In My Kitchen: June 2025 (and the upheaval of painting the house)

June has been an unsettling and exhausting month with getting the house painted.  We had easy familiar meals: baked potatoes, vegan omelettes, sushi salad, tomato orzo and the occasionally peanut butter sandwich.  We also ate out a bit more than usual and had more takeaway meals in our kitchen. 

Our energy was directed into packing up and moving back in.  I will write more about the painting later but here is a taste of the chaos.  I will also soon write up My Monthly Chronicles with all the eating out we did instead of eating at home.

The above sandwich of warm leftover okonomiyaki topped with cheese, tomato, and lettuce was an excellent quick meal.

We went to see Wes Anderson's The Phoenician Scheme at the Pentridge Palace cinema.  The design in te film was a sight to behold with lots of whimsy and humour.  It made the film wonderfully entertaining despite the slight and confusing plot. Afterwards, we bought our favourite sweet and sour eggplant at Lucky Little Dumplings and comforting spinach and cheese pasties and the best pesto arancini for the freezer.  At home I had a loaf of oatmeal bread from Bake Alley Bakes that was purchased with an amazing rhubarb danish and a decadent peanut butter cookie.

I had this fantastic eggplant and seaweed salad sandwich with furikake, rocket and kewpie mayo for lunch with the lovely Bake Alley Bakes bread and Lucky Little Dumplings eggplant.

We didn't try many new recipes but found a new favourite: this simple marinated cucumber salad.  It was excellent on this plate of rice vegan omelette, and leftover sweet and sour eggplant.  The salad was so good that we have made it a few times since and I will post about it soon.

Another trip to Bake Alley Bakes found me coming home with a Sourdough high top loaf, a tahini and chocolate scroll and a s'mores bear claw.  I loved my scroll more than Sylvia liked her bear claw.  She was not so into the dark chocolate as she is more a milk chocolate kind of gal and not a huge marshmallow fan.  It just looked so amazing I could not resist it.  And of course the pastry was so good.

Sylvia made an old family favourite from my childhood: Chocolate pudding.  This warm self saucing pudding is such great comfort food on a cold dark winter's night.  This photo is from the next day after I put some pudding in the freezer for later.

Continuing on the childhood comfort food theme, I could not resist this Chokito muesli bar.  It was a good quick snack for work when I was out of home.  And they were delicious with great chocolate flavour and a pleasingly chewy flavour.

There were too many boxes this month.  Shadow enjoyed the empty bookshelves, when he was not climbing over boxes.

This is a quick lunch while packing: cheese on toast with red capsicum, celery and cashews.  It was very satisfying.

Another easy meal was baked potatoes with cheese, coleslaw, lettuce and tofu bacon.  We had leftover tofu bacon and leftover baked potato when we had pizza the next night.  I added baked beans to mine .  It was so smoky and satisfying.  I usually line my pizza trays with baking paper but had packed it so I had to use some used foil I found that had not yet been packed.

While packing, I found that the best place to get used boxes was the KFL supermarket in Coburg.  As I was there taking away their used boxes, I also purchased a jar of their furkikake.  Only one of this brand of furikake rice seasoning mixes is vegan (sesame seeds and seaweed).  Sylvia loves it.

This photo of our newly painted kitchen shows why we haven't had too much cooking at home.  There were too many boxes, too few days with a kitchen table and no light for the latter part of the month.  No light when it gets dark at 5pm makes the kitchen rather gloomy.  Finally we got the long fluorescent globe in a precarious position to get it working and then it smashed to smithereens on the floor when it fell the next day.  Fortunately no one was under it.

I have tried to be very sparing in buying new stuff while having to pack everything.  Even so, my self control faltered when I saw these beautiful giraffes and a retro bread and butter plate in a Vinnies op shop.  It wasn't great to have to add the to my suitcase but I love them both and am happy to bring them into our newly painted home.

While cleaning the house after the painting we had a takeaway lunch from Tylers Milkbar.  I had a hearty Moroccan Harira Soup with chickpeas, lentils and brown rice in a warming spiced tomato broth with preserved lemon.  It was good soup!  Sylvia had There's a Leek in my Toastie with  stracciatella, sauteed garlic & leek, Swiss cheese, house pickles & dill, plus tofu bacon instead of the ham.  She also loved her generous slice of blueberry crumble cake.  I tasted it and it was every bit as fantastic as she said over and over!

We were at Tylers because Sylvia is a fan of Alex Barrington's artwork.  Alex co-owns Luthers Scoops and does the artwork for their posters.  She also had a small exhibition called Art is life but you can't eat it at Galleria Crocodillo.  We bought a few of her cards when we went to the exhibition near Tylers.

I love the fun worlds that Alex Barrington creates with food in her artwork.  This is another of the cards we bought.

My parents and brother have been fantastic in helping me pack up furniture and boxes and return them to the house after the painters left.  This is a lunch we had when bringing everything back into the house.  I could not have done it without them and a family friend.  My mum did some delicious baking and brought along a zucchini slice, Davidson plum cookies and a plum crumble cake.  (The plum crumble cake was generously made by my mum as requested by Sylvia after her crumble cake from Tylers - it was so good!)  Sylvia and E went off for superb focaccia, choc chip cookies and a chocolate scroll from the new Beit Sitti in Coburg.  We are keen to go there soon to eat in.

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.