In My Kitchen: July 2026

July was a crazy cold month!  It was puffer jacket weather, especially when we were told that the heating at work was out of order until the end of winter.  The month started with school holidays and it just never returned to routine: Sylvia got sick, my bike had a flat tyre and there were lots of changes at work.  We had some good news with the work heating getting fixed earlier plus the pleasure of new armchair and some family history research.  Not much time or energy for new dinner recipes but lots of good food nevertheless.  I will soon write more about our outings in My Monthly Chronicles: July 2026.

Changes in technology drives me batty.  Too many websites are suddenly inaccessible without a login.  I usually just check my GoodReads books without logging in when I am at the shops so I know if I have read a book (I find it hard to keep up with what I have read in a series).  A few weeks ago in an op shop I found I could only see my books by logging in.  So I winged it and bought the book anyway and then got home and found I had read it!  Argh! On the same day I was not impressed to discover that Yahoo suddenly reduced the free emails cap from 1 terrabyte to 15 gigabytes.  It was painful but also liberating to reduce my yahoo emails from 17GB to 12GB.  Now I just need to keep them down and try and delete more photos off my phone!  It is neverending keeping up with technology.

My siblings have recently had quite a bit of travel between them.  My brother Dave was in China and brought us back a brilliant hot pot fridge magnet that you can see above with our foodie fridge magnets.

We didn't make many new meals this month but I enjoyed revisiting a few favourites.  Clockwise from top left:

• Our version of Minestrone is on our weekly meals a lot.  This one included parsnip and fennel
• Samosa pie - this is like an Indian style pot pie and tastes so good - why has it been so long since I made it!  (It had a lot of liquid so I added a spoonful of cornflour.)
• Meera Sodha's Vegan Broccoli, Fennel, Chickpea and Orzo Stew was one of the meals we made again after loving it the previous month.
• And Fried rice with tofu scramble - but a little different to usual with Sylvia making her tofu scramble separately so we could add it at the end of the fried rice instead of cooked in it.  One big advantage of this was the the turmeric only coloured the scramble so it contrasted with the pale rice.
   

I have posted about my Vegan roast dinner pizza using short cuts.  One of the shortcuts was making roast potatoes in the air fryer.  It only works with a small batch with our small air fryer.  I got tired of either wiping up a greasy air fryer tray or using paper inserts so I have purchased a silicone air fryer insert that be easily washed.  I first bought a nicer more expensive one but it did not fit so I gifted it to my mum who loves it.  Ours is cheaper and brighter and does the trick!
 

These frozen samosa pastizzi are a new favourite.  We buy thim in FOY next to the Coburg Woolworths at $11 for 12.  They take between 15-20 minutes in the air fryer at 220 C.  The crispy pastry and spicy vegeie filling are so delicious to pull apart.  It is a challenge to try and wait for the steaming heat to subside.  This is the only pastizzi there that are vegan.  While not that cheap, they are better value at 850g than the vegan samoa packet in the next door supermarket that is $12 for 500g.

A favourite from my childhood is is curried sausages.  I figured out how to do a tray bake of vegetarian baked curried sausages a while back and revisited the recipes when we needed warming food.  Sylvia is starting to really enjoy some curried meals so it was good to see her enjoy it.

I bookmarked a recipe for a one banana banana cake quite some time ago.  As I am now eating a few more of them I put one aside to get old and soft to try this banana bread.  It was a vegan banana bread with a crumble topping.  We loved it.  There is another old banana in the fridge right now so perhaps the universe is telling me I need to make this again!  Well, who dares to say no to the universe!

We are also having more sauerkraut in our kitchen on rice bowls and sandwiches.  The Gaga's gut loving Raw dill pickle kraut is a favourite.

While on Smith street to have lunch at Not so sushi,we had a wander down the street to browse some of the foode shops: Friends of the Earth, Soul Foods, Alimentari and Hinoki.  We mostly resisted temptation but at Hinoki we bought a couple of Daifuku (a strawberry and a green tea) and a packet of frozen edamame.  We use edamame quite a bit and needed some, but I think I was also swayed by the cute red checked packet.

 

I am a fan of these salt and vinegar sweet potato nibbles which are a pleasing light snack.  Sylvia enjoys them because they are vegan unlike a lot of flavoured crisps.  We just can't work out why a flavouring like lime and black pepper needs to have milk in the ingredients.  

We went to the Coburg Farmers Market because it was the last market appearance by the always amazing vegan Better Now Bakes before they open their new shop in Brunswick East.  As usual we were too tempted and came away with so much fantastic baking: the richest best tahini brownie, the piquant pickle chive and dill scone, a fluffy tasty Japanese curry focaccia (with potato, furikake and seaweed?), a pleasing yuzu white choc and coconut cake and a scrumptious and gorgeous apple maple and pecan cake.  We will miss them at the market but can't wait to visit their new shop which is set to open very soon.

We bought some beige food from KFL - soy chunks, potato curry puffs and vegan eggs - that made the vegan ham from the supermarket look colourful!  The curry puffs weren't anywhere near as good as the samosa pastizzi's above but Sylvia loved them.  She has also been enjoying vegan ham and cheese sandwiches.  There are some plans for the soy chunks but we have no idea how to pry apart the frozen vegan fried eggs.

Here are some vegan supermarket purchases: iced matcha latte with oat milk, hearty mushroom and lentil pies, vanilla rice puds, packaged tofu scramble, the tea collection of iced mochi (hojicha, genmaicha and matcha), and a frozen mango sticky rice with coconut milk.  We have had most of these - the pies were really good with a pre-chopped kale slaw pack, the scramble was nice enough in a taco bowl, Sylvia was excited about the sticky rice with mango and the mochi.  There is a wee box of panadol to signal there there was pain too but not enough to stop Sylvia eating good food.

When I asked my sister Fran to surprise me when she had me in my family KK gift giving I knew she would find something interesting.  With the cold weather we finally got to try the Ground Pleasures original hot chocolate powder that she gave us.  It was amazing.  I am pretty fussy with hot chocolate powder but this was so good that we finished it within weeks.  Sylvia gave it a dash of pizazz with her hand held milk frother and a sprinkle of hot chocolate powder on top.  It is not the cheapest and is not in supermarkets but we might need another box before the end of winter.

Life is chaotic and busy so it is wonderful when we can slow down and create collages.  This is one I made in the kitchen in July.  You can see the mess it makes in the background of the hot chocolate photo but even with the cleaning up, it is a relaxing activity.

 

It is a year since we had our house painting.  Two of the outstanding things to do over that time were to buy a new chair for the loungeroom and to find a green teacup for the glass kitchen cabinet.  In July we managed to achieve both.  We have looked at so many photos of chairs on FaceBook market place and found it really hard to find the right one.  This floral chair was not my ideal but it is close enough for jazz!

In June I bought a green teapot and tea cup set that I really love.  More recently Sylvia fell in love with another green teapot set, this time at the Salvos op shop where we bought our chair.  It has not been easy to fit both tea sets into the cabinet but Sylvia was determined and made it work.  I have compared the three iterations of our cabinet above.  In July 2025 I organised a fairly spacious cabinet after quite a few items were sent to the op shop.  The following month Sylvia reorganised with some of the op shop pieces she loved.  Then in July 2026 the cabinet is now full with lots of lovely green.

Finally here is a close up of the cabinet so you can admire some of the detail on the new green sugar bowl with a few sentimental items including a gnome salt and pepper shaker I bought as a child and a green decanter I bought when living in student share houses,

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.