Golden Kumara Cake

The smell of woodsmoke in the air and the crisp bite of autumn chill nipping at my nose send me into paroxysms of glee every year.  

They used to remind me of camping trips, building fires to roast marshmallows over, and making big meals to freeze for the nights when you just want to shove something in the oven and be done with it.  

Now they just make me jealous that I don't have a wood stove in my house and that my kitchen is freezing cold from June to October unless I'm baking up a storm.  And even then it's a challenge to see how long I can stand the cold in there, or how many layers I have to put on, before I get hypothermia.  And that the marshmallows here are not jet-puffed and there are no graham crackers and therefore no s'mores and this makes me sad.  I cry.  Mom, send graham crackers and marshmallows please!!

Ok, back to reality.  The reality that I am still seasonally challenged.

My internal body/weather clock keeps telling me Thanksgiving should be around the corner, and it isn't helping that the grocery stores are flooded with all kinds of root veggies and squashes.  Yum, orange food. 

So instead of making the traditional pumpkin pie, I've made a kumara (sweet potato) cake!

You could also freeze this cake (un-iced), and just warm it up and serve with custard on a chilly rainy night.

Golden Kumara Cake with Orange Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 cups wholemeal flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 ground cardamom
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 2 1/2 cups peeled & grated golden kumara (about 2 medium kumara)
• 1/2 cup chopped nuts (I used walnuts)
• 1/2 cup raisins or sultanas
• 4 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups oil
• 1/2 cup orange juice

Frosting:

• 250g cream cheese, softened
• 30g butter, softened
• 1/2 cup icing sugar
• 2 tbsp orange juice

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 170 C.  Grease and line the base of a 23cm springform pan with baking paper.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder and cardamom.  Stir in sugar, kumara, nuts and raisins/sultanas.
3. In another bowl, whisk eggs, oil and orange juice until the mixture has emulsified.  Stir this egg mixture into the kumara mixture.
4. Pour into prepared baking tin and bake for 50 or so minutes, until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.  Let cool completely before icing.
5. While the cake is baking, make the frosting: combine softened cream cheese, butter, icing sugar and orange juice together in a bowl.  Whisk until smooth.

Eggplant & Zucchini Parmesian

Last night I declared a “night off from everything” for me and Jonno.  That included any form of exercise, any kind of being responsible, and anything work-related.  I put the kaibosh on and we had to actually interact with each other, face to face.  Well, at least for a few minutes anyway.

What does one do with a whole evening in which to engage with their partner?? 

Our answer: eat dinner while watching a superhero movie and scoffing two bottles of tasty red wine.  

What?  We were thirsty!

A model of relationship communication and how to spend quality time together, we are. 

Geek girl tangent: Can I just say that Joss Whedon really should direct all the superhero movies from now on?  I mean, have you seen The Avengers?!  For shiz, it’s great for comic books nerds and newbies alike because JW really knows how to strike the balance between interesting plot lines and subplot, a little implied but not in-your-face romance, lots of humour, and relevant political issues.  I’ve even mended my feud with Scarlett Johansson because Joss managed to make her into an ass-kicking, wrong-righting, smart as hell but under the radar superhero.  In case you were wondering, ScarJo and I had a falling out after she divorced Ryan Reynolds.  Imagine what kind of superhero power couple they would have made if they stayed together – the Green Lantern and the Black Widow.  Rawr!! 

Back to veggies delicately resting under blankets of sauce and cheese and bread crumbs.  Jonno swears that it is the bread crumbs that really make this dish, and I can’t say he’s wrong. 

And who wouldn’t love to sleep under a blanket made out of cheese? 

On second thought, that sounds stinky, maybe not.

Apologies for the lack of photos, but just imagine roasted eggplant and zucchini covered in rich red sauce and lovingly dusted with melted cheese.  Nom.

Eggplant & Zucchini Parmesian

Makes enough for 4 dinners

Ingredients:

• Vegetable or olive oil
• One medium-large eggplant
• One medium-large zucchini, or two small zucchini
• Flour
• 1 c. breadcrumbs
• 1 c. grated Parmesian cheese
• 1 jar prepared tomato-based pasta sauce
• 1 c. mozzarella or tasty cheese, shredded

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 180 C/350 F.
2. In a decent-sized skillet or fry pan, pour enough oil to cover the bottom and turn on medium heat.
3. Slice eggplant and zucchini into 1cm rounds.  Dredge the veggies by coating in flour on all sides.
4. Once the oil is hot (fling a drop of water into it and it should sizzle), fry veg slices in batches til golden on each side.
5. Shake excess oil off and remove to a 9x9” baking dish, arranging eggplant on the bottom layer and zucchini on top.
6. Sprinkle half the breadcrumbs over the veggies. 
7. Pour contents of tomato pasta sauce over the top.
8. Top with remaining breadcrumbs and allthecheese. 
9. Bake for 20 minutes, or until you think the top is sufficiently golden and bubbly. 
10. Boil up a packet of fettucine pasta and serve alongside the E&P Parm and some garlic bread.  And a nice red wine.

Proceed to GO and collect $200.  I wish. 

Zucchini Bread - Yes, Veggies in Baking!

There is something about being forced to sit in front of a computer for eight hours a day that gets my creative juices flowing.  Please note however, that I do compose these posts on my own time, not on company time – I just tend to come up with the ideas while staring at something completely unrelated.


So yes, after three months of unemployment/couch occupation, I have a job!  Which is slightly diabolical for a food blogger, because while I didn’t have a job, I had heaps of time in which I could have done a lot of blogging…if I had had the money, creativity and motivation to do so.  But there was something about having alllll that free time – it just got sucked up by more important everyday life things, like watching Dance Academy and Ellen.  


Also, Motivation and I are not really friends, not when there’s heaps of time to get something done.  It’s Motivation’s evil twin Procrastination that is my BFF when I have plenty of time to get shit done.  I’m sure most people are like that, it’s nothing new.  But it’s funny what I would call a “good reason” for not doing something. Here are some popular excuses: 


-I can’t get out of bed yet, I have to read all the Internets before I can start my day properly!
-I can’t do the dishes right now, a cat has just taken possession of my lap and desperately needs my love and affection.  For the next two hours.
-I can’t possibly do laundry right now, there’s a could in the sky that could potentially produce rain that would get any washing I hang out wet.
-I can’t go for a swim right now, I’ve just eaten lunch!


But here’s something you can’t procrastinate on: baking with in-season veggies.  


What what?!  Baking something sweet with veggies?!  Cue Jonno’s horror-stricken face; he has declared that it is an abomination to have vegetables in a cake.


Back when we were working together and someone would bring in carrot cake for afternoon tea, we used to tell him is was a “spice cake” so that he would eat it.  Then later we would enjoy telling him he had indeed just eaten a CARROT CAKE.  Gah!


Anyway, this zucchini bread/loaf/cake is great if you include both raisins and some kind of nuts, because it adds great texture and crunch to an already great dish.  Make it now while the zucchinis are big and glorious!!

Zucchini Bread

Adapted from Love & Confections

Makes 2 loaf pans

Ingredients:

·         2 cups Zucchini, grated & drained - about 3 medium zucchinis

·         4 Eggs

·         1 cup Vegetable Oil

·         2 cups Sugar

·         3 cups All-Purpose Flour

·         1 tsp salt

·         1 tsp Baking Soda

·         1 tbsp Cinnamon

·         1 tsp Vanilla Extract

·         1 tbsp Baking Powder

·         1 cup Nuts - walnuts are good

·         1 cup Raisins

Directions:

1.      Preheat oven to 325°F/160°C.

2.      Grease and flour loaf pans

3.      Beat Eggs well

4.      Add Oil and Sugar to Eggs and beat well

5.      Add Flour, Salt, Baking Soda, Cinnamon, Vanilla Extract, and Baking Powder.

6.      Mix to combine.

7.      Add Zucchini, Nuts (optional) and Raisins (optional). Mix to combine.

8.      Bake for 45-55 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean when testing.

Summer Shrimp Stir-fry

I never in a million years thought my summers would look like they do in Wellington.  First of all - it's January, and all of the calendar-y type things that the teachers put up in my classrooms had snowflakes for January.  Hearts for Feb, shamrocks for March, eggs for April, flowers for May, sunshines for June, ice cream cones for July, sailboats for August, fall leaves for September, pumpkins for October, turkeys for November, and evergreen trees for December.  And that's how the year went, none of this sailboats in January business. 

Oh!!  And the crappiest thing about it?  My birthday used to be in the summer time, and we'd do really cool stuff for it like go to the water park.  The place that has water slides and wave pools and things that generally involve hot weather and cool (but not freezing!) water to submerge one's self in.  And usually sunburn.  Now I only get sunburned because there's a big frickin hole in the ozone layer above NZ and Aus, not because I spend all of my time running around in a bathing suit. 

Now what do I do for my birthday?  Curl up on the couch under 17 blankets and make the hubs watch girlie movies in an effort to conserve heat.  Last year we did rent a bach at a winery and spend the weekend, but all the vines were dead for the year and it wasn't that pretty.  Mostly we sat in front of the fire. 

Anyway, back to summer things that are different. 

Please note, I am not complaining, just observing.  [Mom, I'm lookin at you!]

Exhibit A: The beach. 

Me and Jonno's private beach and I'm not telling you where it is!

Back in the US, we would go to the beach for a week each summer because it was over 2 hours away.  Here in NZ, I can walk to a beach.  In fact, I can walk to many beaches.  And I'm within driving distance of a few different surf beaches, depending on which way the wind is blowing.  The problem?  You need a wetsuit to go anywhere near that water, what with our proximity to Antarctica and all.  Yeah, that always puts a bit of a damper on my ocean swimming intentions.  It does however make a great ice bath for the legs after going for a punishing run - just wade on in on the way home. 

Exhibit B: Baking???

Plum and Lemon Cake - an easy way to glory among your workmates.

The only baking done in a Washington DC summer time was when it was rainy outside and the air-conditioning was going full blast inside, therefore making going near a hot oven bearable.  In Wellington?  Lots of baking can still be done!!  Good for my taste buds, not for my fitness resolutions.  Last weekend I made Mairi's Plum and Lemon Cake to bring to work, and by the time I remembered to go take a photo of it, this was all that was left. 

Exhibit C: Stif-fry in the summer

I'm not sure why this is so different, but in my world it's light years away from anything I've had back home.  But!  That's doesn't mean that people back home shouldn't make this in the summertime.  You should.  If you appreciate summer veggies like I do, then you. should. make. this.  Just please wait until June or July when the stuff is in season.  You really don't need to be eating a tomato that's traveled farther than you ever will, ever, coz you know that's where those winter tomatoes come from - Mars.

Difference difference difference, argh!! 

Ok, as Jonno would say, "rant over".  I'm adaptable.  I'm happy.  But for my 30th birthday next year, we're damn well going somewhere warm to celebrate!


It's a rainbow for summertime!  With tomatoes on the side for picky husbands.

Summer Shrimp Stir-fry
serves 2 with leftovers

• two handfuls of frozen shrimp, whichever size you like
• one tin of sweet corn, or two ears of corn that have been already cooked
• 1/4 of a red cabbage, shredded
• 1 punnet cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
• 2 small zucchini, diced
• large handful of fresh greenbeans, end snipped off and broken into bite-sized pieces
• 1 onion, diced
• 1/2 red capsicum
• 1 cup rice

1. In a wok or large fying pan, heat some olive oil on medium heat.  Throw in the onion, capsicum and zucchini and saute' until soft.
2. Meanwhile, cook the rice according to the directions.
3. Also, boil up some water in the jug and pour over the frozen shrimp in a bowl to defrost.  Use the rest of the boiling water to start the green beans in a small saucepan.
4. Drain the shrimp and add them to the wok/pan, adding a little more oil and some salt and pepper as well, stir to coat and combine.
5. Once the greenbeans are cooked, drain and add to the pan.
6. Stir the cabbage into the mix and take off the heat.
7. Serve the stir-fry over buttered rice and top with tomatoes.

Sesame Beef and Noodle Salad

Noodles!! Noodles are fun, aren't they?  Even the word is fun.  Noodlenoodlenoddle.  Use your noodle! 

And other such silly things.

Now for the serious.  This noodle-y salad thing is seriously good.  So good that Jonno went back for seconds, even through it had some kick to it.  Jonno does not like much kick.  If you could measure the heat in something in terms of a soccer/football goal kick, Jonno likes things at a gentle tap to the goalpost that the goalie doesn't seem to be leaning towards.  This dish seemed to have somewhere in the region of a decent sock right at the goalie's head kind of kick. 

Oh dear, I think I've really been affected by living with Jonno (he who watches only sports on television) when I start using sport analogies in my food posts.  *Headdesk*

ANYWAY.

I don't know if it was because I made this dish at 8:30 at night after we'd gone for our run and were starving like some lions in the middle of a gazelle shortage, or what, but hot damn it was tasty.  Perfect for the summer time, nice and quick and you can use any extra veggies you might have on the verge of 'science experiment' status lounging around in the fridge.

Sesame Beef and Noodle Salad
adapted from Taste Magazine

• 800(ish) grams thick lean steak, trimmed and sliced thinly
• 2 tbsp sesame seeds
• 2-4 cloves garlic, depending on how much garlic you like
• 1 tbsp sambal oelek (Indonesian chillli paste, found in Asian grocery stores)
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 1/4 cup caster sugar
• 1/8 cup white vinegar
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• 450g packet udon noodles
• 1/4 red cabbage, shredded
• 3 spring onions, finely sliced
• any other veggies you have on hand, I threw in some red capsicum

1. In a wok on medium heat, toast your sesame seeds until they begin to darken, about 7 minutes.
2. Dump the sesame seeds and garlic into a medium-sized bowl, and use the back side/bottom end/pestle to smush the garlic and sesame seeds together.  Add sambal oelek, soy sauce, caster sugar, white vinegar, and oil and mix together. 
3. Add the meat to the sauce mixture and then dump it into the hot wok.  Add the noodles to the wok and work them into the sauce to get them coated.
4. Cook steak for 1-2 minutes on a side while the noodles cook in the sauce at the same time. 
5. After a few minutes, add the veggies, stir through the mixture, then remove from heat.  Dinner is served!

New Year's Resolution Taco Salad

I'm back!!  Ok ok, I've been back in NZ for a week now, but you know I have to read through all of the wonderful posts that were waiting for me in my Google Reader before I could buckle down to do my own. 

What should be on my NY Resolutions: de-cluttering.  This is my junked-up coffee table, in all its junky glory!

In true New Year's style, Jonno and I have started our very own fitness regime in which he is the tyrant and I am the oppressed, jiggly peasant masses.  [Sorry, the word 'regime' just set me off on the semi-tangent.]  So far, we're a week into the Couch to 5K training program, which is a Big Deal for a non-runner like to me even consider making running part of my workouts.  Have I mentioned I hate(d) running?  For realz.  Hateness.

But it's really not so bad right now, mostly because it's gorgeous summer here in Wellington, or at least way better weather than over in America.  If I had attempted to start this thing over there, in the cold and snowingness and rainy dark and generally crappy weather, my training program would fizzle out faster than [insert non-offensive joke here].

So, you see, there's still kind of a problem with this whole exercise and eat well thing, namely being that I'm a food blogger and I still love love kissy kissy huggins love food.  Except for horseradish, nah I'll never ever touch that stuff, man.

When making our Grand Plans of 2012, I statutorily declared to hubs that I would not, WOULD NOT, abandon my foodie nature and give up eating the good stuff.  There may have been some foot stomping thrown in there too, just for good measure.  I need my chocolatepizzamexicanbutterpancakescurryhamburgers food.  To survive. 

Teaser: that Buttermilk Chocolate Cake is to die for.  I'll blog about it soon!

Solution?  Buy less cheese.  That's all that we could agree on.  So I keep making yummy things and taking photos of them and consuming them, but now maybe I'll share them instead of hoarding them in my refrigerator.  That would be nice of me, wouldn't it?

It would also be nice of me to share this easy recipe/idea for a quick taco salad, great for these summer nights when you don't want to spend any time near anything hot and you want to make something relatively healthy.

Please note: Jonno protests this being called a 'taco' salad, since there is really no actual taco anywhere in this thing.  My argument is that it's what you would put IN a taco, and you could really get some tortilla chips and spoon it up with them.  So there, Jonno, taco it is and forever will be. 

Match Point is a slightly disturbing movie, but it's by Woody Allen, so not all that surprising really.

Taco Salad
Serves: 4

• One bag salad greens, your choice
• 2 large boneless chicken breasts
• 3 tbsp lime juice
• one tin of sweet corn kernels
• one tin of beans - kidney, cannelini, chickpeas, or even Wattie's chili beans would work
• one large onion
• one capsicum, diced
• one punnet cherry or grape tomatoes
• 3 tbsp fajita spice (McCormick's makes a great one)
• olive oil
• salt and pepper

1. Chop up chicken into bite-sized pieces and toss in a bowl with lime juice and fajita seasoning.  Put in the fridge to marinate a little.
2. In a large skillet or frying pan, swirl around some olive oil over medium heat.  Coarsely chop your onion (don't cry, it's not sad!) and saute' until soft, but not much more.  Remove onions from the pan.
3. Throw the chicken in the hot pan and brown up.  Sprinkle a little more fajita seasoning over the chicken, and season with salt and pepper.
4. While the chicken is hotting up, chop up the capsicum, drain the corn, and rinse the scungy gross brine off the beans.  Once the chicken is sufficiently cooked and will not poison anyone, toss in the corn and beans to warm them up and get all mixed up in the seasonings.
5. In a large serving bowl, compile the tace salad thusly: greens, capsicum, onions, chicken/corn/bean mixture, tomatoes.  The juices from the chicken/corn/bean mix should be sufficient to dress the greens, but if not, toss a little olive oil and lime juice in there as well.

Other veggies could make an appearance in this tasty dish, and cilantro/coriander chopped over the top may send it into orbit, but I did not have any on hand, sads.  Give this a try, if you believe that salad can actually be dinner.  Or just make it for lunch, whatevs. 

Not for Thanksgiving: Vietnamese Spring Rolls

Thanksgiving is next week and I am a very sad girl because for the third year in a row I’ll be missing my Mom’s delicious t-giving food. I love most everything about Thanksgiving – drawing up the menu, making a shopping list, doing the big shop, helping Mom in the kitchen, making the table look pretty, seeing my aunt, uncle and cousin, eating so much food it hurts, and passing out without attempting the dishes.

I don’t love getting dressed up for the holidays. Never have. Fights used to occur over what my sister and I would try to wear; we favoured jeans, tees, maybe a cardi, but inevitably we were sent back to our rooms to try and find something a little more ‘festive’ and ‘nice’ to wear. We don’t do dressing up for holidays very well. There might even be a pact afoot between us and Cousin to have holidays all in our pajamas, with minimal fanciness. Maybe.

We'd still have the same food though.  Even a power outage won't stop us from having our traditional Thanksgiving food.  (True story!)

Right now, every American foodblogger and their monther is and has been sharing Thanksgiving recipes (click here if you still need some ideas, there are 101), and I wonder how many of them will be used by other people. See, my family has a pretty set menu of culinary demands when it comes to Turkey Day and we rarely deviate from it, and I kind of have the feeling that most Americans are like us.  But that doesn't stop me from wanting to try new kinds of Thanksgiving, just not on the actual day.  I almost feel like I need a whole week of Thanksgivings just to try all of the foodcoma-inducing recipes that are flooding my Google Reader right now. Dear Mr. Obama, could you please make Thanksgiving last a whole week? Worldwide?

Meanwhile in New Zealand it's all windy and sunny and the flowers are blooming and I just feel like skipping down the street with a basket of freshly-baked goodies under my arm and singing at the top of my lungs. Except I don’t sing, or skip, so it would be more like me just walking down the street with (let’s be honest here) a plastic Farmer’s bag with something bad for you in it, grumbling about having to go to work in an office instead of being outside.  Which actually does happen, just about every morning really, because I'm (a) not a morning person, and (b) sitting in an enclosed box all day while the sun is taunting you can really suck.  And then there are the people out on the harbour sailing and kayaking and I just wish I had a robot that looked like me to do my job so I could go out and join those people in their boats.

Boaty people at the Boatshed doing all kind of annoying boaty things in the sunshine.  Boaty.

When I was a kid, I declared I’d never have an office job – I would have a job outside if it killed me. But then I realised that if I wanted to make more than minimum wage I couldn’t be a lifeguard forever, and there’s also this thing called Winter that kind of makes working outside a bit less glamorous than previously thought. I’m still considering a career change though, I hear being a Woman About Town is exciting!

Geez, it’s like Random Tangent Day in Christina’s head. Are you following all this?

Please excuse my creepy pink fingers.  It's the filter, I swear!

So because the holidays are coming and that means you need a lot food floating about the place to feed your guests, and because the weather is glorious and I'm guessing that probably means you want to spend as little time as possible slaving over a hot stove, I give you my favourite no-cook (and therefore no hot oven to overheat you) appetiser – Vietnamese Spring Rolls. Or, around my house, Spling Lolls. We’re silly.

These spring rolls have a great fresh flavour, which combined with the mint and a hint of the fish sauce, the crunch of the cucumber and peanuts, and squidginess of the wrapper makes for very fun eating.  It's also a great way to get people (husbands, children, sailors suffering from scurvy) to eat salad without them realising it!  Who can't resist finger food that looks like....spring rolls. 

A word of caution, however: these are a bit labour-intensive, so get some other people involved in the assembly bit. And for heaven’s sake, give them some wine while they do it. Unless they’re children, then something highly-sugared should get them through.

These spring rolls are enjoying the sunshine, but the sweet chilli sauce is being all moody over in the dark.

Vietnamese Spring Rolls

• Packet of rice-paper spring roll wrappers (available in Asian supermarkets and specialty shops)
• Vermicilli noodles
• Half a head of cabbage – green or purple, or both if you’re fancy
• One carrot
• Bean sprouts, a big handful
• Cucumber, cut into thin matchsticks
• Fish sauce
• Fresh mint leaves, chopped
• Peanuts, chopped
• Sweet chilli sauce for dipping

1. Chop up your cabbage into thin slivers and shred the carrot.  Boil the vermicilli for a few minutes, just until they're pliable.  Drain off the water.
2. Chuck the cabbage, carrot, noodles and bean sprouts into a wok or other large vessel on medium heat.  Splash (not douse, not drown, but splash) some fish sauce over the veggies, about two quick turns around the pan should do it.  Cook the mixture down for a few minutes, then transfer to a bowl.
3. Chop up the mint and the peanuts and set out in bowls for your assembly line.  Cut cucumber into matchsticks and set out on a plate.
4. Grab a bowl big enough to submerge your spring roll wrappers and fill it with hot water, but not too hot that you can't stick your hands in it. 
5. Spring roll construction: stick the spring roll wrappers about halfway in the hot warm and let it soak for 15-30 seconds, turning the wrapper every 10 seconds or so.  The hot water turns the wrapper all soft and pliable.  Rub your fingers against the wrapper to help the wrapper soften. 
1. Lay out flat on a clean plate.  Pick up a handful of filling mixture and spread in a line along the top hemisphere of the circular wrapper.  (If the wrapper were an America-centric map of the world, you'd be spreading it over the good old USA.) 

2. Place a few cucumber sticks along the length of the filling, and sprinkle peanuts and mint over the mixture.  Fold the top of the wrapper over the mixture and tuck under.

3. Fold the sides over, toward the middle.

4. Roll the filling down to the other edge of the wrapper, using your fingers to tightly tuck everything under along the way.  You want the spring roll to be quite tight, not floppy and loose, because let's face it, no one likes a limp.....spring roll.

5. The wrapper will stick to itself.  Serve with sweet chilli sauce!

How do you like my diagrams, eh?  Some fancy work in Microsoft Word goin on there!

Guacamole is a Good Decision

I make really strange decisions sometimes. I’m not sure my brain is wired properly. I wear weird combinations of clothes that I swear look awesome before I leave the house, and then later see photos of and have one of those "what the hell was I thinking?!" moments. 

Once for bookclub, I brought two bags of yeast rolls as my ‘plate’ because I (a) had just mastered making a bread product with yeast (!), and (b) I thought everyone would love them as much as I do and of course 7 people would polish off 24 rolls. Heh. What really happened was that not one was eaten, even by me because everyone else brought food that was much more fun than rolls, and since I put the fresh-from-the-oven rolls in a plastic bag and the moisture couldn’t escape they got all soggy and I had to throw the whole thing out later that night. Sorry for the run-on sentence.

This ‘pasta’ (I’m not sure what it’s actually called because the packaging was literally all in Greek) was one such strange decision. I found it in with the foreign foods at the grocery store and thought that the long hollow noodles looked like fun. Wrong! They are slurpy little buggers and you end up wearing half of your pasta sauce on your shirt coz its gets into the noodles and then falls out when you try to eat them. Also, the sauce doesn’t really stick to them, so the meal ends up more like ‘pasta with a side of tomato sauce’ rather than your normal spag bol. I’m sure they have some practical food use, but since I can’t read Greek, I’ll never know what it is!

Guacamole, on the other hand, is always a good decision. Especially technicolour guacamole.  You can't go wrong holding a bowl of guacamole.  Just broke a lamp?  Make some guac.  Need to say sorry to a friend?  Bring a bowl of concilatory guacamole.  'Accidentally' adopted a new pet or three and have to break it to your partner gently?  Yeah, guacamole might not be enough.  But it would make a good start!


So bright, it almost hurts your eyes.

I learned how to make this from a waiter at a restaurant just outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico. They had a guacamole cart that they would wheel over to your table, with all the ingredients all chopped up, and then proceed to create avocado bliss before your very eyes. It’s so easy and visually stunning and not to mention yummy that you can’t not make it. The hardest part about making guacamole is just remembering all eight of the ingredients – when I’m shopping for the ingredients I pretty much have to walk around holding up however many fingers of ingredients I have picked up. It probably looks like I’m flashing gang signs whenever I do that. I try to ignore the funny looks.


Brightness dimmed by fun filter.  And yes, I did make this funky blue bowl, aren't I clever? :)

Serve this with plain tortilla/corn chips. The best ones I’ve found in NZ are the homebrand ones at Countdown, all nice and salty. None of this cheese-covered nonsense with my guacamole!! *Shakes fist* Also, don’t puree’ the avocado into a paste-like consistency. I’ve seen this done and to me it takes a lot of the flavour out it. I like my guac chunky, with lots of complementing flavours all mingling and getting to know each other in the bowl, not whizzed to greeny-gray gluey stuff.


Mexican-style Guacamole

• 2 large/3 small ripe avocados (they should be slightly squishy)
• 1 red onion
• 1 chilli pepper
• 3 cloves of garlic
• 2 ripe tomatoes
• 1 lime or bottled lime juice
• ¼ cup chopped coriander/cilantro
• Salt

Note: a food processor is useful, but not essential.

1. Finely chop the red onion and garlic cloves.
2. De-seed the chilli pepper and finely chop.
3. Halve the tomatoes and scoop the seeds and pulp out with a spoon. Dice up the remaining fleshy bits.
4. If you have a food processor, pulse the red onion, garlic, chilli pepper, tomatoes and coriander/cilantro a few times, until nicely incorporated but not pureed. If no food processor, just pile them all up on your cutting board and run your knife through it all until you have a uniform size going on. Dump into a bowl and incorporate well.
5. Cut the avocados in half and use your knife to remove the stones. Scoop out the green stuff into your bowl and use the back of a large spoon to smush the avocado up.
6. Sprinkle a pinch of salt and a good squeeze of lime juice, then mix everything together gently.
7. Make the guacamole a few hours before or up to a day before serving to let the flavours develop.
8. Store covered in the fridge to delay the avocado turning brown, then take it out a bit before serving to let it warm up.  Serve at or close to room temperature, not cold.

Gratuitous parting kitty shot: Lucy has a cute little beauty mark on her nose, like the little diva she is.

Seasonally Challenged: Vegetable Soup

I fed my husband vegetables last night, lots of em.  Six different veggies, to be accurate.  And no meat, potatos, pasta or rice.  Miracle?  Nah, just starve him til he'll eat anything!

Shooting from the hip vegetable soup!

Disclaimer: I know that it is coming on spring, and this recipe is mostly tinned and winter veggies, but I have said that I am seasonally challenged, so I'm just living up to the hype!


This was last night:

• Cheeky pint with workmate and his lady.
• 6:30 @ home: husband dishes out a snack of pita bread and hummus.
• 7: 00 Cracked a bottle of wine - the alcohol held off hunger for a while so I could catch up on Grey's Anatomy.
• 8:00, me, "oh, guess it's time to make dinner!"  I checked the recipe for the Minestrone I had planned to make.  $h!t, it takes hours.  We didn't have hours, the growls coming from Jonno's monster of a stomach were drowning out the rugby game, that's when you know it's bad!
• Delivered bad news to husband, he takes it stoically then astonishingly is still able to think on his feet: "isn't there some soup frozen in the freezer?  Just throw that in a pot, she'll be right!"
• Sure enough in the freezer there is an ice cream container full of what looks like chicken soup - we're saved!
• Not so fast - the soup is only chicken broth, left over from when I roasted a chicken and then thriftily used the bones to make stock.
• Me: "Didn't I buy some chicken the other day?  I'll just cook up one of those and chuck it into my already-defrosting stock and we'll have chicken soup.  Boom!"
• Nope, I didn't buy chicken, I bought pork chops.  Fail.
• In a strange twist of fate, I had just bought celery, which I never buy because we both hate the flavour of raw celery.  It tastes like sweet grassy nothingness, you know it's true!
• Bonus: other actual vegetables in the house (as opposed to frozen ones, usually reserved for stir-fry), so boom!  Vegetable Soup!
• 8:45 Put Round 1 of veggies in the pot, then go back to Grey's and another glass of red.
• 9:00 Round 2 of veggies plus herbs, more Grey's.  Possibly more wine.
• 9:20 Grey's is done, I remembered that I was supposed to feed my husband, dish some out and actually sit down and talk to husband for the first time that day. 

Lesson learned: label what you freeze!  I also discovered some kind of dough in the freezer, and I have no idea what it's for.  Could be pierogies, bread, pie.... 

And maybe I should start reading recipes before I plan them for the week?  But come on, who has time to actually read things, especially when the rugby is on, which it is constantly right now.  Thanks Rugby World Cup, for usurping my husband and stalling our lives for six weeks.

Oh, oh, but wait - RWC you make up for all your time-stealing by giving us ships to explore this weekend!  Ahoy mateys!  Five grey Navy boats (ships?) are currently gracing our office view and taunting us with their cool gadgety-looking things.  So.  Cool.

Spontaneous Vegetable Soup

Serves: 6 at least

Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients

• 1 L chicken stock or broth
• 1 tin cannelini beans or kidney beans
• 1 large kumara, sweet potato, or white potato
• 2 carrots, peeled and diced
• 3 celery stalks, chopped
• 2 medium onions, diced
• 1 tin sweet corn
• 2 tsp chicken or vegetable boullion or stock powder
• 1 tsp thyme
• 1/2 tsp rosemary
• salt & pepper

1. Defrost frozen stock or bring liquid stock to a rolling boil in a large pot.
2. Round 1 of veggies: beans, kumara/potato, carrots - into the pot for 15 minutes.
3. Round 2: celery, onions, corn, plus the herbs and stock or powder.  Season with plenty of salt and pepper.  Let simmer for another 10-15 minutes. 
4. You could also through in some pasta in this last step, but don't cook too long so that pasta doesn't get all soggy and floppy.
5. Serve to an unsuspecting yet starving family.