Dinner from Hamburg

Well, not really from Germany... We got home early from school/child care today (4:30pm instead of the usual 6:30pm) so I decided to cook hamburgers for dinner (mostly at Dante's request). I didn't have all the ingredients - Dan had to get hamburger buns on the way home - but I made do.

500g beef mince
1 carrot, grated
Handful of mushrooms, finely chopped
1 large onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 slices old bread, soaked in water until really soft then squeezed out
½ packet French onion soup mix
1 egg

Sauté onions and garlic until slightly browned.
Put everything into a big bowl and mix well.
Shape into patties and cook in a fry pan until done.

Serve on toasted buns with cheese and lettuce from the garden.
And tomatoes if your family will eat them. Mine don't so I had to go without.

Sorry, no pictures.

A hit with the boys. Elora "helped" and hence knew about the hidden veges and refused more than a mouthful of the meat. Ate lots of bread and cheese though!

Cinnamon+sugar+butter=yum

I recently discovered the blog of Jo from bubala who is also a mother of three here in Sydney. Lately she has been making bread and the other day she wrote about making cinnamon scrolls. They sounded just too delicious and too simple and easy not to try making them myself!

So yesterday (my day at home with Elora) I made up a batch of dough and in the afternoon I made the scrolls. I probably used more butter than Jo and forgot the sultanas but it didn't matter.


They turned out wonderfully! Soft but not too soft, sweet and cinnamony and delish. We had them for dessert and the kids demolished them in no time. "Mmm. They're like doughnuts!" Atti said as he reached for his second.

They were so good I decided to make another batch this morning and took them to work. I remembered the sultanas this time and used a little less butter and a little more cinnamon. They weren't bad either. We demolished them too!


Thanks, Jo, for the inspiration!

YACS (Yet Another Cake Stall)

Yesterday the P&C at the boys' school held a cake stall at the local Farmers' Market. Success, of course! I was only partly involved, in that I was there from a quarter to eight in the morning until we closed up just before 1pm. And collected all the money (since I somehow got talked into taking on the Treasurer's position). And was up at 4:30am making scones.

Sounds like a lot but it wasn't really. All the other organising was done by a bunch of much more efficient and organised parents!

Something that always surprises me (although I'm starting to get used to it - but must not take it for granted) is the amount the parents at the school pitch in. Only a handful come to the actual meetings once a month but when we put out a call for help we are inundated with offers.

This time we were inundated with delicious home-made baked goods! Yum yum yum.

It was a cold and bleary day. Bucketed down with rain in the first hour or two. And yet the crowds came. And everything was sold.

A friend has called me "the queen of cake stalls". I seem to be involved in a lot of them! Well, who doesn't like cake, huh?

Gourmet cooking? Not tonight.

After all the recent baking, I really am a bit tired of cooking. And cleaning! So tonight when Atti suggested we have tinned spaghetti for dinner I was happy to oblige. Tinned spaghetti and baked beans, just to add to the variety. And toast with butter.

Well, the kids ate it, that's the main thing.

Tomorrow I'm thinking of trying this.

A terrific success

Wow. The cake stall this morning was amazing. In all the years i've been doing this I have never seen it be so successful. I didn't really do much with this year's stall. It seemed that it was all organised well and I was glad to take a step back. I simply baked and ate and sold a few. The stall made nearly $900 in 3½ hours!

Afterwards I had a fairly pleasant day at work followed by a wonderful night meeting up with some crafty peeps. Does pulling apart some knitting that I'm unhappy with count as starting a new project??

Bakin' time again

Last year I got busy making cup cakes for the annual child care cake stall. Tomorrow it's on again! I've been busy all night making banana cup cakes with cream cheese frosting and a new recipe - Chocolate Mud Cupcakes from this book.

As an aside, have you heard of BetterWorldBooks? A great place to buy books online - new or used. Good prices, excellent shipping fee and to top it all off, part of the takings (maybe all of them?) go towards funding world literacy.

Sorry, no pictures tonight. I'm so tired I can barely stand up. Icing these guys will have to wait for the morning.

Gettin' my bake on

The oven has been running hot here, lately! (Arf, arf)

It started two weeks ago. A friend at work brought in scones for afternoon tea on Friday. Hmm... I love scones with jam and cream, if you recall. So that weekend (which incidentally happened to be the Mother's Day weekend) I made three batches of scones. They weren't great - the first batch had too much milk, the second was better but didn't rise as much, the third better still. But I had cream and jam and was going to take them down to tennis (our regular Sunday fortnight family tennis gathering) except that it poured rain. So we had three batches of ordinary scones to eat. Ack! I'll get better with practice, I'm sure. If we can face them again (of course I can!)

Then we had a cake stall at child care. I think my fifth or sixth? Getting better at organising them, I have to say. We had a terrific response from both parents and buyers. Lots of delicious treats to sell, lots of helping hands, lots of willing purchasers. We made about twice as much money as I expected - a resounding success. My contribution - a couple of dozen cupcakes and the same number of chocolate crackles (which were actually made by Dan!).


There was, of course, The Dinner. Incredibly, we had the kitchen pretty much completely cleaned up by mid-morning the next day. And on Sunday I couldn't shake the baking bug. I made banana+choc-chip cupcakes in the afternoon while the kids were napping, on a whim. From scratch, too :) Yay! They were delicious. Even my father said "not bad". Especially warm and fresh.

I didn't take any pictures, unfortunately.

I wonder when I'll lose the baking bug. Perhaps when I run out of flour?

Markets and dinner

The weekend's planned trip to the Finders Keepers Markets was heartily disappointing. Not because the markets were no good, but because we didn't get to go. Even more disappointing because when I read some blog posts about it I hear that it was a terrific success.

The reason we didn't go was a good one, though. It was Dan's birthday on Friday and I decided (copying a friend's idea) to have a surprise dinner party for him. I'm always doing this to myself. Have an idea for something simple and it turns into something huge! Just a few friends turned into dinner for twenty-one (including the kids).


A few dramas in the lead up - I had to work, Dan took the day off work, I couldn't leave work early enough and then got stuck in traffic and didn't get home until 6pm!! Dan ended up putting the meat on, my mother did more meat and the potatoes and my mother-in-law and I did the rest. We didn't eat until 8pm.

The best family shot of the night! Note the delicious passionfruit + chocolate gelato cake. I couldn't find a 5 candle so 4+1 had to suffice.

But all in all, it was a fabulous night with good company, lots of food and a lovely relaxed atmosphere. Nothing formal. But my friends don't care about that sort of thing. Dan was quite happy. The kids were fairly well behaved.


After dinner they took themselves off to the lounge room and flaked out in front of a movie until I was able to get them to bed - at 10:30pm! So late! No wonder we were a wreck the next day and missed the markets! As evidenced by this picture. Atticus, fast asleep on the lounge, just before lunch.


I don't think I will be doing it again for a quite a few years, even though it was a lot of fun. The markets, though, will definitely NOT be missed again!

Today's culinary lessons

1. Tang + tea = orangey tea. Okay, but nothing really special. Maybe I needed more Tang.

2. Tang + tea + milk = BAD NEWS! The milk curdled. Really badly. Who would have thought it? It smelled horrid, too!

(I've been busy, as you can see)

Atti at the park

D: Atti, what are you playing?
A: I'm playing "Cross and Knockers".

Dan took this video a couple of weeks ago while he was at the park with the kids. It was so cute that I couldn't not share it!

We had a quiet day at home today, the kids and I. We did pop out for lunch - my parents took us to the RSL club for lunch (which was a good and bad idea...). Naps after lunch (including me and excepting Dante who played on the PS2 instead). Made a cake to take to work tomorrow - the same Blueberry Butter cake I made for Atti's birthday this year, and also attempted a couple of months ago which really bombed... I didn't blog about it at the time but I should have. It looked terrible, the texture was thick and chewy, but it tasted okay! (We all had a great laugh about it... especially me, utterly embarrassed about it all.) This is the third time around. Still not as happy with the look of it but we'll see what happens when we cut it open tomorrow. Hopefully I will redeem myself.

P.S. Does anyone else adore Ewan McGregor as much as I do? Currently listening to him on the Moulin Rouge soundtrack. What a voice!

Aussie Day long weekend

What's that blur? You might ask.
Well, it is Billy Bragg live on stage at the Metro Theatre in Sydney. It was taken with Dan's mobile phone camera, and a lot better than the ones I took with my phone!
Yep, we had a night out. Got Dan's sister to come and baby sit (with help from my mother and Dan's mother, too). And we had a most delightful evening out seeing my most favourite singer/songwriter in the world. We even got to catch some of the support act, kept secret as a surprise who turned out to be The Nightwatchman (Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine doing his folk solo stuff). So great!

It did make me feel old, though. Billy's been around for many years, well before I even knew what folk/rock music was. I've liked him since 1991*. His audience is fairly varied but I reckon the median age would have been 35-ish. I always enjoy watching the crowds at gigs. (And I love this new law which bans smoking inside venues and pubs. Clear air! Not coming home stinking of smoke!) Billy Bragg gigs certainly do have an interesting and varied audience. But anyway, it felt absolutely wonderful to get out to a gig. Happy, happy, joy, joy.

[* I remember the first time I heard of him. I was at Circular Quay with some friends and we were chatting to a cute British busker (as teenage girls in a pack do, right?) and he was really keen for us to request Billy Bragg. We didn't. We requested REM. But then he played his song anyway.]

The following day we had "just a small family lunch" to celebrate Atti's birthday. Three years old! I didn't want to do anything big. Was actually thinking of just having a cake for afternoon tea. But then, you know how things go...

Small family lunch = huge roast dinner for 20 people. That's the way we do things over here.

Atti was absolutely delighted! When the cake was set down in front of him with three candles he grinned ecstatically, so pleased with everything. We had a paddling pool in the back yard and the kids had a grand time. Ice-creams were et and fun was had. It was a very pleasant afternoon. His best present was a kitchen set and toy food from Grandma. The kids (mine and their cousins) had to be dragged away from it at the end of the day. So perfect for him at the moment. I bought some of those wooden "cutting" food items (stuck together with velcro) and they were a great hit, too. I have to say that the cutting simulation is very satisfying. :) (Elora was asleep at the time so missed out on being in the photo.)

The cake. Blueberry butter cake (I try to avoid chocolate cakes for kids this age) from a Bill Granger recipe. Doesn't look like much, but tasted divine hot out of the oven with a good dollop of King Island Cream. Yum. I made it all by myself. It almost ended in disaster because I didn't have the oven hot enough, but it worked out in the end!

Fruit salad, yummy yummy

Today we celebrated our belated Aussie thanksgiving. Much like last year except with TWO enormous turkeys this time! Yummo.

We brought our huge fruit salad, as per usual. Instead of going to the local fruit shop I went to Sydney's biggest produce market with my mother early yesterday morning.

Oh how I love the markets! I have fond memories of accompanying my mother when I was little - with the enticement of having a doner kebab for breakfast/early lunch. And it was just as terrific now as then. Aisles and aisles of stalls filled with vast amounts of fruit and vegetables. Plus the fish market down at one end as well as a deli section and the odd kebab van, still there after all these years. I wish I had brought my camera with me. So many colours! And the smells! Delicious.

The part I love best is the "exotic" section. Well, not so exotic to some, but new and interesting to me. That's the Fijian/Indian section with their baby eggplants and fresh okra and I don't know what else! This time of year is great because all the summer fruits are coming in (hmm... cherries, white nectarines) so the variety is huge. I loved the stalls selling just mushrooms, too. So many types! All fresh and undoubtedly yummy.

I tried not to go too overboard, but wasn't overly successful. Who can resist strawberries at $1/punnet? Trouble is, you need to buy an entire tray to get them at that price. I think we're doing well - we only have 7 left (out of 15).

So, yeah, now we're swamped with fruit. Our fridges (yes, we have two) are full and that's after Thanksgiving. The challenge to eat it all before it goes bad is on. I'd say we're doing all right. My boys (and the girl now) lurrv their fruit. They're going to be getting heaps of it this week. Yay!

Poor sick baby

Elora's got the miseries at the moment. She woke up every 3-4 hours last night and I was completely zonked today. Managed to have a nap in the middle of the day... which caused me to get behind schedule for everything else!

At least I finally managed to choose a new oven. My old one died, oh, in August... and I've been making do since (read: using next door's oven) but it's about time we replaced the thing. The only problem, I discovered, is that they just don't make them like they used to. Have you seen inside these things lately? They are tiny! How is one meant to cook a huge roast plus vegetables in one of these modern ovens? My old oven is 60cm wide externally, but inside is 50cm! New ones are 60cm outside but only 43cm inside (at best). My big dishes won't fit.

So my mother and I searched and searched. Found a couple that were almost big enough but not quite. In the end we decided to get a 70cm wide Miele one which is 53cm wide inside. Yay for compromise!

Now off to bed.

Cooking skillz

After reading Karen's post about making wontons I've been keen to do the same (not necessarily with the kids, though)... so today I finally had a chance to make them for our dinner tonight! I'd had the ingredients since last week but only had time to actually put it together today (and a bit on Saturday).

They turned out really well. I was delighted by the "Oh, yum!" exclamation from Dante (and echoed by Atticus) when I put them on the table (with noodles and soup). I didn't do it exactly the same way as Karen did - made with prawns and pork, ginger and water chestnuts, boiled, not baked. I even worked out how to fold them properly (after a few tries). As you can probably guess, I'm not that great a cook - don't try new things that often (and with a mother-genius-cook right next door I've never really needed to). So, I'm pretty proud of my effort tonight. And the fact that I know how to do it now!

Wonder what I'll try next. *grin*