In My Kitchen: June 2015

It’s once again time for In My Kitchen and as per usual this is a collection of things from the past month — a small snippet of those seen over on Instagram — in loosely interpreted categories and no particular order…

As always I’m linking up with Celia for IMK.

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Kitchen Shenanigans

Have you heard about Australia’s Biggest Morning Tea? The lovely Sally and I are hosting a Virtual Morning Tea Party and we’d love you to join us in raising funds for the Cancer Council!

You can find the info here, whether you want to do join us with a post post, just donate or simply hug someone you love.

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My birthday was a few weeks ago and included amongst other things…

An inappropriately large stack of made-up recipe chocolate pancakes, a gorgeous almond milk matcha latte and a card from my mum with a photo of the spring flowers in her yard.

A bowl of doughnuts with a candle on top thanks to RJ — when he said he had to assemble my birthday dessert before I could see it I was intrigued. When he asked if he could use a prop bowl I giggled. He didn’t even blink when I had him light the candle again for a photo.

And finally take-away Japanese, on real plates because fancy. Cooked up some red rice to go w the sashimi too, because extra fancy. Interrogation worthy kitchen lights are complementary.

We also headed up the coast for a weekend get away but more of that in a moment.

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Because we all love conversations with RJ:

R: is that a new pie plate?
J: …
R: …
J: but it’s Pyrex’s 100th birthday so they gave me a present and a new pie plate totally means pie!
R: you can make pie with all the current pie plates.
J: that’s not how pie works.

New pie plate was used to make orange & vanilla oven roasted quince and the kitchen smelled like heaven. One guess as to what I ate for breakfast for days.

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Anyone want to come over for a cuppa? Possibly related side note, BYO coffee.

Chalking up (heh heh) the time spent on the lettering as practice. In other news apparently I’m better at calligraphy in chalk on jars than in pen on paper. Figures. Thanks to Freedom for the new storage solution*, I kind of love them.

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We were asked if we wanted to trial* a Hello Fresh vegetarian box recently. The concept is great for people who want to make their own meals but need recipe inspiration and a box with all the necessary ingredients.

For us it doesn’t really fit as dinner tends to be leftovers from that day’s shooting, but one night in an attempt to have a proper meal we made their Pumpkin Mac & Cheese and it was a huge hit (and I even nearly followed the recipe too, ahem).

A serving for two made a ton so the next day I had the leftovers for breakfast with an egg on it — this should not come as a surprise.

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Received a copy of US mag Curbside Cuisine featuring three of my recipes and then I spotted one of my IG posts in Sunday Style!

In other news evening procrastibaking Cinnamon Rolls may or may not have made an appearance as breakfast… Take that, winter.

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Food Finds

We headed up to Kingscliff on the north coast of NSW (one of our favourite places) to get away for a few days.

When I discovered that Pottsville had a Sunday market we simply had to go check it out and oh goodness what we discovered…

Locally grown fruit, straight from the farmers including $1 custard apples (only $1 because these are the small ones!), $1 for 5 tamarillos (which I’d never had before and can’t say I’m particularly enamoured but I think perhaps they weren’t ripe enough), and a $3 pineapple that you could smell from a metre away. Heaven.

To you RJ says good morning, to me he says please hurry up and take the photo, it’s raining on my head. In other news how perfect is his outfit for holding tropical fruit? Ha!

Oh and those custard apples once they ripened? Perfect. I ate far too much then froze the rest because frozen custard apple makes the most amazing sorbet.

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When a friend has a tree laden with kumquats you take home as many as possible. Half went into this cake, the rest are still in my fridge pending inspiration…

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When two gorgeous single origin sourdough loaves* from Brasserie Bread land on your doorstop you find an excuse to put all the things on bread. All.the.things.

It’s a bit whiter bread than we usually eat but I’m loving that they’re working directly with specific Aussie farmers for the wheat in these loaves. Added bonus that the structure is insane.

I really need to start making sourdough with my starter but all the hydration levels confuse me and I’m yet to find a recipe that isn’t predominately white flour so instead I keep feeding Ray and making things like crackers. Sigh.

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I’ve had a chance to sample a Goodness Me Box* this month and just quietly is it wrong to put choc hazelnut spread on muesli?

I’ve never subscribed to monthly boxes – do you? And why? To try new things or for a surprise or something else? Just wondering.

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Not My Kitchen

A recent afternoon of creativity and cake — such a civilised way to learn calligraphy if I do say so myself.

I can only hope to be as good as Jas one day (responsible for the beaut penmanship seen here).

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RJ and I attended a Culinary Tales cooking class* where local refugees teach students how to make food from their homeland.

The lovely Ranya from Yemen taught us how to wrap vine leaves and make pastry for Gozleme. In other news RJ is a master grape leaf wrapper, who knew.

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Out & About

Between that trip up to Kingscliff (including a few detours down to Byron while we were there) and our usual weekend brunch habit back home in Sydney, there’s been quite a bit of good food lately.

Roadhouse is my number one tip for anyone near Byron, their lunchtime fish tacos is my number two tip.

As such, we landed in Cooangatta, hopped in the rental car and drove straight there for lunch. Also, over-ordering means leftover greens and potatoes packed up for later and nibbled on through the weekend, everybody wins.

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Brunch the next morning (as well as the morning after that) was as Mockingbird Cafe in Kingscliff. In a street filled with cafes this is our fave (we may actually try another one someday, or maybe not).

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We couldn’t spend a weekend in the Northern Rivers region without going to the new Three Blue Ducks outpost at The Farm.

We had a lovely birthday dinner there on the Saturday evening then went back for brunch on Monday. Gorgeous.

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So we totally do more than eat and go to the beach when on holidays… there’s sleeping, and walking and oh never mind, it’s all eating and beaching.

Shared one last round of fish tacos plus a roasted sweet potato soup and almond milk chai back at Roadhouse before we hopped on the plane to head home.

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Yes, Bread & Circus showed up last month too but this time we were there with the mother-in-law. You have to love a place that hands out cookies while you’re waiting in line for a table.

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When you both work the weekend you go out for brunch on Tuesday, like a date.

Brilliant breakfast for lunch at the new to us The Depot in North Bondi — both shared because the only thing better than breakfast for lunch is two breakfasts at lunch.

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Miscellaneous Miscellany

Do you know Sneh? Well she’s running a monthly Instagram vignette comp and I managed to win it this past month! Just wait till you see the prize…

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My #7vignettes collection for June. Back to the flaylay, keeping it simple with a white background.

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And finally a beach shot, because I have been freezing for weeks and the other day when we went for brunch in Bondi it was 22° (that’s 72° thank you very much) and perfect and I wanted to stand in the sun forever.

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That’s All Folks

Make sure to pop over to check out the other IMK posts listed in the sidebar of Celia’s Site — there is always great stuff to be found.

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* Asterisked items were received for editorial consideration in accordance with my editorial policy. Nothing here is sponsored. All opinions are fully my own and yes they are generally positive, because I don’t have the time or inclination to share stuff I don’t like. Supercalafragalisticexpialadoshus. Beam me up Scotty.

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