a belated Monday's Menu

It was quite a grey old weekend in the end. I was hoping for some more sunshine, but it was still nice to relax at home. We felt quite good about the cleaning and tidying both at my parent's shed and ours (Rob gathered up another trailer load of rubbish and recycling from behind our shed).

Menu wise this week:

Monday: Chicken cacciatore with boiled potatoes.
Tuesday: Chicken and vegetable soup.
Wednesday: Pappardelle with some chicken cacciatore.
Thursday: Ziggy's hot dogs! An excuse to eat our home-made tomato sauce. I added some hot english mustard quite liberally, which cause a wasabi rush right down to the tip of my nose. But I love that feeling and kept eating anyway.
Friday: Cheese night was back, a hard, French goat cheese, called Chebris Brebis, a soft French cheese, Picolin and Gorgonozola Dolce. All delicious in their own way, served with a little fig and walnut baguette and a rocket salad.
Saturday: Pasta and meatballs.
Sunday: Dry-cured, then hickory smoked slow roasted in the Weber beef short ribs, with potato stacks and rocket salad.

Other treats this week included; speckled bread (fruit loaf), a lamb, potato and pea parcel at Jackman & McRoss, figs grilled in prosciutto and stuffed with fetta, pancakes with maple syrup, boiled eggs on toast, left over pasta and meatballs on toast, and that chocolate caramel peanut slice.

What's been on the menu at your place?

Monday's Menu {our normal little life}

We had another quiet stay-close-to-the-hut weekend. At least the weather was nice enough this week to go outside, open windows and get some sun. Maybe our quiet life might seem a little dull to others but I wouldn't have it any other way. I posted this photo of the hut, reflected in our dam yesterday on Instagram. One of the comments said it looked like a fairy tale. Which made me think about our life at the hut. Rob and I often walk around the block, checking on our trees, looking for thistles and enjoying the dogs running and wrestling nearby. There have been many perimeter walks, mostly with the hut present only in our imaginiation. There were times when I dragged my feet, that I didn't enjoy it, because I didn't think we'd ever live there. Seeing the empty spot where the hut should be just made me feel upset. The problems seemed insurmountable, but still we couldn't think of anywhere else we'd rather be. I guess that's being a little melodramatic, but I hope I never forget the difficulties we had to get there, as it makes me all the more grateful for the quiet weekends we've had recently.


We've put a moratorium on going into Hobart on weekends at the moment. With the shorter days it seems such a waste to be driving around shopping so we've been trying to get organised on Friday evening for a weekend in. Having said that, our washing machine is becoming quite temperamental so shopping for a new one may be a task for a Saturday morning soon. So our weekend started with some shopping and then a quick lemon linguine with a glass of wine, then reading new library books on the window seat.

Saturday morning is becoming our sleep in morning now, and I was treated to bacon, eggs and baked beans with freshly baked rolls in bed. Claudia was very interested in the bacon, both dogs got a little taste afterwards. I borrowed some novels from the library for once, normally I stick to cooking or gardening books. So I enjoyed reading Eat, Pray, Love and an old Rosamunde Pilcher novel set in Cornwall.

I made some meatballs to freeze for future meals, and cooked some quinces for a tagine I had in mind. Rob spent his morning on his hands and knees shoving aluminium fly screen underneath the cladding of the hut, in an attempt to keep the mice out.

Rob came in after lunch and made a massive batch of shortbread cut out as foxes. Which I have just realised I have failed to photograph. I think he was a bit over it by the end, as the mix was quite crumbly but they were very tasty.

Claudia has obviously decided to take the mouse problem to task. She snuffles around in the tufts of grass looking for them. Up until now I didn't think she'd been very successful. On Saturday afternoon she was pouncing and pointing and then just stood there until we came closer, then she picked up a poor mouse and ran off with it! I guess she didn't think it was fair if she had caught it that we should get it. Apparently it was quite comical to see me running after her, and her running with the mouse's tail hanging out of her mouth. I'm still not sure if she swallowed it or spat it out somewhere.

I cooked the beef and quince tagine, we've become quite obsessed about chuck steak at the moment and are dreaming up all sorts of slow cooked casseroles to use it in, serving it with a roasted pumpkin and fennel couscous.

Sunday was so sunny so we took the dogs for a walk on nearby Manuka Hills through some dry sclerophyll forest. The dogs loved it and ran around pretending to be timber wolves. We headed back to the hut and listened to Radio National's coverage of the Sydney Writer's Festival while we oiled all the timber window frames, doors and skirting with tung oil, a job we'd been meaning to do for awhile. We planted the red ranunculus in the flower garden, quickly walked another perimeter and then headed inside so Rob could help me dye my hair. I'm not sure it looks very different though, the colour was just called Chocolate, but looks a bit red under lights.

How was your weekend?

On our plate this week, chicken soup, scrambled eggs, steak and those potato stacks again, my breakfast, quince and beef tagine, tomato and meatball soup, lemon linguine and chicken and roasted vegetable risotto.

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.