These were fun: Almond Fingers

Except, I made squares, not fingers.  I got it in my head that fingers would be far too ladylike and dainty and small when I was cutting them (I know, dainty and small are pretty much the same thing), and I wasn't having any of that, so I cut them into big ol' squares.  It wasn't until afterwards that I remembered about big ol' plumber sausage fingers.  Sausage finger almond fingers would be perfectly acceptable, so next time for that.  I think, having a meringue topping, fingers might be a bit less messy-crumbly than squares to eat, but really, having crumbs to hunt down on a plate isn't exactly a tragedy.  It's just a bit sad if you have guests that would judge you for licking the plate.  My advice?  Don't invite those sorts of people over.

I overbaked these horribly, but we still managed to eat them all, so even horribly overbaking didn't make them horrible as it turns out.  Yay!  The recipe said to bake 20 to 25 minutes, but actually, they were ready in 10.  I was completely disbelieving that my oven and the recipe could be so far out, so I spent 10 minutes dancing around the oven humming and haaring and second guessing myself (while they overbaked, dammit all), until I smelled that horrible smell of slice that's been just that little bit too long in the oven and bad words were said.  Still, as I said, we still ate them.  We're committed like that.

They were fun, and a different thing to make.  You roll out the short base, and pour/spread the meringue over top, sprinkle with almonds, then cut them up and put them onto the baking sheet pre-baking.  Getting them between the sheet I rolled them out on and the sheet I was going to bake them on took a bit of a delicate touch, but I managed to do the entire batch without disaster (until the aforementioned overbaking.  Sigh!).

I'm definitely making these again.  They were either from Ladies, A Plate by Alexa Johnston, or A Second Helping by the same author.  If I were less lazy, I'd walk across the room to the bookshelf to confirm which.  I think it was Ladies, A Plate.

Anyway.  Soooo .... yuuuum!  And magic with a cup of coffee.  Boom.

A few (more) of my favourite things

I'm fairly sure I did a favourite things post forever ago, so on that basis let's say I definitely did, and I've titled this post accordingly.  And of course, it doesn't really matter at all, other than me showing you some of my favourite stuff, so I'll just get on with that then.

Square black houses.  I couldn't tell you why they hold such a huge part of my heart, but they do.  It doesn't matter how horrible a house looks, if I imagine it being black and square, it's awesome.  Except for the new house that's been built on the waterfront around the corner.  That one is beyond redemption.  I need to take a picture and show you. 

I particularly love this square black house, because it's home.  (You're welcome to think I was trying to take the picture on an arty angle.  I was, a bit, and to show off the squareness, but mostly I was just trying to keep all the kid fingerprints and dog-shakeoff all over the lower windows out of the shot)

My Chan Luu bracelet.  This is one of those things that I shouldn't have bought, but I adored on sight and so I did.  Since I was a kid I've loved polished stones and other than my engagement and wedding rings, I don't wear jewellery, so this is the perfect piece for me.  Each of the faceted stones has been drilled and is strung into a channel setting, bound onto two strings of leather.  The colours are fabulous.  And it's clever and different and not at all fussy.  So much to love!

 

While I'm here, my Lucky Brand jeans and Standard Issue knitwear, also awesome.  I adore Standard Issue, and their stuff lasts forever.

Kohl & Cochineal Obsidian handbag.  I love design, and this piece is definitely a design to admire.  I've had it a few years and I swear I love it more now than I did the day I bought it.  It's a spectacular size so a wee bit prone to bashing people accidentally, but I forgive it everything always.

Successful expirments in the kitchen.  These are afghans.  Minus the chocolate icing and walnuts.  With dark brown sugar instead of the usual soft brown sugar.  And only a small amount of cocoa, but a whole lot of grated dark cacao.  I love the colours in them.

Smudgey fingerprints on an almost empty bicky jar.  That means the kids are happy.  In turn, that makes me happy.

Finding good quality, natural skincare that won't burn my face off or cost me an absolute fortune is a whole lot harder than you'd think.  For the last few years, I've been bringing in Kora Organics from Australia.  I adore Kora, but the shipping fee alone was AUD$30.  I couldn't justify the cost, other than that it was an awesome product and awesome products are hard to come by.  Tricky.  Then one day I was reading a blog that praised The Herb Farm products, so thought, what's there to lose?  So I tried them, and fell head over happy, happy heels.

A super hasty shot of our last ever Chairman Mao pizza from our favourite pizza place that closed down during the week (hoisin sauce, pork belly prepared for 14 days, capsicum, baby corn, water cress, Lebanese bread ... nom).  I was trying to hold off the husband so there wasn't much time.  I have the saddest face ever that I'll never have this pizza again.

And there you have it.  A few of my favourite things, while I wait for a raspberry chocolate mudcake to do its thing in the oven.  Assuming success, pictures will follow.  Oh yes, they will follow.  They may be pictures of a half decimated cake, judging by the smell in the kitchen at the moment, but you know, a picture is a picture.

A day with Petite Kitchen

I'm trying to be really determined and keep up the initial burst of enthusiasm I had over simple, healthy eating (which is actually a euphemism for everything-free).   I know that it's better for my endometriosis because the daily symptoms I have of the disease either reduce significantly or I have days free of some or all of them altogether.  Still, even with that motivation, it's going about as well as you'd expect. 

The butter and the sugar calls to me.  And I possibly holler back ... C'mon over!  Have a coffee!  Put your feet up!  You'll love it here, really you will!  Stay as long as you want!!

I did though, spend a day making Petite Kitchen recipes as I do honestly work on healthier eating habits, and making some changes (like not being a piglet.  I think that's a good, achievable place to start.  Most of the time.).  And learning to cook actual food. 

And then I made a cake full of cream and sugar.  Heh.

So, my day with Petite Kitchen went a little something like this.  Actually, a lot this this.  Pretty much exactly like this.

'White chocolate' and raspberry almond muffins.  Breakfast, because I figured ground almonds, eggs, coconut oil, honey and raspberries, why on earth not?  I tried giving one to the husband.  He was horrified, and went off and made a banana cake for himself.

Dinner.  I know a roast chook is a roast chook, but these veges are ridiculously pretty so you get a photo of them.

 

My triumph!

 

 

Dessert. Creamy coconut chia seed breakfast pudding.  This is so much more noms than you'd imagine.  Especially looking at that photo.  The picture in her book looks much more lovely and creamy, and actually creamy in colour, but I added cinnamon into mine.  Hence the beige.  Plus I think I went a bit heavy on the chia seeds.  Both the husband and I are fans of this one though.

Raw chia seed jam (blackberry).  Horrible photo, sorry.  It was getting a bit late and the light was crap.

Chewy oat and jam slice, which, incidentally, became breakfast the next day and it was yum!  Nut butter, chia seed jam, coconut and rolled oats ... I'm fast becoming a big time fan of baking I can have for breakfast.  And that also solves the problem I had with this baking in that it doesn't necessarily last as well in the tins as traditional butter-and-sugar baking and you seem to eat less so there was an unhappy level of waste. 

aaaand lemon cream cake (Hungry and Frozen).  No breakfast here.

Building love

I have a fascination with coloured glass panels in residential buildings.  Something about them reminds me of libraries and old abandoned industrial buildings with the windows painted in, though I couldn't tell you if that's the beginning or the end of my fascination.  Or even a great part of it at all.  I do love them though.  Maybe it's an echo of possibility in these buildings more than in others that strikes me .

More so than anything else, I always wonder what people were thinking when they put panels like these into a building.  Not in a 'Are you mad?' way, obviously.  But it's quite a specific choice, in my mind.  Brick, block, board and batten, weatherboard, corrugated iron, concrete, even expanses of clear glass ... any of them, and any combinations of them often, can be used to amazing and admirable effect but for whatever reason they just don't provoke the same immediate reaction in me.  

Did someone just want coloured panels?  Do they have a vision for the future of the building? What is it?  Are they making a statement about the environment in which it will sit for many years to come? Is it pure fun?  Did someone have too many beers and no one looked at the design again before it went to the next stage?  I can't imagine it's a cheap materials option, so it really seems like there needs to be a why.  On this scale, anyway. 

Don't even get me started on how you'd choose your colours without spontaneously combusting.

I think too, for me (you might be quite different or not give a toss altogether) one of my favourite aspects, particularly in relation to the house below, is that unlike many other houses that give you some level of indication of what may be inside, even down to furnishings, you are left totally guessing.  There are a few things that are unlikely (country chic), but still not an impossibility.

So, I definitely love it, but find it drives me just a little nuts.  Thankfully my happy place has plenty of room for that.

Exorcising my soup demons

The time when the husband will be away and I'll have to feed myself is bearing down on me somewhat, and since the pizza place doesn't deliver and I probably couldn't eat pizza for two months solid if it did anyway (or could I?  That could be a thing, you know.  Seeing if I could ... no.  Probably best not.  Although ... no.  Nooooooo ....) so I had to get back on the soup horse.

Chickpea and chorizo.

Swedish yellow pea (pea and ham soup, by any other name).

 

Feeling bookish

This is one of those times when I wonder if I should join Pinterest, but I equally suspect that that's one vortex I should definitely not go near.  Besides, this is fun. 

I've been feeling a bit bookish lately so I've been doing bookish window shopping.

Is it still window shopping if it's via PC screen?  It's a window of a sort ... a window to the internet ... I think I much prefer that to online shopping which suggests actual shopping.  Which it's not (yet).  It's a quandary, no?  The husband hears window shopping and he's only a little bit concerned.  The husband hears online shopping and he goes all pale and stuff. 

I've also just applied to graduate with a second Arts Diploma (in English), and I've been thinking about studying again (long term plan.  Long.  I need to learn how to read a book again, and be able to finish a sentence.  Looooong).  Everyone knows that the key to successful study is awesome stationary, so I needed to give this aspect some serious consideration over at Father Rabbit.  Tra la!

And obviously, excellent stationary requires an excellent bag, does it not?  (Also, if you think not, that's a rhetorical question and shush).  I've long loved this Makr ruck sack at Douglas + Bec but the tan Saben satchel ..... I don't really even care that it's a man bag.  Listen carefully and you'll hear it begging for some pink pens and a floral notebook ....

Also on the bookish front, sort of, I've been playing with perfecting my workspace for the last couple of months, and it's almost there.  I'll post pics when I'm happy with it.  And I've vacuumed.  And tidied.  And the random pile of pill containers which has appeared on the windowsill (thank you husband, for cleaning out the medicine cabinet?) has been removed, so it looks a little less like I should perhaps go to rehab. 

Where was I?

Right.  The Desk.  The plan when we first moved in and while the kids are little and need watching for mischief (and all manner of other things including intervention, should they be attempting to maim each other ... which happens fairly frequently as it turns out) was that we'd dump my desk where it is now temporarily, squeezed into a corner of the open plan kitchen/dining/lounge, until the kids were old enough that I could move my office out into the actual office that's built off the side of the garage.  Except, I love my little space, so I've claimed it permanently and have just been working on making it less bleh in the middle of our living area (and less of a pain.  Squeezing past a slighty-too-big desk constantly was annoying).  Plus, my chair is right by the bi-folds, which open out onto the deck.  Hello.  Who'd want a poxy old room in the garage when you can instead work very, very hard (fall asleep) in the lovely sun?

This is my list which you have to see because it's awesome.  It gets updated, replaced, scrawled over and generally ignored on a very regular basis.  This is the generally ignored variety because it has my housework list on it.  The books-and-shiz-to-buy list was far more successful.  Go figure.  I'm ever grateful to Blackbird for this one.  Lists are how I survive my life, so cool lists make me happy.


 

 

Also, that white tube?  My Diploma (the first one.  In History). Prooooobably should get that on a wall. The kids keep running off with it to bash each other over the head.  Not ideal.

And these are a few of my other current wants because walls by desks need to be awesome too.  The art is going to take a little (quite a bit) bit more time but I love me these though, I surely do.  The Move Ur Art piece on the left is a major want - even though they spell it 'Ur'.  I have no idea how much it costs, which means probably a lot.  I should find out, but the last time I went to check on the price of something I ended up owning it (my camera and I don't regret it for a second) so ... yes. 

The card is by Rifle Paper Co. (Douglas + Bec also stock some of their stuff).  The gumboot wearing dog would look great next to my icecream parrot (you'll see eventually).  Also, he might provide some encouragement to the actual dog.  I'd have far less housework if the actual dog was inclined towards gumboots.  You never know (though you could probably safely assume).

And last, but not least, I'm still working on convincing the husband that I need dots.  He's so far resisting being convinced, with quite some determination.  Very boring of him.  I really do like the dots.

All this and I haven't even started on the Great Diary Decision for 2014 (I'm assuming that the husband can't be convinced that I really need a Hermes agenda).

Pistachio shortbreads

It's been a quiet week.  I was diseased, and then the not-ginger was poxed.  It's been fun (and by fun, I mean the total opposite of fun).

Back into it now though, more or less.  Now that I can eat again, I needed cookies. 

(Oh!  Definitely worth mentioning that somehow, while in the grips of disease, I managed in my fevered state to come up with an argument in favour of the Missioni towels (I posted a pic a couple of weeks ago) that the husband agreed to.  Ha!  Of course said agreement may have been part of the delirium, but we'll cross that bridge after I have new towels.)

Said cookies ended up being Pistachio shortbreads from Ottolenghi, The Cookbook (and are seriously amazing, FYI).

I really love biscuits with a noticeable amount of spice, so I always have to try recipes if I see them.  Often and disappointingly though they're loaded with sugar so that they still appeal to mass taste for sweet biscuits.  To me, that almost totally takes away from the spice ... which I guess is actually the idea.  Something a bit different without being different.  A bit like Belgian biscuits.  I love the idea of them and depending on the recipe, I can usually do one, but ug.  Usually they're so sweet it hurts.

Anywway, these babies have a good amount of cardamom in them which is a reasonably newly appreciated taste for me (clumsy sentence, but you get the idea) and very little sugar (25g of icing sugar).  Rice flour picks up in this one I think where many recipes have cornflour to give them that softness and texture.  They're brilliant.  The recipe calls for them to be sprinkled with vanilla sugar but I didn't have any and didn't have the ability to make any (no vanilla pods - I use paste and that wouldn't be any good mixed with sugar for sprinkling, obviously) so I used coconut sugar instead.  I'd be interested to see how that changes the flavour from vanilla sugar at some stage when I have some, but in the meantime, I'm happy as a happy thing with how they turned out.  Coconut sugar has quite a caramel taste.  It's uber lovely.

The shortbreads don't have pistachios in the dough.  The nuts are chopped pretty finely and rolled into the outer edge.

I made two thicknesses - the recipe said to cut them 5mm - 1cm thick.  I did one tray at 1cm, and one tray at 5mm.  I prefer the thicker shortbread, though they maybe look a little bit weird, because they are very small (4cm across roughly).  I thought they'd spread, but of course, there's nothing in them to make them do so.