Local exploring

Here's a quick recap of what I've been up to since my last post in early September:

Trying out the VRE station that's five minutes from our house for a day of commuting to meetings in DC - infinitely preferable to navigating traffic!

The VRE doesn't run on weekends, so the station does double duty as the home of our local farmers' market - great local produce and flowers.

Unpacking and renovating continue - at a slower pace now that we're nearing completion on both. Here's a shot of my very old slow cooker (a wedding present) cooking its first-ever batch of Disruptive Bolognese using a mix of farmers' market ground beef and turkey (a resounding hit!). In the background is the recently installed backsplash, the last major piece of work in the (now-complete) kitchen.

Thoroughly enjoying my first proper North American autumn in a very long time with some festive front-door decoration...

...as well as the view from our new window seat - Miss B and I agree this lamppost is like a bit of Narnia on our doorstep...

...and having this view a few steps from our front door is pretty nice too!

When we can tear ourselves away from nesting, we're enjoying having DC close by for fun as well as work - it's kind of amazing to see these iconic buildings pop up in the distance as you wander the city.

And, last but not least - a new recipe to share as I re-deploy a time-honored strategy suggested many years ago by my English friend E: "make friends with cake". In this instance a batch of cinnamon sugar scones, which I brought to share at a coffee morning recruiting parent volunteers at Miss B's new school. I met a few people, and signed myself up for a few things - another rootlet put forward into our new community.

Making lemonade

So my long (long looooooong) spell of waiting is over, and not in the way I had hoped - though a number of people in a position to understand it all better than I have just about convinced me that this outcome will be the best one in the long run. I think. In any case, that's really all I'm going to say about it, with apologies for being mysterious. Overall I'm relieved to have the waiting be over, but I've got feelings to process and next steps to ponder. As I do so, I'm continuing to work on practicing meticulous mindfulness - it, along with regular strenous gym workouts, has become a key mechanism for dealing with the 'anger' phase of the process around this drawn-out decision (to say nothing of  my feelings about current events in the wider world).

As I refocus on life here in Canberra, autumn is getting underway. The first of the new season apples are showing up at the markets, so to celebrate earlier in the week I made a personal-sized version of Dinner with Julie's Apple Pie Scones - I still used a whole apple, but it was small, and I halved the scone dough.
 

I got 3 good-sized scones out of it, and it significantly improved my week.

Since baked goods can improve most people's week, I also asked Miss B what baked good she was in the mood for, and she requested Dark Side cookies - "like the kind they would have to lure you to the Dark Side?" So I dug up this recipe from Nigella Express, and these super-chocolate bombs were just what the doctor ordered - or rather the frazzled new high schooler.

Yes - did I mention that Miss B is now in high school?! To be fair, it starts in Year 7 in Canberra, but still.

In other cooking experiments, I had a sudden hankering for san choy bow the other night, so I decided to whip some up. I didn't bother looking up a recipe, I just winged it (wung it?) with what I had on hand.

My version consists of chopped onions and mushrooms (and a little smoked salmon too) sauteed with oil/ginger/garlic/chili, with a sauce of 2 parts soy to 1 part fish sauce/sugar/lemon juice/sesame oil/sriracha, topped with chopped scallion/spring onion and slivered almonds. Wrap in lettuce leaves and have some rice alongside if you're a carb fiend like me. Proper san choy bow recipe here (turns out I wasn't that far off!).

And last but not least, here's some actual (as opposed to metaphorical) lemonade:

After my weekly farmers' market run this morning, I did some prep cooking - restocking my personal pantry for the week. On the right you see my coldbrew coffed brewing. On the left, my copy of Genius Recipes open to the One-Ingredient Whole Grain Crackers, which I made with a rice-quinoa blend I'm trying to use up. And in the middle, my re-gifted T2 tea infuser* brewing up a concoction of citrus zest and juice and mint and maple syrup to add a twist to my daily Green Tea Fizz.

*Sidebar story: the friend who re-gifted this to me handed it over with the declaration that she couldn't be bothered to use it, but that she was sure I'd figure out something interesting to do with it. I decided to take that as a compliment and a challenge; it took me a few months, but - voila!

Hope all is well in your corner of the world.

Ten things

The waiting continues...and I've been working hard at practicing meticulous mindfulness. It's been going pretty well, aside from a couple of weeks where the US election combined with solo parenting to send me into an anxiety tailspin. (The election was one of the things I was waiting for, and to say I was not happy with the outcome would be an understatement on the order of describing Australia as a place with one or two possibly harmful critters.)

But. Life marches on, and I must focus on the things I can do even in the midst of feeling helpless and at the mercy of events over which I have no control. So in that spirit, here's an update of recent-ish happenings.

Going back to early September - a tiny birthday cake for a visiting colleague of DP's who has become a family friend. He made the long trek to Australia for the second year running to guest lecture in DP's program, and I found out that his first full day in town was his 66th birthday. So we surprised him when he came over for dinner.

In late September, we went to the US for our planned family visit; for me it was five cities in just under three weeks. One of the highlights of my trip (and my year) was a long-planned sisters' weekend in New York, with all of us together on our own on a trip for the first time in a very long time. It was a memorable and spectacular trip, in part because of visiting places like The Frick Collection.

Our final city in the US was a 36-hour stopover in Dallas to visit our good friends who live there. We really enjoyed visiting the Dallas Arboretum's Pumpkin Village - a clever and creative use of winter squash, and I couldn't stop giggling most of the time for thinking about this. (Warning: NSFW language!)

Then back to Canberra, swapping autumn color for spring in bloom and harvesting lemons and rosemary from the garden.

Two weeks after we got back from the US, I was off again - this time to Seoul for my organization's annual meeting. It was a productive and positive week overall, but it makes me a little sad that this is pretty much the only picture I managed to take outside of the conference (it's a little mall made up entirely of small shops run by local craftswomen and -men).

Back again for the tail end of October; settling in to nearly three months with no overseas trips scheduled, and starting to see some real signs of spring - encouraging enough that I have revived my cold brew coffee habit, making it in my French press and then storing in a repurposed Chianti bottle. (Classy, no?) My standard ratio for coffee (hot or cold) is 7g of coffee per 100ml of water; cold water for cold brew, and let it brew for at least a couple of hours. Chill in the fridge overnight, then serve over ice with a hefty splash of milk and a dollop of maple syrup to sweeten.

The end of October also means Halloween, and a sweet treat to celebrate it. This year I made ghost cakes for Miss B - basically a chocolate cupcake, topped with a gloopy pile of vanilla buttercream frosting and suitably decorated.

Moving into November and real spring weather - a good opportunity to host our first outdoor Sunday lunch of the season and invite a few friends over to share it with us.

And speaking of a few friends: this weekend we celebrated Thanksgiving in Australia, with a buffet turkey dinner for 60+ friends, colleagues, students and their families. An epic undertaking achieved with a lot of lists and a lot of help, and one to make me remember to be grateful for all the things I have.

Which today include the luxury of having to do not much of anything except eat pie, bask in the afterglow of yesterday, and figure out what the heck to do with all these leftovers.

January round-up

A bit later than planned...one of these days I'll go less than a month between posts and not have every one be a photo-filled epic. Until then, here are the latest happenings:

Two days after DP returned from his trip, and the very day of my last post, we headed off on our annual family vacation to the coast - not to Jervis Bay this year, but further down the New South Wales coast to Tuross Head, which we loved so much we may have to switch our allegiance permanently.

Then, less than 24 hours after we returned to Canberra, it was my turn to flit off - on my annual January work trip to England - all London this time, with no chance of jaunts to Oxford or elsewhere (woe) - and Germany.

For the second year running, I celebrated my birthday in England - this year with a fancy birthday tea at Fortnum & Mason and a swanky dinner as well.

After a jam-packed week of meetings, dinners, team-building activies, and more meetings, I flew to Germany to spend a weekend and a few days in the office with my friends and colleagues in Freiburg. There was snow for sledding...

...cheese for raclette...

...and this vegetable, which we thought was a parsnip - the German name for it is "parsley root", and it appears to be topped with...parsley. C and I were so struck by this - the possibility that parsley grows parsnips, and vice versa - that we went home and looked it up. Apparently parsley root is a different root vegetable, which looks like and is closely related to parsnip, but is much more widely available in central and eastern Europe than elsewhere (probably why I'd never encountered it before).

The other notable food milestone was my first time baking a cake in Germany: a lemon cake, made by special request (basically this recipe, with  a lemon apiece - zest and juice - in batter and frosting).

I really enjoyed my trip, but I was also very glad to get back to my regular routine in Canberra - including my first Saturday-morning farmers' market run (complete with coffee and planning) since before Christmas.

More cake! For my belated birthday celebration with DP and Miss B - vanilla cake (as above) and chocolate buttercream (but with double the chocolate shown there).

So, to sum up: travel, cake, travel, cake, travel, cake. And now it's February, and Miss B has started Year 6 (Year 6! Holy hell!). We're heading down the path of another year, and the first day of autumn is just around the corner.





I hope there is plenty of adventure (or not, as you prefer) and cake where you are. More to come soon, I hope.

Another round-up

So I've gone AWOL again and come back again....Here's what I've been up to in the interim:

Went overseas for my organization's annual meeting - 10 jam-packed days in Vienna...

...mostly work, but friend M and I managed to sneak out to a cafe one afternoon and sample two famous Viennese specialities - Sacher torte and apple strudel.

We finished off the conference with a gala dinner in the spectacular Vienna Rathaus...

...and then the next day it was off to Amsterdam to another conference, this one the annual meeting of one of our partners. I had about 3 days there, and one free afternoon which featured a visit to the Van Gogh Museum, a World Cup rugby match in an Irish pub, and a wander through the streets and canals in between.

Then it was off again, for a flying visit to Boston en route to spend a week in western Mass. with my sister-in-law R and brand-new niece Miss D. I fuelled up for my drive with an Australian-style coffee from the cafe in my old neighborhood.

I was gone for nearly 3 weeks - by far my longest solo trip since Miss B arrived more than a decade ago. I got back to Canberra with spring well underway in late October, and snapped this to send back to R and lighten her sleep deprivation with a laugh.

Ten days after I got home, it was DP's turn for a road trip and my turn to keep the house running. Crumpets are a tradition now when DP goes away, and this was the best batch yet - not least because for the first time I made the dough the night before, cutting down on the yeast and stashing it in the fridge to rise slowly over night. In the morning there was no waiting, and the extra time for the dough to develop improved the flavor.

More signs of spring - some talented gardeners in our new neighborhood!

DP came back in late November, and I was off again - but this time just a 2-day hop down the road to Melbourne for our regional symposium. I managed to fit in a morning run around Carlton Gardens and captured some typically changeable Melbourne weather...

...and then it was back home to plunge into prep for Thanksgiving! We pushed our celebration back to Saturday this year to accommodate my trip, so I took Friday off to get my planning and prep organized.

And get my contributions to the desserts sorted: 3 apple pies, one small raspberry pie for Miss B, and this year's experimental pie - smitten kitchen's nutmeg-maple cream (a hit!).

As usual, I didn't manage to take any good pictures during the event itself - we had 35 people for dinner, including the 3 of us, and by all accounts a good time and a major feast was had by all, including yours truly. And I thoroughly enjoyed the post-celebration rituals as well - sleeping in, pie for breakfast, and lounging on the deck enjoying the flowers and swapping stories from the night before.

Aside from Thanksgiving, I've managed to do some regular cooking as well:

This pork larb that I mentioned about a year ago is back in heavy rotation. I don't know if you can read my scribbles, but that's basically the entire recipe - heat some oil and saute some garlic and chili, then tip in about 450g/1lb pork mince and cook. While that's cooking, mix together a sauce of soy, fish sauce, and brown sugar (I use 1 part fish sauce and brown sugar to 2 parts soy). When pork is just about cooked, chuck in a few big handfuls of spinach to wilt in the heat, then mix in the sauce. Serve over rice with a squeeze of lime juice and some chopped spring onion and herbs. (I get the rice going first and the rest of it comes together by the time the rice is cooked.)

Strawberry season is in full swing, and I've been alternating between making strawberry jam and roasted strawberry compote, shown here - basically tossing strawberries with sugar and a splash of balsamic in a baking dish, then putting into a 180C/350F oven for 45-60 minutes. I stir into yogurt, pour over pancakes, and occasionally eat straight out of the jar.

I also tried an experiment with making Russian tea cakes as a slice-and-bake cookie - delicious, but no structural integrity. They basically fell apart as soon as you picked them up. So I'll be sticking with the original shape for upcoming Christmas baking.

And finally, I'm experimenting with cold-brewed coffee - perfect for summer iced coffees and might save a bit of money too on my daily coffee shop habit!

Phew! That's all the news for now from here; hope all is well where you are too?

February round-up

Whoosh! There goes another month. Items of note, as recorded on my phone photo album:

My boss sent me flowers! To say thank you for my hard work on the giant project I mentioned a couple of posts back. They brightened up my kitchen for the better part of two weeks and made me happy every time I looked at them. It was such a nice feeling to know why they were there.

Peach-blackberry crumble! I made this for dinner guests early in the month, with some stellar fruit from the farmer's market. I used this crumble topping recipe and topped it with homemade vanilla ice cream (have I mentioned that I got an ice cream maker for Christmas? More on this later, I expect). Although I suspect the shot above might actually be Greek yogurt, which is my preferred crumble topping these days, just FYI in case you're inclined that way.

Birthday cake! Three people on DP's team have February birthdays, and so he asked me to provide a cake for the birthday lunch. You can't see my favorite part: I always end up with extra colored frosting, no matter how lavishly I decorate, so this time I put some of it between the layers as a surprise. Next time I'll do it on a home cake and get a picture.

Scones! Which are actually a vehicle for what's in the jar - spiced pear-blueberry butter. Backstory: I have coffee every Wednesday morning with a group of parents from Miss B's school. Attendance varies, but there is a core group of about a half-dozen of us who are almost always there. For the last couple of weeks, one regular, J, has been bringing bags of pears from his tree to give to all of us, and the cooks among us have been experimenting with them - one of them a fellow food blogger who just posted her second pear creation.

For my contribution, I cooked down about 1 kg/2 lb of pears in the slow cooker until soft, then pureed them in a food mill and returned to the slow cooker to thicken further, along with a generous handful of blueberries. Once the butter had thickened enough that a spoon left a trail across the bottom of the slow cooker, I seasoned with some lime zest and juice, a large pinch of salt, lavish shakes of cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, and nutmeg, and finished with a good slug of maple syrup. (Fruit butters don't usually need much extra sugar, as the natural sugars are concentrated through the cooking process.) I decanted into sterilized 120 g/4oz canning jars, which I hot water bath canned, making sure I had enough to share, as well as one to serve with scones I made first thing last Wednesday. I used this recipe, omitting the berries and adding half a lime's worth of zest instead.

I didn't get a picture of my favorite dinner of the month, which was last Sunday, when we had a small bunch of friends over. I was in the mood for American food, so I made this kickass honey barbecued chicken, along with potato salad, coleslaw, and rolls. I finished off with a chocolate icebox cake topped with salted caramel sauce, and we ate outside on a perfect late summer evening. It may well have been the high point of this summer for me.

And that wraps up February - first day of autumn tomorrow here in Australia (though temperatures tomorrow are scheduled to be over 30C/90F). What's in store for March?