Flat As

I woke up this morning, after a glorious and much-needed sleep-in, to the sight of the full, ivory moon slipping behind some pink clouds against a mauve sky. I didn't rush to take a photo or anything so I could show you here, but I did lie in bed enjoying the prettiness of it all, and then I noticed how cool it was and I thought it might be time to make some pancakes.

I'm talking here about those thin creations sometimes called crepes. But I call them pancakes because that's what I grew up calling them, and that's what the recipe is called in The Golden Wattle Cookery Book. Whatever Golden Wattle says is alright by me. Besides, I don't like those thick things. Too...um...cakey.

Pancakes were such a treat when I was a kid. Looking back, I realise what a labour of love making them must have been for Ern as he patiently stirred all the lumps out of the batter with a fork. Though whether the love was directed at me or at the pancakes I will, fortunately, never have to know. Pancake mix was always made in this jug of Dyzie's:


This little jug has long been a source of jokes between Bezley and I, as it resided in the Ern-Bezley household for many a year before being passed on to me.

"hazelblackberry, you might want to have a look at what's on the table." "Oh I see you're using my jug." None of us realise how fortunate we are that Bezley has such a great sense of humour.

I don't make pancakes in this jug. I use a bigger bowl that will take my electric beaters - no patient fork-stirring for me!

So we start with flour and eggs. You know, with a well in the middle. I always make the well in the middle, but it never seems to make any difference that I can tell.


I've had a lifelong paranoia of off eggs, so I always break them into another container first. It may mean extra washing up, but what price peace of mind? You will note that these eggs are okay. Phew.


Then we add the milk and some salt and whiz it all together.


Before you can cook pancakes, you have to let the batter rest for half an hour or so. Pancake batter is so precious! Not like hardy little pikelets which take a vicious beating and then jump straight into the pan to be cooked!


While the batter is resting you do two things. First, you get the lemon and sugar ready. I really never have anything but lemon and sugar with my pancakes. I've tried other toppings, but I always come back to lemon and sugar, with the pancake rolled up like a cigar.


So you've got your lemon and sugar sorted. Now it's time to think about what you're going to drink with your pancakes. I make this little mess:


It's Milo, powdered milk, milk and ice all blended together. It's delicious!


(This was all only cooked for myself. I just used two cups for effect. Or something.)

By the time you've piddled around doing that, it's time to get out the right size frying pan and make those pancakes. In my house, in my life, the first cake of the pan is a dud. I don't know why this is - sometimes it's because I don't let the pan get hot enough first, but that doesn't explain it every time. It's a kind of exercise in patience and forbearance, knowing the first pancake will be a dud. Or do I simply create the reality of the dud first pancake with my negative expectations? Frankly, who cares.



Once you've turfed that mucky first creation, you get some more batter back in the pan and now you've got it all happening.


You have two choices on how to proceed from here. You can cook all the pancakes at once, rolling them up and placing them in a dish in the oven to keep warm as you go. Or you cook one pancake, get it sprinkled with sugar and lemon, rolled and stuffed in your gob while you cook the next one. I'll leave it to your imagination to figure out which method I prefer.

Bon appetit!

Sunday Brunch

A toasted (and buttered) muffin, English spinach, a poached egg, mushies and a little bit of barbecue sauce. I couldn't stuff around too long taking a photo - I just wanted to eat that sucker!

Strawberry Smoothie

A perfect start to the morning.

All the world wonder'd.

Well, it's not yet Orthodox Easter so I suppose I'm not TOTALLY behind the times. It's just that I took all these photos of the Easter treats I made and I won't be denied.

I won't.

It all started in 2006 when Bezley was buying gourmet ice cream from a little shop down the road. I thought the containers would make something, but I didn't know what. So I got her to eat away and save the containers for me. She's a trooper, that Bezley.


It wasn't until late last year that I was looking at my stack of foam containers and thought, "They're shaped like half an egg. Maybe I should decorate them up and fill them with Easter eggs!" I nearly fainted with my own brilliance.

I had some pretty grand plans for these babies but then suddenly it was two weeks until Easter and I hadn't done anything and yet I was determined to do something so I scaled my grand plans back considerably. I went to Bunnings and I bought some paint:


These are little sample jars of acrylic paint. They're quite cheap - only about $4 a jar.

I painted the bottom of the eggs brown (when the paint first went on it really looked like chocolate):


I painted the tops pink (because I have decided to colour-code my seasons, and everything I do at Easter is pink and brown. Actually, that's the only season I've colour-coded so far.):


And I painted these little wooden decorations (also bought at Bunnings, for about $1 each) a sort of murky combo of light brown and lime green. I wasn't too happy with this but decided to press on:


I knew then that all I wanted to do was attach some ribbon around the top of the brown part and put a little label on the lid. Finding the ribbon was hard. I settled for this green stuff (there was a lot of "settling for". "Settling for" leaves me unsettled, and yet into the valley of death rode the six hundred...):


I lined each egg with squished-up pink tissue paper and poured in eggs:


Then I made up brown tags with pink and green ink, stuck them to the lid with the murky wooden decs glued over one edge. They don't look too bad, do they? Not too bad.


They weren't the Easter treats I was hoping for, but they were certainly the Easter treats I got. I finally sent and delivered them on the Tuesday after Easter.


Every time I have the chance to learn some kind of profound lesson about preparation and planning and malice aforethought I seem to pass up the opportunity (except the bit about malice aforethought).

k. is going to call me demanding to know why she didn't get one. It's because I left hers on the counter at the post office and when I went back to get it it was gone. Then she was in Fiji and I forgot all about it. Sorry, k.. Next time.

Yeah, yeah, meat is murder. Like, whatever.

Here's a little haiku I wrote a couple of years ago:

Snowy lambs frolic
Warmed by friendly spring sunshine
Please pass the mint sauce

Ooh, I love a roast lamb. Grumpy can't have too much lamb: it results in a gout attack. But roast beef is just as good! Nearly.

Now that I am the acknowledged roaster of beef in the household, and because the weather has cooled down a bit, I thought it was the perfect time to get the oven blasting and cook a little bit of cow.


See that container of salt there? When I first moved in with Grumpy, lo these many - well, 14 - years ago, he had a container of Saxa salt just like that in his cupboard. I only replaced it last week. We have many vices, but salt is not one of them - not counting rubbing oil and then salt over this baby. The beef, I'm talking about the beef.


I always cook lots of potatoes because Grumpy doth love a roast potato. I've only just got into the habit of throwing some onion into the mix: and well worth it it is too. I'd have lots more pumpkin and carrot but the roasting pan isn't big enough and our oven isn't big enough to accommodate two pans.


Here's the finished product. Sorry it's a bit blurry. I was quite hungry by this stage and I thought it was just my sight going wonky. Also, I shot it from this angle because no one needs to be confronted with the reality of my oven. Particularly not the people who eat the food that emerges from it.

Let's Go Eat

A while ago I mentioned this sauce. After you've left some chook breasts marinating in it all day long (don't forget the lemon juice!), you peel some veggies and bung them in the oven to roast:


Then you cook some diced onion in a pan. Remove it and put to one side. Add the chicken breasts and let them get nice and brown on both sides, then put the onion back in, pour the marinade over, let it get all bubbly and excited and cook away for 10-15 minutes until the marinade is thick and dark:


Cook some peas for a minute or two, serve it all up and what you have there, my friends, is dinner:


(And a husband in the back ground saying, "Take that photo pronto. I'm starving.")

Stirring the Pot

There was no time for sanding or staining this weekend, and there wasn't much time for cooking either. But Grumpy was screaming for something for dinner so I whipped up an old stand by. It only takes a few minutes to make, it's delicious, and it makes enough to leave some leftovers in the freezer for Grumpy's lunch:

(chicken and noodle soup with chilli and bok choy)

There's no getting round it - our windows need cleaning.

But I'm hoping the rain will take care of that. I'm too busy making bikkies. Choc chip bikkies, with peanut paste and oats in them. These will be popped into an attractive blue Tupperware container and taken into work tomorrow. You know, to butter up the new boss. I need all the help I can get.

Every day bucket go-a well....

We eat Vegemite almost every day - dammit, Marjorie, I'll go so far as to say we eat Vegemite every day, like the good little Aussie bleeders that we are - and the jar just seems to last and last, no matter how often a knife is dipped in to it. So it's always kind of exciting when Vegemite goes on the shopping list.

Okay, not that exciting, but still....

And even better when the brand new jar, its glossy blackness not yet marred by a buttery knife, coincides with the first day of real crumpet-eating weather.

This reminds me. We're out of crumpets.

Youy've gotta be made of it.

When I sat down to work this afternoon the kind old sun was coming in through the spare bedroom window. I warmed up pretty quickly and took off my cardigan. It was only as I wrapped the ribbon round the finished album, a couple of hours later, that I realised the sun had moved away and how chilled I had become.

The best thing to warm up again? A mug of hot Milo. Quite a few eyes get raised at the sight of this little beauty. I made it in grade 5. Yep, 1979 was a big year for me and clay. Various oddly-shaped, er, well, shapes are strewn around blackberry homes as evidence of my enthusiasm for, if not my control over, my medium of choice. I've stayed loyal to my mug. By some strange quirk of fate it holds exactly the right amount of Milo drink - enough to warm and satisfy without wearying - and the handle is at a very comfortable height.

All the bees in the world.

Today's treat is Honey Joys. Quick and simple to make - a mere 8 minutes in the oven - and pretty damn delicious. Just give them time to cool down before you try to eat any, otherwise you'll begin to appreciate the common properties shared by hot honey and napalm.

And afterwards, signs of destruction:

This Day

Today is Anzac Day. A day for quiet reflection and remembrance.

And if all that thoughtfulness gives you an appetite, then you might want to whip up a batch of Anzac biscuits.

First you start with the dry ingredients: 1 cup of rolled oats, 1 cup of plain flour, 3/4 cup of sugar and 1/2 cup of dessicated coconuts (some people also add peanuts. I don't. Moderation in all things.) Mix until well combined.


Then you melt 125g (or so) of butter and two tablespoons (or so) of golden syrup. Remember when golden syrup came in a tin? Bits of syrup would always dribble down the sides of the tin, causing it to stick to the shelf? Grumpy liked this picture the best. He thought the one taken without a flash looked a bit grim and massacre-like.


While this is happening, dissolve a teaspoon of bicarb in three tablespoons of boiling water. Then add it to the syrup mix. As you can see, you might want to do this over the bowl of dry mix. Every year I forget that this will happen.


Mix all this together with the dry ingredients. Place heaped teaspoons of the mixture on greased trays. Allow some space between each blob for spreading - well, they're very sociable little chaps and want to get to know their neighbours. Cook for twenty minutes in a moderately slow oven. The blessed CWA cook book says that moderately slow is 160-180 deg Celsius. Keep an eye on them while they cook, they burn easily.


When done, let them cool on the trays for a few minutes before lifting on to a wire rack. I loosen them while they're still warm on the trays to avoid the tragedy of stuck and broken biscuits.


Then you can eat them. When they're warm, they're chewy; when they're cool, they're crunchy. Either way, they're delicious. Grumpy doesn't care for Anzacs much. He prefers a SAO with butter and vegemite. I'll be taking this lot into work tomorrow.

For God and Country

I've had a hankering for some time now for pikelets. This morning seemed like the perfect cool grey, rainy morning for them. My CWA cookbook doesn't need to be held open at this page.


I always make a triple batch - one egg, some milk and a few tablespoons of flour and sugar doesn't sound like much of a pikelet feast to me.


This pink measuring spoon is one of a set Bezley bought for me. They're great because they scoop, so it's easy to get the right amount and they double as mini ladles for recipes like this, which call for dropping just a tablespoonful of mixture into a hot pan.


You have to cook them with lots of butter - I mean, come on, it's not like they're a health food! Then eat them while they're buttery and hot all by themselves or wait until they're cold and add a bit more butter, just to show your arteries you mean business.


When my mum and dad would go into Fitzroy Crossing to do the shopping, collect the mail and, er, perhaps stop at the pub on the way home, they'd leave me and some of the aboriginal kids from the camp behind our house with a big plate of pikelets and a jug of green cordial. But I don't want to risk being satirised, so I'll leave the memories there and live in the now, man: fighting with Grumpy over the last pikelet. They're too good to be gracious.

Have blog, will eventually return to it.

Here are the first three ingredients for tonight's dinner: rosemary, olive oil and LOTS of honey. I don't have children, nor an overwhelming desire to acquire any, but I do love the kids issues of donna hay magazine. Some of the recipes are very tasty for alleged grown-ups as well. Tonight we're having one such dish: rosemary honey chicken. It also comes with a couple of lemons' worth of lemon juice. I mix the marinade all together, score the chook (Grumpy's a breast man, so that's what we have...come to think of it, I'm a breast girl, too), and leave it to all slosh around together for the day. Then you pan fry the chook for a bit in a dab (just a dab) of olive oil, add the marinade and cook it until the marinade starts to caramelise. You're supposed to throw in some veggie stock too but I don't bother.

Grumpy will get this dished up with potapum* and beans, because that's all I'm capable of on a Sunday night. Check back later, I'll post a photo of the complete meal.



*Potapum: my grandmother's word for potato and pumpkin mashed together, to fool little boys who don't like the orange stuff.