On the chair: Petite Kitchen by Eleanor Ozich

A funny thing happened about a week ago.  I was in a gorgeous wee Grey Lynn store (Father Rabbit) with my BFF (yay!  It doesn't happen often enough!!) and spotted the cutest little cookbook, Petite Kitchen.  It's one of those books that catches your eye and you just have to pick it up.  Seriously, you have to.  I'm pretty late to this party, but it turns out that Petite Kitchen has a huge Facebook following and a beautiful blog as well as producing beautiful recipe journals*.  And she's local, which I love even more, doing all of this right here in New Zealand (because it also means I can find all the ingredients she uses with relative ease).

So, I picked it up and I loved it but I don't cook so left it back on the shelf to think about.  And I knew Father Rabbit has an online store so I'd be able to find it again later.  As beautiful as it was and as much as I wanted it, the husband does all the cooking (he has for quite some time, since taking the task over a few years back probably as a means of preserving his own life.  I'm not joking) and I generally (always) leave him alone with his own recipes ... getting involved in the cooking at any level is a bit like making eye contact with that person you don't want to talk to, in my opinion. A bad, bad idea.

All I really did though was cost myself shipping once I got home.  And then two days after putting my online order in, when I was once again pouring through Petite Kitchen, I learned exactly how much attention I don't pay to things (quite a bit).

There's an italicised list that features at the bottom of the recipes on. every. page.

Gluten free ... grain free ... wheat free ... refined sugar free ... dairy free ... egg free ... nut free ... vegetarian ...

Some lists were slightly shorter than others, but you get the idea.

Horrors.  Absolute, total horrors.

Me, of the butter, sugar, eggs, sugar, butter, butter, more butter, as many eggs as possible, three different types of sugar? excellent! flour, miiiilk ... 

In possession of a cookbook free of ... 

It felt a bit like the ladle, all over again.  Do I show the husband?  Do I pretend I absolutely meant to do it (which he wouldn't believe at all)?  What if he makes me eat stuff?  He was out when the courier arrived, so I could just as easily hide it under the couch and act like nothing ever happend, and when the Mastercard bill arrives, maybe Father Rabbit was ... ahhh ... lunch.  Yes, lunch.  I mean, it's a cookbook, so it could potentially have been lunch, couldn't it?  I'm sure that's not fibbing ... exactly.

Except I'm all rusty and out of practice, and so I just showed him and sobbed (not really) that I made a dud purchase.  And he, not out of practice at all, flicks through it, hands it back to me open to a recipe for Vanilla Nut Butter Biscuits with Raisins saying:

"These look really nice.  And easy.  And we have all of this stuff too.  You could make those while I put the kids in the bath." and walks off to put the kids in the bath.

And since the biscuit tin was empty, and I had a free pass on skipping bath time, I did.

They weren't pretty (my homemade ground almonds weren't quite fine enough so my bickies were a bit breaky/crumbly when I flattened them for baking.  Must make them again asap to improve on the prettiness), or complicated, but they were fun and tasted beautiful.  Really, really yum.  It's a bit of an exciting new world too.  We've since tried Buttered Balsamic Lentils with Spinach and Garlic for dinner ... yuuum ... (the husband made that - I'm still working up to non-baking) and collected Chia seeds, coconut oil and milk and a big bag of ground almonds so that I can continue to play.

 

Chocolate Coconut Rough Macaroons with afternoon tea coffee (sooo good!).

 

* If anyone knows where I can get the first one, I'd be really grateful to know!