In My Kitchen: September 2026

 

September was filled with school holidays, t-shirt weather and signing up to a crazy amount of new systems in my new job.  I've been making simple salads for work lunches and sides.  Possibly the most innovative dish I made was air fried onions rings in my melted cheese on toast.  It was pretty good.  More usually I made some of my favroutie meals like the above 20 minute Coconut chickpea curry.  Fortunately Sylvia made lots of great new dishes to add a little pizazz to our meals.

I have scheduled this post because by the time it is published, I will be in Canberra for an interstate break.  I will write more about that next month.  Here's hoping for a little more time and energy next months but I am not holding my breath!

I really loved this Vegetarian Sushi Bake (With Chickpeas).  It was a layer of sushi rice topped by a layer of spicy tuna-style chickpeas with some nori blended in for flavour of the sea.  Then it was all baked and served with avocado, cucumbers and furikake.  This might be the most comforting way to eat sushi!

How I love leftovers!  This is the sort of pizza topping, that I never would eat if not for leftovers.  We had leftover sausage barley soup, air fried out-of-date falafels, olives, turnip pickles and cheese.  It was excellent.  The pink pickles were a pretty addition that worked well with the flavours.

Sylvia has been making her cabbage pasta regularly.  Lots of cabbage (and sometimes onion) are fried until caramelised and soft.  She adds some seasonings like miso, nooch and sesame oil.  On this occasion she fried Field Roast Italian Garlic and Fennel sausages that took it up to another level.  Crispy sausage on soft pasta is just perfect.  I really loved some lettuce and cabbage with it and added some red capsicum in big slabs that I could not be bothered chopping.  

An Italian deli inspired pasta salad inspired this barley salad.  We had really crispy tofu bacon, crispy sausage  and vegan salami with lots of rocket, cucumber, tomatoes, marinated olives, and pickled onions with vegan olive brine feta.  I had to pick out the salami - it is not the sort of mock meat I ever want bu I could have had a bit more rocket.  All that good stuff tossed together with dressing was amazing.
  

One of my dad's friends kindly gave Sylvia this vegan Toasted Marshmellow poopcorn.  Sylvia was very excited to discover a great vegan popcorn fomr the Popcorn Shed with lots of fun flavours but unfortunately it is from the UK and not easy to find unless we order online.

Sylvia made oa superb vegan Mac and Cheese bake which was a white sauce with vegan cheese (yay for Damona) and good flavours, with a great topping of panko breadcrumbls, crushed cornflakes and sesame seeds.  

We were excited by all the wonderful bakes by Alex a Bakes at the Vegan Market at the Coburg Town Hall.  I took home a vegan cheese and vegemite pastry twist.  It was really good.  I wished I had bought more!

This Creamy zucchini orzotto from The Plant Bowls was gorgeous with creamy cashew sauce.  Sylvia added peas and spinach as well as topping it with our home made feta and dill.  She declared it her favourite new dish that she plans to make again and again!

We got into the packet of frozen naan breads from the freezer.  They were too easy to heat in the air fryer - just 3-4 minutes.  This easy meal with salad, tofu scramble and pickled onions was really good on a night when we could not be bothered doing much for dinner.

We had fond memories of Sylvia's previous crispy rice salad.  She decided to do it again.  Her salad had crispy rice with panko and seasoning inspired by Emily Eats and then the fried tofu and vegies inspired by Tess Begg.  I helped make the dressing with miso, maple syrup, sesame oil, rice wine vinegar and soy sauce.  Lots of good vegies with crispy rice is amazing.

The AFL Grand Final is always a big event in Melbourne.  We even had a public holiday to celebrate.  This year I worked the holiday in a blissfully quiet office and swapped the holiday for another day of leave.  However I was excited about watching the game on the Saturday.  The pre-match is usually the highlight and this year delivered with the glamour of Kylie Minogue's performance and the nostalgia of Mike Brady singing Up there Cazaly, despite the rain.  It was amusing to see the commentators pre-match on a desk on the grassy oval with umbrellas.  Very Monty Python!  

Sylvia had made sausage roll filling the day before and I wrapped it in pastry and baked them in the late morning.  They were hot out of the oven for watching the grand final.  Sylvia had put twice as much silken tofu as the recipe so they were soft with a bit of a gravy vibe but delicious.  We also had hash browns, falafel, hummus, crisps, crackers and vegies.  The actual match between the Freo Dockers and the Brisbane Lions had me on the edge of my seat right to the end when Freo were leading by a few goals 4 minutes before the end and the Lions suddenly got 4 goals in 4 minutes and won the match.

We love our platters for the grand final.  This year Sylvia did all the shopping for the platters with E who came along for some pre-match entertainment before heading off to book club. Before he went we had the dessert platter.  Sylvia had apple slices, strawberry and popcorn.  But not chocolate!  So I broke up some of my Whittakers dark chocolate to add to the platter.   We enjoyed grazing and by dinner time weren't hungry and just had a few sausage rolls and some vegies.  A very enjoyable afternoon!

Finally here is my new sewing machine.  A friend from the historical society is really into her sewing history and looks out for old sewing machines.  She found me this one from the 50s or 60s and brought it over a few weeks ago.  I am excited to have it but also not feeling confident at the idea of using a sewing machine.  It has been a long time since I last used one.  I confess I have not used it but have instructions and some people who can give advice so I really look forward to some free time when I can grasp the nettle, so to speak.

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

In My Kitchen: August 2026

With the end of August, comes the end of Winter.  The past month has given us some wild weather but ended with a few blissfully sunny days that are perfect for hanging the washing on the line and heading out for a bike ride.  It has been a crazy month.  I finished up my previous job and for the first time ever I was sent an exit survey.  I did not mention in my survey how weird it was to have a team meeting in the middle of my farewell lunch!  We had not even finished eating.  I had a week between jobs where we did an overnight road trip to the Goldfields regions of Victoria.  And now I have had about a week in my new job which is going to be busy but interesting with good people!  

There has not been much time for blogging but I will give a round up here (and also in My Monthly Chronicles August 2026 post which will look at getting out and about.  We have had some amazing meals both at home and eating out.  Above is a noodle soup that was excellent and felt a little fancy to have condiments such as chilli oil (for Sylvia), fried shallots (for me) and daikon and carrot pickle (for both of us).

 

You can see a lot of the ingredients here: a mushroom mix of enoki, oyster and king oyster, fried tofu puffs, broken dried soya sticks, Chinese broccoli, wheat noodles and vegan fish balls.  The soup was amazing with the condiments but for one thing: the fish balls were disgusting.  I say that as a vegetarian who has never eaten seafood (other than flake and fish fingers as a kid).  They had a very odd texture and neither of us liked them.  The rest of the soup was slurpilicious!

Sylvia was very keen on making the dailkon and carrot pickle  which was from RecipeTinEats.  We simply added vinegar, sugar and salt to the veggiees.  The hardest part was chopping the carrot and dailkon very thinly, which Sylvia did in the front of the tv.  It was quite stinky but so delicious on all sorts of meals.
 

The main reason we made the daikon and carrot pickle was for a Bahn Mi.  I bought the bread rolls from our local Vietnamese "Crystal Bakery".  We had a tub of vegan pate from Fresh on Young to spread on the rolls.  We stuffed them with braised some tempeh, lettuce leaves, cucumber batons, daikon and carrot pickle and a garnish of parsley leaves from the garden (we don't like coriander).  It was amazing and messy and so so good!

These are the Miso Maple Braised Tempeh that Sylvia made.  The recipe was unlike our usual way of frying tofu or tempeh.  The chunks of tempeh were fried and then cooked in a glaze for about 30 minutes until glossy and sticky.  They had lots of flavour with quite a bit of fresh ginger and were quite saucy!
 

A complicate meal was a vegan roast at home in August.  She bought a Veggie Delites vegan roast and braised it with cranberry sauce glaze.  I am not so keen on them but it worked with all the trimmings.  We made it a weekend when we had lots of time to potter in the kitchen.   The facon wrapped brussels sprouts looked quite impressive.  We roasted potato, carrot, parsnip and pumpkin.  I also made gravy and cauliflower cheese using the same recipes used in my recent Vegan roast dinner pizza.

A simple meal was what The Kitchn called 20 minute Coconut chickpea curry.   It was a good way to use the nice laksa paste we have.  I probably took longer than 20 minutes especially with sides but it excellent served with brussels sprouts, red capsicum, spinach, leftover sticky rice, scalliion pancakes from KFL supermarket, spinach and the last lime from our tree this winter.  

A summer meal: vegetable fritatta from Smith and Deli and slaw we made a home.  I bought the fritatta and a chai flavoured vanilla slice while out on a ride.  I took a plastic box for my purchases.  The vanilla slice came in a cardboard tub that fitted in my box and the fritatta went straight in the box next to it.  I used octopus straps to secure it to the back of my bike and then merrily went on my way.  

I stopped at bike shops - the first because my bike had an odd sound and the second because the first bike shop had not fixed it.  But the minute I arrived at the second bike shop, the sound disappeared and I felt stupid trying to tell  them there had been a weird whirring,  It has not been heard since!  I also stopped to take photos.  At first my purchases seemed to be travelling well but by the time I got home the vanilla slice was such a mess I am not sharing any photos.  It was amazing with fantastic chai spices and the fritatta with lots of pesto on top was also a joy to eat after my long ride!

We had a new winter warmer.  This pot pie from Sweet Simple Vegan was perfect for the wild rainy weather we had in the middle of the month.  It was a gorgeous vegan creamy filling of onion, celery, potatoes, carrots, peas (and I thought I put in a tin of lentils but am not so sure now I look back at the recipe) and broccoli.  The puff pastry was cut into squares and arranged on top of the filling (which was cooked on the stovetop and oven in my cast iron pan).  I really loved this because it was much easier than dealing with a big sheet and I was able to use up some scraps of puff pastry from the freezer.

We also had an old winter warmer: Bean and beer stew with dumplings.  I had made it years ago (2010) and loved it.  When I made it again this August, I wondered why it had taken me so long.  It was great comfort food with lots of beans and fluffy wholemeal dumplings steamed on top.  Must remember this next winter!

While I was quite tired and not up for lots of new ideas, Sylvia found quite a few great new recipes.  This cabbage pasta is a fave new dish with mainly fried cabbage and seasoning in the pasta sauce.  I really like it with a coleslaw mix of veggies we have been making.  Sylvia found the idea online but ended up not following a recipe.  For the sauce she added miso, pasta water, nutritional yeast flakes, soy sauce, sesame oil and maple syrup.

 

I really loved these Creamy gnocchi with Crispy seasoned tofu.  This was another new recipe from Sylvia.  It was her favourite vodka tomato pasta but instead of adding cream, she added a tin of butter beans pureed with the bean water (ie undrained).  I liked it more with the beans but she preferred the sauce with cream.  The mellow creamy sauce went well with well with the crispy tofu which was seasoned with soy sauce, maple syrup, thyme, smoked paprika, onion powder and garlic powder.  So good!
 

We've continued to make rice on Sunday nights so we can have it on Monday nights to make an easy meal.  One night Sylvia wanted to try soaking, marinating and frying some dried soya chunks.  The marinade was great but the soya chunks are not really my sort of thing.  They were fine when mixed with lots of vegetables and rice. 

We even had a salad night with this Roasted cauliflower, pearl couscous and chickpea salad.  It was a warm salad but by the time I got home had cooled down and was delicious at room temperature.  We added in pickled onions, of course!  And had lots of the tofu and avocado dressing leftover.  I think it would be a great vegan dressing for coleslaw but we had it on toast instead.  This was a great salad that just might be back on the menu as the weather warms up.

Continuing the theme of food in our fridge magnets, Kerin brought a lego style magnet kit back from Vietnam to make a sushi magnet.  It was fun to do but the magnet fell apart within a day so is now on the fridge with parts missing!  What a shame because it is a fun idea.

This photos shows a lot of things we bought on our trip to the Vegemite museum in Beaufort, the Creswick market and a smattering of op shops and vintage shops in Beaufort, Creswick and Clunes.  The postcards are of paintings of local buildings by Beaufort high school kids using vegemite and water.  The spiced cider and bread are from the farmers market.  I got a green and white striped jumper in an op shop and Sylvia found a colourful skirt at the same place.  In the top right hand corner is a green glass bowl with a curved handle (like a basket) that she bought in an antique shop in Clunes.  We had a lovely trip that I would love to find time to write about!

Also at the Vegemite museum, I bought a stick of vegemite fudge for E who had looked after Shadow in our absence.  It was very nice - yes I had a taste.  Very smooth and not too intensely vegemite.

The whimsical green card was bought in Clunes at a shop with the wonderful name: Opsessed.  I also bought a pen and magnet at the Clunes Bottle Museum, a magnet saying "My keyboard must be broken.  I keep hitting the escape key but I am still at work".  Is it too soon to take this to a new workplace!  And some camomile, honey and vanilla tea to drink in our hotel room.

Sylvia was delighted by all the coloured glass in the bottle museum and bought this lovely green bottle.  She found some fake grapes - just the sort of thing she loves - in an op shop.

While at the Creswick Market I tasted a warm alcoholic spiced apple cider from Daylesford Cider.  I told the stallholder that I would buy it if it was non alcoholic.  He miraculously produced a non alcoholic version and I bought a six pack of the cans.  The heated taster was really good but we have drunk it cold and fizzy.  It is so wonderful, I wish I had more of it.  We really enjoyed it with our roast dinner!  It would be brilliant chilled in a warm Aussie Christmas.
 

We went to KFL supermarket and bought a vegetarian fish sauce and a plant based tonkotsu ramen kit.  I am curious to see the ramen kit but it is not opened yet.  

At Woolworth's supermarket Sylvia bought brown sugar porridge sachets - because it was winter, gluten free oreos and LCMs (accidentally vegan) marshmallow flavoured cereal because it was novel and on special.  I was pleased to have the oreos when a gluten free friend came over for a cuppa.  They were pretty good!  Sylvia really liked the LCMs cereal for a change but said it was very sweet.  

We had an electrician over for a couple of issues.  One was blue stuff leaking out of power points.  Urgh!  More exciting was having him install the light shade that I bought for Sylvia's bedroom last October when we went to Daylesford.  It is so gorgeous.  I have one installed that is like it but not quite as nice.  The electrician had to change the fittings so we could get the new shades up.  I am really pleased with the change because the light fittings that were removed were a glass bowl that was flush to the ceiling and it was quite awkward to unscrew it to change the light bulb.

At the end of my first week of work - my first full week in the office for years - I was tired and forgot to feed the starter for pizza dough.  Instead we ordered pizza from Shop 225.  When I arrived to pick up - after a text message - the pizzas were ready but they were still doing the dessert so the pizzas were not very warm by the time I arrived home.  The place was really busy and had a cosy vibe.

We had the From Nonna's Garden pizza with pomodoro stracotto (stewed tomato), eggplant, zucchini, onion, basil and parmigiano reggiano.  It came with the thin and crunchy Roman style base and by the time it got home it was really floppy but the flavour was amazing.  The other pizza was called 2807 (why??).  It had a puffy thicker base and was topped with fior di latte, mushroom cream, pork sausage, porcini, parsley, parmiagiano reggiano and "finished with truffle oil".  I was less keen on these because pork sausage and creamy sauce is not really my thing.  I loved the puffy crust!

It was good to finally try Shop 225 pizza which were very good.  This Italian restaurant prides itself on its inclusiveness.  They cater for vegans and celiacs.  Most pizzas can be adapted from both diets.  For dessert we had fried gnocchi with nutella.  The gnocchi was like doughnut balls.  They were tossed in sugar and excellent with the nutella.  I double checked that the nutella was vegan and it was.  We would love to go back and eat in.

Last weekend, I had a great leftover lunch.  The night before we made a great vegan pizza with some leftovers.  It had backed beans, chopped baked potato, mushrooms, olives, dollops of cashew tofu cream and crispy tofu bacon.  On the side was some slaw with a pickled onion brine based vinagrette that worked ok.  Lastly I had a mug of tinned tomato soup; this is my comfort food.

The other dish we had on the weekend that I loved was a Rhubarb and strawberry crumble.  I don't make many desserts but I love to make at least one baked dessert over winter.  It was a weekend of lazy food and a crumble was easy and comforting.  A great way to see out the winter.

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

In My Kitchen: April 2026

April was a busy month of Easter celebration food, including hot cross buns and vegan Easter chocolate ,and lots of easy meals.  We were eating more stews and baked potatoes as the weather cooled in the first half of the month before it returned to the balmy mid 20s in the second half of the month. I made old faves (zucchini slice, lentil soup, mock tuna salad) and had fun with some new recipes (a polka dot nut roast of sorts, miso bean pasta and spanikopita).  Sylvia made lots of scrambled tofu lunches.  

As always, I will also write a My Monthly Chronicles post with more about outings and eating out in April. I also celebrated my 19th blog anniversary with post on the Coconut and chocolate layer cake that I made for the Cake picnic last month.

The above picture is from the polka dot nut roast I made for a bit of fun at Easter.  I was inspired by my Christmas nut roast and my Aboriginal flag nut roast but needed to make it vegan for Sylvia.  So I added some tahini as well as besan and aqua faba.  Then I had to work out colours for each of the polka dots.  They all needed tweaking.  The beetroot colour was the best once I pureed it, I wanted the kale to be a brighter greener and the saffron was better in the Aboriginal flag than using turmeric. Another challenge was arranging the coloured dots and finding I needed more "white" batter around them and then realising I should have made the colours random rather than in a row.  It took a few hours at night and was quite an achievement.

I took the polka dot nut roast to my parents place in Geelong for the Easter Sunday roast.  I also made one for Sylvia and E to have for their Easter meal back in Melbourne.  Sylvia did not like this nut roast as much as the Christmas one that inspired it and I will have another go at veganising it.  However I was pleased with it and loved how the polka dots gave it pops of colour when slicing.  I would love to try it again and really want to play more with colours in nut roasts.  I just need more time for it.

On her first vegan Easter, Sylvia was able to find quite a few treats.  Clockwise from top left: Nomo cookie dough chocolate bunny and Mummy Meegz chucki chocolate (vegan creme egg); Plant Cocoa Hot Cross Hazelnut Easter eggs; Nomo chocolate egg with crispy pieces and a cookie dough bunny; Barbie Vegan gummy carrots (package); the gummy carrots; hot cross buns.  Sylvia loved all of it, though was disappointed she did not find any pana chocolate hot cross bun bars of chocolate.  The Planet Chocolate eggs were the best.

I baked the Sourdough Hot Cross Buns - my fave HCB recipe I make each year and experimented with (and posted) a recipe for Matcha, white chocolate and coconut hot cross buns.  They were pretty good except the matcha was too old to be very green.

I returned from Geelong with some good stuff, which is seen here with a couple of treats exchanged at home. Sylvia got the Nomo easter bunny from E, the Mummy Meegz Chickee Eggs (mini eggs) from me and I received the Health Lab Aussie lamington jam filled balls (amazing).  My sister Susie kindly found a bar of Lindt vegan milk chocolate for Sylvia, my dad organised gorgeous personalised glass Easter eggs to be made for each grandkid (Sylvia's is green and came in the unicorn bag), my mum made hot cross buns and my sister Fran gave me a jar of her Frankly Raw peanut butter.

Organising to buy vegan Easter eggs was more of a challenge than the regular milk ones in the supermarket.  I rode to a few places one afternoon to find them.  Pickles Milkbar had a good range of vegan Easter eggs.  While there I purchased a cheeseymite pastry scroll.  I asked about the sausage rolls and was given one to sample - it was a bit much mock meat for me but Sylvia loved it.  

On my travels I also purchased the Sweet William white chocolate melts, were was disappointingly thin an so sweet and the DJ&AShitake, oyster and nameko mixed mushroom crisps.  We have had the shitake crisps before and preferred those to the mix as the oyster mushrooms did not taste great.

I went to a work symposium and had a lovely time chatting to people in the breaks but did not spend much time getting myself food.  While riding home I found I was quite peckish and so I stopped at Cheaper Buy Miles in Sydney Road.  It is a grocery store with cheap remainder stock.  I bought all of this for $13: a packet of (tiny) vegetable mom, two dairy free almond Magnum ice creams, a tin of chunky pumpkin and chickpea soup, a packet of oregano Zeus Street Greek pita crackers, and a huge bag of mini potato cakes.  

Those mini potato cakes were a delightful indulgence.  I usually only have potato cakes with orders from a fish and chip shop.  These ones were so cute and lasted a while in the freezer.  They were great as a snack, a side and on pizza.

A friend offered me a monster zucchini and I could not resist.  It was from her friend's garden but she could not convince her kids to have zucchini fritters.  I made it into a vegan Zucchini slice.  Traditionally zucchini slice has been made in Australian households as an easy way to make dinner with surplus zucchini.  

I weighed this zucchini by chopping it into parts.  Initially it was more than I needed for the slice. I was surprised that the bulbous end weighed about 700g - and I thought the zucchini was much heavier than the 1kg I needed - but once I scooped out the seeds in this part, it weighed about 400g.   

This zucchini slice was much slower than the traditional one with eggs and bacon.  This one took a few hours by the time I had made a batch of tofu bacon, the tofu besan omelette mixture, grated and squeezed out the zucchini, mixed it all up and baked it.  It was amazing.  Well worth the effort.  While I used the Zucchini slice recipe from my blog, I added a bit of extra flour, besan and nooch which meant this time it was firm enough to slice.  I wish I could say how much but it was a bit of this and bit of that.  I also added panko breadcrumbs and sesame seeds on top.  This is the best zucchini slice I have ever made.  

I made my first vegan spanikopita.  I used a traditional spanikopita recipe from Somebody feed Seb with a bit of cross reference to the Lazy Cat Kitchen's vegan spinach and ricotta rolls.  I also used this vegan cashew feta recipe with olive brine that I have made previously.  I cooked it a bit longer this time and it was better for crumbling but still needs to be a bit thicker.  Sylvia was keen on making the spanikopita as a coil.  I learnt that a coil needs to be baked in a tin or it will crack and flick out at odd angles like a broken spring.  It was pretty good.  Could be better.  I am determined to try this again.

Sylvia's favourite lunch at the moment is scrambled tofu.  She fries up some chopped sausage or tofu bacon, crumbles in unpressed firm tofu and adds in lots of seasoning: nutritional yeast flakes, stock powder, dijon mustard, turmeric, smoked paprika, garlic powder, black salt and black pepper.  Then it just needs to be stirred for a few minutes until well combined and sometimes baby spinach is added after the gas jet is turned off.  It doesn't take long at all.  We had had it lots of ways.  Above clockwise from the top are scramble and lettuce in a tortilla wrap; scramble and baby spinach on toast: scramble, tomato, lettuce and rice;  and scramble with mini potato cakes and spinach.  All were excellent.  Sylvia told me that the rice bowl presentation was very la-di-dah!

One lunchtime when we had a good sourdough bread I made a Mock tuna (chickpea) salad and stuffed it into a sandwich with lots of scramble and a generous handful of baby spinach.  It was so good.  I put a skewer in it to hold it together for the photo because it was so stuffed that it was struggling to fit together.

I love tempeh but Sylvia is not so keen on it.  She has been trying some dishes with tempeh that tempts her.  tempting tempeh!  This Creamy Orzo with Tempeh Crumbles was a great dish for the tempeh doubters.  It had vegan cream, cannellini beans, roasted eggplant and sun dried tomato.  I forgot to check the eggplant while roasting and it was pretty charred.  Again I am more of an eggplant lover than Sylvia and was less fazed by her by the char.  I hope we make it again - maybe with peas for a touch of green next time!

Another delicious new meal was this Bean Miso Pasta with a creamy sauce made by blending a tin of butterbeans, including the liquid, with white miso, sesame oil, nutritional yeast flakes and lemon juice.  It was so easy and tasty that it was made two weeks in a row.

I have made this Creamy lentil and vegetable soup two weeks in a row.  It is a great way to use up vegies in the fridge.  I wonder how it would be with some pumpkin in it!  I found it in a favourite Alison Holst cookbook years ago when I cooked from cookbooks so much more than online recipes.  It has been so lovely that I have an urge to return to my cookbooks.  I just need to find more time for them!  I was pleased to update the photo in my original blog post as the first one was not pretty!!!!

I returned to this Gnocchi, Cabbage and Sausage recipe that I had made from a couple of recipes and wrote about in last month's In my kitchen post.  I tried it a different way by adding water after the initial frying so the cabbage was partly boiled and greener than when I had just fried it.  I preferred it this way but Sylvia didn't.  I think it might have had something to do with the gnocchi being cooked too much but can't remember.  This needs more work but it is a good easy meal that I want to develop.

We make pizza with my ridiculously easy Fast track sourdough pizza dough most Friday nights.  This pizza pictured was a fantastic vegan pizza I made that was topped with  tomato sauce, mushroom, capsicum, olives, chopped leftover baked potato, Damona almond feta and grated Damona American cheese.  I usually put dairy cheese on mine but occasionally make it vegan so I can share with Sylvia.

This picture is from my bed when I had pizza leftover on a Saturday morning and was reading in bed.  I don't do it too often but I am finding that occasionally reading in bed on a weekend morning is a great way to get more reading in.  Perhaps this is why I have finished as many books in 4 months as I read in the whole of 2025!  I started a couple that I could not finish as I kept losing track of them with infrequent reading.)  In April I have enjoyed reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Mary Ann Shaffer, with Annie Barrows) and Inconvenient Women: Australian Radical Writers 1900-1970 (Jacqueline Kent).

(I have passed on my copy (from the op shop) of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society to my dad who is on driving around Tasmania with my mum and family friends.  He highly recommends it for holiday reading!) 

This Crispy rice salad is becoming a summer favourite.  This time we made it with lettuce, avocado, edamame, cucumber with the dressing from the Japanese cucumber salad and a sprinkle of fukikake. It is really good.  I think it wont be made much over winter but I hope it comes back into our meals again when it gets warmer later in the year.

I wrote about buying panisse from the Vegan market in My Monthly Chronicles: March 2026.  This is one of the ways we ate it.  I air fried the panisse while Sylvia fried diced potatoes.   (She preferred the panisse fried on the stovetop in our cast iron frypan).  I served mine in a bowl with lettuce, cherry tomatoes, red cabbage, red capsicum, leftover Easter nut roast, yoghurt and pickles.  I really love bringing together bits and pieces in a bowl.

Here is our cat Shadow trying to work out how to open the kitchen door.  My regular plumber (not the cheap one who is no longer answering my call and I fear has retired) came to fix some washers and leaks in the bathroom taps.  He had installed my air con and checked if I was cleaning the filters.  The shame!  After a stern talking to, I smeared them with washing detergent and soaked them in the laundry sink before scrubbing them.  He suggested they get cleaned whenever the season changes!  Must try harder!

I moved a kitchen chair to get the filters out.  Shadow will jump to grab at the round door handle to try and open it when he is desperate to go out. Yet he lives in hope and was happy to get closer where he could try and work it out.  We were laughing to much to take a photo of him jumping to try and open the door.  Sylvia managed to take a photo of him standing.  He is such a long cat!  He is more successful with door handles that we push down to open.  We sometimes hear that thump as he jumps at a door handle.  As the weather cools and we shut the doors more, I expect we will be hearing more thumping soon!  

 

My sister finally flew out from Ireland with her son, 6 weeks after her plane was turned back on her first try.  We went to visit them in Geelong at my parents' home where they were staying.  It was good to see them.  My sister kindly brought presents.  Fruit candles for me.  Percy pig lollies from Marks and Spencer for both of us.  Vegan chocolate truffles from Marks and two gorgeous hair clips that you can't see well in the photo - a peacock and a parrot.  I also brought home leftover fried rice with tofu that my mum had made for lunch; it made a great work lunch.  Sylvia declared the chocolate truffles were wonderful and made her feel so much better that Lindt balls are not vegan.  

My sister also visited us in Melbourne while she was on our side of the world.  We had all sort of plans which changed as her plans changed.  There is never enough time for her on a quick visit home.  Sylvia and I went to Terre Mardre in Sydney Road where we bought lovely hummus, grapes, salad leaves, vegan tomato deli meat slices and a great sourdough baguette.  We served these with some tofutti, carrots, red capsicum, and celery.  The snack platters were great for my sister to fortify her for the epic journey back to my parents' on the bus that was so much slower than the train it was replacing.  Sylvia grazed on them platters with Chris and ate the rest for our dinner!

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 even that brings together some wonderful bloggers who share glimpses into their kitchens.