good friday breakfast

you may be looking at the time of this post and thinking that i just didn't get around to uploading my photos for a while. no, i pretty much got up at 11.15 and made breakfast. i haven't slept this long since i was a student.

this is what breakfast looked like before i cooked it.


this is what it looked like before i ate it


i know you can all work this is out, but this is it:
1. two rashers of organic bacon
2. two free range eggs
3. one gorgeous paolo's organic multi grain roll
4. salt, pepper, HP sauce

i certainly won't insult your intelligence by telling the esteemed readers of this site how you cook all of this.

i know you're not supposed to have red meat on good friday but: a) i'm not a christian b) i'm allergic to fish

a revelation or two

this evening i realised two things. but before i realised them i realised another. i realised that it's thursday late night shopping before easter and i will make my easter long weekend much more enjoyable if i did the supermarket shopping now.

then i realised the two things that are the things i realised. i realised:
1. it's easter and i am allowed... nay i am obliged.... to eat what ever the hell (sorry Jesus) what ever the heck i want to
2. i'd need to put a cardie on before i went out.

these are two very important realisations, i feel.

firstly, it meant it's not a billion bloody degrees anymore.

secondly it meant i can eat anything and know it's all in the name of religion.

cool

then i thought i might just document every thing i eat this weekend. kate on obsessive consumption (i site i just looooove) documented everything she buys, down to photos of the receipts. so this weekend i will photograph and document everything i eat. and maybe the stuff i buy too, we'll see how we go. kate's zine is called 'what did you buy today', maybe i can start another blog called 'what did you eat today'. kate's site, when she was back at uni made me think about how much useless stuff i buy, so maybe this would make me look at what/how much i eat.

anyway, i digress. this is what i bought at the supermarket today:

it came to a grand total of $44.52 (including $2.73 GST..hissssssss). i've got yoghurt and butter and milk, HP sauce (stay tuned for tomorrow's breakfast!), little chocolate eggs so i have something to offer easter guests should i have any. i got myself sour worms, from the natural confectionery company so they're almost health food. and i got two tubs of ice cream, which made up my dinner tonight. i know ice-cream for dinner. shocking isn't it. i must say, the pure chill organic vanilla raspberry ice-cream in the chichi tub at the back was $7.49, while the good ol' Golden North (a south australian company i'll have you know, just like giganis brothers who made the yoghurt) down the front was $6.37. the golden north was delicious, choc full of roast almond pieces and toffee. the organic stuff was boring as bat doo doo.

obviously, the cat food is not for me!! it's for my beautiful boys.

by the way, don't you just love my funky elephant tablecloth. i got it, and a million other funky tablecloths in the markets in jaipur. jaipur is where i had the best egg kofta i think i will ever eat in my life. mmmmm.... egg kofta

laugh, i almost fell off my stool

Mil Millington's site is not one i read terribly regularly, but when i do i laugh in that insane way that usual grips me in public places, like the jubilee line to paddington at 8.15am when you're standing up reading while hanging onto the hand rail and you lose your grip (physically and emotionally) as the train pulls into the station, and the people around you look at you like you may be mad, before you get off the train and walk into an NHS hospital. not that this has ever happened to me of course (thanks very much Geoffrey Williams).

anyway, you really should read the bit about the thing that nearly made him stop the site, scroll down, it's in really large red writing. i'm giggling insanely just thinking about it.....

deep frying, drought and a visit to the doctor

last night i hosted my round dinner party, in the company of JC and Young Jess. really it was just a coincidence that the food i had decided to make was round!

to start with we had arranchini. little balls of risotto, with a piece of mozzarella on the inside, rolled in bread crumbs and deep fried. mine were a little big, so the cheese in the centre didn't melt properly, but when done right these are extra delicious.

then we had cannelloni. equal parts of spinach and ricotta, a couple of cloves of garlic fried with spring onion piped into pasta tubes, covered in tomato sauce and cheese and baked in the oven.

i was going to do loukamades for dessert, but it was too hot to deep fry again.

Young Jess brought around the fixings for cannoli, but the shells had gone a bit stale. so like the classy women we are we just ate the ricotta filling out of the bowls with a spoon.
of course amongst all of this i totally forgot to take photos of the actual food.

as i was cooking the leftover risotto balls tonight, i remembered that when i was little i used to get a funny reaction from eating that really fatty, delicious, red chinese sausage. really, the tandoori colour i'd added to the risotto was sort of the same thing.....

..... maybe that's why i spent almost four fun filled hours in the emergency department of the royal adelaide hospital in the middle of last night with a face like some deranged monkey. it just puffed up, and the skin gets all tight and red. it truly is very unattractive.

i was so tired when i got home i just collapsed into bed and slept until about 5pm, and could go straight back to sleep right now that you very much!

but good news is at hand! very, very good news. as many of you probably know australia has been in the middle of a horrible, horrible drought for as long as many of us care to remember. for northern queensland recently this has been replaced by hurricanes and flood. for us here in the south, it has been weeks and weeks on end of blistering heat, that has made almost any type of outdoor activity totally unbearable.

but looking at the online weather report tomorrow will be in the high 20s, going down to 24 later in the week. there has also been rain predicted. oh, blessed rain!!!!! not that i'm getting my hopes up. we've been told this before and it normally amounts to about 30 minutes of light drizzle, but right now i think we're all prepared to take what we can get. BRING IT ON!!!!!

easter cakes

hurrah! the tired, grumpy BHG of yesterday is gone. and in her place (aside from filthy kitchen) is a lovely array of easter cupcakes, which will be the take home prizes after tonight's round dinner party.

I adapted the cake recipe from the february CCH entry from the cupcakery. i altered it a little to suit what i had at home, so this is how i did it:

hazelnut and chocolate cupcakes
2 cups self raising flour
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 cup raw caster sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
125g butter, cut into pieces
1 large egg
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
1/4 cup frangelico
200ml cream
1/2 cup milk
2 cups chocolate chips, or cooking chocolate finely chopped (yes, you read right 2 cups!)
1 cup chopped hazelnuts

1. place flour, sugars, baking powder and butter in a bowl and beat until nearly combined, and butter is clumped into small pieces.

2. add the egg, vanilla and frangelico. what there's only a little frangelico in the bottle. may as well drink it. mmmmmm.....

3. add the cream and enough milk to form a droppable batter.

4. fold in the nuts and the chocolate pieces

5. spoon into paper lined trays (this batter made about 18 big cakes for me) and bake at 180 degrees for approx 15 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean. cool complete on a rack before icing.

i totally made up the icing, again to suit what i had in the fridge... still to hot to go to the shops.

1.in a large bowl mix 260g icing sugar with 125 softened cream cheese.

2. over a double boiler melt 160gm milk chocolate with 60gm butter, until just melted. cool a little and add to sugar and cream cheese.

this made a fairly thick icing, but that's ok because i wanted to draw the bunnies, and eggs and chicks (yes, that's what they are) on the top. i did this with a wiltons gliter icing pen.

these cakes are very moist, i guess from the cream, and very rich with all of that chocolate. i really chose this because i had a lot of hazelnuts in the pantry, but i'm sure i'll use this recipe again.

i was a bit doubtful about wasting all that frangelico on cake batter. i ate one of the cakes straight out of the oven, while the chocolate was still melted, and you couldn't taste it at all. this morning the flavour is stronger, but i'm wondering if hazelnut oil wouldn't give the same result. then there'd be more frangelico for me! hurrah!

don't mock me!

this month i decided to join kate at the clean plate club, for the cookie carnival. in australia we don't have cookies, we have biscuits (JC the chocolate queen will argue this one black and blue with me however), so this is my biscuit entry for this month.

i would like to start by saying that the results of this baking enterprise are in no way a reflection of kate, the clean plate club or cookie carnival (or biscuit bivouac - i'll come up with a better name), in any way, shape or form. the results can rest only with me.

it was a total and utter failure.

but let's start with the recipe. raspberry swirl biscuits (makes approx 2 doz)

ingredients
2 cups self raising flour
1tspn baking powder
1/4 tspn salt
125g butter, room temp
1 cup caster sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup raspberry jam
1/2 coconut flakes
1/4 cup toasted walnuts

• beat the butter and sugar together until creamy
• beat in the egg and vanilla
• sift in the flour, salt and baking power and beat until moist clumps form
• gather the dough into a ball on the bench top. flatten and shape into a rectangle
• wrap in cling wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour (or overnight if you like)
• remove from fridge and roll out on a lightly floured surface.
• mix jam and coconut together and spread over dough
• roughly chop the walnuts and sprinkle over the top
• roll dough up along the long edge, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for another 30 minutes
• unwrap the log, discard the ends and cut the remaining dough into 2cm rounds
• place cut sides down, 3cm apart on trays covered with baking paper
• bake for approx 20 minutes at 180 degrees, or until golden on the bottom

yes, sounds so easy doesn't it. that's what i thought too.

i'm not sure if my dough was too cold, or too warm, or do dry or too sodding something, but it all crumbled and broke apart. i didn't so much roll it up as fold it over. i must say they taste much better than they look.

you know that bit in elephant man, when he says "i am not an animal.." they look a bit like that.

the photo doesn't help. it's too late, i'm too tired and it's still too bloody hot here for me to muck about with lighting so they look very dried out (as an aside i'd like you all to note the article about the heat i've linked to is from thursday. today is saturday).

on a cheerier note, i also made some cupcakes tonight. i don't have the right ingredients for the icing, so i'll let you know about that, and sunday's round dinner party tomorrow. that's right. round dinner party

damn you etsy! damn you to hell!

the trouble with etsy is you go in, casually having a look around. nothing i want here, nor here. no, no, there will be no shopping for little BHG today. then BAM it hits you - the item that you absolutely will die withoutbut they only ship to america and norway (???). how will i live with out a nervous robot tshirt? can my life possibly ever have meaning now?

of course if you live in america - or norway - you can go to dogbone art's shop on etsy and have all the nervous robot tshirts you like.

think of us here down under... ...

... ... bereft of robot tshirts... ...

.....the toast one is great too!