Pikelets

Why does every recipe for pikelets leave out Step 4?  Step 4 is essential, and I'm not sure you can make pikelets without it.  I think the world needs me to reinstate Step 4.

Method

1. Place the flour and sugar into a bowl. Stir with a wooden spoon to combine, then set aside. Whisk the milk, butter and egg together in a jug.
2. Add the milk and egg mixture to the flour mixture. Whisk until smooth.
3. Heat a large non-stick frying pan over medium heat. Brush with a little melted butter. Using a tablespoon, spoon the mixture into the pan.
   
4. Burn inside forearm on edge of hot frying pan.
   
5. Cook for 2 minutes or until bubbles form. Carefully turn them over and cook for a further 1-2 minutes or until cooked through. Transfer them to a plate and repeat with the remaining mixture and remaining forearm.
6. Serve the pikelets warm or at room temperature, topped with jam and cream.

What are pikelets called in the USA?

Jessie's Kitchen

Sweet and sour for every course

Anna-Lucia had been busy in her little kitchen, and called me over to the Red Table.  She had the little red chairs pulled up around it and on one side, a tiny wooden table had been placed there to accommodate my larger-than-child-size posterior.  She thinks of everything.

Each place had been set with a bowl, a spoon and a cup and saucer.  She stood at her place wearing her tiny little white apron, miming serving out food into the bowls and pouring tea into the cups.

"This looks lovely," I said.  "What are we having for dinner?"

She was at a loss.  She had spent so much time preparing the place settings and cooking the 'dinner' that she'd forgotten to specify exactly what 'dinner' she had cooked.

"Spaghetti?  With chicken?"

"Yes," she said, a little relieved. "Sa-getti wiff kicken."

"Mmm, it's lovely," I replied after Grace had been said and we'd taken our first mouthfuls.  "It's really tasty.  What did you put in it to make it taste so nice?"

"Strawberries," she said.

"Oh, ha, wow.  No wonder it's so nice!  Anything else?  Mayonnaise?" I knew she liked mayonnaise.

"Yeah - strawberries and bay-maise."

"Well that's just lovely.  And this cup of tea - now that's different!  What's in that?"

"Grapes," she said.

"Mmm - nice.  I've never had grapes in my tea before.  Okay, now what's for dessert?"

Again, she was a little lost.  I knew she'd prepared it because the chocolate pudding tin was sitting on the table ready for serving.

"Did you make chocolate pudding?"

"Yeah, it's clock-late putting!" she cheered.

"Ooooh, that's is love-ly!" I encouraged, and took a bite.  "Now this is different too!  There's a new flavour in that.  What did you put in?"

"Punkyin," she answered, without missing a beat.

I'm not sure if I should be concerned

Believe this if you can.

Anna-Lucia has been "cooking" her baby dolls in her toy oven.

One day, Mr de Elba walked past Anna-Lucia playing in her kitchen, and said, "What's cooking in the oven, Anna?" to which Anna replied, "Maisie!"

And just today, my attention was grabbed when Anna-Lucia shut her oven door and said with satisfaction, "There.  She's woasting!"

I didn't say "who", I said "What's roasting, sweetheart?"  And she replied, "Caroline!"

No Lie.

Either something has derailed in the Culinary Cortex in her brain, or we're raising the Wicked Witch of the West.

Australia Day Food

Really, the company was better than the food.  However I won't post photos of the company, not to protect their identities but because I didn't take any.  Having your photo pop up on someone else's blog might make you feel a little bit unsafe anyway, and I didn't clear it with them first.  Needless to say, lunch with David and Victoria was delightful, and Brooklyn, Romeo and Cruz were perfectly behaved.

We ate:

Roast lamb

with potatoes, pumpkin and sweet potatoes

and garlic bread and steamed veggies, some of which were green and gold,

green and gold drinks,

and green and gold jelly with ice-cream.

David and Victoria brought green and gold lollies

and then there was lots of this (below), even after the company left:

Our vocalist lost us lots of points.

And that was Australia Day 2010.

Here's the 2010 Lamb on Australia Day ad by Sam Kekovich.

I collected previous years' here.

Parfait!

So it happened like this:

Shrek said that Ogres have LAYERS. Donkey said that onions stink, and what about cakes, because cakes have layers and everybody likes cake. Shrek said he didn't care what everybody likes, and that Ogres are not like cakes. And Donkey suggested that everybody loves parfait ...

Anna-Lucia watched it a thousand times and now says countless times a day that ogres like onions, and they don't like cakes, "but WE DOO!!!"

Nat said that it was that ogres ARE LIKE [similar to] onions, not that they LIKE [enjoy eating] onions, and conversely that they ARE NOT LIKE cake. Because he can't leave well enough alone.

And Anna-Lucia went on undeterred about Ogres not liking parfait, even though she didn't know what parfait was.

Well.

I decided that we needed to research parfait, because you never know, we [Mummy] might learn something. We looked up parfait on taste.com.au and found the pictures for many recipes. We discussed the ingredients and the different LAYERS that each parfait had.

And now, parfait dominates our thoughts, menus and grocery shopping lists.

Picture an impossibly tiny two year old girl wolfing down her dinner, and as she puts the final mouthful away she declares, "I'm finished! I can have parfait now!" Easy for her to say. First I heard about parfait for dessert!

Well. Long story short (oops, too late) this is what we had for breakfast this morning.


Layers.

A layer of mango yoghurt, a layer of banana, a layer of mango, a layer of strawberry, a layer of kiwi fruit and another layer of mango yoghurt.

"Num num num, can I have more parfait?"

Oh sweetheart. I think I need a little lie down.

Breakfast

This is gonna be a funny post. I'm guessing you'll all think I'm crazy because I am doing a step-by-step coooking post on how to prepare our favourite breakfast - porridge (oatmeal). Everyone knows how to cook this and the inclusions are pretty basic, so who really needs a step-by-step post showing how to do it?

Nobody.

So why do it at all? To test out my new camera of course. To see if I can take pictures of food that don't make you want to 'pass', and head down the local fish&chip shop instead.

Not that you'd have fish & chips for breakfast.

But I digress.

I also want to show you how we like our porridge, because a lot of people don't like porridge. Swift Jim, for example. He says it's just gruel to him. And I have to admit, a steamy pot of this is not all that appetising:

But think of all those unsweetened complex carbs - too good to waste surely? We go through a lot of oats at our place, and this is what we do with them.

You'll need:

Step 1 is pretty important. If you stuff this up, you'll only be correcting it later on. It makes perfect sense to do this right the first time.

You have to spoon some porridge into the bowls so it can cool down while you do the next steps. But it is quite important that you spoon it into the RIGHT bowls, and have the RIGHT spoons waiting. In this example, we have the Bunny-Rabbit bowl and the Bunny-Rabbit Spoon, and behind them we have the Stripey bowl with the normal dessert spoon. Very important.

Next you need to mash up a ripe banana. We go through a lot of bananas at our place. See how yummy? See how yellow? It is my belief that the more you mash a banana, the sweeter it gets. I think this is most probably incorrect and stupid. But I still like to think it.

The children are used to waiting the extra 5 minutes for their breakfast, but they still get a bit bored, sitting at the table while I mash banana.

Add the mashed banana to the porridge with some sultanas ('raisins' in the US). We go through a lot of sultanas at our place.

Mix it up well, and add a sprinkle of cinnamon on the top. Smile at young children's pronunciation of cinnamon. We go through a lot of cinnamon at our place.

And now for the Grace.

"Thankyou for the world so briiight...
Thankyou for the stars at niiight...

Thankyou God for ...

Please bless the food,
Thankyou for the food...

And now for this bit:

Ah yes. Very good Mum.
And I of course am irrationally proud of myself for getting those complex carbs into them, using only fruit sugar to sweeten it. Yummo.

How To Eat Tomato Sandwiches...

...if you really like tomatoes but are not too keen on bread.

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Thanks for your help in the previous post - still not sure what to do, but Hip-Jen reminded me of the frangipani clock which was quite nice after all. The fruit plate then becomes my third best work, and therefore, less needy of salvation.

Happy Lamb On Australia Day

It's Australia Day. Dee has been talking about what she loves about Australia in her recent posts, and Heather loves the idea of our weather so much that today she asked me to wear a t-shirt and shorts outside and soak up some sun! She's just saying that because it's (in her own words) "freaking FREEZING" where she lives right now, and I do sympathise with her. But I didn't go outside and soak up rays today because I feared my body would dry up, go crackly and burst into flames.

For my Australia Day Post, I will show you a series of TV advertisements that keeps us laughing every Australia Day.

The actor is Sam Kekovich. He was an Australian Rules football player and is now most famous for being the spokesman for Meat and Livestock Australia, promoting the lamb industry.

His ads are the most politically incorrect pieces I have ever seen broadcast on Australian TV, but most Australians love them. He takes brazen swipes at people, groups and situations which knock the air out of your lungs and make you wonder how long it will be before the ads are taken off air. But each Australia Day, he's back with more.

I want to share them with you. If you're easily offended, feel free to leave now. Sorry if you feel you need subtitles, they're not available. He talks faster as the years pass and something tells me you're not as used to our accents as we are to yours! We see all your TV, and all you get is Bindi the Jungle Girl. And maybe The Wiggles.

2005 I believe this is the original ad. He takes a swipe at thongs (flip-flops) and anyone who eats vegetarian or chicken.



2006 Sam shocks again. in 2006, our news was full of pretty (but stupid) Australian girls jailed for drug posession in Indonesia, riots and violence on the beaches at Cronulla and bird flu threatened poultry all over the world. The Australian Cricket Team lost the Ashes and one of our famous cricketers suffered the breakdown of his marriage after news that he had multiple affairs with English models while away on tour, transcripts of his text messages to them appearing in tabloids all over Britain.

And Sam blamed it all on us not eating enough lamb:



2007 In 2007, Sam produced an epic 3-minute ad. I'll let it speak for itself:



2008 He suggests Australia Day is replaced by Australia Week. We'd come through the horse flu epidemic, the appalling behaviour of our footballers which got far too much publicity, and there was a lot of controvery surrounding the way refugees to Australia were kept in detention on the island Nauru. Sam mentions all of these, and drew criticism for being disrespectful about the appearance of Helen Clark, the then-PM of New Zealand.



2009 Were we surprised to see another Eat Lamb On Australia Day ad from Sam? Yes we were, given the controversy that's followed his previous ads. But we still laughed. The situation of the world economy was his focus, but he also reminded us that our Olympians probably did better out of their sponsorship deals than the actual Olympics.



Where can he go from here? We have to wait another year to find out.

Please nobody tell Sam that I have planned to cook homemade pizza for dinner on Australia Day.

Potential Fireball in my Kitchen

I'm pretty mad. When buying the appliances for my new kitchen, was was sort-of talked into, sort-of tricked by the salesman into buying the most expensive model, even though I wanted the mid-range model.

He managed this by asking me some dumb question about oven cleaning (it might have been the time he asked, "Do you enjoy cleaning your oven?" with such seriousness on his face, as if I might have said, "I do, actually, it's one of my guilty pleasures.") When I answered that I wasn't all that keen on cleaning my oven, he surreptitiously changed my choice of oven to the pyrolytic cleaning model. So that's what I ended up getting.

I was a bit shocked to see the price of the overall package jump up, but I thought, what the heck, I'll live here and use my oven for MANY more years to come, it might end up being worth it."

And of course, you know that a fortnight after the kitchen was finished, it appeared we were indeed moving, a fact I still haven't come to terms with.

Now, what does the "Pyrolytic" model do that other ovens don't?

Well, the salesman claimed that I would have have practically NO CLEANING to do in my new oven, as the pyrolytic feature heats the oven up to something ridiculous, like 500 decrees C (that's 932 degrees F, I kid you not) and it blitzes all grease to kindgom come. At worst, the only residue is some ash that can be wiped out.

That temperature is HOT. It's like having a controlled fireball in your kitchen. It's like the surface of the sun. It is so hot that the light doesn't work during cleaning and once a certain temperature is reached, THE OVEN LOCKS ITS OWN DOOR and will not unlock it until it cools down to a more reasonable temperature.

Would that be worth the extra money, you think?

Perhaps.

That is, it would be worth it IF the included oven trays could be put through the pyrolytic cleaning process.

IF the included wire racks could be put through the pyrolytic cleaning process.

IF the side-rails could be put through the pyrolytic cleaning process.

IF you didn't need to do the abovementioned items the old-fashioned way, with elbow grease and oven cleaner.

IF it did not say "After every use, wipe the oven with a solution of washing-up liquid and allow to dry."

IF it didn't say, "First, remove the worst of the residue manually."

IF it did not say, "Residue that is not removed may cause changes to the surface colour when Pyroluxe is used."

How glad am I that I spent the extra money on it?

Not at all.

Humbug.

Grace

I want to say Grace at my place. I want my kids to get into a habit of thanking God for everything, including the food they eat. Not necessarily singing grace, I just really hate that, but saying a quick heartfelt thanks is what I'd like to foster.

The other day, we were having eggs on toast and Mr de Elba said (I believe 'off the cuff'),

"Thankyou God for eggs and wheat.
Thankyou for the food we eat. Amen."

I loved it! Honest, short, fun and it rhymed! Top marks.

I got to thinking about other graces I could write for different meals. My first one took an unexpectedly disturbing turn and needed to be abandoned:

A Husband's Grace for Roast Lamb
Thankyou for my kids and wife
And this dumb beast who gave its life
Who fell to rise and bleat no more
Lifeless on the killing floor...

Obviously that wasn't going to make the grade. I was heading towards the vegetables, and ended up in a pool of blood.

I tried some more, but they came out sounding awkward:

Grace for a Frittata
Thankyou loving Holy Father
For our vegetable frittata...

That rhyme is too tenuous.

Grace for a Pizza
Zank you Lord for now we eat za
Tasty roasted pumpkin pizza...

Way too silly.

Grace for Fish and Chips
Lord we pray these fish and chips
Do not go straight to my hips...

Getting too far away from the spirit of giving thanks for the food.

And then creativity struck and with a change of meter and a change of focus came this scrap of promise:

Grace for Sunday Morning Breakfast
Gratitude for tea and toast
Breakfast that I love the most
Comfort and simplicity
Being my priority
This Sabbath of tranquility
Thankyou, Holy Ghost.

And God would know I was talking about him, but was scratching for a rhyme there. He'd smile though, because I never call Him "Holy Ghost." It lends a dazed, ethereal feeling to the grace which is rather appropriate as that is how I feel on Sunday mornings after being woken far too early by my kids.

Speaking of which, I think there needs to be a grace in which they feature.

Grace for When I've Put Too Much Effort In
You gave me time to plan this dish
You gave me money to buy the fish
You gave more time to cook the lot
And serve it up all steamy-hot

You gave us two most lovely kids
To look at the food and hit the skids
To whinge and moan and pick at the food
To make some comments that are really quite rude

But all of these things I thank you for
And for the kids, I'll thank you more
Let me not begin to resent
The time and money and effort I spent

Let me thank you as I enjoy
My food, my husband, my girl and my boy
And remind me next time that I must be nuts
When preparing dinner to bust my guts.

Amen.

And here's a final one for meals the children actually do eat:

Grace for Anything With Rice
Lord I think it's really nice
You gave the human race its rice
Feeding those from every land
Filling tummies as you planned.

Make me thankful as I scrub
Rice from table, boy and bub,
Floor and carpet, fork and plate.
Teach me to appreciate.

Amen.

Of Killing Birds With Stones

So here's an interesting thing.

I was making a spinach and feta pull-apart today. Great recipe! I don't usually mess about with yeast and dough and kneading and rising because the end product is sometimes a little heavy and if you can't finish it the day it's made (and our family usually can't), it's a bit of a loss the next day.

Anyway, the recipe calls for 10 minutes of kneading. That's a lot of physical activity for someone like me. But I was getting into it and noticing how it was working my upper body. And then I noticed that because the dough was fairly stiff, I had to 'brace' my body so I could knead properly.

The muscles I was working were for core stability, and in particular the transverse abdominals. These are the ones I need to exercise regularly to help what (I think) Kaz Cooke calls "achy breaky pelvis" - the sacro-iliac dysfunction I got when I was pregnant and haven't yet lost due to low tone and lax joints and grumble grumble grumble. And kneading the bread was the best workout I'd given those muscles for a while!

Then I remembered how the pelvic floor works in synergy with the transverse abdominals and if I try to exercise that at the same time, I'd be making bread, toning the upper body, dealing with the achy breaky pelvis and solving the sneezing problem all in one!

This is a recipe I'll have to make more often.

The New Kitchen

Our new kitchen was finished on Monday, and I'm sorry it's taken so long to give you some pictures! Remember how it used to look?

The first thing that got a makeover was the floor:



The rest of the kitchen went in smoothly. The stone bench and the tiles took a little longer than I expected, but it was all done in pretty good time.

Now, the place looks much nicer. There is a noticeable increase in useable storage space. That picture in the upper left will be change to actually be a picture of US, not the standard picture of models pretending to be married that you get when you buy a frame.


This is my dream bench. Plenty of preparation space, drawers below, cupboards above, and a magnetic whiteboard behind it.


That's a pretty standard amount of fruit for our kitchen. We also have watermelon and pawpaw in the fridge (which, frustratingly, is still in the living room.) This picture was taken yesterday, and most of that fruit is gone today.

Our new cooktop is a dream to cook on. That's it there under the saucepan. Beside the kettle. There.

The pantry has heaps of space. Half the shelves ware moveable, so I made a small shelf at the very bottom for the dustpan & brush and some trays, and the second-bottom shelf is large for the appliances. The oven is awesome. I'm looking forward to trying new recipes in it using new functions like fan-grilling, and also some recipes I gave up on because my old oven couldn't cook them well, like sponge cakes.



We've got some baskets for the hats that live just inside the door onto the deck...


and a basket for the tea towels and washers.


It's a dream to cook in, and we're very thankful we were able to get a new kitchen. Thanks for bearing with me during the kitchen process. It was worth it!

Kum Ba Ya and Twigs in your Bed

I'm not really into camping.

Sorry, I pronounced that wrong. I meant to pronounce it, "I hate camping."

Mr de Elba would love it if I liked camping, but I don't. In a few weeks he and five friends are going on a canoeing-camping weekend, and I am glad because perhaps this means I won't have to endure the experience myself any time soon.

Three months after Mr de E and I were married, we went on a church camp which involved tents. It was a disaster.

I have to say that the company was great, because our good friend Hippomanic Jen was with us and she reads this blog. (The company actually was great!) But not even good company could make me stop wishing I was at home in the snuggly bed that the Good Lord provided for me.

The trouble started on the first night. We all arrived at the campsite after dinnertime and had to put tents up in the dark. Jen had been promised by the pastor's wife that she could share a tent with their daughter. Unfortunately, the daughter didn't share such generous leanings and loudly refused to be a part of any such sharing arrangement.

I could feel Jen's complete mortification through the darkness - misplaced trust, accommodation rejection and the strong possibility of a night under the stars.

Of course Mr de Elba and I offered that she could share with us. Our tent was another generous loan from the pastor's wife, thankfully not rescinded.

Our dear friend had to accept our offer (what choice did she have?) despite being deeply horrified at the thought of sharing a tent with a newly-married couple. She didn't need to be horrified: we were most certainly NOT planning on "getting up to anything" in a tent - by a lake - hidden only by thin canvas - surrounded by church people. We had been on a Beach Mission two weeks after our wedding, and already had enough material to write a book entitled "The Perils of Making Love on an Air Mattress."

On the first night, the sleep was uncomfortable and patchy. On the second night it was painful and awkward, owing to the fact that Mr de Elba didn't apply sunscreen before going windsurfing that day and got sunburnt.

Often, the only saving grace on a Bad Weekend Away is the food, but when you're camping in tents, this is one of the most disappointing parts of the experience.

The plan was to have bacon and eggs cooked leisurely over a fire for Sunday morning breakfast, smoke curling up towards the branches above, the pleasant aroma of the meal wafting through the campsite.

The reality, of course, was to wake on Sunday morning and realise that the two bags of ice in the Esky had melted, and raw eggs and bacon were floating randomly through the morass.

Mr de E, Hippomanic Jen and I had cereal instead. We dragged our sorry selves home, and I (at least) silently whispered, "Let's never do that again."

I guess Mr de Elba either didn't say the same thing, or he's forgotten ...

Some Kitchen Success

Since I wrote the last blog post, I cooked something in my oven, and it worked out! Oh the joy of Sweet Sweet Culinary Success! Would you like to know what I made?

I reheated a few frozen cocktail spring rolls! And I didn't ruin them! YAY!

This is not to say I'd usually ruin the reheating of a few cocktail spring rolls. I'm just saying - this performance anxiety has had me worried that all skills I used to have will go out the window with the 1974 oven whose door never properly shut anyway.

Buoyed by my spring roll success, I thawed some pastry, put leftover Chicken & 10-Veggie Casserole inside some squares, triangled them up and cooked ... Pasties! And THEY turned out okay too!

And today after finding a really good set of saucepans (ya gotta get the posh type if you have induction, y'know) I came home, boiled some water and ... poached two eggs! And THEY turned out too!

Jamie Oliver, eat your heart out.

I'll try a proper recipe soon, I promise.

Performance Anxiety!

I am suffering from a large dose of performance anxiety regarding my ability to cook anything good in my new kitchen. I have become certain that I will mess up any recipe I cook in it, despite the word "Competence" being plainly displayed on the lower edge of my new oven.

The retailer who sold me the appliances runs free workshops for customers to learn how to use the appliances we've bought.

I think I need to sign up.

The Mess, The Kitchen and Disturbing the Peace

Every day I think, "I don't have anything all that interesting to blog about today - maybe something great will happen tomorrow and I'll be able to blog it."

But every day, nothing blogworthy happens. This doesn't mean that life is dull! I'm enjoying sailing through the days with Mr de Elba and the kids, but nothing really outstanding is going on.

Here are a few of the unblogworthy things that have been happening. Each one half-deserves a post, but none makes it over the line. So they all have to share a post.

1. THE MESS: Sonny Ma-Jiminy made a comprehensive sunscreen mess today, OO-MOM rating 8 (deliberate). While I was cleaning that up, he made a rice mess, OO-MOM rating 3 (accidental). While I was cleaning that up he went to the toilet and got wee all over the floor, OO-MOM rating 4 (accidental, and isn't he such a lovely boy to be taking himself to the bathroom all day and managing not to wet the bed at night?)

2. THE KITCHEN: Everything is done except the final electrician's visit and the tiling. I won't post a picture until the tiling is done because before the lovely tiles come, the gorgeous mangrove-coloured benchtops don't yet look their best. No fault of the benchtop! Check it out!



See how lovely that little corner of bench looks with the wood grain in the cupboards? Mm-mm, nice. Now check out how horrible it looks with the ripped-up wall behind it:



Yuck. Well to be honest, that picture was darker than real-life, but honestly, nothing would look all that hot with the poor wall behind it! I'm waiting for the whole job to be done before I post pictures. But our kitchen is nearly functional so long as you don't need to use the oven or the cooktop, and life is getting back to normal.

3. DISTURBING THE PEACE: I was taking Sonny Ma-Jiminy and Smoochy Girl to the car after getting a few things at the supermarket yesterday when I saw a man pull up into the car park that was immediately outside the entrance to the shop. As I walked out the doors, I saw him sitting in the driver's seat, fastening a large piece of cardboard to the inside of his windscreen. In bold black letters the sign read, "Doctor C__ of [Our Town] committed perjury in the Supreme Court." Weird. But not really blogworthy.

I just wanted you all to know that I'm still here, but there's not much to say.

A Very Good Sign

I hadn't noticed until a few nights ago this mysterious single word in small letters at the lower edge of our new oven.



That's a pretty nifty feature. Anything to make me a more competent cook.

Three Days

Monday

Tuesday
Wednesday

(And now everything will GO SLOW, so I will stop with the reno blog and give you more mess and mayhem.)

(P.S. - this picture shows pinkish cabinets. They are most definitely not pinkish. The colour higher in the room is closer to the real one.)

Taking Shape