Welcome to The Kitchen Playground. Cooking can bring great joy and great despair. I hope that the recipes you find here, many of which are very quick to make with the weeknight in mind, help you to experience more joy than despair. Many recipes have instructions for the Thermomix 31 as well as traditional instructions. The emphasis is on real, fresh food that combines flavour, texture and scent to delight the senses.
Nothing like a gorgeous sunny day to make a woman neglect her indoor tasks in favour of her outdoor tasks. I arrived home from work at lunchtime and thanked my lucky stars I’d planned a quick and easy meal. The next few hours were spent in productive outdoor activity; building up another layer on the […]
Out there in the ether is a cook book. It’s name escapes me. It’s a vegetarian cook book. It’s appallingly laid out. So much so that it is nearly impossible to browse. Not a photo or illustration to be seen and set out in columns. It does contain some gold if you have the stamina […]
After the weekend’s birthday celebrations, one thing I did not feel like doing today was cooking. Rare but true. Even so, it’s only just occurred to me as I type this that take away is the common option for nights such as tonight. It’s just not something that occurs to me more than once in […]
It’s Abbotsford Convent Slow Food Farmer’s Market week this week. The Ankle Biters and I arrived just before 8am and filled our trolley to overflowing with locally grown spring goodness. The seemingly endless hues of green at a spring market make my heart sing. In addition to this cornucopia of spring vegetation, I also treated […]
photo by 5k1nnyt1g3r, some rights reserved Silverbeet and Mushroom pasta bake 10 large silverbeet leaves, blanched and chopped 3 large field mushroom, sliced 1 onion, finely chopped 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped 1 tablespoon olive oil 1 tablespoon butter 8 sun dried tomatoes, roughly chopped 1/2 cup cream pasta of your choice (I used […]
I was raised on spanakopita or a variation thereof from a week kiddie. Something that strikes me as a little strange when I think about it, given the lack of multiculturalism in suburban Melbourne in the early 70’s. There was a goodly sized Greek community in Melbourne even then but we didn’t have any personal […]
Why oh why are my family so jolly difficult about orange vegetables? I know they are good eaters and I really shouldn’t complain but I love my beta-carotene and I wish they did too. Every now and again I try something new hoping it will be a winner. My current read is Animal, Vegetable, Miracle […]
Lately, Son and Heir greatly objects to staying home all day. He has this driving need for some form of outing every day. It’s a pain in the backside when I don’t want to go anywhere. Like today. All I wanted to do was clean the house and tend to some outdoor tasks that I […]
Here is a random nasturtiun from my back yard. Not relevant to anything else I have to say today. Just pretty. Now that I’ve got that out of my system, I’ll move on to my next random topic. The Junior Landcare Watermelon Challenge. It’s open to Australian children as individuals or as schools. The idea […]
This makes a ton. I have kept some noodles and egg uncooked and will cook them tomorrow and serve them with some of the soup for lunch. Indonesian Chicken Soup serves 6 – 8 slightly altered from One Course Meals by Charmaine Solomon. 1 chicken, jointed 2 teaspoons salt 1 teaspoon whole peppercorns 12 sprigs […]