Monday's Menu

Thanks for all your comments and wishes for my Mum. She's staying positive and so am I.

This weeks menu:

Monday: Left over paella
Tuesday: Potato, pea and purple brussel sprout frittata (disturbingly the next day the brussel sprouts were blue!)
Wednesday: puttanesca pasta
Thursday: Soft-boiled eggs on rocket on sourdough toast
Friday: Chicken and mushroom pie with rocket
Saturday: Roast chicken with roasted potatoes, pumpkin, sweet potato, carrots, parsnips and the obligatory rocket salad.
Sunday: Chicken, vegetable and pasta soup.

A few other highlights included a lunch date to Tricycle for soup and still warm rye rolls for breakfast in bed yesterday with cumquat marmalade.
We're churning through the citrus at the moment, tangelos, mandarins, oranges and blood oranges, I'm loving it. What's your favourite winter citrus?

Monday's Menu

Rob and I had a long weekend, which was lovely. We headed up to Launceston to visit Rob's parents, and take them out for dinner (to belatedly celebrate his mother's birthday).

We had delivered some fresh oysters and a bottle of Champagne to have before dinner, (felt like teenagers prepping for a big night out with drinks at home!) We then headed to Novaro's, which is a small Italian restaurant. We enjoyed a bottle of Chianti, whilst snacking on some Ligurian olives. Rob and his mother had ordered a slow cooked lamb rump on a mushroom risotto, his father a Quail salad and I ordered the duck. I love duck, but we rarely cook it at home, so if it's on the menu it makes choosing quite easy.
The others meals came out first, they looked pretty good, but then mine arrived, it was half a duck! The duck was probably more Asian in style, flavoured with star anise and soy, it sat on a bed of red cabbage and apple, although I didn't think of as a common accompaniment to duck, was excellent. The duck meat was nice and moist, and after skipping lunch I managed (with a little help from Rob) to finish it all!

What else has been on the menu?
Monday: Fennel, rocket and orange salad, with leftover beef.
Tuesday: Tomato, vegetable and meatball soup.
Wednesday: Carbonara.
Thursday: Stir fried vegetables with noodles.
Friday: Dinner at Novaro's.
Saturday: Seafood paella and apple and fruit mince crumble.
Sunday: Beef short ribs with baked potatoes and rocket. I also made a big batch of cauliflower soup, which was really tasty- I will share that recipe later this week. Rob also treated me to pancakes with poached rhubarb and blood oranges for breakfast.

Monday Menu {the Hoot cake}

Well this last week was all about one thing the cake. My sister sent me a text a while ago with a photo of a Hoot cake (up until that point I admit I had never heard of Giggle and Hoot). It looked doable. I gave them a few types of cakes to choose from (for inside) and they decided upon a caramel mud cake.
So over the last couple of days the cake took shape, I baked two mud cakes, made some buttercream, Rob sandwiched them and covered them in the white fondant (he's much better at that than me, and believes he has a second career in plastic surgery if he ever desires a career change), then the cake was carefully transported to my sisters. Where, on a very cool and miserable Friday evening, she and I set to work with 2 kilos of coloured fondant and that photo. We're pretty proud of our effort. Although it didn't start promisingly when I was quickly trying to make some royal icing to use in sticking the bits together with. I hit a spatula in the mixing bowl with the electric mixer throwing icing sugar and goopy icing all over me and the bench and the wall. My sister just heard me say "oh no". She had the good grace just to laugh at me, and the damage wasn't too bad. But we moulded and rolled and cut and came up with:


My sister had cooked up a storm, baking cupcakes, jelly cakes, scones, biscuits. meringues, fudge and fairy bread. I offered to make a second cake just in case the 40 guests were still feeling hungry. I quickly made the Annabel Langbein lemon and coconut cake on Saturday morning, covered it in cream cheese frosting and added some pink mini bunting. I left the coconut out of the icing this time, as I thought that last time it made it look a bit lumpy.


The party was a great success, the birthday girl walking around (yes she can walk), dancing to music, opening lovely gifts and being loved by all her many Aunties, Uncles, grandparents, great grandparents, great aunties and uncles, and friends. I'm not sure what she thought of the Hoot cake, she smiled and looked intently at it, and seemed shocked by us all suddenly bursting into song. But she knows how to clap and clapped along with us.

I got the icing from a new-ish cake decorating shop in South Hobart, A Tiny Bit Marvellous. A bit like a lolly shop for cake decorator professionals and wannabes like me!

The rest of the weekend was spent relaxing and doing some de-beige-ing.
The menu this week (apart from the cake):
Monday: leftover beef and quince tagine with pumpkin and fennel couscous, and a fennel and orange salad.
Tuesday: a fish-less paella, with roasted red peppers and olives.
Wednesday: a spinach and pine nut omelette.
Thursday: Tomato pasta sauce, with red peppers, olives and fetta.
Friday: THAT cheese (1792, a washed rind matured on a piece of Huon pine board).
Saturday: Beef, mushroom and red wine pie.
Sunday: Beer braised ham hocks, with fennel, apples and cabbage.


What's been on the menu and your place?

Monday's Menu

A varied menu at the hut this week-
Lamb ribs with mash and peas
Beef curry with pappadums and beer.
Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting.
Oysters with chilli, lime and salt.
Seafood paella.
Boiled eggs on toast.
Roast lamb for one: quince jelly roasted lamb shanks with vegetables.
One-pan chicken, sausages and sage (marinade the chicken for a couple of hours then throw it in a pan with some sausages, very tasty, a Nigella recipe from Feast).
Lamb and vegetable soup - I promised the recipe to Ally on Instagram but I'm running short on time so I might post it later or tomorrow.


The Easter bunny arrived at the hut a little early this week. I'd better stop eating them though cause Easter is still over a month away!

Our Easter

We took it slow over our Easter break.

• Sleep ins.




• Dog walks at the beach.




• Just hanging out at the block, planting trees.




• Snuggling under my Easter present from Rob, a heated throw rug.




• Inviting ourselves to cook a paella at our friends place.




• Eating chocolate.




• Camping at the hut overnight and christening the new Weber Q bbq.

The little hut is getting there, unfortunately the builder has run out of the timber for the back wall. So there may be a little wait til it's completed. I've decided that instead of having matching timber Z strap Barn doors for the laundry hut, I'd like blue doors. Rob has graciously allowed me this slight change of plan!

Yesterday the builders made a big mess at the block by installing the septic tank and water tanks. So there will be mud everywhere. But he's starting to promise the end is near.

Not long now.