hang me up to dry: kitchen organisation

These are ones to do if you are renovating as you will need to put reinforcing behind the plasterboard so that the rods can take the weight. Rods, shelving, knife wall magnet and hooks are from Ikea. Having hanging pots and utensils and wall shelving make cooking and cleaning in your kitchen so easy! I…

the salmon dance – easy pan fried crispy skin salmon

The key to crispy skin when pan frying is don’t dance with the salmon – you may be tempted to move it around while it’s cooking or flip it over – hold this urge – the longer you cook skin side down, the crispier it will be. Points 1 to 3 also help remove moisture…

she’s a rainbow – nasturtiums

Nasturtiums are dotted around the outskirts of our lawn, between some of our fruit trues who are happy to have them close to them. Mostly we use the leaves and flowers to add colour to ‘pretty up’ salads. But I recently saw an idea for nasturtium infused vinegar (http://www.sbs.com.au/food/recipes/roast-beetroot-salad) and gave it go (along with…

pickle in the middle – rhubarb pickle

This is a tasty little pickle that was featured in the roast beetroot salad on SBS Food Safari Earth (Nov 9th 2017). When I saw it I immediately thought, ‘awesome – another thing to do with all the rhubarb we have at the moment!’ I grow giant rhubarb which is green, and is slightly more…

in the beantime

This week we’ve really been getting in to pulse salads with a protein. Putting herbs and preserved citrus in the salad and coating with a lemon, vinegar and garlic dressing brings the salad to life. These are quick to prepare, have little dishes, and leftovers are good for a work lunch the next day –…

paint it black – kitchen blackboard

Looking for a quick way to lift your kitchen? Put a little spring in your kitchen’s step by creating an instant blackboard to record immediate lists (no more forgetting that one thing you just ran out of!) and dinner menus for entertaining. When we renovated our kitchen 2 years ago, we gave the laminate on…

Shape I’m In – whip your kitchen into shape!

What do you do to get your kitchen into shape? With the change of season and a new arrival (the fridge!) I recently re-tidied our kitchen and so a few kitchen organisation tips will be up on the blog over the next week or so. Of course they will be weaved in with some recipes…

bettlebum – beetroot + silverbeet leaves

We have a few beets that are ready in our garden at the moment. I love beets to add colour to salads and also baked, wrapped in aluminium foil, with some vinegar and salt and pepper. Their leaves are also great to use in your salads. I find growing your own veggies makes you more…

coffee & tv – home-made cold brew coffee

This is a smooth and tasty cold brew coffee that you can make at home, and also take in an esky to enjoy camping or on picnics. This also makes a thoughtful gift and we made up bottles to include with our home made Christmas gifts. We did the batch Christmas morning. We are camping…

Add a dab of salt to your onions

I have moved away slightly from my song titles for this post. This title comes from Episode 1 of Black Books when Manny swallows the Little Book of Calm. In my head my blog post sounds like an excerpt from there – perhaps the Little Book of Calm Cooking? You may already do this, but…

fed and watered

I wanted to give a little shout out to the book, Dough by Richard Bertinet. Cass has been getting into making bread in preparation for the wood oven we are constructing in our summer holidays – watch this space! He has been using this book to prepare starters and make loaves of sour dough, whole…

oh! dahling – green lentil curry

This recipe is an adaptation on a simple dahl recipe in The Complete Asian Cookbook by Charmaine Solomon.The coconut milk adds a subtle, but tasty, coconut flavour. This adaptation turns into more of a green lentil curry rather than a dahl – but I like the Oh! Darling play on words too much. It was…