opportunities to practise. 

I wonder what will come out of my kitchen tomorrow?  Every day seems to bring some unexpected reason to be in there.  For now I need to clean up before we head out to visit a friend in their newly finished home.  I can't wait to see it.  I'm in love with the library, and I haven't even seen it in its finished form.  Just that there is one quickens my heart!

Using it Up: Milk

I love a good kitchen challenge of the "use it up" variety.  This week's is to use up 10 litres of milk that had reached is use-by date, which Dh had brought home from work.  So, hot chocolates and baked custard appeared on the menu last night.  I think perhaps homemade mac 'n cheese should keep some children happy at lunch time tomorrow.  And I think Miss Sunshine's friend is coming for breakfast, so perhaps pancakes will fulfill the brief of yummy substantial breakfast upon which to study as well as using up some milk.

I got busy and did some menu planning for the rest of the month as you can see above.  That is quite literally a screen shot of the typed version of my menu plan.  I love that snipping tool!  So I'm all planned up and ready to go for next week when the world begins to spin a little faster.

And the septic tank man came this morning.  The pipes are back to normal!!!  Mr Busy and Dh stood out on the deck right over the tank and watched the man do his job.  They were both entertained for quite a while!  I was eating breakfast - something that should not be combined with observing the intricacies of how to empty a septic tank!  In any case the very nice man gave us a bag of septic tank-friendly goodies like bathroom cleaners and toilet paper when he was done and my kitchen sink is now running smoothly again.  And we have a sticker to tell us when it needs doing again.  The man was not so impressed that it had been left seven years! 

More Slow Food in the Midst of the Rush

Image Credit

In Nigella's 'Express' series she has an episode entitled "Quick, Quick, Slow".  Indeed there a chapter in the book so named.  And her theory about a little bit of preparation effort and walking away while the food cooks slowly for a while is quite sound.  With dinner plans turned upside down and my early evening hours spent traipsing after children unexpectedly I needed to rethink when all the cooking I needed to do for today would happen.  I arrived home by 8.15pm and got the above Italian Chicken recipe going.  A recipe of super quick preparation time and then just letting it roast for an hour and a half.  I will take some for lunch today as I have a Uni thing all day.  While that was roasting I made sausage rolls to take to a family event for Mr Busy's class for dinner tonight.  Maggie Beer's sour cream pastry and my trusty filling of sausage mince, carrot, spring onion and egg means it's very simple but satisfyingly tasty.  By the time I went to bed my chook had been dismembered and mixed with the vegetables and the sausage rolls cooled and placed in a baking dish so it can be reheated before leaving tonight.  Today will go much more smoothly with all of that slow kitchen pottering done!

My pre-Costco freezer emptying mission was successful and it is now refilled, though not quite to overflowing.  The best deal I got was $10 off each two-pack of whole chooks.  That meant I paid only $5 for each bird.  Not just any chooks either - Lilydale Free Range.  Ohhhhh yes!  We are in for some good chicken, people! 

Finally, Frances asked about the difference between an American-style hamburger and an Aussie-style one.  I think most Aussies will tell you there's a huge difference.  When I was googling for recipes and ideas I found that most American-style burgers had lettuce, tomato slices, melted cheese and mustard.  An Aussie burger, in comparison would have tomato sauce instead of mustard, and it would be fully decked out with all of those fillings as well as pineapple, egg, beetroot and cooked onion.  In any case the recipe I ended up using for the meat patties was a real winner which surprisingly didn't have any onion in it.  And the kids insisted on pineapple.  Not so American after all I suppose!

Slow Holiday Cooking....and Happy 4th of July!!

Photo Credit

My house was reminiscent of the image above yesterday afternoon.  My clothes horse looks a little different, but I definitely had handmade fettuccine and linguine hanging on mine!  Early on I decided that if I was going to go to all that effort I should double the pasta recipe and invite some friends over to share.  I also christened my new ramekins.  Joolz suggested lemon delicious puddings and she was spot on the money!  I used both the ramekins and some oven-proof mugs to feed two families and everyone agreed they were as delicious as the pasta.  Mine looked very much like the one pictured below.

 Photo Credit

What struck me about yesterday's meal was that I really do enjoy just puddling about in my kitchen when I have the time to do it.  Handmade pasta is a time-consuming but simple meal that just suits lazy winter days that have you all cosy at home. I spend much of the year running from one end of the day to the other that I had quite forgotten how satisfying slow food is.  Both in the making and the eating.  Don't worry - there was a green salad to satisfy my new goal of including more vegies in my diet!

I know it's a tad early for those on the other side of the globe, but Happy 4th of July to those of you who celebrate it.  We don't normally take on the holidays of other countries, but we were in the US on the 4th three years ago and spent the night in Denver, CO to see some spectacular fireworks.  What we really saw was the most amazingly awesome storm.  As well as the fireworks.  I have never seen a sky so black.  It was truly beautiful in a stormy kind of way.  So tonight we're having American-style hamburgers, and we're following that with a trip across the pond and down memory lane with some bread and butter pudding Nigella-style.  I know it's not American but I have some ginger jam and I really want my freezer as sparse as it can be before I head into Costco.  In any case, if Miss Sunshine has her way we'll celebrate the 4th a few times because she really wants deep-fried mozzarella which comes frozen at Costco.  I'm inclined to indulge her just this once as it is the one food thing from that US holiday she has remembered with great fondness!

Kitchen Toys....errrr....Tools

Yesterday Miss Mischief finally got her long-begged for haircut.  Such as it was.  You know....just barely trim off what is needed to get rid of the dry split ends and a general tidy up.  She opted not to go for a thinning out this time - too much frizz. 

While we were down in the 'burbs we stepped in to 'House' to see what was on offer with such amazing sales being advertised.  And pictured above is what I walked away with.  I now have six little oven-proof ramekins.  Something I've wanted for a very, very long time and have always balked at the price.  These were about half what I expected they would be so I snapped them up.  I'll have to keep checking back for another six.  Because when you have friends over for dinner and they have children you're going to need more than 6!!!

I wonder what should be made in them first.  My gut reaction is gooey chocolate pots.  My healthy, more measured response is mango mousse.

I've been indulging in some Nigella viewing in the past day.  Who knows what will turn up in these cute little pots.