Monday Menu and the hut has got it's Christmas on

Sorry the blog was a little quiet last week. No real reason just time I guess.
We had a good weekend, on Friday Rob and I headed to the State Cinema to see Skyfall. I loved it. Although as the movie was over 2 hours long I did have to dash out mid way to visit the ladies, and I was fairly desperate to leave at the end too.

Because we'd picked the early showing (6.30pm) dinner didn't really work out very well, as it was too early before hand and then too late (for Hobart) afterwards. We did stop at Mykonos for some hot chips! Felt like an undergraduate student again.

The gale force winds on Saturday meant that we stayed inside, and so Rob got our decorations out of the loft and the hut was decorated in a few hours. We still love our homemade twig tree, and I've already spent the last two evenings gazing at the lights.


We've still been enjoying our veggies from the garden (although the wind totally trashed the peas and broad beans so they've been pulled out now and I spent several hours yesterday shelling beans and freezing them).

So our menu:

Monday: Real Shepherds pie with left over roast lamb shoulder, veggies with a topping of smashed pink eyes.
Tuesday: More Shepherds pie.
Wednesday: Salad with vegetables from the garden and bacon.
Thursday: Salad with peas, broad beans, bacon, avocado and parmesan.
Friday: ahem, hot chips!
Saturday: Some peas and beans from the garden.
Sunday: Rob made the best steak sandwich, with grilled bread, fried eggs, onions, tomatoes and of course steak.

All those veggies must be doing the twins some good, we visited our Dr on Friday, and when he measured them on the scan they were both measuring a week ahead! They now weigh an estimated 700g each.

Monday's Menu

Thank you for all your lovely congratulatory messages on my last post. We chose to keep the sex a surprise (Friday's scan was the big 18-20 week morphology scan), well I did, Rob did peek, but couldn't really tell!

Unlike some of my Monday Menu posts from earlier this year when I felt ill just looking at some of the food, I am now enjoying most foods (just not spicy food or too much of any one thing).

Monday: Pumpkin, bacon and pea risotto with toasted walnuts and crispy sage.
Tuesday: Home grown broccoli frittata with a side of cheesy cauliflowers (again from our garden).
Wednesday: Creamy bacon, pea and pecorino penne.
Thursday: Nigella's one pan sage and onion chicken and sausage, with steamed new pink eye potatoes. We used chicken wings instead of a jointed chicken, which we love.
Friday: Egg and bacon pie- used Annabel Langbein's recipe but with puff pastry not shortcrust.
Saturday: Lemon, thyme and chilli chicken wings cooked on the Weber along with BBQ'd asparagus.
Sunday: Oxtail stew with rice and peas.

And those pancakes- a special request for the show day holiday, Rob's American style pancakes with buttered pecan ice cream, whipped cream, maple syrup (the real stuff a friend bought back from Canada) and toasted pecans.

What's been on the menu at your place this past week?

Snap it {breakfast}

Those of you who follow me via Instagram will know that Saturday and Sunday at the hut usually start with breakfast in bed for me.
I know I'm spoilt rotten. I do appreciate it. Rob will surprise me with a tray including orange juice or coffee, and depending on his mood/inclination:

• thick pancakes with fruit and yoghurt or maple syrup
• sourdough toast/home made bread/crumpets with honey or jam
• muffins (he I have to say makes the BEST muffins, Baklava, raspberry, jam doughnut, orange, the list could go on)
• home made granola with poached fruit and yoghurt
• a full cooked breakfast.

Whilst I love pancakes and muffins, I have to say I think if I had to make a choice for my last breakfast ever, it would be something savoury. My all time favourite breakfast? Is left over spaghetti and meatballs on toast. 

If anything this collage demonstrates just how much I love our red plates and red gingham doona cover (which is fading because we wash it so frequently!)


Playing along here.

Monday's Menu

Loving daylight savings, but I struggled this morning to wake up.

This weeks Monday's Menu collage looks a little bare.

Monday: Mushroom, asparagus and bacon risotto.
Tuesday: Broccoli and potato frittata (our own broccoli) with a side of wilted silver beet.
Wednesday: I ate so many left overs for lunch I just snacked on some nuts for dinner. Rob, having been to the gym tucked into a big plate of you guessed it, cooked greens from the garden.
Thursday: We had dinner at my parents, my mother had made lasagne.
Friday: Rib eye steak with baked potatoes and asparagus.
Saturday: Beef curry with chickpeas, lentils, silver beet and carrots, with pappadums.
Sunday: Curry take two, with added steamed pumpkin and little waxy potatoes.

The curry is a winner, and I'm pretty sure we'll have it for dinner tonight, if not tomorrow night. I may sound like I'm sick of silver beet, but we're not. Harvesting greens just prior to eating them has totally changed my appreciation of them. They taste so much better. I know everyone tells you that, but it's true. Try it.

What's been on the menu at your place?

Monday's Menu

Well Spring certainly started with a bang in southern Tasmania. Blue skies, warm temperatures. The weekend was perfect.
We pottered in the garden, weeding my flower beds, Rob installed a new overflow pipe (the outflow from our tank currently ended in the middle of my rose bed which is not ideal), he has redirected it to the veggie garden where we hope to put a water butt (a barrel). My anemones have started to flower, blue, pink and white and the occasional rogue red one!

Yesterday we headed into town and had yum cha at Me Wah with Rob's daughter for Father's day.  We love it, trying steamed dumplings (pork, prawn, vegetarian and trevalla) the obligatory roast duck and pork ribs. It was certainly buzzing yesterday, with families of all different combinations shared lunch.

I must admit we came back home to the hut and had a nap to sleep off all that food!

Menu wise this week -
Monday: Stir fry rice.
Tuesday: We headed out with my work colleagues to Ethos. To eat a series of tapas style dishes. My favourites were the fried chickpeas and a chorizo sausage cooked in red wine with potatoes. It's a lovely space, and the food was ok. But now that I've been I probably won't be in a rush to revisit.
Wednesday: We stopped by Bottega Rotolo for some lunch (beautiful minestrone for me) and had an asparagus, speck and parmesan frittata for dinner.
Thursday: Scallops with bacon on rice.
Friday: Penne pasta with pecorino, peas and speck. This was delicious!
Saturday: Beef shin stew with mash potato.
Sunday: After our big yum cha feast we had some leftover beef shin stew with pasta.

Monday's Menu {Mother's Day megamix}

Trying saying that really fast.
We finished our week on a culinary high with a Mother's Day lunch for my parents and brother at the hut.
The weather was FOUL all weekend. Horizontal sleety rain, gale force winds, snow on the mountain, winter temperatures.
So we hibernated inside.

The menu:
Monday: our weekend curry with the addition of silver beet and served with rice, papadams and yoghurt.
Tuesday: the 2nd encore of the curry, with more silver beet, butternut pumpkin and potatoes. I think it was the best version of the three!
Wednesday: our cheat's ravioli (made with wonton wrappers). Stuffed with Elgar cottage cheese, spinach, pine nuts, and parmesan, served in a tomato sauce.
Thursday: Pan-fried potatoes, speck and onions.
Saturday: vegetable soup.


On Friday we treated ourselves to meal at our favourite Tasmanian restaurant, the Red Velvet Lounge. Quite luckily for us, it's only 15 minutes down the road to Cygnet. We ran in from the rain, and felt warmer as soon as we saw the wood fire. Our neighbour is the front of house, so we caught up on neighbourhood comings and goings, the current mouse plague our gardens. Steve came out for a quick chat too. A small group of musicians sat in the corner of the restaurants singing and playing music, adding to the ambience. I can't get enough of this place, and would go every week for dinner (or lunch, or breakfast or for a piece of Banoffee pie) if we could.

I had been thinking about a steak with chips and Bearnaise sauce all week. Rob had read an article on how to best eat out. Apparently you should order the item that sounds the least appetising. Don't order the steak (like me), but the item that at first glance you wonder why it's there. Because it will be there for a good reason. The theory goes that the chef has to cook steak all the time, so won't find that interesting, but the different item, may not be ordered very often and therefore will be more exciting for the chef to cook. He thought he'd test it out at RVL. Which isn't very risky because all of the food looked delicious. So he picked the lambs fry.

We enjoyed a glass of Blighs cider each and a Chicken liver parfait, with red wine jelly, sourdough toast and cornichons.

Then our mains arrived, my steak was cooked perfectly, smothered in a the Bearnaise sauce and the chips were nice and crunchy, just how I like them. The lambs fry was served with bacon, slow cooked onions, potato puree and sherry sauce. We decided to share so ate half and swapped. I had never tried lambs fry before. But it was tender and delicious with the sides and the herbs. But I found it very rich (especially after the liver parfait and steak, so couldn't get through my half). Happily full, we stumbled out into the cold and headed home to the hut with smiles on our faces.

Weekend baking included pancakes with stewed apple and blackberry jam (Rob), date loaf (me, found this recipe on BabyMac's blog, so easy and so good) and Coconut rough slice (me).

Sunday menu for Mother's Day

Nigella's Union Square Cafe Bar Nuts

Annabel's baked Sicilian olives

with Jansz NV sparkling

Nick Nairn's potato stacks

Roasted onions, neeps, carrots, parsnips, and leeks.

Wilted silver beet

Margaret Fulton's Roast tarragon Chicken with brandy cream sauce.

Rye dinner rolls.

Nick Nairn's chocolate souffles with brandy cream.

I think the guest of honour was suitably impressed, she liked her present too (slightly narcissistically I gave her two photos, one of Rob and I on our wedding day and one of us on the day of my PhD graduation) for her photo wall. She had been hinting that she didn't have any photos of us.

After they left (and Rob took the dogs for a walk) we lazed on the window seat. 

We didn't get around to much mouse proofing, however, we did catch three in the humane trap (ie we let them go in the bush). They are so cheeky. On Saturday night we heard much squeaking coming from the heat pump. We opened it up and out hopped a mouse, it must have been fighting with another mouse cause we could hear scuffling. He brazenly looked us in the eyes and ran back in before we could do anything!

Hope you had a lovely weekend, particularly those of you who are mothers to children young or old.

Monday's Menu

It’s granola season at the hut. I struggle with eating breakfast during the week, I get bored easily, and I was so over porridge. I’d eat a mouthful and then not so subtly put the bowl down for Claudia to finish off (she loved me!) So last weekend I baked up a batch of Nigella’s granola (from Feast). What’s not to love about roasted Almonds, seeds, honey, and raisins? I made another batch yesterday but added some flaked coconut, pumpkin seeds and golden raisins as well. During the week we served it with strawberries, mango and rhubarb. Now I can't wait for breakfast.

As mentioned on Friday we took delivery of a box of goodies from Mount Gnomon farm. So pork dominated the menu all weekend. We’re not complaining though. Rob slow roasted the shoulder for three hours in the Weber on Saturday. Then yesterday we blasted it in our oven under the maxi-grill, that thing is wicked, I could see the skin blister! That crackling, I have to say, was perfectly cooked, shattering as you bit into it. It was then warmed up again in the Weber sitting on some sliced fennel, baby carrots and bay leaves, and served it with roast potatoes, the pork was deliciously juicy. Oh dear I’d better stop otherwise I might start drooling on the keyboard.

Finally, as it rained most of Saturday we were happily stuck inside, after lunch I fell asleep on the window seat with Claudia as a foot warmer, for several hours!

I thought I’d better do something worthwhile, so I measured out and chopped the dried fruit for two Christmas cakes (sultanas, currants, raisins, dried apricots and prunes).


Maybe the menu might have to be a little healthier this week (looking at what you eat all week is a bit of an eye opener) maybe even some salads and green vegetables! 

Top row: Scrambled eggs on Pigeon Hole sourdough toast, Granola with Greek yoghurt and strawberries, Italian sausages on mash with peas (an excuse to eat relish), creamy mushroom, bacon and pea fettuccine, spring vegetable risotto.

Middle row: Mount Gnomon bacon and egg roll, Sweet Envy jam doughnut and pecan sticky bun, Mount Gnomon chorizo, tomato and lentil risotto, dried fruit soaking in brandy for Christmas cakes, the roast pork shoulder (from guess who).

Bottom row: The pork served with roasted fennel and carrots, a pear poached in red wine, cinnamon, vanilla and thyme, our granola fresh out of the oven, this morning with rhubarb, gin and tonic season has started.