In my kitchen…
…are a set of beautiful old etched glasses from the 1950s. Our beloved neighbour, Mrs M, passed away in July, just a week shy of her 93rd birthday. Her daughter Sarina gave me these glasses to remember her by…
In my kitchen…
…are three jars of Pete’s lilly pilly jelly, made from the fruit of the large tree in our backyard. The lilly pilly is a tall growing Australian native, which produces tart red berries in abundance. We harvested the fruit a few months ago and stored it in the freezer until we could find the time to turn it into jelly…
Here’s a Wikipedia photo of the lilly pilly berries…
In my kitchen…
…is a small bunch of kohlrabi, a gift from Jimmy at Flemington Markets. The bulbs were delicious both raw and stir-fried in oyster sauce, and the chooks loved the leaves…
In my kitchen…
…are boxes of new season Roma tomatoes, which we’ve been turning into fresh and roasted tomato passata. The great bonus of this process is tomato water, which I’m drinking chilled as I type..
In my kitchen…
…sits a box of dark Belgian chocolate cane toads, a gift for Big Boy’s English lecturer, to thank him for getting our son through the semester!
In my kitchen…
…is the first head of lettuce from our new garden. Up until now, we’ve been picking off leaves for salad, but this is the first complete plant we’ve “harvested”. It’s very exciting!
In my kitchen…
…are two bags of rice. The first is a gift from our generous friend, Moo – bomba paella rice from Valencia, Spain, known as the “king of paella rices” for its ability to absorb three times its volume in liquid.
The second is a box of carnaroli risotto rice from Italy – slightly longer grained than the more traditional arborio rice, and supposedly better at keeping its shape during cooking…
Tell me, what’s happening in your kitchen this month?
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 
I love the cane toads and their warty/lumpy skin. Do you hesitate before you bite into one?!
And those glasses are gorgeous. A lovely reminder of your neighbour.
Gorgeous lilly pillys too….
In my garden a really big bush turkey is hanging around pretending to be one of my chooks. I went to feed them this morning and he/she was playing king of the castle and my poor chooks were herded to the inside part of their chook home. I think the turkey is stealing the eggs too….or just scaring the chooks out of any desire to lay eggs. It is not too worried about the dog either, just flies up when she goes to chase it. I actually rather like bush turkeys and their complete disdain and disregard for people and any attempts to do anything (unapproved by them) on land they consider to be theirs. They have attitude…and you have to admire them for it. If more native species had ‘attitude’ we wouldn’t have quite as many threatened species. For similar reasons, and although politically unacceptable, I have a certain admiration for cane toads….
SG, you are always so funny! Supporter of the bolshy underdog.. :)
In my kitchen:
*I have 4 largish bags of rice/buckwheat/and something small and brown??? sent from my niece.
*I have scrumptious clam chowder made from fresh clams.
*I have a new/old teapot from the thrift store.
*I have a handful of lavender that I want to fashion into a doll
*I have a surplus of herbs that I’m either freezing, drying or making into wreaths.
I love to incorporate dishes /bowls/ glasses from a loved ones kitchen. I have a salad bowl from my mother’s best friend- her daughter gifted me with it- and I never use it without thinking of the blessing of that dear woman in my life.
Heidi, we’re drinking from the glasses today – apple cider, no less. It’s a lovely reminisce…
Also, I have lavender flowers – I just told Pete I have to try and make one of your wands!! :)
As always, your kitchen is full of fascinating goodies Celia! And I like the cane toad chocolates, very Australian! ;)
My kitchen is full of baked goods! :P
Currently, I am far away from my kitchen and when we move back home next year, I will be working in my new kitchen as we are in the process of purchasing our dream home, just half a road away from our current home. So exciting and exhilarating!
:-) Mandy
I love the colour of the lilly pilly jelly!
In my kitchen I have
~ a still broken fan oven. Without the fan, I can only cook one thing at a time, so I’m trying not to use it too much.
~ an empty cake box – I’ll have to bake today!
~ a sinkful of dirty dishes.
~ rosemary and chillies drying in the airing cupboard
~ a jar of a ‘National Trust’ prize-winning Red Hot Redcurrant Chutney, waiting for an opportunity to be opened. The recipe was developed by a 12 year old boy!
~ the last courgette(zuchinni) from the garden. There aren’t many beans or tomatoes left either. Only the chard is still growing.
My kitchen has 26 lemons in it staring at me saying…. “Anna, make me into lemon butter” but I’m a little concerned I’ll end up eating it all & end up 26 sizes better. I love lemon butter but per butter lemon ratio its mostly butter huh….
Lemon Tea anyone? And pass me one of those Chokky Toads thanks.
Have a great day Celia :)
Chocolate cane toads – hilarious!! Magnificent lettuce too – it looks like a work of art!
My kitchen is full of many jars of mirabelle and quetsch (lovely long oval plums) jam and 8 packets of Lindt 70% as it was on special. I can’t have my 3 kilo sack of Valrhona anymore as husband and I can not stop eating it.
Anna
In my kitchen I have a big quince waiting to be slow roasted either with a pork belly roast or maybe into rosey coloured sweet slices. In my kitchen is a great big bag of dried rosella flowers from my dad, too bitter on their own, so maybe stewed with lots of sugar, or turned into a rich sauce to go with pork and rich meats. In my kitchen is a little gray cat sitting on her special spot on the kitchen pass, where she can keep an eye on things without being too unhygenic!
Lorraine, so I saw! That cake looks WICKED!
Mandy, that’s very exciting! Look forward to seeing your new kitchen!
Suelle, I can’t believe your oven is still busted! I’m feeling pain for you…I know how hard it is to bake with a not quite right oven!! Hope it’s mended soon…
Anna, thanks – hope you have a good one too! Lemon butter…mmmm… I read once that it can be frozen, and then defrosted as needed for cakes?
Anna, I couldn’t keep a 3 kilo sack of Valrhona in the house either. So glad the mirabelle jam finally worked – I was telling someone about your adventures today.. :)
Chef, I’ve never tried rosella flowers before – do they use them for jam, or is that the seeds? Lucky little gray, with her warm and cosy vantage point! :)
I’m not worried about the baking Celia – I prefer to bake without the fan. But I learned the hard way that I can only cook one thing at a time when I tried to roast potatoes and make Yorkshire puddings – I had to throw the half-cooked Yorkies away and eat pale roast potatoes! The new element should arrive today! I’m sitting in waiting for the delivery.
Oh your kitchen happenings are looking lovely. That lilli pilli colour is gorgeous. I’ve always heard of them, but never actually seen the berry. I always love the looks of those little sacks of things, (your bomba) I like to think of all the fun things I could do with the bag afterwards.
My kitchen happenings…. actually a whole lot of plaiting of bread too :-) Heidiannie’s influence!
Sourdough mexican pizza tonight. Honey Oat Biscuits yesterday….and a lot of flicking through some wonderful new cookbooks.
…and those glasses are truly beautiful.
Mmmm…my lillipilli seeds (well the local ones, I don’t have a tree myself – apart from gifts from the birds) are mauve and I fear would make a pretty pale jelly. What the (Scottish) wife would call ‘peely-wally’. (Don’t hold me to the spelling!)
Colourful.
All I can say is wow! There’s alot happening in your kitchen and I’m most envious of your lettuce and tomatoes!
In my kitchen is:
-red silverbeet lots to use for an indian vege dish
-broccoli enough for 1 stir fry
-lettuce for a salad to go with a crispy skin salmon dish
-some leaves of cabbage to make stuffed cabbage leaves
-48 eggs all ready for the weekend (ohh, i’m going to have so much fun) to enter an egg challenge.
Earwigs, swiss chard, bolted lettuce, duck eggs, escaped earwigs… cobnuts, apples, more apples….. you know what’s in my kitchen :)
I love these photos! I also love chocolate frogs.
Peter, Deb, thank you! :)
Brydie, lilli pilli is one of our few “wild” foods – there are often lilli pilli trees growing everywhere, with fruit that just falls to the ground and rots, or gets eaten by birds. Closest thing we get to a hedgerow plant, I think. One to look out for!
Lee, that’s interesting, are the mauve lilli pilli berries a different variety? Can you still cook with them? I’d be fascinated to see what colour the jelly turns out! Pete added some of our homemade pectin to his jelly, and it’s set really well…
48 eggs, Soy! Does the challenge involve bicycles? ;-)
Jo, is it cobnut season again already? I remember you doing some wonderful bread with those last year!
In my kitchen I have–
way, way too many eggs, the last lot of chicks we hatched out were almost all pullets and I couldn’t bear to eat the pullets!
62.5 kilos of flour–went to the wholesaler today, because I don’t have enough of any of my stock flours for next weekends market bake.
5 jars of beautiful clear marmalade, sweet, tart and just a tiny bit bitter.
and a bunch of lovely scented cream and pink carnations that remind me of funeral homes and senior proms.
62.5kg of flour and too many eggs! Liz, that sounds like our place too! :) I’m sure it won’t last very long though, particularly if you’re baking for the markets. What do you bake to sell?
I bake a variety of sourdoughs and some turkish flatbreads for our little monthly local market at Nabiac. It’s great fun but extremely tiring to make enough bread to meet the demand. The ‘regulars’ learn to get there early to get what they want. It helps feed my addiction to baking–nothing like getting paid for indulging in your hobby!
Absolutely Liz, although I can imagine it’s enormously hard work if you’re needing to buy 65kg of flour at a time! :) Do you have a blog? I’d love to learn how to make turkish flatbreads.. :)
in our kitchen tonight is a new rice cooker… we had one years ago and it just seemed to take up space. I remember being glad when we finally tossed it. So today… Mrs Dredgemeister brings home an “express” rice cooker… smaller, not faster me thinks. it is smaller. I’m yet to be convinced. Surely they only encourage vast volumes of carbs to be consumed. I admit absorption method is better than than the rapid boil… but rice cooker, I’m still not sure. Thoughts C & P?
Dredgey, I think rice cookers are cool, but for us, they take up too much room, and ours lives in the cupboard most of the time. We tend to cook all our rice in the microwave. If you’re worried, choose the rice carefully – Basmati is low GI, Jasmine is high, but Basmati will be harder to cook in the rice cooker (which seems to be designed for fluffy white rice!).
In my kitchen are packing boxes and a great big mess! We’re spending the next few days packing our kitchen things away in preparation for our old kitchen to be ripped out on Monday for a new one!
Sarah, wow! Good luck with the reno!!
Thanks for these lovely things in your kitchen!!
Those chocolate frogs are looking like fun!
Too bad for the loss of your lovely neighbour but those stained glasses to drink from just look so beautiful!
A really good memory!
Sophie, thank you…it is a lovely thing to remember her by… :)
Ugh, more cane toads! Nice to have a chocolate present though. Your lilly pilly jelly is such a beautiful pink, it’s almost unreal. I remember eating lilly pilly jam when we were in Oz, but had forgotten that vibrant colour.
Hehe…can’t get them past you even in chocolate, Choc? :)
I think lilly pilly jelly varies enormously in colour, depending on the colour of the plant. We must try making this with different coloured fruit…there’s always lots around the neighbourhood…
[…] not often that I like these ‘surprises’. Before starting this post, I mentioned to Celia that I had 48 eggs in preparation for this challenge! When the weekend came, I had 38 left. (We […]