Gorgeous Mother's Day

I had a gorgeous Mother's Day.


Mother's and Father's Days around here normally concentrate on sleep-ins and breakfast in bed made by the kids.


This last year both girls have done a lot more cooking and it really showed how much their skills have improved in the meal they produced yesterday. Makes me wish I'd kept a record of what they made each year. I do remember a few tea and toast years, some french toast, and quite a bit of Dad help but can't remember much more.


Anyway this year there was a cup of tea followed by a delicious banana and oat smoothie in bed. 
After leisurely getting up and ready there was a brunch of pumpkin, fakin (vegetarian bacon) and caramelised onion mini quiches and salmon, dill and cream cheese finger sandwiches,    

lemon and cardamon bun and chocolate pastry swirl with a latte to go!

Finally an early afternoon sweet course of lemon and cardamon buns and chocolate pastry swirls with coffee. 


Fabulous! 

And done with no help - (and all went smoothly except the spilling of milk all over the laptop with the recipe on it which was sitting on kitchen bench!! We need to rethink this habit!! Insurance claim in, fingers crossed!)






I suspect you may see their recipes if you follow Mia's Blog. 

In the afternoon friends lent us their season passes to the netball and we saw our first professional level netball match - NSW Swifts vs Melbourne Vixens. What a game! Swifts won - just - and it was very exciting with a great atmosphere. Always good to try something new. Ian even one a lucky door prize at the after match members event. 







Thank you Gorgeous Girls and Lovely Husband. It was a great day!
Nicola / Mum

Brunch for a cool Autumn Morning

Do you know the "Australian Crawl" song "Beautiful People"? It's a classic piece of Australian 80s Rock from my formative years. It has 2 lines that come back to me from time to time - "Beautiful People - their garden's full of furniture, their house is full of plants" which I just like and "They've got friends who just flew in from L.A." And I sometimes do have those friends - 2 of my very favourite people came for breakfast on Saturday morning - fairly fresh off the plane from LA - Merran, a friend from high school and her nearly one year old baby, Oliver. We feel a special bond with him because we were staying with them when he came home from hospital and for those first few days which was very special.


They came early (due to jet-lag body-clocks and a busy schedule of people to show Oliver to on his first trip to Australia) so I guess it was actually breakfast.


We started with freshly squeezed orange and pineapple juice (well really we started with a round of enthusiastic hugs - but you want to know about the food I expect)




Then we had a fruit and yoghurt breakfast entree.

Honeydew melon, kiwi fruit and fresh figs with greek yoghurt drizzled in honey, whilst playing with Oliver on the rug. 










Next was breakfast main - Eggs Florentine with fried roma tomatoes. I haven't made Hollandaise Sauce since catering college - but will definitely do it again. Found a very detailed recipe on taste.com.au which worked really well. Had one dash to the sink for cold water as the eggs appeared to begin scrambling - but rescued it! So there were:
* toasted wholemeal english muffins, 
* 2 bunches of English Spinach washed and very quickly wilted in melted butter while still a little wet - (I love the colour of the spinach) and then put in a seive for a few minutes to drain)
* poached eggs from our chickens
* lashings of Hollandaise Sauce on top! I used the recipe above, except that I used a white wine vinegar reduction instead of water as the base.


There was also some Roma tomatoes, diced and slowly cooked with salt, pepper and olive oil for the side. 


We took a break to introduce Oliver to chickens and a trampoline - both of which were a hit and then he fell gorgeously asleep on the rug.


Finally Mia made fabulous Ginger Scones for Breakfast dessert with a pot of T2 French Earl Grey Tea. Delicious! I think you'll be able to get the recipe for them on her blog some day soon.

A great way to start the weekend!!


Nicola

Ethical Shopper

We try to make the world a better place in little everyday ways where we can. I don't pretend we are making anything like the impact we could - but we, like many, are on the Western Treadmill of work, school, housework and not too much else and this is one area we can manage right now.
Spending our money where it does the least harm and possibly some good is our aim.

I try to stay out of supermarkets a lot. I buy fruit and vegetables through a co-op (Harvest Hub) which tells me who grew my fruit and where. We grow some of our own citrus and herbs. I buy very little meat - and only free range or organic. I buy sustainable fish types from a proper fish shop and very little tinned fish. We have our own chickens for eggs. We make a lot of our own bread and other baked goods. We make some of our cheese and yoghurt. And if we weren't so firmly on the treadmill we would make and grow a lot more.


When I do need to shop in a supermarket, I try to choose one of the smaller chains, Franklins usually, and I choose brands and support businesses that behave ethically. To simplify this I use an App called "Ethical Shopper"
This was slow early on but quickly I came to know the brands to choose and those to avoid and now it's fairly simple.

Sometimes you come up with products that are difficult and have to make some compromises or changes. For example, I now buy most cosmetic and toiletry items at chemists, health food shops or department stores where I get a better range of options - I discovered the massive range in supermarkets really only comes from about 3 companies.

Sometimes I compromise - I buy some fair trade chocolate from a company that has some black marks for it's other chocolate products - but figure the fair trade purchase and message is worth it.

This almost always means we pay more for things. But we are comfortable with that.

It's small - but across a whole year of eating it must make a difference - and if I can influence someone else to adopt it, and they can influence someone else etc- the difference may become big enough to change some business and farming practices!

Off my soapbox and back to my cooking now.

Nicola

Pumpkin and Sweet Corn Frittata for a days sailing (in the rain)

In the dying days of the long summer holidays we were invited to join some friends on their yachting holiday for a day! We were to bring lunch (for 10), they took care of dinner.


We had eggs overflowing almost falling out of our refrigerator (from our reliable flock of 4 gorgeous chickens) so I decided to make a frittata.

I baked pumpkin, cooked sweet corn and chopped shallots and arranged them around my favourite frittata pan. (These were the vegies I had on hand - but many would work - we commonly use sweet potato or semi-dried tomato, sometimes caramelised onion, fried mushrooms, char-grilled zuchini or eggplant, basil. Meat eaters could add ham also.)

I topped it with some of my homemade ricotta (but you could use any almost any cheese here)


I cracked 12 eggs and whisked them with a little milk, salt and pepper and poured if over the vegetables. (I sometimes use cream but I didn't have any on hand)

I baked it for about 45 minutes on 180C. (I would have preferred on hour at 160C but was sharing the oven with Ian's sourdoughs.)

We served it with a green salad and a grainy sourdough Ian had baked. It was all eaten and enjoyed.

Ian's batch of sourdoughs - we took the large one on the left.

The day, sadly, rained heavily from beginning to end!! What happened to Sydney's summer!!! But it didn't stop lots of swimming, dam building, sailing, rides on the doughnut of the back of the boat, much fun and of course much eating!

Nicola