In My Kitchen: November 2024

The end of November shouldn't have these storms and heatwaves.  It feels like the middle of Summer rather than the end of Spring.  I am being spoilt by all the early stone fruit.  The garden is going gangbusters with this sun and rain.   The nights are long, which was just as well while our kitchen light was not working for a couple of weeks.  We have been eating well with soups, noodles, salads, and mostly managed to ignore all the festive goodies in the supermarket.  It has been a busy month that started with a scream platter and has ended with Sylvia sneaking in as much Christmas decorations around the house as she can.

Above is a bowl of the bounty of fruit available in Spring.  We are eating lots of stone fruit: nectarines, apricots and cherries as well as some berries and a banana. I recently shared easy chilled Strawberry and apricot chia puddings with granola that I made one warm night.

There has been a lot of soup for dinner and collage-making on the kitchen table.  We both love this cauliflower, potatoe and cheese soup.  I love it because I have got into the habit of buying whole bunches of celery.  I love it in a salad or just chopped for snacks.  When I make this soup, I add the rest of the celery bunch to it.  I fry the onion and celery, then add a chopped cauliflower and potato or two, add enough water (with stock powder, seasoning, herbs and mustard) to cover the vegetables and simmer until vegies are soft, then blend and then melt in grated cheese.  It is pretty easy and satisfying.

I also posted an easy Udon noodles with miso and edamame that has been made in the microwave regularly in our kitchen lately.

Since we did a great collage workshop last month, we have had a few collage sessions at the kitchen table.  This is my favourite.  It is the queen of the greens battling sugar mountain!  I'd love to find time to talk about our collaging as we have enjoyed it so much!

When Sylvia was at primary school, they had an annual trivia quiz fundraiser.  It is a while since I have been to one but I am still friends with some mums whose kids are still at the school and was invited to this year's quiz.  Each table had a dress up theme.  Ours was pirates so I made skull and crossbone pizza.  I made my favourite fast track sourdough pizza bases (v), vegan mozzarella, a tomato sauce with charcoal colouing and Sylvia made her skull mushrooms.  It didn't work quite as I had hoped but was still impressive.  The mushroom "crossbones" were too thin and the mozzarella "crossbones" were too thick.  I would like to try with a thinner nozzle for the crossbones.  Maybe next year I will try again.

I had my 15 year old daughter ring me while I was at a history talk because she could not find the vodka!  Argh! Don't judge me!  She was making vodka pasta for dinner.  At the time our kitchen light was not working so when I got home and helped to wipe up the spills in the dim light, I thought all was clean.  The next day when the sun was streaming through the window, it looked sadly less clean.

We enjoyed a couple of trips to the Rose Street Artist's Market in Fitzroy last month.  I loved this bowl with the green flowers by the lovely and talented Jade Tran.  It is always a pleasure to meet the person who made the crafts I buy.

Here are a few other bits and pieces we brought home from the Rose Street Market.  Sylvia was delighted to see the stalls of It-Atelier where she bought the sweet little gingerbread house and Moon Clayground where she got the lovely pottery acorn tree ornament.  The Australiana foodie postcard was also gorgeous.  Everything was but we just could only bring a few things home.

We love to grow cherry tomatoes in a pot over summer.  This year we have a tomato plant that went gangbusters after lots of sun and storms.  It is healthy enough it has survived some wilting during hot weather - I hope!  We are expecting a bumper crop.  You can barely see to the right of the tomato plant where we had a couple of smaller pots, also from my mum, with silverbeet and rhubarb.  It has struck me with rhubarb that when unfamiliar with a plant, it is so much harder to know when the fruit is ripe and ready to eat.

Sylvia continues to add to her garden of pots.  In fact it is taking over our table and chairs in the backyard.  It looks lovely despite it being harder to sit down out the back.

I am a big fan of minestrone.  Sylvia is a recent convert.  She brought me this Minestrone recipe to try.  I used kale instead of spinach and left out the green beans.  She loved it but she wasn't so keen on the celery still having a bit of crunch.  I love celery in a stew but it seems to take longer to cook than other vegetables. 

On another of the hot day, we made Edamame Salad with Smashed Cucumbers.  It was very green and very lovely but not perfect.  It surprised me that my favourite part of the salad was the cucumber.  In fact I wished there was more.  I found the edamame a bit much.  I think it needed more cooking to be soft enough.  And some avocado would be a nice addition.  I liked the dressing which was less spicy than intended - I only used 1 tsp of chilli paste instead of 1 tbsp of chilli oil - and a furikake garnish.  But I still prefer our favourite Pearl couscous, cucumber and rocket salad.

This photo does not show how amazing this version of Okinawa Tofu Rice.  I found a recipe in The Age newspaper weekend magazine and I loved the sound of taco rice with some Japanese flavourings.  The recipe called for minced beef so I found a vegetarian version with black beans and I combined the two recipes to make my own.  Crispy rice with melty cheese topped with beautifully flavoured beans, lettuce, tomato, avocado and spring onions.

I made the amazing Charred corn and quinoa salad with tahini ranch dressing again.  It was so good served with low carb Easy Cheesy Cauliflower Muffins.  They reminded me of years ago when substituting cauliflower rice for carbs was all the rage but these were tastier with lots of vegies.  The muffin recipe is easily gluten free.  Ours was not.  As well as breadcrumbs, we added a tablespoon or two of flour to bind the mixture.  It was such a tasty accompaniment to the salad and a great snack to take to work.

As soon as Sylvia heard miso and banana bread in the same sentence, she was making plans.  We found an amazing miso maple banana bread recipe and she baked it.  This was one of the best cakes I have had for ages.  I really loved the glaze made out of icing sugar, maple syrup and miso.  It was poured over the cake in the recipe but we used it to spread on the warm soft slices straight out of the oven.  It wasn't toothachingly sweet and went so well with the cake.

We were so amused to see a Pavlova Kombucha in the supermarket.  It had a cute label and was on special so we bought a couple of bottles and a couple more of the Merry Cherry kombucha.  The pavlova flavouring is quite subtle and the merry cherry flavouring is a bit too cherry but they are healthier than a lot of seasonal treats.  Kombucha is such a refreshing drink on the ridiculously hot days.

At the end of November we were doing an Onigiri Trail which was a great way to visit some different Japanese cafes and pantries.  At Haiku Future in Camberwell, we loved the great Japanese grocery.  So many beautiful tempting foods and cookware but it was all quite pricey.  I bought some Yuzu tea powder and Sylvia chose a packet of dorayaki (pancakes with red bean filling).  Both were items we love but are unlikely to encounter in your average shop!

And I need to finish with a festive touch and a expression of surprise at how quickly Christmas has come around.  We seems to have hit full festive mode as November has become December.  Sylvia has festooned the house with Christmas tea towels, tinsel, tiny trees, and of course a wreath on the door.  We bought this wreath last year but it needed some colour.  Sylvia found some little red berries and glued them on.  I have so much that I hope I have time to share.  Not all of it will appear on my blog. December is already shaping up to be a busy month.  What I can guarantee is that there will be Christmas posts ahead!

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 gorgeous festive hand drawn header.