Monday Menu

On the menu:

M: Pasta carbonara.

T: Lamb chops, mash & salad.

W: Minestrone with bocconcini and pesto.

T: Stripey trumpeter, chips and hut salad.

F: Vermey's skirt steak wasabi special, baked potatoes and hut salad.

S: Cold roast beef, bread (for me), hut salad, French cheese and fresh figs.

S: Mother's Day pancakes and leftover roast beef, baked potatoes, hut salad and fried mushrooms, Steohanie Alexander's date and chocolate cake.

All so good even if eaten semi cold a bit later than intended! 

Monday's Menu megamix

I'm back. The cold is all but forgotten (except for the occasional annoying cough).

To be honest I can't remember a lot of what we ate the week before last, but looking at my collage, we enjoyed a spring vegetable risotto (peas and broad beans courtesy of our garden), an omelette, roasted lamb shanks and root vegetables on couscous with minty yoghurt, and home made lamb souvlaki the next day with the left over lamb, hummus and more minty yoghurt. We also headed out for lunch one day for roast duck, pan fried beans with pork and dumplings. They were good.

During the week I had off we enjoyed:

Monday: Steak with pumpkin, asparagus and mini radishes from our garden.
Tuesday: Mushroom, bacon and pumpkin risotto.
Wednesday: Chicken wings with sausages, sage and onion.
Thursday: Frittata with pumpkin, asparagus (from our friend's garden, it was so sweet) and walnuts.
Friday: Penne with cream, peas and bacon.
Saturday: A birthday dinner in northern Tasmania for Rob's father. We started with dips and bread, Rob made Nigella's marinated ocean trout (she uses salmon) with capers and gherkins. We moved onto roast beef fillet with Cafe de Paris butter, new pink eye potatoes, steamed carrots and parsnips, fresh broad beans and peas (the last four veggies from our garden) and a green salad. The birthday cake was a chocolate roulade with cream and raspberries.
Sunday: After snacking all day we ate a simple salad of rocket, pumpkin and pine nuts.


Rob sent me some gorgeous photos he took of the spring grass at the hut, with the dogs wrestling in the foreground. If I can I'll load up a movie made of the images...but in the mean time here is my favourite.

Friday Flowers

Finally something to share. I meant to take photos the week before but the weather was so terrible I didn't get a chance to.

My spring flowers have started. Bright red tulips, deep blue anemones, lipstick pink anemones, white anemones, pale blue spring star flowers, nodding Hellebores, and just the last couple of days the pink Claudia tulips have started to expand and colour.

It's so nice to look out our bedroom window and see them in the morning. The blue wrens have been a bit confused by the blue anemones. The poor males are having to compete with 50 bright blue anemones, to which the females are irresistibly drawn!



The vegetable garden is starting to get going too. We're eating fresh silver beet several times a week. The broad beans and peas are flowering which hints of tasty fresh beans and peas to come.
Garlic and shallots are hopefully fattening up beneath the soil, if their leaves are any indication of their happiness.
The carrots and parsnips are starting to actually grow so we may get a few of those too sometime soon.
We're even eating the tops of the Savoy cabbages (we put them in a little late to actually have cabbages).
We're hoping to put some new lettuce seedlings in soon, as well as a new sowing of rocket.
Fine little asparagus spears have emerged, but we will have to be good and let them be for this year. I'm already looking forward to our first harvest of home grown asparagus next year. One of my favourite vegetables.
The orchard has started to bloom, almonds, the peach and nectarine, plums, apricots and now the apples. The alpine strawberries are flowering and expanding too.

Hopefully Friday flowers is now back for the season!

Hope you have a lovely weekend.

Monday's Menu

Hello again. Life is a little slow at the moment. But that's ok.
The days are noticeably longer now which we love.

Menu wise this week:

Monday: My mother made us a batch of Hungarian meat soup (a broth made from simmering marrow bones and vegetables) sounds a bit odd, but with some ramen noodles it was delicious, and I was taken back to when I was little and ate it at my Grandmother's house.
Tuesday: Mushroom and orange risotto. One of our favourites.
Wednesday: Pasta and meatballs.
Thursday: More soup.
Friday: We headed out for lunch of dumpling soup at Shoe Box, and a home-made wagon wheel from Raspberry Fool. For dinner Rob made beer battered flathead and served it with a rocket and fennel salad.
Saturday: Maggie Beer's Orange and soy chicken wings. These were really good. Will be on the menu again. Served again with fennel and rocket.
Sunday: Roasted vegetables on rocket.

What have you been eating at your place?

A belated Monday's Menu

Sorry it's a little late this week.

Monday: Chicken and mushroom pie with rocket, pear and blood orange salad.
Tuesday: Vegetable and noodle stir fry.
Wednesday: Steak on rocket.
Thursday: Room service Wagyu beef burger. Hmmm. A once in a life time experience. I was just too lazy to head out and find something else.
Friday: Steak on rocket.
Saturday: Slow roasted pork belly (from Mt Gnomon Farm) with fennel, onions and carrots.
Sunday: Pork belly and vegetable soup.

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?

Winter garden

Sometimes it's good to remind myself of the good things in life, the beautiful things, the furry friends who make me smile.

Of blue sky and sunshine, and a perfect reflection in the dam in the middle of winter.

Or a puppy so keen to please you, knowing that she will get praised for jumping up onto the log and sitting.

These photos are a couple of weeks old, but the garden is not rapidly growing at the moment.

We are still harvesting rocket for salads a few days each week.

The golden shallots are looking promising, I imagine each plant with 6 fat little golden bulbs underneath, and look forward to the harvest in summer.

Our collection of Tasmanian eucalypts are starting to take off on the fence line, hopefully providing a screen one day.
This week has been a bit of a roller coaster ride for many reasons for me, but infinitely more so for my mother, who has had an unwelcome diagnosis and awaits surgery next week. Whilst I try never to take my life and family for granted, every so often something like this will jolt me into realising how lucky I am. That silly things like washing machines breaking down or cracked car radiators that need replacing really are not that bigger deal in the grand scheme of things. To make the most of every moment with those you care about.
I hope you have a relaxing weekend planned. I'm hoping to retreat to the hut, weed some garden beds and help Rob plant the nine new fruit trees we just picked up from here.

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's Menu

Hello again.

I couldn't resist posting twice.

As you know I was at a conference all week, and as you do, I ate morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea all week. Oh I felt like I was going to explode. I'm terrible I can't walk away from those sweet treats. As a consequence our evening meals were more like snacks.

Monday: Left over roast pork, cabbage and apple, rocket toasted sandwiches.
Tuesday: Rocket salad, with soft boiled eggs, speck, croutons and black pudding (much to the horror of many on Instagram).
Wednesday: Cheese, crackers and olives
Thursday: Steamed broccoli with chilli, lemon oil and anchovies.
Friday: Pasta and meatballs.
Saturday: Roast short rib of beef with thyme, baked potatoes and rocket salad. Followed by the sticky maple pecan cake
Sunday: A big lunch out, at Fish Frenzy, Blue eye trevalla and chips for Rob, crumbed scallops and chips for me and grilled fish and chips for Rob's daughter. It was nice, but I ate far too many chips and definitely didn't need dinner.

What was on the menu at your place this week?

Monday's Menu, a little late

Hello. Sorry I'm late. I've flat out this week with the conference booth, so have only just got the chance to create my weekly menu photo collage.
We're both still recovering from this silly head cold, so neither of us has felt all that keen in the kitchen. But there were some highlights still:

Monday: leftover beef Bourguignon.
Tuesday: chicken and ramen noodle soup.
Wednesday: Pasta puttanesca .
Thursday: Baked beans and fried eggs on toast!
Friday: Spinach, fetta and mint pastry triangles.
Saturday: Roast loin of Mt Gnomon pork (Vermey's are stocking them now!) on a bed of savoy cabbage and apple with potato stacks. With a fruit mince and apple crumble for dessert.
Sunday: Rocket salad, with speck, soft boiled eggs and croutons.


I hope that next week is a little less frantic and I have some more time to write here. I miss it.

Winter garden {broad beans and shallots}

I could get used to a 4 day week I think!
Just quickly a garden update more for my own benefit, perhaps, than yours.

Despite the cold weather, the optimistic plantings in mid April are growing.

We have a promising crop of golden shallots.


The broad beans are looking happy too.


We have been eating rocket salads for about two weeks now, it's so nice to be able to do that.
The cabbages and broccoli are growing ok, the carrots and parsnips are a little slower though.

We have plans for moving some rhubarb crowns and a fig tree to somewhere which will make them a bit happier, planting out the poor long suffering grape vines, establishing a raspberry patch and when the asparagus crowns arrive, creating an asparagus bed.
We're on the search for some artichoke crowns too, do any locals know of a good source?

In the flower garden the leaves of the ranunculus and anemones are poking through the soil, I've been informed that the roses are on their way from Geelong, and we repotted the gerberas (although one got a bit munched the other night as we had left them up against the hut).

Happy weekend to you.

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

Winter food is certainly the go at the hut at the moment.

Monday: Beef and mushroom pie with peas.
Tuesday: Ham hock and vegetable soup.
Wednesday: Beef stew on tagliatelle.
Thursday: Beef stew with mash and silverbeet.
Friday: A bowl of mashed potato! (I missed out on the food at the Crib championship as I arrived late. So found some leftover mash in the fridge).
Saturday: Roast chicken with potato, fennel, pumpkin and silverbeet. With an apple and mincemeat crumble for dessert (will post the recipe tomorrow).
Sunday: Chicken and pumpkin risotto with rocket salad (from our garden).

Garden at sunrise

With ANZAC day in the middle of our week, we feel like we've had two Friday nights and two Sundays. Delicious indeed.

The veggie patch is coming along, with cabbage, rocket and carrot seedlings popping up in the beds. Fingers crossed they get going before it gets too cold. Rob planted all the golden shallots we kept from last year, if we do as well as we did last year (each bulb became a set of 6) he may let me eat some of them!

We spent a happy afternoon planting bulbs that we have been dragging around in pots from house to house. The Zantedeschia bulbs are quite freaky looking, big potato sized things with fat roots coming out around the crown of it. I hope they'll be happier in the ground finally. The final pots of pink and white lilies also went in to their beds too.

We're looking forward to a quiet weekend at the hut, we're having a few friends over for lunch on Sunday, so Rob and I are busy discussing menu options. I think we've settled on gougères to nibble on whilst the tea smoked ocean trout cooks followed by a Tarte Tatin, Rob's favourite dessert.

Happy weekend to you.