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Now

November 19, 2010 by Celia @ Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

© Brypix.com

We only have moments in which to live.

The future is a concept …very useful concept, I’m not putting it down.  The past…memory…is also a concept.

But the only time in which our lives are unfolding is now.  And “now” has some very, very interesting properties.  And if we learn to inhabit “now” more, with awareness, it’s almost as if the universe becomes our teacher.

Jon Kabut-Zinn
from his Mindfulness lecture at Google

. . . . .

When life is stressful and chaotic, I find meditation and mindfulness practice a useful tool for bringing order and calm back into my world.

There is so much wonder and joy to be had in the present, but sometimes stuff happens and it can be difficult to hold on to a positive outlook. Every day brings its own challenges, and past and future worries can rattle my sense of well-being and self.  At those times, I find Jon Kabut-Zinn’s breathing meditation exercises incredibly helpful.  They’re non-religious, non-psychedelic and a great life skill to practice and hone for when things get really hairy.  Big Boy told me recently that if it wasn’t for meditation he would never have made it through his final exams – he was so wound up studying that meditating before bed was the only way he could get to sleep.

If you’d like to know more, you might be interested in this mindfulness lecture posted on YouTube. Grab a cup of tea, it goes for over an hour!

Posted in Musings | Tagged , , , | 31 Comments »

White Chocolate Bundt Cake – In Metric

November 17, 2010 by Celia @ Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

 

Over the years, I’ve refined my baking repertoire. And while I love trying out new recipes, there’s a handful of core favourites that I routinely revert to.

Our chocolate slab cake – one of the most popular recipes on our blog – is baked at least once a month.  It’s a very large cake, and the neighbours all respond to the clarion call with plates to ferry their portions home (it’s that kind of cake).

The butterscotch bars are almost embarrassingly easy to make, and they’ve become our regular standby for school orchestra rehearsals, last minute morning teas, and birthday and Christmas gifts.

Now that we have fresh eggs, the cookie jars are constantly filled with chocolate meringues, and the fudge brownies have become our newest  house fave – baked frequently as Pete finds them irresistible. (We had dinner with Alex last week, who said “once you’ve tried the fudge brownies, there’s no going back”.  Bless her, that made my night…)

The white chocolate bundt cake in the photo above is Big Boy’s all time favourite cake.  It’s a bit more work to make and probably only gets an airing three or four times a year, but this is the cake I turn to whenever I need a showstopper.  And even though I’m not a white chocolate fan, in this cake, it’s sublime.   I posted the recipe over a year ago, but have just updated it with metric measurements, since I make it by weight rather than cup measures these days.

I always top the cake with tempered chocolate (in this case, milk and dark), but it’s almost as good simply dusted with icing sugar.  Please note that it’s a large cake – the standard 10 cup bundt tins by Wilton and Nordicware will take most, but not all of the mix, so do have some muffin pans or mini tins on standby for the excess batter.  The methodology, with updated measurements and a printable version, is available here. I’ve also made a caramelised white chocolate version, which was particularly wicked!

White Chocolate Bundt Cake

  • 450g plain (AP) flour
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • ¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
  • ½ tsp salt
  • 250g unsalted butter, softened
  • 440g white sugar
  • 1½ tsp pure vanilla extract
  • 5 large (59g) eggs, at room temperature
  • 115g white chocolate, melted and still warm
  • 250g thick Greek yoghurt
  • 115g  white chocolate chunks or chips

Click here for a printable version of this recipe

I’d love to know your baking standbys – do you have a recipe which you turn to time after time?

Posted in Recipes | Tagged , , , , , , | 60 Comments »

In My Kitchen, November 2010

November 15, 2010 by Celia @ Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

In my kitchen…

…is a batch of sourdough spelt epi. They’ll be served with extra virgin olive oil and homemade dukkah.  Epi are easy to make (there are step by step instructions here), and they never fail to impress…

In my kitchen…

…are our very first new potatoes!  The plants aren’t ready to be harvested yet, but we’ve been bandicooting (pinching new potatoes from just under the soil at the top of the mound).  They’ve grown surprisingly quickly – we only planted our first batch of potatoes in late August.  Below are a large red norland, a few King Edwards and our first baby bintje…

In my kitchen…

…is today’s harvest of beans.  We’re picking this amount every other day at the moment, and often eating them raw…

In my kitchen…

…is a homemade bug catcher.  A wineglass half-filled with cider vinegar or white wine vinegar is irresistible to annoying little fruit flies, and by adding a drop or two of dishwashing detergent to the mix, the bugs aren’t able to fly out again once they’ve dropped in for a drink…

In my kitchen…

…are bread making treasures!  Lovely Wendy went hunting for proving baskets for me in Hong Kong, ever generous Christine sent me one of her homemade bread bags, and my dear friend Joanna organised a Danish dough whisk to be sent to me from the UK (I’ve been brandishing it like a magic wand!)…

In my kitchen…

…are the salt holder and egg beater of  Mrs M, our beloved neighbour who passed away in July. I think of her every time I use them…

In my kitchen…

…is a tray of supernatural brownies – my default recipe whenever I need a large quantity of baked treats in a hurry…

In my kitchen…

…are the first fruits from our supposedly non-fruiting prunus!  I took these photos for Heidi in August.  At the time our tree was covered in blossoms…

In the eighteen years it’s been growing, our prunus has never fruited properly – we’ve had the occasional tiny orb which fell off, but never anything worth picking.

This year we were surprised to see quite a few medium sized plums – they were dropping off the tree before they were ripe, so we collected all we could reach – about 450g (1lb) in total.

Not surprisingly, the plums weren’t great eating, but loathe to waste them, we submerged them in vodka and brandy with sugar.  Hopefully we’ll end up with a drinkable plum brandy in a few months’ time!

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

Posted in In My Kitchen | Tagged , , , , , , , | 39 Comments »

Sourdough Chestnut Loaves

November 13, 2010 by Celia @ Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

I love chestnuts, so I was delighted to discover this bag of imported chestnut flour at a local Italian deli.

Inspired by a recent post of Jezza’s at Stir the Pots, I decided to try incorporating a little chestnut flour into a batch of sourdough loaves.  Here’s a photo of my bubbly wet starter – I keep it very liquid (166% hydration) and feed it at a ratio of one cup of water to one cup of bakers’ flour.

My recipe called for 700g flour, so I made this dough with 500g bakers flour and 200g chestnut flour.  The resultant dough was the most surprising colour – taupe with a tinge of purple might be the best description.

For those who are interested, here’s the complete formula:

  • 200g active sourdough starter (166% hydration)
  • 400g water
  • 50g olive oil
  • 500g bakers flour
  • 200g chestnut flour
  • 10g fine sea salt

The bread has a subtle chestnutty sweetness which makes it a great foil for cured meats. It’s sublime in a bacon and egg sandwich, and  absolutely perfect with peanut butter.  As the chestnut flour is quite expensive, it’s good to know that even a small amount will make such a difference to the finished loaf!

Posted in Recipes | Tagged , , | 32 Comments »

Fresh Eggs

November 11, 2010 by Celia @ Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

Every day, our six lovely ladies lay six fresh eggs.

One of these is often gigantic (last week, we had one that weighed in at 74g), while the other five are medium sized, usually around the 54 – 56g mark.  But as you can see from the photo above, all the eggs have huge yellow yolks!  The colour derives in part from their layer mash (it’s almost impossible to buy a decent mash without some colouring in it), but mostly from their large intake of garden greens.

Our chooks eat all the surplus garden foliage – armfuls of weeds, nasturtiums, cabbage leaves, spinach, whole broccoli plants and a variety of other miscellaneous vegetables.  They’ll eat any skinks that wander into their enclosure and all of Maude’s snails, as well as the bugs and worms they dig up.  Their diets include the odd treat of oven-roasted tuna and salmon, as well as cucumbers, zucchinis, corn and the occasional bowl of pasta soup or risotto.  They adore a little ricotta cheese or homemade Greek yoghurt, often swooping at Pete when he brings it to the coop.

In return for their dinner, they till our soil, fertilise our plants, meticulously pick out and eat all the oxalis and onion weed bulbs,  greet us cheerfully whenever we get out of the car, and lay perfect, large yolked eggs for our breakfasts and baked treats.

Life has been a bit crazy and stressful around here lately, but cracking open an egg, laid by one of our beloved and blissfully happy chooks, is guaranteed to make my heart sing.

Posted in Frugal Living, Musings | 39 Comments »

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