Microbial musings

An amazing yoga workshop day introduced me to Yoga Qi Gong, which was a revelation; and acupuncture, which was less alarming than I expected.  It also introduced me to kombucha in the fabulous refreshments created by Nena Foster Food, and which we learnt to make in the afternoon workshop on fermentation. 

We made red and white cabbage sauerkraut with apple, fennel and juniper.  It needs a bit more fermenting before it is ready, but tastes pretty good.  It also needed regular 'burping' to prevent the gas building up and bubbling over!

My kombucha took a while to get going and grow a proper SCOBY, but I threw away the first batch and the second is progressing much better.  My SCOBY even has a baby!  More on that when it has had a second brew and is ready to taste.

And lastly, something I had never even tasted before: kefir. I had thought to eventually try dairy milk kefir, however Nena gave us water kefir grains to use with coconut milk.  This is the easiest of these three ferments.

• 1 can of organic coconut milk.  This isn't to be superior about ingredients: the coconut milk should only have coconut and water in the ingredients, not additional thickeners which most ordinary cans include.
• 2 tsp water kefir grains

Shake the can of coconut milk first to re-amalgamate it if it has separated; pour into a glass container and add the kefir grains. Cover with a muslin, tied round with a string. This lets gasses out and prevents bugs from getting in.  It should be ready in 8-24 hours: the milk will have thickened and the taste is elegantly sour.
Use a plastic sieve (or anything non-metal) to drain the kefir into another container.  Store the kefir in the fridge for up to 6 or 7 days.

Reserve the kefir grains to either use again straight away in another batch, or you can put them in a small glass jar with a little more coconut milk and store in the fridge.


There is a lot of conflicting information about the two different types of grain (water and milk), how best to keep them and even how often you need to 'refresh' them in their favoured substance.  Nena's advice was simple - as above, pretty much - and I will just keep these kefir grains for water kefir rather than converting them for use in milk.  I am hoping the grains are kept happy and start to grow so I can give some away to friends and share the pleasure.

I would have turned down these lovely bacterial buddies as I didn't think I could manage them without a kitchen, however I do have a small fridge so have been able to keep the kefir grains and kefir there.  I store the fermenting jars in a bedroom, awkwardly wedged under a chair, next to books and laundry bags: upstairs is a bit warmer to help them activate and downstairs remains a kingdom of cement and paint. My ferments seem to take longer than I think is usual, as I keep a fairly cool house.

Looking after these three is strangely like having a family: I check in on them, feed them, burp them and start the cycle over again.  It is a lovely way to potter and nurture and re-learn how to inhabit my home, while creating food at the same time.

I would stay and chat, but I need to make a SCOBY hotel to store my growing family in!

Kitchen catch up

I had great plans for finding the silver lining in the grim culinary situation of not having a kitchen, by cheerily posting all my endeavours to eat well for the duration of my building work.  I soon realised that a summary would suffice, so here it is:

• Lidl does the best, cheap ready meals. The red Thai curry stood up the best and, just as I was getting thoroughly fed up with chicken in every meal, they started making a vegetarian bean chilli.
• Pots of fruit in juice, and small tins of sweetcorn became store cupboard essentials for preventing scurvy.
• Coffee in bags does. Not. Cut. It.
• Only a very good friend would think to post a big box of kabuto noodles, in every flavour.  Praise be for HG.

The building work was delayed from starting for some months and, thinking I would need something to cheer me if it was further delayed over the Spring, I booked onto a course called 'Self care with food and herbs'.  One evening each wintry month I headed to West London to meet the most wonderful group of people and our inspiring teacher.  We drank infusions, made a decoction, smelt, tasted, squeezed, looked and ate. We made tinctures, balms, sprays, talked about sleep disorders, digestive soothers and walked around the garden, munching ground elder.

Though I was in a kind of shut-down mode with my kitchen packed away, these sessions made me come out of hibernation.  My lunchtime meals changed to include the best I could manage in a work-kitchen: my favourite was beluga lentils, with smoked mackerel, lovely bitter, red chicory, beetroot and handfuls of any other salad veg that was easy to store, wash and chop.  Though it just sounds delicious, and filling, the ingredients are carefully chosen to have stimulating bitters, pulses for gut health, lots of oils and dark colours.  I don't want to get all Helmsley on yo' ass but it was a very good time to be reminded to look after myself.  And I got through winter without so much as a cold!

This has been my trusty 'kitchen' for about 20 weeks:




The building work is mostly complete - and even the ill-fated, Velfacking windows are finally here - so today I am taking delivery of an oven and fridge.  Week 20 and very soon I might be able to make a meal again!

Week 3

As always I am vexingly late to my own party.  For two long weeks I have been trying to post some thoughts but effing Blogger doesn't now support its own effing app, so when I tried to write, the text repeatedly vanished.  And then when I logged in on ye olde computer to try again, freaking Google has so much security that I nearly didn't get in.  Like withdrawing cash over the bank counter, Blogger is now too secure for the only person who actually needs access.

What the EFF.

Where was I?  Oh yes, into week 3 and only scanty notes about weeks 1 and 2 - the golden times, the halcyon days of my build!  But if I get all completist and go back to week 1 I will never get started, so here I am, mid-thought.

It is already week 3 of the kitchen build!  I say that as if the past two weeks have sped by, but in reality living in a building site, riddled with anxiety and decision making, is the utmost best best best way to slow time in the unslowable middle years of life. 

Week 3 so far has a very fun site meeting.  I genuinely love this, and teeter about on planks of wood, or stand in wellingtons with my hands on my hips saying helpful things like 'Is there a reason the downpipe can't just go on the extension roof? How long before you can build over that concrete square?  How much does steel cost?' and more.  I'm practically indispensable.

Whilst building updates make me misty-eyed with pre-emptive sentimental feeling, what I was really noting down here was what to eat when 'between kitchens', as HG says.  To help future me on, say, week 7, when I am showing symptoms of scurvy.

I can't WAIT to go back to weeks 1 and 2 (what days!) however in week 3 I have been very bad indeed about not being prepared.  My budget, you will recall from week 1* is £10 per day.  The kitchen set up you will recall with equal freshness of mind* is a work kitchen, at work; and at home, a microwave, kettle and fridge - but with the added challenge of being in the work place of the building site.  The dear builder even pulled in a sink so there is running cold water, though no drain, so only a bucket beneath.

Weeks 1 and 2 I did so well so it must be inevitable that Monday of week 3, the last Monday in January, I broke the budget. I gorged on a Costa-coffee-cake breakfast; an overpriced sandwich at lunch, eaten in 0.8 seconds; then stayed too late at work, hungry, so ate out.  I decided if I was going to break the budget it would at least not be in the centre of town, I would instead take my money south of the river and eat locally.  The trains were the coin-toss, and the first train I could catch took me to The Station, where I had a Vietnamese vegetable curry, a glass of wine and crumble with cream.  Well, once you start eating it makes you sad when you have to stop again. As I waddled home I decided that for £22 I was both warm and full, so it wasn't a terrible move.  Plus it feels so civilised to eat off of china rather than out of plastic.

My resolution was no better this morning: home made beans on toast at Archibalds, with coffee; a hasty salad from Pret (I wasn't even trying by this point); and a redeeming microwave meal of cauliflower cheese with rice.  Random and at £2.50 bang on budget, had I been sticking to it.

Now I need to don my wellingtons and put on the kettle for a mint tea and hot water bottle. I'm back in my own bed now, after a spell on the sofa, so am making the most of the comfort - while it lasts.



*when I write the posts

Roll on Spring

It is a perfect Spring day - too warm for April, but blue-skied and burgeoning with promise.

I have the luxury of a whole garden day and, not wishing to interrupt the flow of clipping and weeding, ran down the hill for a sausage roll for lunch. 

It is 3 years almost to the day since I first clapped eyes on my home, though it took much longer before I could move in. When a local business opened a Kickstarter campaign to open a community-focused local deli I gladly chipped in, hoping for some variety to the fried chicken shops.  I love fried chicken but a deli would definitely add something useful!

And so it is that on days like today I can pick up a hot-from-the-oven sausage roll just 5 mins from home.  I still don't have an oven of my own, so baked goods are such a treat right now. What a sausage roll it is: soft, plump, delicately flavoured.  And the pastry! It is bigger than the picture but it didn't make it to the plate without being assaulted.

Its companions are fridge-foraged: a little brown rice and flash-fried courgette with garlic, chilli and a squeeze of lime. The drink is the taste of summer 2016: elderflower cordial, made last year with my parents.

Only another month or two before the elders flower, and it all begins again.

Beet poet

And the reason I had leftovers to use up: a TV night in with my friend Mel.

We had Campari soda, naturally, before this salmon and salad. I never usually relish a supermarket cooked beet, but these baby beets with black pepper were luscious! 

I have nothing to say about poetry, I just enjoy a terrible pun.

Radishes are my vegetable of 2016 and at any one time I have a pack on the go. My only complaint is that they are a little mild, but I intend to grow them next year and will try a few peppery varieties. Recommendations gratefully received!

Slugged!

So my lovingly hand-reared courgette plants, and several tomato plants, made a fine delicacy for the slugs and snails. Oy! The remaining two weedy squash plants are now sulking inside next to a window. They would rather be outside in some soil but I have turned protective parent.

A regiment of underdeveloped toms are perched on a radiator (don't ask) in my Steptoe and Son back garden (really don't ask). I am going to plant these out; I can't think egg shells and coffee grounds will deter these Amazonian slimies but the toms have one last chance. Grow prickly and hairy, wee Monemakers!

In a funk of vegetable failure, I gave in to reality and signed up for a veg box delivery. Iam now looking forward to it - hungry anticipation mixed with admiration for large scale growing. Imagine the slug patrols on a farm! The first box arrives this week so to make room I cleaned my fridge and defrosted the tiny ice box. I am also eating everything up.

Tonight I'll eat the final courgettes with pasta. Lunch dealt with the rest:

(A lousy photo but it'll jog my memory for next time!)

June salad with bacon and Dijon potato salad

Scant teaspoon of Dijon mustard, mixed with mayonnaise. Add in cold, cubed, cooked potato (made twice this amount)

Pile up in a dish:

4 radishes (halved), third of a cucumber (sliced), half a yellow pepper sliced, a good handful of mange tout (blanched then run under cold water), a spring onion sliced.

My sister & her family were at a hog roast today so, feeling a little pork-envy, I fried some pancetta cubes and added them - along with bacon fat from the pan - on top. 

A squeeze of lime.

May days

April is the most astonishing month.

From misty to hail to sun, the weather is petulant.  And the garden follows suit! Hidden behind the ungiving frosty mornings the ground must secretly be warming, because suddenly the green flourishes. I had been anxiously seeking my peoney plants, worried they had been carelessly squashed or murdered by boisterous fence & shed replacements. I found them on a bleak Sunday in the gloaming evening, their red alien fists punching up through the soil; three weeks later and they were lush, green and a foot tall! Everything is burgeoning. Even the weeds...

I really enjoyed weeding in winter.  My battle with brambles and that sneaky, tenacious ivy actually seemed to be progressing - in my favour. But bring on the April showers and shy first sun and I have a dispiriting handicap, as if I am now fighting with one hand behind my back.  I see I can no longer be a weekender; it begins to seem as if longer days are provided for the sole purpose of keeping on top of the growing vegetation.

For the first time, I have been nurturing* seeds to life. I thought I had over-watered and rotted them, but it turns out that even they are keen to thrive. After 3 weeks of being ignored they sprang to life and now I am thrilled to be growing tomatoes (moneymaker), courgette, patty pan squash and butternut squash. I have some herbs on the go and Rose & Al gifted me two sturdy strawberry plants they have been bringing on.  

I put the seedlings outside yesterday to harden off, only to find it was warmer outside than inside the house. May has over stretched itself into July temperatures: such hot weather! Like being dropped into summer for a day. So today I shelter inside (ironically less hardy than the spindly, baby tomato plants) and make lunch.

 

Surprise-Summer lunch

1) Discover last year's elderflower cordial hasn't gone off & have with fizzy water & lemon.

2) Rootle in the fridge for salad items.  Layer up in a flat bowl:

Watercress; cucumber, cubed; radishes, halved, a spring onion, thinly sliced; avocado; red chilli which later turns out to be disappointingly mild, very finely diced.

Lemon juice, olive oil, black pepper & salt... you know the drill.

3) Make like the Larkin poem and enjoy it with all windows down, all sense of hurry gone.

* neglecting

Mrs Hubbard

When I looked, on one of those dark days between Christmas and New Year, the cupboard was bare.  When my Mother looked she found this:

Hubbard soup (minimal version)

For making something out of nothing, this beats even the tomato and lentil soup that KK makes. Chop one white onion, soften in oil; add a tin of tomatoes and a squeeze of tomato purée.  Cook for a bit - maybe 15 mins - then blend roughly and season well. Serves 3.

Ridiculously Good Sausage rolls

Caramelise some onions by slicing an onion in half, then slicing the halves into slim half moons. Add to a pan with a little oil and cook on a low heat for 30 mins. Add a teaspoon of balsamic and half a teaspoon of sugar and cook a further 15 mins.

Roll out puff pastry into a long rectangle. You will soon fold this in half, lengthwise, so bear this in mind as you place on sausage meat (from Jonathan the butcher, "hardly any fat in there" as Ma kept telling us): keep it to one side, with space all round. Top the meat with caramelised onion then fold the rest of the pastry over the meat, like a long blanket. Tuck the sausage up cosy, press the edges together, and brush with milk. Slice the roll into big chunks; they need to be pretty hefty or the pastry will bounce open as the rolls cook. Bake hot (190 degrees) for about 20 mins.

This was a very warming lunch.

hello? Is it me you're looking for?

The cooking dry spell continued, making me more grateful than ever for other people's home dishes. Jimmy's classic ham, rice and salad; an Ottolenghi-salad lunch crafted by Mel; Alex's barley and black pudding risotto.

And then, after two days alone in the burnt ochre palette of English autumn countryside, I noticed my cooking mojo sitting next to me.  He looked like this:

I had picked courgette, tomatoes, rosemary and thyme from Rosie & Alex's garden. So I made ratatouille and chipolata sausages for supper, and also a lamb stew for school nights this week.

Mojo Lamb

Brown the cheapest of stewing lamb in Alex's nice, deep pot, then remove to a dish. 

In the lamby pan, add more oil, then in it sweat sliced onion and cumin seeds.  

Add diced celery and cook a bit more, keeping the heat low. 

Return the lamb to the pan, cover with water, then add in rosemary, diced carrot and a few odds of courgette that had gone mushy at one end, but you wanted to rescue the edible bits.  

Leave on low for a couple of hours, happy in the knowledge it will taste even better when re-heated after work.

Pour a glass of wine and let the aromatic rosemary smells sharpen your appetite. 

house salad

After a series of increasingly bizarre meals, culminating in 'left over curry with sweetcorn to pad it out, with penne pasta' on Friday, I was ready for real food again. Thank goodness for the weekend!

At Deptford's Big Red Bus on Friday night Jamie and I had wonderful pizza. Saturday's falafel salad at Maltby street market had gorgeous crunchy falafel and silky aubergine. We took in the Ladywell Tavern for beers, lovely coffee and cake at Fee and Brown, and late night chips at a local chipper.  

After all the excitement and sunshine, Sunday evening felt a little quiet and back-to-school sad. So I made House Salad which, being in the Flamingo house, had to be pink.

• New potatoes; boiled, cooled a bit, and quartered lengthwise
• Cos lettuce chopped or torn
• 2 spring onions, sliced
• 5 cherry toms
• 5 radishes
• The end of a tin of sweet corn 
• A skinny fillet of salmon, fried then left to rest

Put it all together with the salmon last, warm, on top. Dash over the frying pan oil, half a lime, and a grind of pepper. Eat while listening to radio 4's 'Boswell's life of Johnson' - delightfully distracting and with Miles Jupp to boot. Enjoy with a bitter Campari and soda, contemplating the sweet / sad nature of life.

hot cross bacon savouries

When the corner shop didn't have any hot cross buns on Easter day, my Mother wasn't put out. 

"Let's have some hot cross bacon savouries instead!" she said, somewhat eccentrically. 

Unsurprisingly, they weren't available to purchase, so we made 'em.  Back home I made a pot of coffee while Ma did the following. If you have an oven, and a spare 7 minutes, I suggest you do the same.

• Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees, or gas equivalent. 
• Unwrap and unroll some puff pastry (bought fresh, pre-rolled); cut into 6 squares.  
• Over these squares grate some strong cheddar and lay over a rasher of bacon. I favour smoked streaky. We didn't have much bacon to hand, so cut up 4 rashers and shared this out equally.
• Bring diagonal corners of the pastry together (as in the photo), brush pastry with milk and bake for 20 minutes or so.

Enjoy with coffee, sitting in the Spring sunshine, with your parents, if you are so very lucky as to have some.

ups and downs

'Lady's Choice bacon spread (with REAL bacon)' read the alluring foil sachet, gleaming in the tinned meat aisle of a Phillipine supermarket, like a diamond in a diamond mine full of diamonds.

I lay my culinary trust in a nation that has four aisles of tinned meat products. In a Manillan shop, the corned beef tins segued into corned tuna and corned chicken; and all this before we had even hit the Spam. Corned beef was a saving grace in my childhood. Summer meant occasional good weather, which meant rare salads. And as everyone knows, cucumber and lettuce do not a meal make. When my 8 year old self couldn't go near Pilchards or prawns, or the jelly around pork pie, corned beef came to the rescue. And as with all tinned goods, you are only a ring pull away from delicious: Pinoy cuisine makes ready for the apocalypse and is just waiting in your store cupboard.

So it was something of a personal tragedy to find Lady's Choice bacon spread is pretty grim! I am sure I'll have better luck with the corned beef I have lined up next.

That evening I had a hankering for cauliflower. 

My current challenge is cooking hob only, on 3 rings max., definitely no oven or grill. Or microwave or toaster. I have a kitchen handicap that only organising building works can cure...But cauli is easy.

I boiled sweet baby new potatoes, steamed florettes on top for the last 4 minutes, and made a hasty cheese sauce with stingy mature Cheddar and a dab of English mustard.  Why does it taste even better in my favourite dish?

first meal

My first meal after five days of dry toast and boiled water. Nothing has ever tasted so nourishing, nor left me with such a hearty glow! 

Not a body beautiful detox, I was instead possessed by some bug or virus. It was all a bit too visceral and left me grumpily waif-like and hungry. Five days of not eating properly! 

Miso soup was a real breakthrough & kept me going: salty soup is recommended to replace lost salts in the body and I happened to have some individual paste sachets from the supermarket. I will keep some in store as medical emergency provision! PJ was my other saviour: dry toast really is the only comfortable thing to eat, and PJ looked after me, toasting seedy bread.

My sister had twin symptoms, simultaneously (discussed in too-graphic detail). We recovered at the same time and, whilst wondering what to brave for a meal, I heard she was having 'your mend-all chicken and barley stew'.  Of course!  A now-distant cousin of Nigella's 'praised chicken', the barley version is very gentle and homey. Barley, cubed potato and leek are simmered about, with a few chicken thighs for 50 minutes. My taste buds feel brand new and must be very sensitive, as the dish didn't need seasoning!

when life throws lemons...

... get a table for one and order in a margherita and some guac. If the Mexican food doesn't sort you out, the delight in dining out - so indulgent on a Monday night - soon will!

Definitely not a dry January in this corner of London.

hibernation

Our Christmas choirmaster comes from sunny climes and said he didn't truly understand 'In the bleak midwinter' until he lived in the UK. 

It sure is bleak and dark and grey.  The cold is damp and pervasive, rather than dry as in Scandinavian countries. And January / February are the hardest, longest months. Crisp, blue days are limited, as are beautiful snowfalls to lift the spirits. But I don't mind: there is something necessary about enduring a winter in order to enjoy the spring. And if you don't fight it, but adapt and hibernate, then it can almost be enjoyable.

My native strategy for survival isn't original, but goes along these lines:

• Plan for social life to start in February: say 'no' to everything else.
• Only make plans with your very closest friends; cheering, low maintenance. An exhibition, coffee, Burns night. 
• Look forward to work: there is HEATING there.
• Bed early, every night. With blankets, films and mint tea.
• Eat well. Porridge, coffee, stews, carbs.
• I don't need to add exercise as my daily commute involves more than an hour of walking, but it does help
• Luxury item of the past 2 yrs: go away post-Christmas for a couple of nights. Ensure hotel has log fires and is insanely intimate and cosy.

This year is peculiarly isolated, with two of my favourite people overseas and other friends too busy to meet. I find a cafe quite the best antidote to being alone too much.

Yesterday I had a morning coffee in Watch House, Bermondsey street. Coffee in London has blossomed so much in recent years that I barely try to keep up, so I can tell you only that they were nice people, with great coffee and so cosmopolitan that they were unfazed by an off-menu request ('do you do a cortado or piccolo?' was met with 'sure, which would you like').  The blazing little fire didn't hurt either! It is tiny to sit in but very pretty; bare scandi-chic, hyacinth posies, plugs for phones.  Beautiful, young things were working earnestly at the other tables, two were setting up a new business. 

My other January cafés so far:

Arloe & Moe (of course)
Hej 
Canela: despite no longer making cheese bread. They do a lovely gallaou.
Frank & Taylor: though an outside cart, the friendliness of the boys keeps you warm!

After a solitary weekend I feel strangely purged and calm. Plus my boyfriend has a defrosted freezer, as a special anniversary gift. Lucky boy!

Knitting in Watch House

Metro Manilla

"Pork" we said. 

"Pork and rice... and juice?"

In a humid 30 degree, city heat, jet lagged and hungry, I liked the look of every single food stall at the market.  Cane sugar drink, barbecued or kebab meat, exotic fruit of every shape and size! The decision making was bewildering but Mel's cousin and his wife saved us, bringing: roast pork belly, fish stuffed with tomatoes and other vegetables, rice, semi- dried beef strips and fresh juice.

Pork for breakfast is easily the most triumphant start to the day.

Coffee adventures were less successful, but we did source a macchiato from Coffee Bean, and find that a Breve was "like a latte but more creamy". 

Jollibee was an immediate hit. Burgers were familiar, 'one piece and rice' (fried chicken) is a combination that should be served everywhere and the proper cutlery would almost convert my Mother to fast food! Sarsi, beloved by Mel as a fizzy drink of her youth, tasted like cola mixed with TCP. Strangely medicinal.

New (to me) fruit: custard apple, their armadillo armour pulled away to eat the snowy flesh inside; mangosteen, with their deep plum case and soft segments within; small, green citrus fruits, like baby limes with orange inside (calamansi) make delicious juice; sweet, clear lanzones with thin skins to peel away. And the sweetest, ripest baby mangos I have ever met!

Holidays with Mel are always delicious.

The flamingo has landed

This year has been the busiest ever, but sadly also my least productive in the kitchen.

Work is bursting at the seams and then I managed to finally completed on the little pink palace! Nicknamed The Flamingo by Herb, the joke is that I don't much like pink and used to avoid it: now I am turning into a librarian Barbara Cartland by some irresistible quirk of fate. 

So be it. It is my new home, even if it does look like Barbie visited.  After gaining possession, Jimmy and I sat at this table in my favourite cafe, Arloe & Moe.  What amazing salt and pepper pots!

Between the unglamourous state of the new kitchen, and the flat I was renting being turned into a building site for the last few weeks I was living there, I have not cooked properly, or regularly, for months.  Disproportionate joy, then, at this first stove-top supper in the Flamingo.

It will be some months before I have a fully functioning kitchen so for now I will be learning to cook camping-style. I hope my real cooking muscles don't atrophy!

chorizo cheer

Tonight's speedy, batchelor girl meal was brought to you by necessity, by way of fun: I needed to eat very soon after getting home, having been enjoying myself at choir.

Ever hungry, I get ever so anxious if I eat late; crotchety too, as my sisters will attest! I get home about 9.30 pm on choir nights and this is one of the zippiest get togethers of ingredients, thought up on the spot.

Chorizo sliced (using scissors to save washing up a chopping board), fried in a little pan for 4 mins; cold, leftover new boiled potatoes added and flash-sautéed in the same pan, and all dashed in a bowl with peas. The peas I put, frozen, in a cup and pour over boiling water from the kettle. 

All I needed was a Campari-soda to keep me sharp and some radio 4. 

Happy days!

Saturday brekker

Herb has raised the weekend breakfast to an institution. Not for her a mindless re-fuel before getting the papers, and she makes sure to spread the word. I think of her as the breakfast evangelist.  She often texts or emails a report of her weekend morning fodder, always with a question about what I am eating.

By contrast I can be found having left over curry, pork pie or kaya toast to tide me over while I decide what to eat on my leisurely mornings. The luxury of rising later and eating without time constraint definitely changes the menu options! Last weekend I had my first asparagus of the season,  with fennel lemon salad and sobrasada on toast. I sat in the sun, listening to bird song in the May-blooming garden.

This weekend there is a half-term break from yoga, so I headed to the market (more sweet, lithe English asparagus), then on to late breakfast and coffee at Arloe and Moe's. My favourite dish there is the savoury avocado and feta 'sexy toast' but today I was swayed by a nostalgia for the very Australian dish of French toast with berries, yoghurt and maple syrup. 

I wasn't wrong, it was perfect!

Today is Bert's birthday so I raised my flattie to toast her health, wealth and coming year.

simples

And then there are those soothing moments when, with the minimal effort that comes with habit, I knocked up a cauliflower yogurt soup and a couple of loaves of soda bread without even thinking.

Inspired by the gigantic, cream cauli's in the market, I bought one every week and made this. The coriander seeds give a fresh, lemon taste and the soup is somehow simultaneously hearty and light.  Bread, still slightly warm, is the only way I want to eat this.

17 April