Brain dead

All I want to do is watch mindless TV all evening. I've been on a course for work all day and my brain is weary from the exertion. The worst part of it is that the course is all day tomorrow as well - Saturday! I feel robbed of half my weekend.

This photo I took this time last week when Phil and I went out for dinner. We went to The Sign of the Takahe, which is like an old stone castle. Very picturesque to eat dinner in, with a roaring open fire and lots of candles, but the food was pretty average for the price we paid. I would've liked to take a lot more pictures of the room but my camera ran out of batteries just after I took this one.

Thats condensation/rain running down the inside of the window by the way. How very authentic!

Samosa styles..

I made these for dinner last night, and I made far too many so we're having them again tonight!

The recipe is loosely based on one of Mollie Katzen's, from the Moosewood cookbook.

The pastry is really easy, just 1 cup of kefir (the recipe says buttermilk, but kefir worked fine. Runny plain yoghurt would probably work fine too)mixed up with 2.5-3ish cups of flour, and some salt. I used mostly wholewheat flour with a little white. You just mix it all up and knead for a few minutes then roll out into circles ready to put the filling in.

For the filling I sauteed some finely chopped onion, garlic, broccoli and cauliflower in olive oil with some spices, then added mashed potato. Easy!

Once I'd assembled them, I brushed on some olive oil, and cooked at about 210c for 15minutes, then turned the heat down to 180 and cooked a further 10-15min.

The dipping sauce was made by putting 1/2 cup water, 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar, 3Tbsp raw sugar and some garlic into a saucepan and boiling for about 15min.

I got tagged.

Jess from modelbehav.com has tagged me with the blog version of a chain letter..seeing as its my first one, I'll complete it but the chain will probably be broken here, as I don't have too many people I can link too!

Here goes:

Alright here are the rules:

1. Link back to the person that tagged you.
   
2. Mention the rules on your blog.
3. Tell about 6 unspectacular quirks of yours.
4. Tag 6 fellow bloggers by linking them
   
5. leave a comment for each tagged blogger, to let them know they have been tagged.

The Six Unspectacular Quirks of Jenn.

1) The volume on the TV has to be exactly right for me. How loud can depend on what I'm watching or what time of day it is, but I tend to spend a while playing with the up and down buttons until it sounds exactly right.

2) I used to play underwater hockey. Thats a quirk because pretty much no-one knows what it is.

3) I enjoy going to movies by myself (thats really embarrassing to admit!)

4) The front of my face is held in place with metal plates and screws. Look in my archives under Feb 2008 if you don't believe me.

5) I have read the Jamie and Claire books by Diana Gabaldon about 4 times. They're loooong, and there's 6 in the series.

6) Despite what you may think from reading most of the above I'm actually an extrovert. most of the time.

And I tag you guys!

Christina http://distantduck.blogspot.com
Toby http://kefisjuggernaut.blogspot.com
Sophie http://sophiesurseine.blogspot.com
Eve http://gardenofeatingblog.blogspot.com/

The Winning Roast Pumpkin Soup

My friend Toby and I are having a fierce pumpkin soup making competition. Of course I will be the winner!

Here is my creation:

- Drizzle olive oil, salt and ground pepper over pumpkin and other accompanying veges of choice (I also had some kumera, onion and a couple of potatoes) and roast in a low-moderate oven for several hours until all soft and goo-ey.

- Cut the skins off the pumpkin and throw it all into a big pot with enough stock (I used chicken stock) to cover it all and simmer for an hour or so. I also added some sage and rosemary at this point.

- Let it cool and blend until smooth, return to pot and re-heat.

- Before serving stir in a dash of cream and re-season if neccessary. Garnish with green stuff and pinenuts!

Enjoy!

anyone got an ark??

This is the river about half a kilometre from our house, and its still raining! Scary huh? We live too far away to be in any danger though thank goodness. Going out to a fancy pants restaurant for dinner tonight - a spur of the moment decision. Can't wait!

Outfit post (specially inspired by Andrea), just as I am running out the door. Another dress which I don't wear as often as I'd like to!

A little distraction..

No real post today sorry folks, I haven't done anything worth blogging about. So I will leave you with this gorgeous picture I poached from asocialiteslife. Despite beck's celeb status I think elmo is definitely the star of this picture!

Nourishing Traditions

This is a book I'm currently reading and trying recipes from (see the pancakes a few posts back). Its pretty radical and different from what is usually taught about nutrition and I'm still forming my opinions about it.
It promotes the use of saturated and animal fats and using full fat dairy products and not the skim versions. It seems to have lots of research evidence to back this up. This is something which is pretty hard to get my head around as generally we are taught to use unsaturated and low cholesterol fats. I'm not entirely sure if I agree with Sally Fallon on this one, although I need to read the book in a little more detail.

She's also pretty big on the concept of soaking your grains before using them. I already do this with my oats (ie soak overnight before cooking) but don't do this for baking etc. The theory behind this seems to be that it makes the grains more readily digestible and therefore we are able to derive more nutrition from them

The concepts in the book I definitely do agree with are the use of whole grains and natural sweeteners instead of refined grains and sugars, trying to avoid excess chemicals and preservatives by cooking from scratch, and the importance of lots of fruits and veges.

Has anyone else read/heard of this book? what did you think?

Cake fail

So its kind of ironic don't you think that immediately after writing a post about nutrition I go and write a post about a big fat cake! To be fair it is a pretty healthy cake, and the flour,eggs and carrots I used were all organic :)
I was supposed to be going out tonight with Phil tonight but I felt the need to indulge my inner introvert, so ended up staying home and baking.

Usually my silicon cake tin works fine without being greased, and although I sometimes do, tonight I didn't cos I figured the cake had oil in it and was fairly moist so shouldn't stick. How wrong was I! (half the cake stuck to the pan). You can see it steaming in the photo, so on second thoughts I probably tried to take it out of the tin too soon.




On the upside, Phil enjoyed eating all the bits that were stuck to the bottom, and the cake tasted good with some yoghurt drizzled over:

Feeding the animals

As most of you will know, or will of figured out from the content of this blog, I am interested in food and nutrition. This year I have been doing some pretty detailed thinking about nutrition, where our food comes from and what we should be eating for optimum health. Kind of like - if we were animals in a zoo, what would the zoo keeper be feeding us to keep us all from dying. Because actually a lot of thought and research goes into what to feed animals in the zoo, yet a lot of us don't really think much about what goes into our bodies except for if it tastes good or not.

My thoughts, and bits and pieces of research are leading me down the path of exploring more wholefoods, cooking from scratch and trying to organic and locally sourced foods where possible. I'm not very good at it, and I'm taking small steps, but I certainly think a lot more when doing the grocery shopping, and our diet at home is definitely taking a more wholesome turn. My kitchen cupboards have a lot less processed junk, and a lot more raw ingredients these days. I plan on blogging a bit about these kinds of topics in the future.

I think a lot of people in New Zealand are beginning to think more this way also. With the cost of groceries rising fast it tends to force you to think carefully on what you're spending your money on. Often the most nutritious staples are the cheapest, like dried beans and pulses.

Thought/opinions? do you want to read my ramblings along these lines? My google analytics thingee tells me that people are actually reading this blog, so what do you guys wanna read about??

"Nourishing Traditions" Pancakes

Nourishing traditions is a cookbook/way of thinking book that I've recently acquired. It presents a new way of looking at nutrition and some bits of it are pretty radical. I'll write some more about it at a later stage, but for breakfast today I tried her recipe for pancakes.

Overnight I soaked 1 cup of wholemeal flour in 1 cup of kefir. Then in the morning added a beaten egg, a pinch of salt, a tablespoon of melted butter and 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda. I also added some defrosted frozen berries to the mix.
They took quite a long time to cook, but had a delicious, unusual flavour and were surprisingly fluffy.
Oh and that blob of yellow you see in the picture? thats my lemon curd !

candlelight

Despite my procrastination yesterday afternoon I managed to get dinner cooked and we had a nice evening. The boys even managed to refrain from TOO much surveying talk!
Tonight we went to our local coffee place to find they'd changed the look of it for evenings - usually in the evenings its quite brightly lit and bustling, however tonight they'd dimmed the lights and had candles everywhere, and it wasn't overly busy. It was very warm and cosy.

This is absolutely not what I should be doing!

Watching Oprah. I'm still battling a cold and trying to cook for a dinner party tonight at the same time. Today is a slight improvement from yesterday in that I actually put clothes on today, instead of staying in my PJ's. I have a long list of things I want to post about eventually but not today. Too many other things to do. Like watch Oprah...

Kefir

I need to give away some of my kefir grains, they've grown and I now have too many. If you don't know what I'm talking about just ignore - I will post more about this mysterious substance at a later date. Alternatively you could google it.
So anyway - if you live in NZ and want some kefir grains let me know!

Click here for a good introduction to kefir if you're interested.

how to make a sick girl happy

Big mug of tea, stack of DVD's and a pain au chocolat. "What??" I hear you say - "pain au chocolate's hardly a health food for restoring a cold-riddled body back to perfect health". Well, upon hearing I am on deaths door *cough*, a kind friend just dropped it off for me and let me tell you it is making me feel better already. YUM!

Vegan apple muffins

I have a friend who can't eat eggs or dairy so essentially for the purposes of baking, she is a vegan. I've been experimenting with a few recipes that she can eat in the last few months, with varying degrees of success. Here are the muffins I made yesterday (see Vanessa - you should've come over after all! - I have saved some in the freezer for you though). They have been pronouced as "normal tasting" by two independent reviewers.
I'm calling this recipe my own because although its loosely based on one I found on the internet, I've modified it so much that it I'm going to claim it. (Makes about 18 smallish muffins)

2 cups wholewheat flour
1 cup white flour
1tsp baking soda
1tsp baking powder
pinch salt
2tsp cinnamon
2 cups grated apple

Mix the above ingredients together in a large bowl

In a separate bowl mix:

1/2 cup oil (could use sunflower, olive, canola)
1/2 cup honey (because she is not actually strictly vegan, I use honey. To make them properly vegan use maple syrup)
a large splash of vanilla
a large splash of apple cider vinegar
1 cup soy milk or rice milk (could replace with normal milk, or yog for the non-vegan, or apple juice/puree if allergic to soy)

Fold wet ingredients into dry ingredients.
Put into greased muffin tins and cook at about 180 degrees celcius for 20-25 minutes.

Enjoy!

Todays attire

To make a change from blogging about food I'm going to show you what I'm wearing today. I've had this dress for a few weeks and been dying for a chance to wear it, today has been intermittently warm so I thought I could manage by wearing a long sleeved top underneath, and tights (although did need a coat over top when I went out). I caught the bus into town with my god-daughter to meet Phil for a coffee.

Excuse the bad picture, I'm still figuring out the self timer..

When life gives you lemons....

...make lemon curd!

As you can see our lemons are finally turning yellow:


So I picked the juiciest looking ones and made lemon curd from the destitute gourmet cookbook.

2 large juicy lemon (I used 4)
50g butter, chopped
1 cup sugar
2 eggs beaten (I used organic ones from the market)

Finely grate rind and squeeze juice. Put into a bowl on top of a pan of simmering water. Add butter and sugar. Once butter is melted and sugar dissolved stir in the eggs. Keep stirring until mixture thickens (10-15min). Cool and store in a jar in the 'fridge.

Im not sure what Im going to do with it yet, but it is so delicious. I've been eating the leftovers with a spoon!

Heres the finished product:

Fresh

...from yesterdays farmers market.

Warm Vege and Quinoa Salad
- Grill eggplant, pepper and mushrooms in olive oil
- Steam some brocolli
- Cook quinoa (presoaked)
- Toss all the above together with torn spinach, chopped tomato and fresh pesto.

Eat while still warm. Yum!

mundane

Im eating my favourite breakfast as I type this, chopped up fresh fruit with organic yogurt, flaxseed oil and homemade muesli sprinkled on top. mmmmmmm... I usually have this, or a variation of it 3 or 4 times a week. The rest of the time I have porridge.

Last night we saw a movie at the Rialto - I'd never heard of it before so we took a gamble in going (especially given the title - 'A Feast of Love' - sounds awful doesn't it??) but it was very poignant with a well thought out plot and excellent character development. Don't take your mum though - too many sex scenes.

Best made plans....

I had big plans for our Saturday morning. The sun would shine, we would dress in cute, hippy clothes, take the bus to Lyttelton with our recycled cloth bags and spend the morning perusing the market, stocking up on fresh delicious local food and finish up lingering over coffee in one of the funky cafes. Then I would have a ton of cute photos to post on here about the wonderful morning we had.

It was pouring with rain this morning.

We were too wimpy to take the bus in this weather and we left our cloth bags at home, but we did actually make it to the market. Which, despite the rain, was still fantastic. Stalls and stalls of the most amazing food and produce (I need more superlatives to describe it). Armed with a mayan spice hot chocolate from the first stall we came to, we ran thru the rain and made our purchases before huddling in the car to finish our hot choc while eating the most tasty moroccan vege pastry.

Refuge in the car

Our bounty