In My Kitchen - November 2022

We are having an odd spring that starts with some hope of sunshine and in October we had a ridiculous amount of rain.  The rain and the floods around Victoria have been record breaking.  The price of living keeps going up.  I have recently spent too much time with the electrician, the vet and then dentist.  I have got appointment times wrong and even got so confused as to think eggs weren't vegetarian at a recently brunch.  I am just glad not to be in the UK where Liz Truss self imploded as PM and replaced by Rishi Sunak who has a very low bar to reach.  But there is progress too.  I have finally got my bike serviced and am back on public transport after too long of avoiding both.  I have made some good meals at home, had a few nice sociable meals and my new job is going well, despite some challenges transitioning from Mac to PC.

Above is one of our nice rituals we have hung onto: Friday night is pizza night!  It is a bit odd as I am not working on Fridays at my new job.  I am so used to relaxing with pizza at the end of a work day but Fridays are usually busy anyway.  On this day of the above pizza - potato pizza from Heaven with capsicum and sun dried tomato as extras - we had postponed pizza to Saturday.  I had eaten brunch at the Boot Factory with my brother and his girlfriend, then lunch with my friend Eliza at Fattie Prince.  It's a long time since I ate three meals from a cafe in a day.

I bought this packet of dried watermelon out of curiosity.  I am not a huge watermelon fan and found the dried version to be ridiculously sweet.  It is not something I can even think of any ways to use it in recipes.

Another purchase that I am not so sure about are these Brazilian cheese bread balls.  They were sort of gluggy like uncooked bread.  I am sure I cooked them long enough but as I read what I have read I get less confident of this.

We have tried some new preserved strawberries from the supermarket.  I liked the gently dried strawberries.  Even better was the freeze dried strawberry crisps.

We bought these Cookies and Screem M&Ms for Halloween.  Stay tuned to see how we used them ....

Another curiosity purchase.  They were weird layers of sweet corn chips.  Good to taste but not really something I need to buy again.

We also had to try these cheese toasties Twisties.  Now that was a gimmick.  Twisties already are cheese flavoured carbs.  They weren't as orange as regular cheese Twisties.  And there is also something wrong about the term "cheese toastie".  I am not sure of the origin of "toastie" but it is not a traditional Aussie term that is suitable for a traditional Aussie crisp.

I was pretty excited by a new kombucha flavour - raspberry and blackcurrant.  It was delicious.  Them there was the summer fruits cheese and raspberry flavoured freeze dried apples.  A pleasant reminder that summer fruit is coming.

Sylvia is already excited about Christmas, even before Halloween.  So here is some festive and scary food - gingerbread men and skull chuppa chup lollypops.

I have been cooking a bit more evening meals.  This one was a hit with Sylvia.  It is a hokkien noodle stirfry with green capsicum, red cabbage, mushroom, soy sauce, garlic, sweet soy sauce, maple syrup, lemon juice and fried tofu.  We have had it on repeat a couple of times since.

Another quick weeknight meal was this spaghetti dish.  I cooked the spaghetti with a splash of pasta water, a drizzle of olive oil, some seasoning stirred well together with a spoonful of cream cheese and a some grated cheese.  I then added some lightly microwaved red capsicum and asparagus.  This was a lovely meal.

I confess to sharing some of Sylvia's joy in the festive season.  We had an outing to Spotlight and found this star embossed rolling pin and a few miniature Christmas trees.  I am still not sure which recipe is a good one to use with the rolling pin as the embossed stars will disappear on any baking that rises.  I have seen recipes for embossed cookies but need to hunt some out.

We also found a 10 piece gingerbread house cookie cutter set.  This seems a good compromise between buying a gingerbread house kit (with pre-made gingerbread that is drying out on the shelves) and making a gingerbread house from scratch (where it is always a bit of detailed work to cut out the shapes in the right size. 

Here is the pieces as listed on the back of the packet.  It looks like it will be easier making a gingerbread house this year.  Now we just have to replace the icing piping bag that split in the Halloween biscuit decorations.

 

 

I was pleased to find a solution to going to the supermarket without a bag for groceries.  I usually have a couple of octopus straps.  When I was at the supermarket recently I found an empty box on the shelves that I could strap to the back of my bike.  The only problem was that it made Sylvia crave violet crumbles after seeing them all over the box.

I am sending this post to Sherry of Sherry's Pickings for the In My Kitchen event.  If you would like to join in, send your post to Sherry by 13th of the month.  Or just head over to her blog to visit more kitchens and her wonderful hand drawn header.