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.  

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. 

In My Kitchen: March 2026

 

March brought darker evenings and cooler days.  Our salad days were transitioning to days of hearty fare.  It was such a busy month that we cooked less at home but brought home lots of good food.  Over the month I had the the Sydney Road Street Festival, a Pulp concert, a family wedding, a short trip to Sydney, a trip to the hospital Emergency Dept, the Cake Picnic, local theatre, a vegan market and a trip to the cinema.  It was exhausting though (mostly) lots of fun.  I will write up a lot more about it in My Monthly Chronicles (March 2026) but you will see quite a bit of it below.

The Iran war has put pressure on budgets with rising petrol costs and another interest rate rise.  In addition I have had a plumber call-out  and holes to repair at the dentist.  I am fortunate that we have some backpay coming up from the implementation of our Enterprise Bargaining Agreement at work (they always have a lag between agreement and implementation).

Above is my brilliantly green St Patrick's Day dinner.  I was sad I forgot to wear green at work in the morning so when I got home that evening - soaked by riding in a rain that would have made Ireland proud - I changed into green tracky daks and a green t-shirt.  Sylvia celebrated by making Zucchini pesto pasta -  which was lovely with lettuce, green capsicum, rocket and celery, and a squeeze of lime juice (from the garden).

It is nice to see that the Take Me Home Gnoccheria at 89B Harding Street has expanded into a Grocer and Mangia (cafe) to replace the space that was Harding Street Convenience Store at number 89A.  The milk bar had been run for 18 years by Andy and Phoebe Lee until the landlord sold the building last year.  I am glad the space continues to be one for community, albeit a more gentrified version of the once common milk bar.

We enjoyed browsing through the interesting rage of groceries with some vegan offerings - pistachio spread, choc top ice cream cones, burgers, fresh fruit and vegetables and Back Alley Bakes breads.  We left with a bar of Alessandro Luppolo smoked dark chocolate.  It was a very nice smooth chocolate with ingredients listed as cocoa beans, sugar and paperbark smoke! But at $13.50 for a 68g block it would be a rare treat.  Sylvia caved to the temptation of a vegan tiramisu. The ingredients list was longer with a lentil-based cinnamon cream layered with chocolate and biscuits soaked in coffee.  She was most impressed.  Later in the month, we also had a packet of Take Me Home's delicious green olive, parsley & chilli gnocchi from their stall at Coburg farmers market.

We have had this excellent  TikTok viral dumpling bake twice in March (we got the recipe from #kuzyinks).  Vegetables, coconut milk and Thai curry paste are mixedin a large baking dish and then gyoza dumplings are arranged on top so the bottoms are soft and their tops crisp..  The first time Sylvia made it with enoki, been sprouts and bok choy as on the recipe but the second time (photo above) we wnt with our preferred combination of edamame, napa cabbage and enoki mushrooms.  On the second outing, we also mixed about a teaspoon of cornflour into the sauce, which has to be thin to cook the dumplings but a slight thickening was prefereable to the watery sauce of our first go.  The dumpling bake is great with basmati rice.

We returned to the  crispy rice salad (from emily's eatings on tik tok) that we enjoyed only weeks before.  This time we didn't have most of the ingredients so we winged it and made the crispy rice to serve with lettuce, chickpeas, corn, green capsicum, and celery.  It was really good, yet again!

Another favourite salad is this Carrot, couscous, bean and feta salad that we enjoyed over the past couple of summers.  This time we veganised it with Damona feta and garnished it with cornichon pickles.  Sylvia had a few weeks where she was eating cornichons on everything.  I think life got so busy that she forgot about them and this week we found one of the jars at the back of the fridge and put it to good use.

We recently had too much cabbage and I looked up ways to use it up.   I found a recipe suggesting that it goes well with gnocchi in the way cabbage and potato go well in pierogi.  Then I found a couple of recipes that added sausage to the mix and I was sold.  The photo looks pretty beige but it was a really nice way to fry up the cabbage as a meal.
 

Another TikTok recipe from rhi.scran,  Sylvia was really keen to make these veagn meatballs (cheatballs?).  They were a matter of squeezing vegan sausages from their skins (we used Beefy Brats from the 'unreal co'.  These were air fried until crispy.  While they fried, Sylvia made a sauce of coconut milk and Thai curry paste and served it over the meatballs and rice.  I served mine with Japanese cucumber salad, red cabbage and red capsicum.  The success of the meatballs depends on the sausages and if we tried them again, we would use different sausages.  It was a pretty good meal, nonetheless!  

After our trip to Sydney, we brought home a wonderful loaf of light rye bread from the Bourke Street Bakery in Surry Hills.  It was so good I could have eaten it slice but slice but needed more veg in my life.  So I rescued a box of neglected Casarecce pasta and added it to a stew of old cherry tomatoes, the remains of a bunch of celery, as well as reliable onion, carrot, a tin of tomatoes, a tin of chickpeas and frozen peas for a token green vegetable, plus tahini and seasonings.  It was lovely with the bread and I stored some in the freezer for work lunches.

Here is another of Sylvia's gorgeous collage cards that she made for my sister's wedding in March.  The wedding was a great and I was very relieved to be able to wash my hair before the wedding after a bit of pre-wedding drama.

A couple of days prior, our washer gave out and we could not turn off the kitchen sink tap without turning it off at the mains.  I had a look at the tap but it was so old it was probably the original from the 1960s and I could not get the handle off the spindle.  It was the Friday night before the long weekend.  We had to do an after hours call out because 3 days were a long time without running water.  My regular plumbers were not available.  I asked for advice but ended going to HiPages to find a plumber with a reasonable rate who was able to get to our place in about 30 minutes and replace the kitchen taps. An experience like that really made me appreciate being able to turn on and off the tap.

I have written about our experiences at the amazing Cake Picnic, Melbourne 2026 run as part of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival in March.  I still plan to write more about the chocolate coconut layer cake I made.  Today I will share a bit of the cake picnic in my kitchen.  Above is our fridge when we parked our cakes into cake boxes there overnight after hours of baking and decorating.  You can see that we had to squeeze everything else in the fridge on other shelves.

After the cake picnic we brought home some of the goodies.  Queen was a sponsor and as part of our entrance price, we got the merch bag of a tote bag, vanilla essence, fondant letters and a choice of a wooden spoon or a tea towel.  We got one of each.  

The cake picnic vanilla essence bottle was gorgeous.  When the organisers announced at the picnic that there were lots of leftover bottles of vanilla essence if anyone wanted more.  We were about to get more until we saw the queues the announcement had created.  It wasn't worth that much hassle!

This is my cake picnic box of slices.  A lot of them went into the freezer and I still cannot face all the sugary cake.  So much frosting!  I was sad that it was such a mess that I could not take it to work or share it with my neighbours.  I don't think I will be able to eat a lot of it but will probably pick at a bit of it eventually.

The day after the cake picnic, I went to a community play (Little Voice) with a couple of neighbours to see one of our neighbours perform in the play.  We brought food to eat at the tables and it was fun that we were the cabaret audience in the play.  There was some great singing and great piano, but a lot of sadness in the story line!  I took along hummus and vegies with some Arnotts seeded crackers.  One of my neighbours was very happy that the crackers were gluten free.  It was good to eat some fresh vegies after the sugar fest at the cake picnic.

Sylvia had tickets but needed a day of rest after the cake picnic.  She had been so determined to go there after being in the Emergency Department at hospital for acute tonsillitis only two days prior to the picnic.  After making a big effort to attend the picnic, she was pretty worn out and needed a quiet day.

We went to the Vegan Market at the Coburg Town Hall at the end of the month.  By then I was so tired and had eaten such indulgent food that I wasn't that keen on buying a lot.  However, I will always ben tempted by Dubai chocolate and really loved it in a slice from the Little Sweet Things stall.  

Sylvia was excited about the Better Now Bakes stall.  They do amazing baking (as any former Great Australian Bake-Off contestant should) and bought a great though a bit spicy kimchi and cheese scroll; a lovely pandan lamington that was green under the coconut; and a slice of the superb "Jai's wedding cake: lemon myrtle cake slices with a strawberry & pepperberry jam filling, dressed in hibiscus buttercream".  We ate well when we got home.

Sylvia was keen to eat a borek and a burger but I really really loved the South-Co panisse.  I admit to tasting a few of the crispy fried squares of chickpea 'tofu' with smooth soft flavoured insides.  It was all I wanted for lunch so we walked across the road to the Coburg farmers market to buy a fine loaf of Flinders Sourdough bread.  We also bought kale, tomatoes and yellow zucchini.  This was the sort of good food I really needed.

Here is a close up of the slab of pesto-flavoured Panisse that I crisped up in the air fryer and ate on sourdough with relish the next day.   Right after the market we had air-fried panisse with lettuce, tomato and mayo in a sourdough sandwich.  Fried panisse is the best!  It is not just how wonderfully soft it is inside but the delicious mellow chickpea flavour with the addition of aromatic pesto.  

When Sylvia found that Sebby Scrolls were serving vegan cinnamon scrolls in the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival Bakers Dozen in Fed Square, she organised to go with her dad.  They told me it was very busy and bought back some of the lovely mini scrolls - that were sold in pairs - for us to enjoy at home.  They were very soft and very sticky with all that frosting.

As the fickle autumn weather veered from balmy warmth into a rainy day, I made gravy. We don't have it often but it is great comfort food.  I had planned to serve baked potatoes for tea but had a problem when I remembered I had forgotten to buy some big potatoes. We had sausages and a couple of small potatoes.  Sylvia was delighted to have sausages covered in hearty gravy.  I didn't use a recipe but just fried onions, added flour, vegemite, tomato sauce, seasoning and water.  It was so so good.  I must make it again now that the weather is cooling as we gallop towards 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 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.