In My Kitchen - March 2025

 

March was a unsettled month with the weather went hot and cold, just like my energy rose and dipped.  With the year passing the Autumnal Equinox, I am seeing the long light evenings of Summer  slipping away.  For my blog this means less natural light for dinner photos.  I have had busy days at work, with the technology problems being particularly bothersome and time consuming.  At home I have had exhausting late nights of life admin but occasional bursts of energy to do the fun stuff and occasional catching up on homework. One of my achievements was washing my Crumpler bike bag on possibly the last 37 C day of the season.  Perhaps that was when I had a flat tire and my bike was out of service for days until I took it to the bike shop.  I wish I fixed my own punctures but I don't!  Going into the bike shop meant an opportunity to buy a new bike seat because mine was held together by duct tape.  We have eaten a lot of salads, soups, tofu bacon salad wraps and vegemite and almond butter sandwiches.

Sylvia made matcha fluffy pancakes one morning (top photo).  I have been having a pretty consistent breakfast of chopped fruit, yoghurt and toasted muesli for over a year now.  It gets mixed up occasionally and one of the best variations was the discovery of having this combination on pancakes, with a drizzle of maple syrup.  I experimented with freezing this batter and it worked well to make the pancakes with batter from the freezer.  They made a good substantial brunch for Sylvia before doing her volunteer shift at an op shop.  I have loved having stone fruit with my muesli and for these pancakes, had some white peaches.

The matcha pancakes were good practice for Shrove Tuesday when Sylvia made chocolate fluffy pancakes with hot chocolate drinking powder.  I had these with yoghurt, plums, toasted musesli and a drizzle of maple.  Absolutely delicious.

We are a fan of Tofucado.  It is a regular inclusion in our weekday meals because it is quick, easy and nutritious.  Grated tofu is fried and mixed with carrot, avocado, and spring onions and served with rice, cucumber and toasted seaweed.  The bowl above was on a day when I added corn, lettuce and beetroot to my bowl plus a scattering of furikake. 

I have been trying to eat brown rice and it works in a lot of meals I would usually use white basmati rice.  However sometimes I wonder how much of it is sold because it seems more prone to beasties than the white stuff.  Recently I found weevils in my rice - those were weevils with wings!  I have washed and bay leaved the container but I am still wary of bags of the brown stuff.  So I have been in the habit of cooking up a kilo of brown rice for meals and leaving it in the fridge for days.  It is surprising how easily we eat our way through it. 

Another meal where we used brown rice is Spring Roll Crunchy Rice Salad. This is an excellent dish where seasoned rice is spooned onto a well oiled roasting tray and topped with frozen spring rolls.  These are baked until crispy and then served with avocado, seasoned cucumber and a creamy sauce.  It is not that difficult but needs a little energy.  It is a bit oily so is not diet food but crispy rice is amazing.  Above is a photo of my first go at the dish.  When I made it a second time and was so tired that I forgot to add the spring rolls.  Fortunately we had lots of tofu bacon to scatter on our rice and veg.  So I need to make it again with spring rolls.

I saw this Creamy mushroom and cauliflower soup on Hungry Happens and immediately added it to the meals for the week.  I added lots of celery and smoked cheese.  It was delicious but possibly one of the least attractive soups I have made for ages.  It looked like the sort of the gruel they served Oliver Twist.  But it tasted good enough to want more.  I took some to work and had it with a cheese and relish sandwich for a very satisfying lunch.

When I reflected on the photo, it shows my approach to sustainability in my kitchen.  I try to limit one-use containers and wrapping but still find my plastic tubs useful.   In an ideal world I would use less of the plastic tubs but still haven't found really practical alternatives.  A thermos for soups was good but more time consuming and got lost.  Glass containers are too heavy and smashable.  But I love my reuseable wraps for taking sandwiches to work.  Some progress but never enough.

The Kale and green pea fritters from Lazy Cat Kitchen were so good.  The photo is not the best but it shows brilliant green colour of the batter.  Even once golden brown from frying, they had a lovely green inside and were packed with vegetable goodness.  We are keen to make these again.

I bought these festive green and white gnocchi shapes in December (see the packet on this Christmas post).  We finally took them out of the freezer recently.  Once briefly boiled, we mixed the gnocchi with  cheese, cream cheese, lemon and seasoning and olive oil.  The festive shapes such as trees and stars were cute but not so obvious once on the plate.  I served them with lots of salad.

Here is the furikake that I have mentioned above.  I bought it at Terra Madre with this cute tricolour pearl couscouss.  The Kura furikake was very nice but slightly more salty that I would like but it did not have chilli so that was a win for me.  The ingredients are sesame, roasted seaweed, Himalayan pink salt, and kelp powder.  I have recently read that furikake is a Japanese rice seasoning that is generally sesame and seaweed and often fish.  We always make sure we read the ingredients to buy a vegan version but I am learning that the recipes all differ slightly.

We could not resist trying these Hot Cross Bun flavoured Kit Kat fun-sized chocolate bars.  Sylvia enjoyed them.  I wanted to love them but I was not keen on the flavouring which I found too artificial. 

I baked a Healthy Chocolate Tahini Banana Bread.  The recipe I was following from Erin Lives Whole was for peanut butter rather than tahini but as a rule I do not bake with peanut butter due to allergies in the house.  I also had a black cocoa that I used so it was very very dark.  The recipe had bananas, maple syrup and choc chips as sweeteners.  I love to taste a cake straight out of the oven and was disappointed by this one when warm.  It was a bit bland.  Once it had cooled it was really lovely and the flavours shone.

On one of the hot weeks in March we had Carrot, couscous, bean and feta salad. for tea.  Such a delicious and satisfying salad.

Another good dinner was this one of sausages, a particularly good potato salad (lots of tofu bacon, celery, parsley and spring onions) with lettuce, tomato and corn.  I took this photo because it was the first time we had used the "corn buddies".  They are such a cute way to hold the hot corn on the cob.

I really love the Voracious vegan pate from the How it all Vegan cookbook.  I make it occasionally and it never disappoints.  As it is a vegan version of a pate I am never sure how it would be received by meat lovers.  I had the chance to check when I took some down to my parents place to contribute to a lunch.  They loved it and asked me to leave some when I left.  Above is a photo of a quick meal with the pate on dark rye toast, topped with tomato slices and accompanied by lettuce, coleslaw and roast cashews.

I had a ride to Bake Alley Bakes who always produce innovative baked goods.  On this occasion I had a savoury danish with ricotta, zucchini and parmesan cheese or crumbs.  I should have written notes.  I did take a bad photo of the Just Beet It sandwich with roasted and spiced beetroots, green harissa, hummus, sweet & sour red onions with fresh herbs on focaccia.  It looked really interesting.  I also bought Sylvia a morning bun stuffed with an espresso cheesecake and a caramel frosting.  She loved it.

We recently had a great meal at Noi Pizza in Coburg (see My Monthly Chronicles February 2025).  On a Friday when I was really tired I ordered pizza from Noi.  It was the first time I had used UberEats for so long but it was a relief not to have to drag myself out to the car.  I had admired E's Sofia pizza at the meal in February so that was what we chose.  It is a fantastic vegetarian pizza topped with mozzarella, grilled zucchini, rosemary potatoes, mushrooms, garlic, chilli, and friarielli cream.  I love how there is so much in the toppings that they are not distributed evenly on the pizza.  It looks more rustic that way and gave us more choice in choosing pieces.

I have recently written a long post on our local Coburg Farmers Market.  Since 2013, I have been sharing good food from this market.  I collated lots of photos from these posts and my blog and scoured my files for other photos and have written a more comprehensive post on the market.  It was an interesting exercise.  Mining my posts for photos and writing was a good way to fast track a post on a favourite place.  Mind you, this was still a huge amount of work because I have been to the market so often.  

Above is a photo of Good Brew kombucha and Flinders Sourdough fruit bread from Coburg Farmers Market.  Good kombucha and good sourdough bread are some of my favourite things to buy from the market.  The kombucha in the bottle does not match the label because I finally remembered to bring back my bottle to Good Brew so I could get it cheaper.

Also bought from the Coburgh Farmers Market is this jar of peanut butter.  It is made by my sister's company Frankly Raw.  This is such good peanut butter.  I have always been keen on peanut butter made with 100% peanuts but this PB has convinced me of how good it can be to add a little salt.  Both peanuts and salt are sourced from Australia, which is not as easy as that sounds.  And it tastes so good that sometimes I find myself eating it by the spoonful from the jar for a snack. 

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 hand drawn header.  Thanks to Sherry for continuing to host this even that brings together some wonderful bloggers who share glimpses into their kitchens.