Happy New Year

Happy New Year

Well it seems like only yesterday that I was in my old place with my pristine kitchen fitted out with all the mod cons, ie lovely fan forced oven & dishwasher! To say the last couple of weeks have been hectic is an understatement. We moved into the new house on 21st December, worked day & night to unpack most of our stuff in a few days then had my family over on Christmas Eve for my mums birthday. So for my first opportunity to entertain we decided on mainly using the bbq just in case the stove & oven didn’t work. To start with I made some lovely bruschetta & dips, my favourite topping had to be the cannellini bean, rosemary & garlic, it was fantastic & definitely something I will be making again & again. So first thing to check off the list was that the stove top worked & even though it is very, very old it is gas so just perfect. The one bad thing about my last house was the electric hotplate which in my opinion is never as nice to cook on as a gas flame.

Next we did some white fish (so long ago I cant remember what), salmon & prawns on the bbq with some dipping sauces teppanyaki style, great idea & nice & light before getting into the man sized meat course. The main course was lamb chops, some fantastic kransky & some snags, along with an old fashioned potato salad courtesy of my mum, a green bean salad & a Capri salad with some Shaw River Buffalo mozzarella which as most of you would know is a dream when you can get your hands on it, unfortunately my parents thought it a bit bland! To finish off I tested out the oven by baking a chocolate pecan pie from the Green & Black cookbook which was delicious though a bit oozy, I’ve since found out that if I up the temp just a bit & cook for a few minutes longer, I have better results with my baking. I haven’t experimented all that much with the oven yet as its been stinking hot every other day & the new kitchen heats up a beauty. Hopefully I can get to know it well & be cooking up a storm very soon as in the old days.

As you can imagine, even though all of this food was spaced out over a long day, we were stuffed silly by the end & nearly falling asleep on the couch before everyone even went home, I didn’t even feel like eating all that much Christmas day so luckily for the main event we just had a simple lunch on at Michaels parents. Chloe had a nice first Christmas even though she didn’t have a clue what was going on, think next year will be much more exciting for her.

So anyway with xmas over & done with, Michael went off to the cricket on boxing day while I had a bit of a break with a couple of friends over for lunch. Since then it has been a whirlwind of shopping, lots of ikea assembling, some gardening & trying to get a bit more organized before we have our housewarming next weekend, please God don’t let it be too hot as we have practically NO SHADE in our backyard. I have picked the site for my veggie patch & cant wait to dig it all up & start planting so I have some excellent produce to cook with soon.

A couple of questions for you readers out there, does anyone know where you can buy stem/candied ginger in Melbourne, and ditto for a wide variety of miniature fruit trees, think blood plum, apricot, apple????

Hope to have some proper cooking blogging up & running again soon