Two years on

Or, seven years since we first met.
Everything and nothing in these numbers,
a lifetime wouldn't be enough anyway!

Happy Anniversary Bear!

Husband of the Year two years running!

Resting up

This is Milo, sleeping in his hammock during run around time. He's not well at the moment, so he's resting a lot more and running around a lot less. Hopefully he'll feel better soon. He's very special to us.

Passionfruit and raspberry souffles

Adapted from this recipe by Neil Perry. I doubled it and found that it actually filled three ramekins, so that was a bonus! Unfortunately the flavour was rather muted. Next time I think I'll cook the fruit puree/juice with a bit of cornstarch to thicken it first (like this recipe by Luke Mangan), and see if that makes a difference. I've had Luke Mangan's raspberry souffle and it was totally amazing. Especially with the hot chocolate poured in.

I made some warm chocolate ganache for this too. It was A Good Thing.

Afterwards, the boys got to have a go at removing the baked on bits.







But only a little go, because, well, you know.

Frutti e fiori

Some pictures in detail of the invading zucchini plant in our backyard.
I am always astounded when I see how large the flowers are when open (in the mornings).









Tasty tasty flowers. Mmm.

The surprisingly excellent passionfruit cake

This evening, faced with two bunches of rapidly wrinkling passionfruit, I hunted around for a recipe. I didn't quite feel like a passionfruit tart, and shortbreads didn't use up quite enough at a go. What I really wanted, I suppose, was a passionfruit mousse cake, one of those things that you ever only get at classy bakeries with expensive arty decorations on that cost more than 50 dollars.

Unfortunately, I am also an impatient cook and frankly couldn't be arsed with the fuss of making the mousse. So, instead, I looked through my trusty Cook's Companion by Stephanie Alexander, dismissed 'jackie's mum's sponge cake' (made it before, too dry, eggy and gritty), and thought I'd give the Genoise Sponge a go, and What A Massive Success! I have Made a Sponge Cake! a NICE sponge cake!

This sort of domestic achievement is quite overwhelming. Next, I might just sew my own curtains! Make lace doilies! Hand me my frilly apron!

So anyhow, I am going to preserve this moment for posterity by writing down the recipe here. I tweaked it the wee-est bit and don't want to forget. If you're thinking of making a sponge cake, this is The One. As Bear says, it was fan-bloody-marvellous. The best sponge cake he's ever had, he's serious.

This is where I would put the photo except I haven't taken a photo. The cake is now sitting in the fridge divided into several tupperwares and being unattractive, so I'll take a photo next time I make it. I still have plenty of passionfruit to use up!

The Surprisingly Excellent Passionfruit Sponge Cake
(adapted from Stepanie Alexander's Cook's Companion, p. 429)

Ingredients for the genoise:
5 eggs at room temperature
3/4 cup caster sugar
50g cake flour, 100g plain flour (the original recipe uses all plain)
60g unsalted butter, melted and cooled

Ingredients for assembly:
Juice from 6 passionfruit (strain the pulp) for moistening the sponge
A glop of organic cream
Icing sugar to taste
Pulp from 2 passionfruit

Oven: 180'C

Prepare your cake tin as usual. I parchment the base and butter the sides.
Beat the eggs and sugar together in a deep mixing bowl with an electric mixer - you want to mix it for a while, the recipe says 10 minutes, I did maybe 5 or 6. it should become expand quite a lot and thicken and become pale.
Sift the flour(s) over the egg mixture and fold in gently but thoroughly using a spatula or large metal spoon.
Drizzle in the melted butter, then fold in thoroughly.
Pour into cake tin and bake for 15-18 minutes till top of cake feels springy to the touch.
It says don't open the oven door before 15 minutes has elapsed. I checked at the 15 minute mark but it was still a little uncertain. I eventually left it in for about 20 minutes in my fan forced oven because I forgot and was cleaning up, and that was fine.
Cool cake in tin for a few minutes, then turn out and cool completely.

To assemble, cut cake into half with a long serrated knife, then brush both cut surfaces with the passionfruit juice till it's all used up.

Whip the cream (however much you want) with the icing sugar (to taste) till it's softly whipped, holding soft peaks (do it by hand to avoid getting butter), and then fold in the passionfruit pulp. Lovingly slather the passionfruit cream over the base, then somehow manouvre the top layer down, and finish by sifting some icing sugar over the whole thing. Tadah! Keep chilled, and then serve to great acclaim.

Buon appetito!

Milo in the yellow submarine

All fuzzy half asleep.

Veggie garden - Summer 2008-9

This was our veggie garden, many months ago.



The climbing beans are in the middle, with dwarf butterbeans at the bottom, and two rows of carrots on the right. Corn is on the left. The zucchini are further away in the background, and there is some of the dill which grew like crazy then went to seed just like that! Tomatoes are all the way to the left, not really in the picture.

Here is a closer picture of the corn, when they were about a third their full height:



Here is an even closer look at the corn. Heheheh. Hanging out with some tomatoes, including a heirloom San Marzano variety, excellent for sauces because of the low seed content, but less flavourful than the little cherry tomatoes.



I think we used it to make this dish, which was corn salsa with baked polenta. It was so amazing I told everyone about it, then never made it again! I blame the polenta. I don't like when it spurts hot grainy goo! Still, it was super incredibly tasty!



These are the potato silos that Bear built. Unfortunately, they were planted way too late and I didn't ask, but I suspect we actually got less potatoes out of it than were put in. Also, I hear that post-potatoes the silos are now full of wonderful soil. That is, full of wormies! Good for them. I hope they are very happy doing their wormy things. *Sniff*



Here is a pretty zucchini, still with flower:



More zucchini, except the one above, of the grey variety, is actually from our neighbour's garden around the back. Their vine invaded our backyard, has surrounded our shed, crept over all our potted plants, entwined itself around a few, and is creeping up the side of our laundry area! It's just as well that their fruit(?) are so tasty! A really creamy tasting zucchini. I'd like to grow some next year, maybe a less aggressive variety (if possible).



This is Bear with one of our last carrots. They were a success this year, much less cthulhu-like, probably because they were better spaced out and maybe the soil was less compact.



E finalmente, here are some little pear tomatoes gathered together. These were an unexpected bonus, having volunteered from last year's plantings. They're also Milo's favourite. He liked it when we brought him to the plant and let him pick his own tomato.



Here is a bonus photo of Milo, because he is a sweetie, posing with his dinner dish.



Bear has been hard at work these past weeks, readying the garden for the winter veggies, including rainbow chard, kale, cabbages, kohlrabi, radishes, some wacky multicoloured carrots, various lettuces and other things I forget. We have also started composting, which makes me very happy!

All is well in our household these days. I hope y'all are doing well too!

A dopo!

Diary of an illness

Saturday. Big Wet sneezes. General air of low grade misery. Blame it on allergies.

Sunday. Mucus mucus everywhere! Require afternoon nap. Use up entire box of aloe vera tissues. Cook up a luscious veggie and bean stew thing. Unable to taste it.

Monday. Overnight, the mucus has turned a yellowish-green. Very fashionable. Yellow is very in! Wake up every two hours to dispense of nose gunk. Start coughing. Uhoh! Inhale plenty of asthma medication in the hope that it will not turn into bronchitis this time. Stay at home and proceed to burn my cheap frying pan (and eggy remains) down to charred rusty mess by forgetting to turn the stove off. Also spill contents of jar of raw honey onto rug. Do two loads of laundry (including rug) and stagger inside, winded from exertion and sunlight. Fantasize about homemade chicken soup with fresh ginger. Mmmmm....

Cheer up a little by looking at absolutely gorgeous rattie photos while drinking troublesomely-gotten ginger, lemon and honey tea.

Hmm!

A nice salad

I just wanted to write the recipe down for the salad I had for lunch today (and yesterday) so that I don't forget it. I didn't take a photo or anything, because I didn't think to do so, but it was really good. So, for posterity:

Some cherry and plum tomatoes, from the garden
A small bunch of rocket leaves from the garden
A cucumber
Red bullhorn chilli (or capsicum)
Small shallot (or half a one)
Ligurian olives

Chop up relevant ingredients into appropriately-sized pieces (finely dice the shallot).
Sprinkle over some dried oregano, pinch of salt.
Squeeze of lemon juice. Half a lemon per serve.
Drizzle spoonful or two of good extra virgin olive oil
Toss about, then add a generous quantity of fresh ricotta on top, as much as you like (I like a Lot), then sprinkle more oregano over, and grind some black pepper, and you have a really nice lunch! I especially like how the olives go with the ricotta. Both from the Norton St Grocers' incredibly popular deli section.

And now, Bear has just handed me a bowl of homemade vanilla ice cream with fresh mango and toasted almond slices. PHWOAR!

Return of the bats

One of the unexpected joys of our new house has been the fig tree, which was surprisingly prolific last summer considering its dead-like scabrous condition during winter when we first moved in. Perhaps it overheard me saying that we should cut it down because of said dead-like appearance, and made a special effort to show us that it was still alive.

Anyhow, several very pleased people benefited from our fig tree last season, because we don't actually like figs very much. They're okay, you know? But other people go mad for them and they are expensive to buy, so the fig tree made us quite happy by allowing us to give figs away and make friends and family happy. Friends and family and all our neighbourhood bats apparently, who ate the majority of the crop. Short of caging the entire tree in wire mesh, I'm not sure that we could have really prevented them from taking what they wanted!



This year, the fig has grown in masses, throwing out an explosion of bright green leaves over the first warm days of spring and then taking it from there. Luckily, it hasn't just contented itself with producing a dense foliage and plenty of little figlets have appeared as well. One was nearly ripe a few days ago, but before we could pick it, it disappeared!

Tonight, Bear and I are sitting in the study (the fig tree is just outside the window) when I hear the tell-tale flap-flap-flap-flap-CRASH! that is the sound of a bat (crash)landing in our tree. I tell Bear and he is mildly concerned, noting that there was another fig that was about to ripen. He is, however, looking at second-hand cars to buy and is concentrating hard on trying to find something cool despite being cheap, small and Japanese (my criteria). A moment later, I go to the toilet, and I hear Bear walking past. He says, I'm going to chase that bat away.

I protest. I tell him not to, the bat has to eat too!

He says, I don't want it to eat my fig.

I plead, But you weren't going to eat it either!

(Silence. I am trapped, powerless, on the toilet seat.)

Bear comes back in, satisfied. He tells me that there are other fig trees in the neighbourhood and that the bat can go and eat from them.

...

Well that was half an hour ago and Bear has gone to bed now. Which is just as well, because I have just heard another flap-flap-flap-flap-flap-flap-CRASH!

:D

Hooray for souffle!

We made a chocolate souffle!



In our saucepan!

It was light and luscious, for at least the first serving, and then it became decadent and rich and then finally too much, as we greedily helped ourselves to large seconds, polished off with the aid of strawberries and whipped cream.

Yom.

o_O

Today, I called my literature review stupid. As in, "I have to go back to work now on this stupid literature review".

Immediately, I apologised to it.

(In my head, not out aloud, I'm not performatively crazy yet!)

I think we will all be glad when it is finished.

How to write a literature review

Writing a literature review for one's phd thesis is not, as it turns out, a matter of finding everything relevant in a fairly narrow topic of study and creating a kind of annotated bibliography (as it was in honours), nor is it the gathering of everything relevant and then evaluating and synthesising the lot in a coherent back history that leads naturally to your study (as it was in masters). So far, it has been the digging up of everything you've read in the past 2.5years, finding stacks of un/half-read papers, coming across new citations that you absolutely must obtain (and then somehow read), and in an iterative process, alternating pedantic criticism (hating it - it's so superficial!) with seeing things in new light and with new insight (Oh the subtlety, the clarity!), all the while making notes in a document optimistically called thesis.doc, hoping it will all come together in the end (the END!). All the while, Not Feeling Any More Knowledgeable, but Quite the Opposite!

Why why why why why why why!

>_<

Fear and cookies

As my 29th birthday approaches, two things occur to me.

1. I have nearly used up all of my twenties, and
2. I am running out of youth!

For that matter, 29 isn't even really a 'twenty' but so much more an 'almost thirty!' (with forced-cheery exclamation mark)

No more am I going to blithely go about exclaiming how much I feel like I am already 30 anyway because of the company I keep. It's actually happening, and it is not without scariness!

In other news, I made the above peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies tonight using this recipe and store-bought Kraft peanut butter and they look great but tasted odd. Maybe I didn't mix in the baking powder well enough. Perhaps they will taste better tomorrow, but if you want to make a chocolate chip and nut cookie, I think this recipe by David Lebovitz (recipe link is to 101cookbooks.com) is much nicer.