In My Kitchen: June 2026

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It is winter,  The solstice has just passed and the weather is chilly,  Yet June seems confused with trees finally bearing their autumn colours and daffodils flowering in the front garden!  In the kitchen we have had lots of colourful bowls of food.  It was a month of check ups - a bike service, a car service and a dentist check up.  Shadow had a slight rise in his proteins on a routine test but we were very relieved that the vet was alert but not alarmed about his kidneys, especially when we heard that the 6 year old cat next door died suddenly of kidney failure.  The Coburg History Society's Bluestone cottage closed for renovation in May and my volunteer work there has pivoted into packing up the content.

We have been out and about and I will write more about this soon when I post My Monthly Chronicles for June 2026.  This month I have posted about Aboriginal Street Art for Reconciliation Week, the Miss Fishers Murder Mysteries Tour, the Home": art installation by Rone at Chadstone Shopping Centre, and wonderful scrolls at Roll Bae.  

After visiting Roll Bae, we crossed Moreland Road and Nicholson Street to peruse Wakim Antiques (10 Nicholson St, Coburg).  I loved the eclectic cluttered display of old furniture and brick-a-brack from estate sales etc.  I fell in love with a c1930 Royal Wilton Green Tiger Lily Breakfast Tea Set.  It was green with pretty little details and a ceramic toast rack as part of the set.  I could not resist buying it to sit in my glass cabinet in the my kitchen.

 

I continue to eat this home made toasted muesli for breakfast with fruit and yoghurt most mornings.  It is a great way to make sure I get fruit into my diet.  I love how the fruit changes with the seasons but the apples I've been eating in the cooler months take longer to eat that the softer summer fruit.  Recently I have turned to eating banana with the muesli.  When I was a kid we always had sliced banana on cereal.  As an adult I am finally understanding how easy it is to slice and serve.  Banana also paired with well with the arils from pomegranates that were grown in my mum's garden.  Those mornings felt fancy.

When we bought sticky rice, I had no idea it had to be cooked quite differently than the rices I usually cook.  Sylvia had a go doing it the traditional way that involved soaking it overnight and then steaming it in cheesecloth.  I had no patience for this and found a method to cook sticky rice in the microwave (rinse a few times, cover 2 cups of rice with boiling water, microwave covered with a dinner plate for 7 minutes, stir and return covered for another 3 minutes)  I have tried it a few times and it works fine.  Above is a very good rice bowl with sticky tofu, broccoli, cucumber, edamame, grated carrot, pickled onions, pickled ginger, sauerkraut.

Our cat is a curious little boy.  Shadow loves an open door in the kitchen.  Look at him inspecting the fridge.  I think he is looking for his beloved cheese.  

Shadow also appears whenever we are making pizza on Friday nights.  He loves to sit on a chair and watch, especially when I get out the cheese.  Sylvia has tried to interest him in her vegan cheese but he turns up his nose at it.  He knows what he likes!  We have been enjoying chopped baby spinach on our pizzas recently.  Sylvia likes it with sausage, schnitzel and olives, while I like mine with mushroom, red capsicum and olives.  Both of us have tomato sauce and cheese!

The ants are driving me crazy!  They came out when it rains.  Lately they have been in visiting in such numbers that I have put down traps which are now see-through.  It is fascinating and unsettling to see how many of them have been in the trap to take the poison back to their nest.  Then the next time it rains they increase again!  (I am sure killing them will throw nature out of kilter but I can't have so many in the house.)

It was frustrating to come home after work to find that I could not get in the back door as the door knob would not turn properly.  I tried many things including the credit card trick but it would not budge.My dad came to help out with his hacksaw and we are very happy we can go through the doorway out into the back yard again.

Tempeh is amazing!  I am so glad that Sylvia has finally come to love it.  Above is how she served her first go at frying tempeh with a marinade.  It was really good.  Served with a couscous salad and freekah salad from IGA, cucumber and spinach leave, pickled onions and sauerkraut.

We visited the vegan market at Coburg Town Hall and I bought home a vegan pork floss bun from Better Now Bakes.  I am not familiar with this sort of Asian bun.  The taste lots of umami with mushroom floss that was really savoury and stuck on with mayo that was oddly sweet, all on a soft bread roll.  The roll was so good and the savoury and sweet flavours were odd in a good way.  The bun looked hairy like a muppet (think fozzy bear) so I added some olive eyes to amuse myself!

Probably my favourite new recipes I tried in June was Meera Sodha's Vegan Broccoli, Fennel, Chickpea and Orzo Stew.  I would like a bit more fennel in my diet and this was a good reason to eat it more.  So delicious!  I made a few changes: I upped the orzo to 250g and added 1 tsp apple cider vinegar, 1 cup peas, 3 leaves of kale and about an extra cup of water.  It had lots of greens, a an amazing creamy sauce that had added fennel flavour.  We had the leftovers with tofu scramble, lemon dill quinoa casserole and pickled onions.

 

We've had lots of colourful meals (clockwise from top left):

• Mexican spiced rice with seasoned black beans, air fryer roasted cherry tomatoes, pickled red onion, lettuce, pickled purple cabbage, red capsicum. We have been having the spiced rice in rice bowls so often that I posted it this month.
• Bean Miso Pasta with peas, roasted pumpkin, broccolini, pickled onion.
• Meera Sodha's Sprout Nasi Goreng with corn, fried tempeh and pickled cabbage.  I really liked the idea of brussel sprouts in the nasi goreng but only had half the sprouts so added kale and peas.  It was quite mildly flvoaured (even with amping up the seasonings) and I suspect would have been better if I had bothered to follow the recipes and marinate some of the sprouts to serve on top.  
• Bean Miso Pasta with broccolini, peas, tofu bacon, pickled onion and sauerkraut.  Now Sylvia is making the bean miso pasta with a handful or two of spinach so it is green.

 

We can't get enough of pickled onions right now.  First it was jars of it from the supermarket.  Finally I tried a quick pickled onions (a mix of Tinned Tomatoes and Love and Lemons recipes).  I hope to post more about them soon.
 

On the way home from the dentist, we stopped at Tylers Milkbar in Preston for some baking.  It was almost 1pm and the baking display had slim pickings and the staff seemed rushed off their feet.  We didn't try to get a seat but just took a huge slab of amazing Vegan Pumpkin, Walnut and Parmesan Focaccia and a square of lovely Blueberry Crumble Cake.  You can read more about their wonderful offerings at my last year's post on Tylers Milkbar.

 

I stopped at Bake Alley Bakes in North Coburg when my bike ride took me nearby.  I wanted a loaf of bread but it was sold out so I contented myself with a fantastic focaccia topped with leek, potato, gruyere and a spicy herb spread (I didn't hear what it was but wish I had asked them to repeat it) and I also got one of their amazing dense and fudgy tahini cookies.  I ate the focaccia with Mock tuna (chickpea) salad and had plenty of both leftover for other meals.

We returned to the Lemon Dill Quinoa Casserole from In My Bowl (you can read about our first go at it in my June 2024 In My Kitchen post). Sylvia made it while I was at work and I was so happy to arrive home after a cold bike ride to this warm dinner. 

We love sticky tofu so Sylvia tried a new version.  This crispy tofu with sticky sweet and sour sauce from @le_cocque on TikTok tasted so so good.  It had garlic, ginger, soy sauce, ketchup, maple syrup, rice vinegar, cornflour (cornstarch) in the sauce.  This is Sylvia's bowl where it was served with sticky rice, cabbage, carrot ribbons, cucumber ribbons, edamame, pickled ginger, pickled onion and sauerkraut.  

My mum heard somewhere about mixing bicarbonate soda with just enough dishwashing detergent to make a paste into a miracle cleaner!  I am a convert.  (Read more about how it works.)  Since discovering it, I have cleaned lots of things - the enamel baking dishes, our the outside of our plastic kettle, tea stains on mugs, the oven door, saucepans and the stove top.  Above are pictures of my stove top before and after with a bonus work in progress picture.  The stove top looked like new when I finished.  This is a game changer!

I got tempted by these Dubai Pistachio Chocolate muffins from Woolworths supermarket.  They had a gooey blob of crunchy pistachio cream on top.  The supermarket muffins were a bit green but not worthy of the Dubai Chocolate topping and did not have nearly enough choc chips!

We had a collaging session at the kitchen table late one afternoon and did not want to stop to make dinner.  Instead I ducked out to pick up a vegan potato and onion pizza from Green Acre Pizza in Brunswick.  It was just what we needed while we kept on with our crafting.

This is the collage I made.  I think the giant cat on the sofa might have been unconsciously inspired by the iconic Goodies Kitten Episode.

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