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?

Monday's Menu {and beauty}

Last night Rob took the dogs out for what we call "a wee on a wallaby" around 10.30. Don't worry no wallabies are harmed in this procedure.
He came straight back inside to get me. The night sky is spectacular at the hut anyway, as there are no street lights around the stars are so clear and bright. But last night there was an Aurora Australis happening. Our first at the hut.
Despite the cold -- thank goodness I'd grabbed a beanie and polar fleece -- we stood in the dark at the end of the terrace and watched in awe as a shaft of silvery light shot up from the horizon and then became a series of shimmering waves, that slowly moved across the sky. The light was like a translucent curtain moving in a breeze. Beautiful. Stunning. Luminous.

I didn't even bother trying to take a photo. For once I was content to capture the memory in my mind, confident that I could record it in words here.


This morning the mist hung over the hills as the sun started to rise. I don't know why but Rob and I have become so much more aware of the beauty of where we live since moving to the hut. It was hard to tear ourselves away this morning for work.


So the menu this week:

Monday: Massaman curry, I used a paste I admit and the end result wasn't as good as I had hoped, but still tasted pretty good with rice and poppadums.
Tuesday: We fixed the curry, by adding some almond meal to thicken the sauce and some silverbeet. We ate it with poppadums again and some natural yoghurt.
Wednesday: Lemon linguine.
Thursday: Tomato, vegetable and meatball soup.
Friday: same soup with freshly baked bread (Rob stayed home to work!)
Saturday: Egg and Bacon pie with rocket salad.
Sunday: Rocket salad with soft boiled eggs, blood pudding (sorry Sarah), and sourdough croutons.


Yesterday we headed to the Cygnet market (which is held on the 1st and 3rd Sunday of every month, from 10am-2pm). We love Cygnet on market days. Even better they have an atm for our bank now! So we picked up free range eggs, vegetable seeds, almonds, spices, rhubarb, carrots, parsnips, swede, leeks, and silverbeet. We couldn't resist a couple of Eccles cakes from Lotus Eaters, a browse in the second hand clothes shop behind the cafe, a loaf of Steve's sourdough rye and a couple of his jam doughnuts. There was a cute new fruit and vegetable shop in town, and we found some coffee beans (we'd totally run out so we were on the hunt for some) and I spied a beautiful dark grey salad bowl, made by Emile Henry. Rob indulged me and bought it.

I'm thinking of collecting my recipe posts in a separate page as a list, what do you think?