Cheese making.

It's no secret I love cheese! And I am so lucky that Adam loves it too! I can't imagine marrying a man who didn't love to sit on the couch and eat three different cheeses on a Friday night.

I bought him a cheese kit for our first anniversary last October. The kit includes a recipe book, some sterilising solution, salt, a thermometer, some spoons plus cultures and rennet. We've only just had a spare Sunday to use it. This basic kit has about seven recipes, and the cultures and rennet is enough to make seven lots of cheese. 

We decided on the quark - with a difficulty rating of very easy.

First we heated milk and culture to 30 degrees. Then we let it sit for 24 hours. That was a little boring, I admit. 

Because I am about full disclosure. I will let you know this first batch did not work. I heated the milk too fast. After leaving it to sit, it turned into sour milk, and smelt terrible. I have a strong aversion to milk (yet love cheese - I don't get it?!) and so I am thankful that Adam disposed of the milk and cleaned up!

Adam did some googling and found a more comprehensive recipe. And it worked! This is after it was strained through cheesecloth over the sink overnight. He is Master Cheesemaker!

We seasoned the cheese with basil and green chilli and served it on homemade bread. It was so delicious. Soft and tangy. Creamy. Healthy. We'll definitely be making more cheese!

Have you made cheese before? What's your favourite?

MasterChef inspired mystery box challenge for my love.

Firstly, how cute is this?! Oh the romance.

Adam and I watch MasterChef together. He started off being openly bored about watching cooking shows - read: yawning - but now he's more eager than me. If I'm not home he will give me an update the next day. He is so tense watching the contestants stress, and tells me what he'd do if he had those ingredients or that pressure. He's also critical of the food or cooking methods - a sign that he's getting better at cooking.

He's taken to cooking too. I love seeing him go from unenthusiastic to enjoying pottering in the kitchen, buying ingredients and thinking of new ideas. One night at around 9.00 I said I felt like dessert and he went to the kitchen, shut the door and googled. He came out after two segments of When Love Comes to Town (the only night I watched it), waving his arms in the air, saying "it has to cool, it has to cool"! He made bread and butter pudding in a cup. It was surprisingly good, if a little eggy. Since then he's cooked two bread and butter puddings, some rum balls and brownies. He's also made a lot of delicious omelettes and pastas. And he experiments with hot chocolate flavours. He's so proud. And while I still cook the majority of meals, he helps me prepare. He's good to have around the house! When I was overseas, he said he was so thankful I taught him to cook for himself.

We are such a foodie couple. We eat out regularly (though have cut down due to wedding planning). And we talk about and dream about food a lot. He says to me often, "thank god you like eating cheese. I couldn't handle a girl who didn't". At home we like simple, fresh foods. Right now we eat a slow cooker meal a week - a curry or stew or a soup. We love a midweek pasta. And it's fun to make a pizza on the weekends.

Last night there was a MasterChef challenge where the contestants were given a mystery box of ingredients and a letter from their loved ones. So heartfelt. Some received ingredients they loved to cook with, others received ingredients that their loved ones wanted cooking for them.

Adam asked me what I'd include in his mystery box. I didn't tell him, I said I needed to think about it, and it would also be a fun blog post. And so it is.

Here are the ingredients I've chosen for Adam's MasterChef Mystery Box. Because food is love. And of course he'd have access to my well stocked pantry. I'm keeping the ingredients simple because I am playing to his strengths and that's how we eat, but he can cook as complicated as he can manage.

Wanton wrappers.

Because we love going out for dumplings and I think it'd be such fun to make them at home on a Saturday night. A few drinks, some music and us making dumplings. I'd love to make some tasty vegetarian ones - mushroom and tofu maybe. This would be a great starter.

Rib eye steak.

I hope he'd make a sweet and spicy dry rub to recreate that amazing steak we had from the Northcote butchers - we won the meat raffle at Bob Evans' concert in December.

Salad ingredients (greens, capsicum, beetroot, tomato etc).

He's great at salads. I hope he'd make a warm salad and season it with some interesting toppings like feta, toasted seeds and nuts and some fruit like cranberries or peaches.

Basic cake mix ingredients - butter, sugar, milk, flour, vanilla.

He loves to experiment with different flavours and I think he'd have fun creating a cake with extra ingredients like chocolate or spices or fruits.

I going to give him some of the ingredients and see what he does with them!

Bon appetite!

What MasterChef mystery box challenge would you give your loved ones?

Why do you choose these ingredients?

How big is food in your relationship?

PS: thank you for the love you showed me on my post about the big peel over the weekend. I'm still sore, but I'm slowly getting better. Your lovely words have buoyed me.

 

Cooking is love

If you follow my Instagram account, you'll see that I share LOTS of photos of food. I try to cook at least four nights a week. I've been happy cooking good food for myself for all these years, but now I've got someone to cook for and cook with. It's fun. Cooking is love.

When I first met my boyfriend, he told me he hated cooking. How would this ever work? He didn't like cooking. But as the months have passed, he has started to enjoy cooking. And his tummy is very content.

There's been a lot to teach him - like cheese is no substitute for butter in the pan - but he's become a fine apprentice.

We make brunch almost every Sunday - oats and pancakes and French toast and fritatta. Weekends are spent preparing more complex meals - we made burgers on Sunday and pizzas two weekends ago. We've done risottos and paella. We are planning to make pasta on the long weekend.

Weeknights are a simpler affair with salads, bolognaise and curries. We make recipes up in our heads.

We laugh and play music and cuddle.

And he enjoys it. He chops and stirs and and fries. He's a great bacon fryer. He's the type of man who's mechanical - makes and fixes things. And so I can see his logical mind working when he's helping me in the kitchen.

It's like My Kitchen Rules at my place every time we eat now. I love cooking for him, ensuring he has wholefoods. He's turned into a foodie - even texting me when he's not here to discuss what's happening on MKR. I love it! His words last night were "An hour and fifteen to do an eggplant entree - god." Foodie!!

Here's what we made for dinner last night: salad of figs, mushrooms, stinky cheese and brown rice. He serenaded me with Lionel Ritchie. Oh the romance!

 

Recipe - serves four as an accompaniment.

Four figs, washed and cut into eighths

Two large mushrooms, sliced

One cup of uncooked brown rice

Handful of parsley

Half a zucchini, sliced thinly - use a vegetable grater

Piece of bacon, finely cubed - I used a 10cm chunk of bacon

Small piece of stinky cheese - I used Milawa Gold, but Gorgonzola will do

Splash of balsamic vinegar

Olive oil

-

Cook brown rice, drain and cool.

Fry mushrooms in a drop or two of olive oil. Once soft and blackish, remove the mushrooms and put aside.

Use the same pan to cook the bacon and zucchini - about 10 minutes.

Finely chop the parsley.

Put these ingredients (rice, mushrooms, bacon, parsley and zucchini) in a bowl, splash with balsamic vinegar and olive oil.

Gently place the figs on the salad

Crumble the cheese over the top.

Eat!

-

It's so wonderful cooking together. It's a happy, relaxing time and I love seeing him appreciate our meals so much.

I now see why my Mum enjoys cooking, and that every meal she prepared for the family was done to nourish, to bring us together and made with love

Do you cook for or with your love? Does it bring you together? What do you cook?

 

Peach and strawberry pie

I made an amazing white peach and strawberry pie last weekend. So amazing that my boy licked his plate.

I felt like a summer fruit pie on the first day of summer, and I had a few ripe fruits on hand. I made this pie with what I had in the pantry, fridge and fruit bowl. It's super easy and tasted wonderful.

I'm not one to measure precisely, so feel free to improvise on my recipe. It would work well with nectarines or apples, or other berries.

1. Dice three white peaches (I guess you can use yellow peaches too) and hull a punnett of strawberries.
2. Place the fruit in a saucepan with a teaspoon of vanilla paste (or essence), a sprinkle of cardamom and cinnamon, the zest of half a lemon and a tablespoon of sugar. I think some grated ginger would be amazing too.
3. Cook the fruit on a low heat for around 20 minutes.
4. Place a sheet of pastry in a pie dish (you could make your own but I used puff pastry that I had in the freezer) and spoon in the fruit.
5. Leave the liquid in the saucepan and cook on high heat until it's reduced and sticky. Pour this back over the fruit you've placed in the pastry.
6. Cook on 150 degrees Celsius for 20 minutes.
7. Eat and proclaim how wonderful it is. Plate licking is optional.

The weekend: pizza, a blogging class, a movie and lunch with new friends.

I've been quite sore this weekend - with Friday spent resting and much of Saturday and Sunday doing a little more of the same.

I made pizza for dinner on Friday night - I bought this dough already made up from my local bakery and it rose to the size of a football. And it was $2.45 for half a kilo! That's three pizzas worth!

My pizza was a halfa - potato, rosemary and garlic, and tomato, salami and olives - with mozzarella all over.

It rose so big in the oven!

On Saturday morning I had a sleep in and then gave a lesson in blogging to a friend. I was so excited! I've decided to give some more blogging lessons - do you want to hire me? Contact me if you do!

Here is her blog - isn't it great?! She commissioned that logo after giving a brief to 99 Designs. I loved seeing how excited she was when all of the elements came together. Visit it here.

I wore denim and stripes - my new fave combo. I picked up a denim jacket on The Gold Coast last weekend and have worn it to death this week.

I rested some more at the cinema - drinking an iced lychee bubble tea and watching Cate Blanchett in Blue Jasmine. Gosh I adore Cate.

Sunday morning was sunshine and sandals. That sun was lovely. I sat outside the State Library before meeting some friends.

I met some new friends - a family I've come to know through an Ichthyosis support group. The two little girls have Ichthyosis. They are so adorable: chatty, smart and funny - they guessed my age at 90 and 20, and then asking "how come you are 31 Carly, Why?!", quickly adding that I was born "many many many years ago"!

They both drew me pictures - this was the five year old's picture of her and I! She's invited me to come to her school to talk to her class, and calls me her new friend. The cutest!

The five year old wants to be a school teacher, a swimming teacher and hairdresser but doesn't know what days she will do those jobs on, and the three year old wants to be a princess and the The Tooth Fairy!

It was a lovely lunch - gosh this condition has afforded me the opportunity of meeting great people!

I'm still a little sore but will be ok :)

What did you do?

 

Whole of body health.

I have a few confessions to make:

I spend so much time focusing on the health of my skin that I don't seem to focus on my whole of body health. I spend a lot of time seeing dermatologists, eye and ear specialists and the infectious disease unit to ensure my skin condition is under control.

And yet I seem to neglect other parts of my health.

I'm not much good at going to the dentist - I think 2007 may be the last time that I went. It's honestly too expensive. Julia, we need more affordable dental healthcare in Australia. I eat a healthy balanced diet (though do indulge) and am mindful of eating whole foods, but don't exercise regularly. I've never had a pap smear. I don't check my breasts regularly. I remember to take an antihisthamine every day but forget my vitamin D supplement. And I haven't ever had my cholesterol or blood sugar checked. I tend not to take painkillers until I feel on death's door, and I am not sure how to manage my asthma properly. My skin is the organ I am most aware of and gets the most visibly, recognisably and painfully affected. Because of my rare condition, sometimes it's easier to just see a dermatologist than go to a GP who doesn't always understand my condition or focuses on it rather than the ailment I present for. Because sometimes it's too hard.


I was at a Heart Foundation bloggers event last week - a cooking class coordinated by Brand Meets Blog. Lots of lovely bloggers connected (Kim, Amanda, Toushka-Lee, Emma, Kerryn, Heather), we drank some wine, and we cooked some yummy healthy food with the help of a chef. The food was great!

We snacked on Lima bean dip and crudités...

And Sandra and I paired up to make a Moroccan mixed grain salad. Sandra has mad chopping skillz. Meanwhile I toasted some almonds.

Our salad! Quinoa, burghul, dried cranberries, celery, spring onions, mint leaves, parsley, olive oil, toasted almonds, preserved lemon, cumin, pepper, olive oil.

And an amazing Vietnamese chicken coleslaw. The best. Kerryn has uploaded the recipe here.

Mackerel. I wish my skin had this beautiful luminescence. It's so important for me to eat oily fish, and mackerel is a great source of omega 3 and good fats for my skin.

Our plated up meal.

And a beautiful poached pear in red wine with orange honey yoghurt.

While cooking with a wide range of fresh healthy produce to ensure a healthy diet wasn't anything new to me, it was really great to talk heart health with Dr Lyn Roberts AM, CEO of the Heart Foundation. She was so warm and knowledgeable. It was interesting to hear that women don't consider the risk of heart disease as much as men, and that if you think it's an emergency, call an ambulance - a false alarm is the best outcome. We learnt about the signs of a heart attack and it was reinforced that to make a healthy lifestyle change, it is best to start with small steps and build on these incrementally. This may mean small blocks of exercise leading to larger blocks, or reducing your intake of a bad food each week.


One of the things I raised was that because of my Ichthyosis, I tend to focus on this chronic illness rather than the health of my whole body. Dr Lyn Roberts emphasised that it's so important for people with chronic illnesses to make sure all aspects of your health is in check. It made me realise the importance of finding a great GP and ensuring they understand your chronic illness as well as them seeing that you undergo the regular checkups.

The Heart Foundation bloggers' class taught me about heart health, but it also made me think about how important it is to look after my whole body - not just my skin. And I am going to make those incremental changes very soon, starting with a check up at my GP, stat! And then I plan to do a bit of exercise each day. It can't be that hard. It will be worth it. I want to keep living this great life to the fullest!

(source)

Tell me, are you good at maintaining your whole of body health, especially if you have a chronic illness? Have you had a lifestyle change for your health? Do pap smears hurt?

Disclaimer: I was invited to the Heart Foundation bloggers' class by Brand Meets Blog. I was not paid to write this post.

 

Visitin' the country, gonna eat me a lotta pizzas. A day with Heidiapples.

You know those weekends that are just perfect. Lazy days, good food, fun and good company? Well I've just had one. It started off with bands, cooking and dinner with a friend, and ended with a beautiful Sunday in the country. I don't drive much, living in the city. There's no need to with public transport so close and affordable. In fact, last year I drove a total of 4000 km. That's it. So to go on a road trip, over an hour from home, is a real novelty. I feel like I'm going somewhere.

The beautiful Heidi invited me to her parents' place on the Mornington Peninsula. Heidi's husband Ben is away in Sydney working at his awesome tutoring business for two months, and then they're going to America for three months (I KNOW, RIGHT?!), so she's back living with her parents. As I expected, they're so wonderful too - friendly, welcoming, and foodies. Such foodies. If my parents and Heidi's parents got together they'd start a restaurant, I'm sure. That or they would talk about food for a week. They have ham on the bone and a love for different cheeses. Like me, they're wholefood fans, and adventurous. We had a pizza festival last Sunday afternoon. Oh it was wonderful. It featured food cooked from scratch, food cooked with love.

Heidi took me for a drive around the area. In the 10 years I've lived in Melbourne I've only been to Mornington once. We started off by going to a cafe/provodore and then the Shoreham beach - Heidi has lovely memories of the beach and I feel privileged she shared them with me. The sea air smelled amazing and I have returned with enough sand in my shoes to feel like I've had a seaside holiday.

When we returned home, we got started on making pizzas. Heidi's Dad made the dough and got the outdoor pizza oven fired up.



Their garden is lush and rambling - filled with roses, fruit trees, herbs and vegie gardens, plus pretty decorations that make it homely. I'm not a fan of the outdoors, as you know, but on Sunday, I really liked being outside.

While the dough was rising, we got started on preparing the toppings. I am a believer that anything can be a pizza topping, but also less is more, and Heidi and her family follow that pizza belief too. We prepared toppings for four pizzas. My contribution to the menu was a fig, cheese and ham pizza - I picked up some fresh figs from my local grocer on the way.

Heidi and I sat outside in the sunshine, drinking adult cordial that her Dad prepared - it was delicious. It's a cocktail of tart plum syrup (leftover from baked plums), ginger and sugar syrup, ginger liqueur, bourbon, soda water amd raspberries. It was delicious. And rather elegant.

We chatted about writing, boys (my boy confusion, and how she's so in love with Ben - her love for him is so cute!!), music (we are both currently loving The Lumineers), American travel and food. So much talk about food. I love Heid's passion for food - she told me how she adores making pastry, and she's always reading cookbooks and learning about wholefoods and nutrition. And I joked that she was a "walking boom box" when she ensured we had music everywhere we went - courtesy of her iPhone in her pocket. So much innuendo captioning this photo!

Finally the pizza dough was ready to be rolled, just in time for Heidi's Mum's arrival home after a stay in the city. Warning: many pizza photos ahead. You're lucky you're not seeing photos of us taking photos of the pizzas. Because we did do that - and agreed it was a pyschologically normal trait of active social media users to do this.

On the left, there's chorizo, bocconcini, tomato and Parmesan, and on the right is button mushroom, shiitake mushroom and Parmesan.

This one is the fig, blue cheese, mozzarella and ham. Some leftover craisons and garlic oil was added too.

And potato pizza - the potatoes were par-boiled, thinly sliced and then layered with anchovies, rosemary sprigs, garlic and Parmesan.

The pizzas didn't take long to cook in the oven - maybe 10 minutes each. We cooked them two at a time.

And then we ate them. With some kale salad that Heidi massaged with lemon juice to soften (like a ceviche). But not before we took approximately 172 photos of the food - and giggled about it being ok to delay eating for blogging purposes. I apologised to the kale for not photographing it.

The pizzas were served on boards - Jamie Oliver style. If you've been following me on Twitter you'll be aware of my gripe with Jamie Oliver serving his meals on boards. Sure it looks good, but how practical is it? What about taste (and germ) transfer? I wince at the weepy stews seeping into the wood one night, and then soaking up the juices of a fruit salad the next night. We all agreed that pizza is an acceptable food to serve on a board.

The pizzas were so delicious. I may have eaten six slices. The chorizo one was packed with flavour, the mushroom one was simple and mild. I loved the potato pizza - it was like eating cheesy potato bake. And the fig pizza was sweet and salty and creamy. Wonderful.

I was getting into serious pizza coma territory and needed some caffeine to pick me up for the drive home. Heidi's parents have a whizz bang coffee machine. But I don't drink coffee, unless I'm on a plane or it has some chocolate in it. Her Dad made me a strong black with equal parts coffee and Nutella stirred in. So delicious. Pizza coma averted.

Heidi had prepared an apple and fig tart which was cooked in the pizza oven. She adapted the recipe from here. She'd made rye flour pastry (which she calculated as being somewhat healthy, given the rye and the low butter content - and I'm taking her word for it because she's a dietician and knows her stuff. Even though she told us "the apples were cooked in a shitload (an actual measurement) of butter". Healthy!

The base of the tart was spread with fig jam so it kept the pastry crisp and went all caramelised. The apples were just sweet enough. It was beautifully rustic. And a success in the pizza oven. We ate it with home made vanilla icecream. Seriously, it was all amazing!

I am so glad to have made the trip to see Heidi and her parents. It's friends like her that make my world a wonderful place.

Thank you all for a great, memorable Sunday. I can't stop singing the Presidents of the United States of America's Peaches now.

 

The weekend so far: The Australian Music Prize, cooking, friends and Fonda.

It's such a social weekend, this one. And the week ahead is set to be social too - filled with my day job, a networking event, making a podcast and dinners with friends. I am loving being a social butterfly but I must remember to take time to relax and unwind so I'm not overwhelmed with activity. Must. Pace. Myself.

On Friday night (so cold and rainy), I went to Federation Square with Clare and watched the Coopers Australian Music Prize shortlist being announced by Bob Evans and Clare Bowditch, and saw some great up and coming bands (they were shortlisted) play live. It was good to see the bands' friends and fans come support these bands - cheering them enthusiastically, amd fist pumping. And they were all so stylish. There was a fan-friend of Daily Meds in an amazing yellow sequinned knitted jacket and army green pants - I loved it!

I surprisingly enjoyed the hip hop, especially Urthboy's set (Jane Tyrrell, his companion singer, is wonderful), and want to explore more of it. My favourite performance of the night was Jess Riberirio and the Bone Collectors. It's the first time the AMP has been open to a public audience and I think it worked well - bought great live music to the masses.

The shortlist is as follows:

Flume – Flume

Tame Impala -‐ Lonerism

The Presets – Pacifica

Grand Salvo -‐ Slay Me In My Sleep

Jess Ribeirio & The Bone Collectors -‐ My Little River

Liz Stringer -‐ Warm In the Darkness

Daily Meds -‐ Happy Daze

Hermitude -‐ Hyper-‐Paradise

Urthboy -‐ Smokey’s Haunt

The winner is announced in March, and will receive $30,000.

Yesterday was a domestic day, I love those kinds of days. I got some groceries at the grocer and butcher in my local shopping strip, and came home to cook some meals for the week ahead, plus some meals for the freezer. The house smelled great! I am excited by food.

In one pot there was beef chilli with red kidney beans, tomato, onion, capsicum, zucchini, pumpkin and fresh green chillis. I'll serve it with yoghurt and cheese.

In the other pot there was a curry made from lamb, potatoes, dates, carrots, cauliflower, capsicum, onion, chick peas and garlic, and a home made curry powder of cardamom, cumin, tumeric, coriander, cinnamon and salt, plus plain yoghurt and fresh red chilli. I tasted some curry and it was the best. Sweet, warm and spicy.

You may remember the cute chicken playground I saw painted on the side of a chicken shop. Well I was excited to see this beauty on the side of a florist as I carried my groceries to my car. Isn't it the prettiest?!

At night I went out with Pip - it was a great night. We ate at Fonda in Richmond, and didn't run out of things to say all night. We talked and talked and talked! I found her so interesting. Funny that we have connections aside from blogging too.

I love Fonda - its service is quick and the food tastes light and fresh. A little noisy, but that comes with attracting a hip crowd.

To start, we had baked tortilla chips with salsa and guacamole, and cocktails. I chose the frozen margarita with elderflower and lychee - heaven! I also had horchata - a delicious cold drink that tastes like rice pudding.

Pip had a quesadilla filled with cheese, beans and chorizo (which I later ordered as I was still hungry!) and I had a fish taco and vegetarian taco. I find the fish taco is a bit too much like fish fingers, but it is still pretty good. The vegetarian taco was really flavoursome - lots of avocado, zucchini and corn - I will order two next time. The quesadilla was hearty and rich, I still have leftovers for breakfast!

We took a selfie - I was worried about being too busty in this one.

And an outfit shot. This dress is from ASOS - so cheap and I adore the rose print skirt and the tulle petticoats underneath.

Must get out of bed now - I'm doing a little road trip today, going to see Heidi. So excited. More food is in store, I know it!

Happy Sunday everyone!

Ps: I'd love it I'd you could click like on my photo - I entered it in the Life Flashes photography competition for Donate Life Week - there's a camera up for grabs if I win! Thank you! And check out the other fantastic photos there while you're at it.