the scent of water

Hey Pesto

What else is there to do when you have more basil than you can shake a lasagne at, right? 

I had made a spinach and toasted pine nut pie for dinner a couple of weeks ago (and yes!  my children ate it!  and no!  they didn't ask for seconds!) and wanted to see if the same flavour would work in a pesto.

As well as the vaguely-resembling-baby-diarrhea tinge the toasted pinenuts add to the colour, they also give it a distinctly un-pesto like aftertaste.  Not bad exactly.  Just unexpected.

It's a little bit delicious in its own way, and I think it would work really well in a bolognaise or somewhere where its smoky flavour would blend in nicely, rather than confuse. 

Warren ate the second half of the tomato and did that weird groany eyes-rolling sort of thing people do when something they thought was going to taste nice proves even better than that.  So, yes.  Not exactly bad.

Everybody loves pie.

And if they don't, they haven't tasted my pie.

Bad hair day.

Some days it's easy to lose the faith, to get overwhelmed with the talent, skill, and success of people I admire, to feel like the frumpy chick on the edge of the group, my presence tolerated but never quite welcomed.  It's just a story I tell myself, I know.  But still.

Thank god for cake.

(Yep, I really am one of those people who take their cameras into cafes to photograph food.)

I'm all in a muddle.

Nothing new about me and muddles.  We are old friends.  Nothing new about the solution either.

Eat ice-cream.

(Frozen rasberries + cream + unrefined icing sugar + food processor = instant gratification)

I'll make this as quick and painless as possible, which is to say not very.

Day 7 and we made it.  Pretty much.  Budget almost nearly kept, to within 5% anyway, which I'd call a win. I might even call it a first. 

Judging by the photos I took, it looks like we lived off snack food for the week, but we ate actual meals too.  Breakfast was mostly porridge or homemade muesli, an egg every now and then.  Lunches were sandwiches made from homemade bread, pizza rolls, bacon butties, often accompanied by fruit and popcorn, and I did succumb to cherry and chocolate chip cookie overload on one occasion or three.  You eat one and see if you can blame me.

Dinners: Devilled meatballs, roast chicken, chicken risotto, spinach and ricotta cannelloni, penne bolognaise, creamy tomato chicken, and pot roast beef.  There was even an apple crumble with cream, and a homemade peach icecream with rice pudding thrown in there too. Yes, it was rather a feast.

 

Which was the revelation.  I'm all for the organic thing, sustainability and animal welfare being rather hard to argue against, and there has been an immensely pleasurable lack of packaging hanging around the house too.  I don't much enjoy the sanctimonius whiff that seems to hang over organic stores sometimes, but maybe that is just the incense. The real epiphany came Saturday night when I answered the usual round of "what's for dinner?" with "I don't know.  Chicken something."

Because I didn't know.  None of my usual combination of recipe ingredients were in the cupboards, and the recipe books weren't of much help either.  Going to the supermarket for a top-up would really screw up the whole experiment, so I had no choice. I winged it.  Pulled out some ingredients I thought might like each other, including the stunted but still nutritious rainbow chard that has been sitting in a pot on my patio forever, and made up dinner.

Going into my pantry and finding quality ingredients there, ingredients that were costing me less than my usual chaotic style of medicore shopping, using them in a nutritious (and super yum too, she says modestly) meal that isn't in any recipe book anywhere and could only have come out of my kitchen in this season on that particular night - it was magic.  Pure and simple magic.

So the experiment continues and morphs into a lifestyle.  I am home-cook, hear me roar.

I almost gave up yesterday.

Because I'm good at that.  Why spend another evening cooking when I could be reading a book?  I was tired and sad and just didn't want to pull out another couple of meals from the (still surprisingly well stocked) pantry. 

One sleep and a defrosted portion of bread dough later, and I managed to tick off another day (5 down and 2 to go).  I confess there has been one last minute run to the supermarket for milk, one for my favourite English Breakfast tea (you didn't really expect me to go without did you?) and I bought the children a small treat this afternoon to celebrate the beginning of winter holidays.  It sounds a lot, put like that, but for me it's a minor miracle.

If the universe was a sentient being, it would so want you to make these.

 

Cherry chocolate chip cookies.  They are crisp, earthy, tart, sweet, and maybe even a little divine. I made 92 of the wee creatures, and my children rose up and called me blessed.

(I used this recipe, doubled it, and replaced some of the chocolate with cherries.  One day I'm going for Heather's suggestion of dried cherries in a sausage and wild mushroom risotto.  It's officially on my things to eat before I die list.)

These, not such a hit.  Supposedly you just melt some parmesan cheese with sesame seeds and Bob's your Uncle.  They look fine, they just taste so very parmesany. The universe says, meh.

I am so the wrong person for this assignment.

You would think after 15 years of being the main grocery shopper/meal provider for the family, I would be somewhat proficient at this job by now.  And you would be so very wrong.  I can cook well, yes, but shop well?  No. Unequivocably no.

It looks easy, when I see other people do it,  it looks like something I should be able to accomplish - just write a menu and shop to it, yes? - but I always fail at getting it right.  Always.  It's the myriad of food possibilities available, I think.  They overwhelm me.  I get side tracked by the organic dried cherries and forget the toilet paper.

Still, I valiantly made my way to the organic store this morning, clue-less and list-less, but willing to give it a go.  The store is not large, and was quite low on fresh produce (perhaps Monday is not the wisest time for a shopping trip) but I managed to get meat for the week, some baking supplies, a bit of fruit, some cheese and milk and butter.  So far the total is $224.18 + plus another $26.75 at an on-line specialty store for gelatine leaves and canneloni (yes, yes, over the top expensive for pasta, but have you ever tasted the genuine Italian article?  If I knew of a way to write ecstatic food loving noises without sounding like I'm on drugs, now is the time I would do it. )

$99 left in the piggy bank, and a bit of fruit and veg and milk left to buy.  Probably also half a dozen other important items that I will forget about until after the last cent is gone.  But still, we're looking okay thus far. Now all I need to do is figure out what one actually does with dried cherries...

Apparently, what I mostly do is ramble.

According to the newly added category cloud in the side bar.  I put it there because I like to trawl through the different categories on other people's sites, depending on my particular mood that day, and thought it was time enough to have one of my own.  I didn't really assign categories before the end of last year, so it's not comprehensive, but never mind because, really, I think  it's rather safe to say that it's all pretty much just one big ramble.

 

I can't remember any longer how I found my way to this mujadara recipe, and even less why I tried it (just lentils, rice, and onions?  how good could that be?) but I thank all things foodie that I did.  It's my new favourite lunch. Truly delicious (though you really do have to heed her instructions re. cooking the onions long and slow, it's absolutely crucial).  You can see what I thought of it by the empty plate above -  I had made two servings, one for that day, one for the next.  Hah, yeah, good joke. 

I also thought an email I received today was a bit of a good joke the first time I read it, which brings me nicely to explaining the other new (and rather premature, but I've told you before how hopeless I am at waiting) addition to the sidebar.  If you've lived on planet blogland for more than a few seconds, you'll no doubt know of the Julie/Julia project that Julie Powell started nearly 7 years ago.  Then came the book, and now the movie.  The movie website is featuring a 'blog of the day' each day until the movie's release on August 7th, and the scent of water will be there in all its foodie-wanna-be glory on July 8th (why me?  I have absolutely no idea.  I figure if we all keep quiet, no-one will realise I'm a total fraud.  So ssssshhhh.) 

I think it probably makes me and Ms. Streep practically best friends, wouldn't you say? I have mentioned before the way I feel about her.  Check out the movie trailer on the website, it looks like a great one.

As obsessed as I am with food (and I am, very), it doesn't show up on this site as much as it does in real life, but I did have one idea a few months ago that I have never gotten around to doing, and now seems like the perfect time to give it a go. 

According to a national paper, it should cost somewhere around NZ$350/week to feed a family my size on an average food budget.  If I shopped at an organic store instead of the supermarket, I wondered, and left out all of the processed gloop I lazily shove into my trolley far too often, could I still keep it to this average budget?  I'd like to try. 

On Monday I will take out $350 in cash and see what it will get me for the week.  I'll catalogue what I make and what it cost me, etc., and so forth. I have both Julie's and Julia's memoir on my bedside table to read as encouragement when I can't be bothered to pull together yet another meal, and a ridiculously large number of cookbooks to look through for inspiration.  Rock on.

(In other news, I bought an older style second hand Bernina today for almost half what it would have cost me to repair my newish flash computerised one.  It'll arrive in a couple of days, and I've already decided on my first project: produce bags like these.  Everything's coming full circle, baby.  And I'm still rambling.)

Some days the jewellery gods just aren't smiling.

So said Caroline, who sat behind me in yesterday's (last!) jewellery class.  Mel told me she thought it looked homemade.  I think she meant in a good way.  I decided that the rushed and crumpled bezel looked less like a ring and more like a free form pastry galette.  Rainbow Moonstone Galette.   If I ever decide to become a hippy, that's so what I am going to call myself.

Sewing machine repair man said this week it will cost $800 to replace the pc board in my machine.  Ouch. And the application I finally plucked up the courage to send in to a writing course at the local university never got to the right people until it was too late because of a technical error at their end.  Double ouch.  And so on. I think what this means is that it must be time to eat an enormous pile of jelly belly beans, because I'm sure I read somewhere that sugar = happy.

 

Make that sugar + books + tea + lap rug.  I finally finished said rug and am pleased to say that it works perfectly.  I might declare it winter every season, so I can curl up under it with the aforementioned happiness supplies and pretend that life is perfect after all.  I am sure that will work,  for one whole hour at least.