lifeline book fair

So... I may have indulged in more books.

I'd say we have well over 200 books in this house. Bordering on addictive my book collecting is also an appreciation of a good read. Lifeline holds a bi-annual book fair, to raise funds for the organisation. Cheap, quality literature with money going to a good cause. Who can resist? Not me!

This was my score recently!

The big big big book of Tashi
Gordon Ramsey - Cooking for Friends. I have to admit that I had to take off the book's jacket. I couldn't stand his grinning face! (the recipes look good though!)
Pirate Girl
Where's Wally x 2
Reading Eggs Reading Pack

non-fiction
Thunder and Lightening
The Human Body
Insects and Spiders
Have You Seen Bugs
Skeletons
Where Have All the Pandas Gone?

 

Famous Five Collection
Sun on the Stubble
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
the BFG
George's Marvellous Medicine
the Twits
the Children of Cherry-Tree Farm
Bumageddon
the Borrowers
Boy Overboard
Girl Underground
Once
Lemonny Snikket's Series of Unfortunate Events
Seven Little Australians
Calvin and Hobbs comic book

Wattle Babies
Tikki Tikki Tembo
the Terrible Underpants
Our Backyard Jungle

Wanda Linda Goes Berserk
the Storm Boy picture book
I Spy books x 2

A Kate Grenville novel (for me!)
Dinosaurs
Elmer
Usborne Puzzle Book - Chocolate Island
One Blue Sock

Older Fiction
Hunger Games x 2

Where IS Wally?

tilba produce markets

It's no secret that I have a sweet spot for the Far South Coast and especially where my husband and I were married, at the base of Gulaga Mountain in a valley that nestles below the mountain's presence, Tilba. (Now of River Cottage fame)

Last weekend my grandmother (in her 70's) and her beloved tied the knot in Narooma so we managed to have a few days with family. It was a stunning weekend and our visit happened to coincide with the Central Tilba Produce Markets.

Our daughter had an ear infection overnight so when I emerged after just 5 hours sleep my eager babysitters insisted I visit the markets solo! Yippee!

This is a small market celebrating everything good - a community vibe brought about lovers of quality produce (and talent.) People have literally gathered produce from their gardens, their paddocks, their chook and quail egg-laying boxes, and sewn or pickled, crocheted and sculpted with timber. I had a few conversations with the stall holders and it was a very relaxed affair. 

If you get a chance to visit make sure you save time to have a wander through the streets afterwards, visit the South Coast Cheese factory at the end of the street and a coffee next door. Oh and have one of John's organic, gluten-free lamb sausages from Bombala. 

Trust me - you'll come away with more than you'd planned. Take a few reusable shopping bags... or baskets!

Pickles and parsley, pumpkins and kale

 custard apples

John from Palarang Organic Meats. John's approach to grasses and his farm is very interesting. John inherited his family farm some years ago and has found a method of feeding his cattle (with native and introduced grasses) according to the seasons.
Take time to have a read.

My haul from Central Tilba hall. 

narooma weekend getaway

Our kids had a ball in Narooma last weekend.

It was another stunning Far South Coast getaway. My blog post about Tilba markets is on its way!

slow cooked lamb shanks (in red wine)

A few weeks ago my step-sister and I decided that if we're to keep in contct more regularly we need to have a family dinner each fortnight. I bought some beautiful lamb shanks from the Free Range Butcher at the markets and, having never cooked them before, I decided I needed to do a bit of research about the best way to prepare them. I was worried I might serve chewy lamb and there's nothing worse!

I searched through my own cookbooks for a lamb shank recipe but couldn't find one I liked. This one from Good Food (my go-to website for online recipes and recommendations for eating out.) I didn't serve my lamb shanks with a salad but I did make a very creamy potato mash (straight from the Thermomix Everyday Cookbook). This a great dish for a cold winters night!

I did follow most of the recipe but I have to say that I was home all day so I reduced the oven temp to 150ºc and cooked them for 6 hours! It is extreme, I guess, and not necessary if you don't have the time but the end product was to-die-for!

I discovered that lamb shanks are so easy to cook! AND SO TASTY! (and best served with a good, heavy red wine!)

These are my photos but apologies - we didn't get a pic of this on the plate... you'll just have to imagine it!

Here it is:

Braised lamb shanks with mint, pea and zucchini salad

Ingredients

Author: Mark La Brooy

Time: 2 hours +

Difficulty:Medium 

Serves: 4

Special options:Nut-free

Braising
4 lamb shanks (from your butcher)
1 bulb of garlic, shelled
1 red onion, roughly chopped
1 carrot, peeled and roughly chopped
1 tin crushed peeled tomatoes (about 400g)
60g tomato paste
1 bottle of red - whatever you like
1/2 bunch rosemary
* I added 1 bunch parsley
1/2 bunch thyme
2 long red chillies
Water or stock (preferably stock) - just make sure your meat is covered

Mash
6 large desiree potatoes
100g butter, melted
100ml cream
Salt and pepper

Salad
1 zucchini, julienned (or use a julienne peeler)
200g peas
1/2 bunch mint, ripped or torn
1 lemon, juiced
75ml good olive oil
Salt and pepper

Method

1. Let's get the shanks in the oven then worry about the mash and salad. Seal off the shanks in a very hot pan (the colour you add to the shanks now will determine how dark your sauce will be). Place in your braising dish. Saute off your vegetables.

After they have started to get a bit of colour, add your tomato paste and get it caramelised, then add to shanks. Deglaze the pan with some red wine and pour over the shanks and vegetables. Add the herbs and top up with stock or water (make sure they are heavily seasoned), cover with foil and bake for three hours at 190C.

2. When they are ready, the meat is wanting to fall off the bone and the sauce is thick and rich and full of winter.
3. Here is how we make mash: Cut potatoes into even four-centimetre squares and boil in water that tastes like the ocean (a good go of salt). Cook until they can be squashed against the side of the pot easily. Strain and let steam for 10 minutes - even put them in the oven on low heat (120C) for five minutes (the trick is to get as much water out as possible so you can replace it with butter and cream). Place in whatever mixer you own and start to whip, adding your melted butter and cream. Add plenty of salt and pepper. It should be smooth and creamy and bloody yummy!
4. For the salad, in a mixing bowl add your zucchini, peas, mint, lemon juice and olive oil. Mix well and season.
Serving up
Place a good spoonful of mash on your plate then one of the shanks. Add a few spoons of your braising liquid and a handful of salad.

precious moments with family (and food)

I'm still dreaming of the lunch I shared with my husband and daughter today. These precious moments as a family are what I 'hold on to' when life gets hectic (which is frequently!)

Salad - bunch rocket (chopped)
1 carrot, 1 small beetroot, half fennel bulb (all thinly sliced with a microplane.)
half capsicum, sliced
half bunch mint, finely chopped
1 handful of pine nuts
400g tinned chickpeas (drained)
drizzle each of balsamic vinegar and olive oil
juice of 1 lemon

You can eat this as a salad on its own but I drizzled the juice of one lemon over a serving each of cold-smoked salmon and this was a perfect accompaniment (or was the salad an accompaniment to the sallmon?).

It was another stunning Sydney day here and this made us feel like we really are heading in to summer!

Have you got a trick for making family moments in the midst of the chaos?

raspberry and white choc chip muffins (& a basic muffin recipe)

This is a basic muffin recipe that can be varied depending on what you'd like to add for example, sultanas, grated carrot, a banana (and less butter), seeds, nut meal, berries, apple, etc,.

You can substitute the milk with a dairy alternative e.g. almond/rice milk if you are lactose intolerant and coconut oil for the butter.

You can also substitute a gluten free flour. 

Thermomix Muffins
makes 12-14

300g organic SR Flour

1/4 tsp sea salt

1/4 tsp baking powder

60g coconut sugar (or rapadura)

1 organic egg

1 cup (260g) organic milk (or a dairy alternative if you are lactose intolerant, or lactose free milk!)

90g butter (or coconut oil)

Variation: 

90g frozen raspberries

55g white chocolate pieces 

Preheat the oven to 180°c. Place the butter in the TM bowl. Melt on 50°c/sp 4/20 secs. Place the remaining ingredients (except the raspberries and chocolate) in the bowl and combine for 6 secs/sp 5. Be sure to avoid overmixing the ingredients. 

Add the raspberries and chocolate to the bowl. Mix on reverse/5secs/sp 5 or until just combined.

Push a whole raspberry into the tops of each muffin then cook for 12-15 mins or until a skewer comes out clean.

You can find this recipe on the online Thermomix recipe community: http://www.recipecommunity.com.au/recipes/classic-muffin-mix-raspberry-and-choc-chip/95490

wheat, nut & dairy-free muesli bars with raw cacao

These are a great lunch box idea! So many schools/preschools ask that lunches don't contain nuts. This recipe is also perfect for those who are lactose and gluten intolerant. If you don't own a Thermomix I am sure you could make these in a food processor. You would just need to use pre-ground rice flour. 

These muesli bars taste healthy but there's nothing wrong with that! 

ingredients

65 g brown rice
1 tbsp linseeds
1 tbsp chia seeds
half an apple
200 g your choice of dried fruit (e.g. dates, apricots, cranberries, sultanas, goji berries etc.)
90 g whole oats
70 g unsweetened puffed rice
25 g coconut, dessicated
1 tbsp pepitas
50 g organic coconut oil
2 eggs
50 g honey
30 grams raw organic cacao nibs
1 tbsp sunflower seeds  

method
 

1.Pre-heat oven to 180c degrees. Line the base and sides of a lamington pan with baking paper.

2.Add the flaxseeds, chia seeds and brown rice to the TM bowl and grind for 20 seconds on speed 9. Set aside.

3. Place the apple half in the TM bowl and grate for a few seconds on speed 5. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and add the dried fruit. Turn to the lid closed position and pulse on Turbo 3 times until the dried fruit is evenly chopped.

4.Return the seeds and rice to the TM bowl together with all of the remaining ingredients. Combine on reverse for 20-30 seconds on speed 3 until well combined.

5.Transfer the mixture to the prepared pan. Use the back of a spoon to press the mixture evenly into the pan and smooth the surface.

6. Bake for 15-20 minutes until lightly browned. Allow to cool for about 20 minutes in the pan before cutting in to 16 chunks. Cool on a rack before eating. Store for up to 5 days in the fridge.

You can also find this recipe on the online Thermomix recipe community: http://www.recipecommunity.com.au/recipes/wheat-nut-dairy-free-muesli-bars-raw-cacao/95370

back off. i'm the mother.

I haven't worked out what it is about a baby that compels people to comment on your parenting. I haven't worked out what it is about being pregnant that gives people the go-ahead to tell the most distressing birth story they've heard, as if you weren't petrified enough.

It is a real test of confidence, something you don't necessarily have as a new parent, when a stranger makes a remark about how you are holding your infant or what they're dressed in. Perhaps I looked like I didn't know what I was doing but I'm also short so perhaps people assumed I was 'young and inexperienced' but when our first was born I was like a magnet for people who felt compelled to make stupid comments.

Maybe it's the byproduct of that saying "It takes a village to raise a child." It sounds nice in theory but these aren't the people helping you change nappies in the ungodly hours or taking your kids to the park when you're lying in bed with the flu!

Don't get me wrong - there were many strangers that made lovely compliments about my babies. In retrospect I sometimes thought that maybe people just felt they needed to comment on something!

I remember an elderly woman coming up to my son and I in the street, in winter, with a heavy Russian accent, and saying "he's cold." He was wearing a singlet, a long-sleeved wool top and a wool cardigan. It was a cold day but he was in a lined pram with a blanket.

Another time he was strapped to my chest and a very helpful woman at the counter of our local supermarket peered in the sling and asked "can your baby breathe in there?" Of course not. I'm suffocating him. The next time I went to do my groceries I wanted to avoid a repeat of the situation so I popped him in his pram with the cover down. He was asleep. We got the groceries okay but I thought I'd just duck in to the newsagency next to the supermarket. The shop owner started to open the window at the top of the pram. "He's asleep," I told her, and she nodded then went around the front of the pram and began unzipping the cover so she could see him. I was furious!

In the early days of parenthood we had lots of visitors. Over a two-hour visit a friend of ours, with years of parenting experience (with her own children, in another era) tested my confidence. Our son had just had a sleep and he woke up and was grizzly when she nursed him. He wanted me but the friend insisted he must still be tired and she convinced me to put him back to bed where he screamed for about ten minutes. That ten minutes felt like a lifetime. And when our friend left I told my husband that I was going to go back to trusting my own mothering instincts. We would make the decisions for our son and his sleep and what he ate and when! I knew I didn't know everything but it was up to my husband and I to work out what would work for our family.

A few of my friends have the 'smile and nod' policy. I've tried to hold my tongue but, these days, with much more confidence, I just can't not respond!!

We were lucky in that our families never made comments about our parenting. They let us do our thing despite doing things differently when they were raising kids. Our sister-in-law recommended Tizzie Hall's Save Our Sleep because she'd used it with her firstborn. At four months (with many nights rocking that cot with our out-stretched legs at 3am) we put our son on to a Tizze Hall routine. This meant he self-settled (cried himself to sleep) for a maximum of five minutes for a week (then not at all) and slept and ate according to the routines. It was the best thing we did. We then knew when to expect him awake and asleep and how much sleep and food was normal and healthy.

My parents had a more relaxed routine of eat, sleep, feed (and repeat) with me and that worked for them.

Tizzie's routine was an especially significant when I had our 2yo boy, a brand new baby and my husband went away for work for six months. The day after we arrived home from hospital I was determined to put our Baby #2 on the routine. Within hours she'd settled into the routine. That approach worked for us.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Now I'm  someone with experience in pregnancy, childbirth and parenting. I'd like to think I'm not that person who makes comments where they aren't asked for. I'm very happy to share my ideas, though, if I am asked.

Have you ever been annoyed by a comment of a stranger (or a family member) or had your confidence undermined as a parent (or an aunt or uncle)? What advice would you give to a new parent if they did ask for one piece of advice?

tofu and brown rice patties (balls)

I'm posting this recipe  in time for meatless Monday. It's a recipe based on a staple in y household growing up - one from my sometimes-meat-eating-but-veggie-preferring mum. 

These are great for kids and especially good for using up leftover brown rice. 

I'd love to hear how you go with these...

Thermomix recipe 

ingredients

60g bread (toasted or frozen, in small cubes)
1 carrot
1 brown onion, in quarters
1/2 bunch parsley
2 garlic cloves
1/2 knob ginger
50g olive oil
250g organic brown rice, cooked (hot or cold)
250g firm organic tofu, broken into pieces
1 large organic egg
75g grated cheddar cheese
pepper to taste
oil, for frying (olive oil or coconut)

method

1. Place the bread in the TM bowl 10 sec/sp 6. Set aside.
2. With the blades running on  speed 5 add the onion, garlic cloves, ginger, carrot and parsley for 5 sec. Add the 50g oil and cook Varoma/3 mins/ sp 2 (MC in).
3. Add the rice, tofu pieces, breadcrumbs and mix 10 secs/sp 5.
4. Add the egg, pepper and cheese and mix for a further 20 secs/sp 5.
5. Shape the mixture with your hands into golf-ball sized patties. Add enough olive oil to shallow fry the patties and heat over a medium heat. Once the pan is hot, add the patties gently squishing the patties slightly when you put them in the pan so they cook evenly. Cook until golden (about 3 minutes each side).
6. Place on absorbent paper towel before serving.
7. Serve these hot (or cold) with tomato relish, kasundi. We ate ours with homemade plum sauce.

Food Processor Recipe

ingredients

1 carrot
1 onion, in quarters
1/2 bunch parsley
2 garlic cloves
1/2 knob ginger
60g bread (toasted or frozen, in small cubes)
250g organic brown rice, cooked (hot or cold)
250g firm organic tofu, broken into pieces
1 large egg
75g grated cheddar cheese
pepper to taste
oil, for frying

method

1. Place the bread in the food processor and blitz to make breadcrumbs. Set aside.
2. In the food processor place the onion, garlic cloves, ginger, carrot and parsley. Blitz.
3. Add the mixture to a medium heat pan with 50g olive oil and sautee for 3 mins. Return to the food processor.
3. Add the rice, tofu pieces, breadcrumbs to the food processor and mix until well-combined. 
4. Add the egg, pepper and cheese and mix until well-combined.
5. Shape the mixture with your hands into golf-ball sized patties. Add enough olive oil to shallow fry the patties and heat over a medium heat. Once the pan is hot, add the patties gently squishing the patties slightly when you put them in the pan so they cook evenly. Cook until golden (about 3 minutes each side).
6. Place on absorbent paper towel before serving.
7. Serve these hot (or cold) with tomato relish, kasundi. We ate ours with homemade plum sauce.

out n about: Lavender Bay, Sydney