Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Wet Garden

July 3, 2013 by Celia @ Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

Last week it rained and rained and rained. Here are some photos from our sodden garden – quite beautiful in its own wet way, I think!

Prewashed cos lettuce (not in a bag)…

The Pond in Winter…

Every time I take photos of our lemon tree, I think of my friend Charlie at Hotly Spiced. She thought it was hilarious that I kept posting a photo of the same solitary lemon in every garden post for months. I didn’t have a choice – at the time, it was the only one on the tree!

Our bed of leeks…

The rainbow chard is coming up with the most gorgeously coloured stems…

All the rain has done wonders for our recently planted bed of leafy greens…

Some wet and bedraggled visitors sought shelter on our deck…

At one point we had nearly a whole flock of rainbow lorikeets…

Nic’s sedum burrito is hanging safely undercover, as it doesn’t like to get wet…

And we rushed to harvest the tromboncinos we’ve been saving for seed, before the rain caused them to split. They’ve turned into giant pumpkins!

It sounds like it’s been raining all around the world! How are things going in your garden?

Posted in Garden | 72 Comments »

In My Kitchen, July 2013

July 1, 2013 by Celia @ Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

In my kitchen…

…are lots and lots of brownies! I made several batches this weekend, trialling out a new Alice Medrich recipe (more to follow in a later post)…

In my kitchen…

…are balancing kiwis! We figured it was a good investment to add to a set of toys that we’ve played with regularly for eight years. We bought this pack online from Tarata in New Zealand…

Kiwis are cool, but they’re much harder to balance…

In my kitchen…

…are free range eggs. Bought eggs. Sadly, our girls have finally stopped laying altogether. But..as we decided, they’ve earned their retirement…

In my kitchen…

…is a wedding gift from Aunt Liz and Uncle Peter. It’s an elegant Lalique crystal jug and it’s barely been out of the cupboard in the last twenty-five years – it just wasn’t something I was keen to put on the dinner table with small children around. I’m hoping to use it more frequently now…

In my kitchen…

…is a container full of coloured Sharpies. Pete can’t understand why we’d ever need anything other than black, but I’ve had great fun labeling freezer containers in different colours…

In my kitchen…

…are two new cookbooks…Jamie’s 15 Minute Meals and Louisa Shafia’s The New Persian Kitchen. The latter was bought on my friend Sally’s recommendation…

In my kitchen…

…is part of our flour stash – Italian pizza, self-raising, plain, Buratto and bakers flours. I took this photo especially for Chicago John…

Finally, in my kitchen…

…is a peek into one of my two utensils drawers. I’m not very tidy!

. . . . .

Tell me, what’s happening in your kitchen this month?

If you’d like to do an In My Kitchen post on your own blog, please feel free  to do so. We’d love to see what’s happening in your kitchen this month!  Please link back to this blog, and let us know when your post is up, and we’ll add it to our monthly listing.

Here are this month’s posts:

Siobhan @ Garden Correspondent

Bernice @ Dish ‘N’ The Kitchen

Marianne @ Aunt Shoe (first IMK post!)

Andrea @ Shabby Chick

Emilie @ The Clever Carrot

Mel @ Veganise This!

Joanna @ Zeb Bakes

Claire @ Claire K Creations

Kari @ Bite-Sized Thoughts

Tania @ The Cook’s Pyjamas

Pat @ A Yorkshire Cook

Fiona @ Tiffin – Bite Sized Food Adventures (first IMK post!)

Johanna @ Green Gourmet Giraffe

Sally @ Bewitching Kitchen

Jane @ The Shady Baker

Misky @ The Chalk Hill Kitchen

Lisa @ Gourmet Wog

Judy @ Savoring Today

Maureen @ Orgasmic Chef

Julie @ Gourmet Getaways (first IMK post!)

Mandy @ The Complete Cookbook

Becca @ The InTolerant Chef

Mel @ The Cook’s Notebook

Heidi @ Steps on the Journey

Anne @ Life in Mud Spattered Boots

Bernice @ Dish ‘n’ the Kitchen

Sandra @ A Life Slowing Down (first IMK post!)

Tandy @ Lavender and Lime

Ale @ Ligera de Equipaje

Joanne @ What’s On The List? (first IMK post!)

Tania @ My Kitchen Stories

Lizzy @ Bizzy Lizzy’s Good Things (late June post)

Posted in In My Kitchen | 143 Comments »

Clay Pot Belly Pork

June 30, 2013 by Celia @ Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

Earlier this week, my lovely friend Lizzy tweeted that she was trying this clay pot pork dish by fellow Aussie blogger, Ai-Ling at Blue Apolocalypse.

It looked and sounded so good that I had to give it a go!

My adaptations to Ai-Ling’s recipe were only minor – I used small perennial leeks instead of spring onions, and because our Emile Henry risotto pot is flameproof, I fried the meat in the same pot that I braised it in…

I cut the chillies back to four instead of ten (the dish still had a delicious gentle heat), subbed dry sherry for the Shaoxing wine, and added a handful of leafy garden greens with the leeks near the end of the cooking time.

The flavours in this dish – oyster sauce, soy, sesame oil – are the tastes of my childhood. My mother never made this dish, and yet every bite of the tender meat and rich sauce made me nostalgic. Big Boy and Small Man absolutely adored it – they ate it until all the rice ran out, and then continued eating it with bread. It’s definitely a keeper.

Thanks again, Ai-Ling!

Posted in Recipes | 68 Comments »

A Perfect Life

June 28, 2013 by Celia @ Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

There’s a question that comes up regularly amongst bloggers once we start to get to know each other better.

“Are we being honest with our readers?”, we ask each other. “Do we portray our lives as idyllic and perfect, while selectively omitting the bad bits?”

My friend Anne wrote about this last year, and more recently I’ve had a similar discussion with both Jane and Linda. And it is a dilemma, because we want our blogs to be an honest reflection of our lives, not a glossed up magazine version.

When I started this blog all those years ago, it was with the sole aim of cheering myself up. I never planned for it to become anything more than that, and for the first year, I was astonished every time someone read it, because it wasn’t written to an audience – it was just an exercise in focusing my eyes on the positive bits of our lives during a tumultuous time.

As I developed rapport with fellow bloggers who have become very dear friends, I soon realised that everyone has a back story, because no life is without its share of hardships and difficulties. Whether or not folks choose to share this with their readers is a matter of personal choice.

It was my wise friend Linda who put it all into perspective for me when we discussed this recently.  She said, “In all the ways that matter, our lives are perfect”.

This afternoon, I went into the vegetable garden which we’ve built from scratch, in the backyard of the house that we’ve lived in for over twenty years. It truly is a home, filled with a loving family and surrounded by friends and neighbours whom we adore.

I harvested a large head of broccoli and served it with dinner, stir fried simply with homegrown leeks and Australian garlic. It was sublime, and fresher than anything we’ve ever eaten at a fancy restaurant. We sat down as a family and chatted, as we almost always do, about the obscure and bizarre.

Linda was right. Despite all the ups and downs, and uncertainties about the future, in all the ways that matter, our lives are perfect. And that’s what this blog is about – the small, perfect pockets of joy that punctuate and define our days. It’s not a glossed up version of our lives – whilst they’re not always easy, they genuinely are filled with great happiness and contentment. Thank you for sharing them with us! ♥

Posted in Musings | 96 Comments »

Vegan Lardy Cakes

June 26, 2013 by Celia @ Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

At Pete’s request, I tried making a vegan version of our lardy cakes.

We didn’t really need to add it to our baking repertoire – I was completely content with the original lard-based recipe and Pete with the butter version, but hey, experimenting is always fun!

We started with organic extra virgin coconut oil and gula melaka (palm sugar)…

The ingredients were as follows:

  • 500g bakers/bread flour
  • 8g fine sea salt
  • 200g active sourdough starter at 80% hydration (see original post)
  • 250g water
  • 1¼ teaspoons dried yeast
  • 100 – 130g extra virgin coconut oil
  • 150g gula melaka, grated (or caster sugar, or a 50/50 mix of both)
  • grated nutmeg
  • extra gula melaka for topping

I followed the original methodology, but excluded the dried fruit (although they would have been a nice addition), and grated over a little nutmeg instead of cinnamon.

I used 130g of coconut oil, but much of it ended up pooled at the bottom of the cake tin, so were I to make this again, I’d probably cut the fat down to 100g. In addition, the gula melaka isn’t as sweet as white sugar – a mixture of half palm sugar and half caster sugar would probably produce a better result.

Having said all that, Pete and Big Boy were very happy with this version of “lardy” cake, and ate the whole thing over a couple of days!

Posted in Recipes | 60 Comments »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »