Guacamole season (and also a recipe)

I have been trying to teach the children about seasons for fruit and vegetables. Late in autumn we had a "goodbye green grapes" party to enjoy the final bunch of the season, which was harder to explain than you might expect due to the plethora of gigantic, California-grown green-grapes that started appearing on grocery-store shelves soon thereafter. We made good use of mandarin season but recently had to say goodbye to them, too, and now we are all eagerly anticipating the arrival of stone-fruit season.

You get my drift.

And then last weekend (or thereabouts), guacamole season started. Big excitement!

Guacamole season goes hand-in-hand with daylight saving and Caprese-salad season and dry-white-wine season and also friends-over-at-dusk season. So even though I'm not famous for loving the warmer weather, I am nevertheless quite the fan of guacamole season.

Guacamole season starts with longer days and bare feet. Soggy bathers, sand inside the house, tasting sunscreen after kissing sweaty lips. Cicadas after dark, mosquitos too, and the hum of the fan in the bedroom. Guacamole is made to share and taste and leave and come back to, and then come back to again. Double-dipping is ok because we are all friends here, family probably or practically, and somehow the guacamole bowl is always empty before the corn chips run out. Some people pair guacamole season with margaritas in glasses with the rims crusted with sugar-salt and I totally get that, but I am too lazy to mix even the simplest of cocktails. White wine or prosecco, straight from the 'fridge and therefore too cold for the purists, suits me. Maybe some homemade lemonade, too.

Would you like to know my guacamole recipe?

A few words before you try this. I have been hunting for the perfect guacamole recipe for a long, long time, and this is the closest I've found to it. Each time I make it it is different, sometimes better than others. But in case you try it and then yell "Naomi, what?!?," here are some things that I look for in what I happen to think makes a good guacamole, and maybe you will agree or maybe you won't.

1. It has to be smooth. None of this lumpy, chunky stuff
2. I'm a bit of a guacamole-purist so this recipe is very simple. No onion or tomato or cheese for me. This ain't a meal, folks, it's a tasty snack
3. No Doritos or other cheesy, processed corn-chips are permitted within a 100 metre radius of guacamole at my house. Get yoself some stock-standard "proper" corn-chips, cheese-free

Naomi's guacamole recipe

Treat this recipe with a fair bit of flexibility. For example I like a decent kick to my guac so I'm generous (ish) with the cayenne pepper and chilli flakes. I also like a lot of lime zing to my guacamole, so I add a lot more lime than others tend to do. Add the lime-juice one lime at a time, to get the taste you like. If like me you love a lot 'o lime, but you find the guac is getting too sloppy, start adding zest instead.

Ok let's go...

Ingredients 4 avocados 2 cloves garlic, minced juice of 1 - 4 limes, to taste 1/2 teaspoon sea-salt 1/2 - 1 teaspoon ground cumin 1/2 - 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper 1 tablespoon chopped fresh coriander (cilantro for my American friends)

Method Scoop all the avocado into a blender, add in the minced garlic, and mix until it's nice and smooth with no big lumps. Now add the juice of one lime, and about half the amounts of the dried spices and fresh coriander, blend to mix them, then taste. Start adding bits and pieces of the rest, plus more lime juice, until you're happy with the flavour.

Serve it with corn chips (the real deal, nothing cheesy), and enjoy!

ps. If you're feeding other people, make the guacamole just before they arrive as the avocado will start to oxidise and turn brown after a little while and you want it to look good as well as taste good!

Sugar free?

I have been trying to give my body a break from sugar. I like sugar a lot more than is strictly good for me, and also, it’s pretty hard to insist that my children have a healthy diet if I don’t model said diet myself.

On Friday I made this sugar-free take on lemon meringue pie from the I Quite Sugar for Life cookbook. It was surprisingly tasty, and I impressed myself with how good (I thought) it looked. Emboldened, I also made a peppermint slice from the same cookbook. It was awful.

Do you have any tips? What are your favourite sugar-free recipes for sweet-toothed folks?

ANZAC biscuit recipe

This morning Scout and I whipped up a couple of batches of ANZAC biscuits. We made the monster-sized ones you see here for us to eat on the weekend (and one for me at morning tea), then another batch of slightly more reasonably-sized biscuits to take to her friends at daycare. She was bursting with pride.

Growing up, we always had two great recipes for ANZAC biscuits, and I made these using the one of them I still have. I don't actually know if this is Nanna's family recipe, or the one Mum got from the Wideview School Fete in the 1980s, but either way it is quick, easy, and the biscuits always taste delicious.

Ingredients: 

* 1 cup rolled oats * 1 cup flour * 1 cup sugar * 3/4 cup coconut (I prefer shredded though the biscuits you see in these photos used desiccated) * 1/2 cup butter, melted * 2 tablespoons Golden Syrup * 1 tablespoon boiling water * 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

Method: 

1. Preheat the oven to 160 decrees Celsius 2. In a large bowl, mix together the oats, flour, sugar and coconut 3. Melt the butter in a small saucepan over the stove, then stir in the Golden Syrup 4. Add the bicarb. soda to the boiling water, then pour it into the melted butter mixture (if you are cooking with kids, they will love this part because it goes all frothy like a science experiment) 5. Pour the butter mixture over the dry ingredients and mix well 6. Shape the mixture roughly into balls and place on a greased baking tray (allow room for the balls to flatten and spread as they cook) 7. Bake for up to 20 minutes, checking regularly for colour and turning if necessary

Make sure you don't overcook the biscuits. Base your estimation of their "doneness" on the golden colour. When you pull them out they'll still be smooshy but don't worry, they'll firm up as they cool down. I like my ANZAC biscuits soft in the centre but if you want them to be crunchy, give them a couple of minutes longer.

ps. Have you ever wondered how ANZAC biscuits came about? They used to be called Soldiers' Biscuits, and were created by mothers and wives and girlfriends to help give their loved-ones the nutritional benefits of oats during the long sea voyage to the front. You can read the story here.

At table

Let's pretend we are all sitting around the table together, talking about our lives. Can you please pass the salt?

How was your weekend? Ours was absolutely lovely, filled with little moments that in the grand and global scheme of things probably hold no great significance but, in the tiny universe of our family, may become milestones to how we live and love.

I taught Ralph the word "grapes" and he pronounced it "gapeths" with gusto. So cute!

Scout helped me cook dinner last night, perched on a stool beside me with her apron on. Everything was a sensory learning experience. "Mummy can I touch this garlic?" she would ask, softly stroking the peeled clove. And, as I opened a jar of capers, "Can I just try one little one?" followed by frantic evacuation of said caper from her mouth, and the endearingly optimistic pronouncement, "I think it probably will be better when it's cooked."

Ralph, who still doesn't walk or even stand on his own, taught himself how to climb onto the bouncing zebra toy, ride it, then get off again. All by himself. He was immeasurably proud.

Scout spent a good hour yesterday being my mummy. As her baby I am required to spend a lot of time asleep, so it's actually quite a restful game. She tucks me in, and kisses me, finds me a toy to cuddle, then says "I love you a moolion boolion troolion my dahlink. To the moon!"

Another new word for Ralph this weekend was dance ("danth"). Ralph LOVES to dance, and once he learned how to say the word, he would yell it at the end of every song, before the next one came on. I also found it very sweet and telling that when I offered to play some music for him, he crawled as fast as he could not towards the Sonos speaker, but to the record player.

After Scout and I had cooked, we ate dinner together as a family last night. This is SO rare in our house, because the kids tend to eat and go to bed quite early, and Mr B doesn't get home from work until quite late. It was such a treat to sit down at the big table and share a meal, all of us, that we had cooked together.

Of these small things are memories woven and held.

Thank you to everyone who wished me well with our "VIP lunch" on Friday. It went really well and everyone had a great time, complete with an impromptu octogenarian and nonagenarian dance party to The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy. I've already posted all my thank-you notes to our guests. I'm trying to get better at sending thank-you notes.

I'm a celebrity! OK not quite, but the mail I sent to Pip Lincolne for her 52 Hellos project made it onto her blog yesterday. I was proud and a little bit embarrassed to be there. I think I knew but it didn't really sink IN that the letter I wrote her might be publicly displayed for people to read. Maybe that's how people on reality TV shows end up doing silly things on camera. They KNOW the cameras are there, but there's too much going on in their immediate world that they forget about the potential others who are witnesses to what they do and say. I don't mind, but maybe I would have tried to be a bit more clever or witty or write about something more momentous than being rejected in an umbrella incident if I'd thought of that. So maybe it's good that I didn't, because nobody enjoys reading self-conscious writing.

How about you? What will you share at the table today?

Lost trades, diets, & coming up for air

Life has swept us up lately. Nothing momentous, but one thing is bleeding into the next and leaving little room to come up for air.

I have been making zines and snail-mail packages and painting and posting mail-art. I have also been working on the picture-book I told you about. I sketched up the pictures for the story-boards and then didn’t like them at all, and had to throw them away because even looking at them blocked my ideas for what I WANTED them to do. I think I feel the pressure because I’m not a professional illustrator, and I really want to do my friend’s story justice. I need to find a way to let go of the creative burden and just enjoy the creative process. Do you know this feeling? Does it happen to you? How do you overcome the fear of letting somebody down, when you’re doing something creative?

My little boy has been keeping us up of a night, and not just with nightmares. We don’t really know why. It is probably a combination of teething, and too many grapes during the day (that was definitely the reason on one particular nappy-dominated night), and wanting to crawl around while watching CSI with us at 11pm. Anyway CSI is not THAT great and I’d rather be sleeping and secretly, I think Ralph would rather be sleeping too. He just takes a bit of convincing. Lucky he’s cute.

Mr B and I have been ordering Lite ’n Easy for our lunches and dinners for the past four weeks. We are trying to lose some of our combined “baby weight,” and enjoy the convenience of having the food ready to go. That would be great if you could call Lite ’n Easy food. Which you can’t. At least, the lunches are mostly lovely and fresh, but those frozen dinners! Our theory is that people lose weight because they simply lose the will to eat. Seriously, I can’t spend one more night smelling that food permeating from the microwave, so I’m going to give up. I’ll take away the lessons I’ve learned in portion control and the fact that I no longer seem to desire sweet things after a meal, and make the effort to cook even when I’m exhausted rather than order take-out, and hope for the best. I should probably cut back on the wine at night, too, but nobody’s perfect.

On the other hand, I think anyone in customer service should study the way they do it at Lite ’n Easy. I might not enjoy the meals, but the people on the other end of the phone are wonderful to deal with. Consistently, no matter who I speak to, they are polite and knowledgeable and supportive and friendly and flexible and personable. That’s pretty good, don’t you think? It’s not their fault that frozen microwave food tastes like, well, frozen microwave food.

The cat has a weird allergy that is causing her to scratch her nose all the time. The dog has gone blind. I'm sure you needed to know that.

In other news, we visited the Lost Trades Fair at Kyneton on the weekend and I've never seen so many pre-hipster beards in the one place in all my life. It was a perfect day for a jaunt to the country and the fair would have been lovely, if it were not for the uninvited swarms of European wasps.

We didn’t stay long, but it was enough time for Mr B to discover the joys of letter-pressing and decide that I really needed a letterpress machine to enhance my snail-mail endeavours. So, who am I to argue? I would LOVE to get into letterpress! Would you like your next mail from me to include something lovely and tactile with that classic letterpress debossing? And maybe some kind of illustration I've created on metal plates? I found a nifty little starter number on the internet for $100, to which Mr B responded “Pshaw, you need an original!” He promptly pointed me to an antique (and very expensive) printing press, not letterpress. Now that would be seriously fun, except that we’d have to move to the suburbs to afford a home big enough to house my new hobby. Which might be worth considering. I think the world is almost ready for the Naomi Loves Times.

What’s been going on at your place?

You make my heart sing

I feel a bit sheepish admitting this in public, but Mr B is a huge country and western music fan. I know! Right?! Anyway he is, and I might not love his music but I do love Mr B. So I decided to write some tongue-in-cheek snippets of lyrics from three of his favourites (Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton and Elvis Presley) onto these heart biscuits, then packed him off to work this morning with a very pink box of Valentine’s Day biscuits under his arm.

What I wrote:

“know when to hold ‘em” (uhuh Kenny) “love me tender” (thanks, Elvis) “all decked up like a cowgirl’s dream” (ah, Dolly: Mr B in cowboy boots? The mind boggles!) “don’t take your love to town” (this is good advice Kenny) “I will always love you” (awww, Dolly!)

Actually the point of this post is to give a bit of a shout-out to the Melbourne-based company that made the biscuits, Blank Goods. Not because they’ve sponsored me or anything (they haven’t) but because they made it SO EASY to personalise this lovely gift. I ordered the biscuits online and in less than a week they arrived, beautifully iced and amazingly unbroken, along with a food pen (!!) with which to write my messages, and all the pretty packaging accoutrements you see in these pictures.

I think food pens might change my life.

Anyway, happy Valentine’s Day for tomorrow, all you lovers. And you too, beautiful strangers.

Meals on Wheels - Sliders on Tyres

According to my two-and-a-half year old daughter, everything tastes better when it is little. So when we were choosing a food truck at the International Street Food Festival* on the weekend, Sliders on Tyres seemed the obvious choice.

For $14, you get a tray of two sliders plus hand-cut chips. I chose the Fisherman (spiced calamari) and Classic Cheeseburger (pulled beef) and let's just say I didn't regret it (read: I inhaled both). The chips were good too, although I submit Evidence A above that I hadn't even finished taking the photographs before the thievery began. I hope they're still making The Boss (pork sausage) the next time I find this food truck, because that looked rather tasty too.

I'm no food writer so I'm not going to try to describe these burgers because I wouldn't do them justice but let's just say that BOTH were up there with the best I've tasted in a long, long time. Also, I present Exhibit B in evidence that the chips were, well, see for yourself!

* Ok the International Street Food Festival. It was… ok, but WAY too expensive. We went along on a whim and, since we couldn't all fit in the car, I took Em and the kids and Mr B took a taxi. When we got there I realised I didn't have cash for parking, so we all got out of the car and loaded both children into the pram and tried to walk through the parking gate. Only to be told by the guys at the gate that we couldn't walk through and instead had to go around and that it was a three kilometre walk. Tried to call Mr B in his taxi but couldn't get through. Started to unpack food for kids to keep them happy during a 3k walk at their lunch time. Ralph started screaming. Guys at parking gate took pity on us and said ok, you can go through. (BLESS THEM!) Packed kids back into car, both protesting loudly. Found parking space, got kids back into pram (more protests). Got to gate, lined up for tickets, only to discover that they were $36 per adult. Doesn't that seem a bit rich to you? But by then I was damned if I was giving up and putting those children back into the car so I forked out and found a spot on the grass to feed my starving kids. The result is that we spent more than $100 for access to what essentially we can find for free at any given day at Edinburgh Gardens or Yarraville or the Batman Market, not to mention Trailer Park at Village Melbourne. Apparently there were some good bands playing, but by the time we'd gone through all of that and eaten our lunch it was time to get the children home for their naps, so I didn't get to hear them. If you'd like a better review of this event, Dee from Wild about Melbourne was there too. Wish I'd seen her!

Food nostalgia: Mum’s devilled eggs & 80s salad

Talk about food nostalgia! Devilled eggs are one of those dishes that take me RIGHT BACK to my childhood, with the first bite. Do you have a dish that does that for you?

Devilled eggs were a classic that my Mum would pull out whenever guests came over. We had devilled eggs with almost every barbecue (and we had a lot of barbecues). They were right up there on her “tried and true” list, with prawn cocktails.

It was 30 degrees outside when I made these devilled eggs, so I paired them with a simple salad for dinner. I call it “80s salad” because I swear we ate a salad like this at least once a week for the entire decade of the 80s. It was the least sophisticated, least pretentious salad you can imagine. The percentage of ancient grains, buffalo mozzarella or kale was exactly zilch. This salad had iceberg lettuce, friends. Remember iceberg lettuce? And whatever other veggies we happened to have to hand which, in my childhood, meant staples from the veggie patch: tomatoes, cucumber, celery. I added fresh pineapple to my salad, because I found some in the back of the ‘fridge and it was still good.

Mum’s devilled eggs recipe

6 hard boiled eggs 2 tablespoons of chutney (or in this case, 2 tablespoons of Jayne’s homemade tomato relish, which did the job admirably well) 1 tablespoon mayonnaise 1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce Salt and pepper, to season

Peel the hard-boiled eggs*, then cut them in half, lengthwise. Put the yolks in a bowl with all the other ingredients, then mush and mix them all together.

Spoon the mixture into the empty halves of the egg whites.

In Mum’s recipe, it says to garnish the eggs with slices of cucumbers, and I am a rule-follower (most of the time), so that’s what I did.

Wash it all down with chilled, cheap plonk. This bottle cost me $10, because I am all class.

* Is it just me, or does anybody else think hard boiled eggs are a LOT more difficult to peel these days? The egg shell comes away in tiny little shards that cut your fingers, and half the time manages to take away giant chunks of egg-white with it.

That didn’t used to happen when I was a kid. Are they feeding something different to the hens? Or did they feed something different to the hens back when we were kids? Every time I make hard-boiled eggs for the kids, these days, I wonder at how difficult they are to peel.

Naomi Bulger, bringing you the hard-hitting news of the nation.

ps. Want more food nostalgia? This is how the Great Custard Controversy panned out.

Roast beetroot, pumpkin & goat's cheese salad

On the weekend I was SO EXCITED to finally harvest the rainbow baby beets I'd been nurturing in my little vegetable box, and to turn them into a roast vegetable salad. I made a bit of a big deal about it, taking Little Miss out with me to talk about plants and food. We both put on our hats and gardening gloves, and her Daddy took a photo…

After all that, my big harvest yielded two baby beets. Two. And they were lovely, perfect little beets, but two baby beets does not a salad make.

So off to Paddy the greengrocer we went, and the lesson on "paddock to plate" was not quite as powerful as I had hoped.

This minor horticultural setback aside, I still think my salad was delicious. The sweetness of the roast vegetables with the creaminess of the cheese was divine. It was also easy to make, and would be simple to adapt with slightly different ingredients. I added chicken to the salad this time because we were quite hungry, but I think it would be just as tasty (probably better) without meat.

Here's how to make this salad for two people.

INGREDIENTS (SALAD)

* Beetroot (a medium-sized beetroot or a handful of baby beets) * Pumpkin (a smallish wedge, I used about two thirds of what you see in the photo) * Baby spinach leaves, as many as you like * Chèvre goat's cheese * Pepitas (sunflower seeds would also be great) * Balsamic vinegar * Olive oil * Salt and pepper

INGREDIENTS (CHICKEN)

* Half a chicken breast * Plain flour * Chinese five-spice * Ground black pepper * Ground sea salt

DRESSING

(OK confession: I used a honey and Dijon mustard dressing that was already made by the good people at Praise. It was delicious, and paired perfectly with the flavours in this salad. If you wanted to make your own, I'd do something similar, because the sweetness of the honey and the sharp taste of the mustard were perfect with the roast veges).

METHOD

1. Preheat the oven to 180 Celcius

2. Peel the beetroots, then chop them into small squares or wedges. In the case of baby beets, peel and halve them.

3. Chop the pumpkin into similar sized pieces, trimming way the skin.

4. Put the beetroot into a baking dish. Splash with olive oil and one or two tablespoons of balsamic vinegar. Sprinkle with a pinch of salt and a few grinds of black pepper*, then toss until all the beetroot is coated.

5. In a separate baking dish, toss the pumpkin in olive oil, salt and pepper*, just enough to coat it.

6. Put both dishes into the oven and bake until cooked through and the pumpkin is just starting to brown, anywhere from half an hour to an hour (best you just keep checking). I took the pumpkin out and let the beets cook for a bit longer, which would have been fine except then one of the children needed me and the beetroot ended up being in there for just a touch too long, and was a bit overcooked. Ces't la vie. Or more appropriately, ces't la parenthood!

(IF YOU'RE ADDING CHICKEN...)

a) Cut the chicken breast into nugget-sized chunks

b) To about 1/4 cup flour, add a good sprinkling of Chinese five-spice (about one and a half teaspoons but don't worry too much), and several generous grinds of black pepper and sea salt. Mix it all in.

c) Toss the chicken chunks into the flour-and-spice mix and make sure they are well coated.

d) Pan fry in a splash of olive oil until the chicken is cooked through, and golden and slightly crispy on the outside.

7. Put your salad together! Into a salad bowl drop your beetroot, pumpkin and spinach leaves, then pour over the dressing. Not too much, you only want to lightly coat it. Toss the dressing through. If you're serving the salad in individual bowls, now's the time to transfer them. Break apart the chèvre and place it around the salad, then sprinkle the whole thing with pepitas. If you're using chicken, place it on top (but don't toss through), before the pepitas.

Voila!

* Don't use too much pepper or it will overpower the flavour of the roast vegetables.

The great custard controversy

Don't say I never bring you the important issues. While we were chatting the other night, Mr B started to tell me about the custard his Nan used to make. To hear him tell it, "Nan's custard" was rich, creamy and perfect. She would whip it up for dessert after a Sunday roast, and make it at Christmas to pour over pudding. Mr B's Nan was one of those truly hospitable women that you mostly only read about in old books. She'd be up at 4am on Christmas Day to roast the turkey, preparing a veritable banquet for the family.

I've got to be honest, I've never really thought of custard as a dish in itself. It seems more of... I don't know... a condiment. But he was so passionate about Nan's custard and how good it was and all those memories, that I asked him to get the recipe so I could try to create his happy culinary experience. Here's how the conversation went next.

Mr B: I don't think she had a recipe. She just mixed it up on the stove.

Me: Would she have given your Mum the recipe?

Mr B (ignoring my question and looking all misty-eyed): It was delicious, and fluorescent yellow.

Me (growing suspicious): And she definitely made it from scratch? What ingredients did she use?

Mr B (with a withering look): What all custard is made from. Custard powder!

And just like that, the Great Custard Challenge was born.

To the best of my knowledge, there are three types of custard: the type you buy ready-made and refrigerated, the type you make up with custard powder, and the type you mix up with eggs and milk. I decided I would make all three, then challenge Mr B to a blind tasting to see which one lived up to his memory.

It took me two goes to make the powder version, because I tackled it first and while I think I got the consistency the way Mr B described it (quite thick), by the time I had subsequently cooked up the 'real deal' version, the powder version had become congealed and gluggy, and I had to throw it out and start again. We will be eating custard in our house for a long time because Mr B bought a two kilogram jug of the refrigerated stuff because it was only a dollar more than the small carton. Sometimes he forgets it's just us and two very small children, and shops like he's back in his childhood home with three adults, five children, and umpteen aunties, uncles, cousins and neighbours visiting at any given time.

If you've never made custard from scratch (actual scratch, rather than with powder), it's incredibly easy. Here's my recipe, a bit of an amalgam of a few I found on the Internet. These are small quantities, and it makes about a cup and a half. I'm going to try it without the sugar next time and see if the kids still like it for a healthy snack.

Ingredients: 


1 egg 1.5 tablespoons cornflour 1.5 cups milk 1 teaspoon vanilla extract* 1.5 tablespoons sugar

*We only had vanilla essence in the house for this experiment because I bought it by accident, and it still tasted ok, but I definitely think extract or the scrapings of an actual vanilla pod would be the better way to go

Method:


1. In a small saucepan with the heat off, whisk the egg, cornflour and a couple of tablespoons of the milk together 2. When you have created a smooth paste with no lumps, turn the heat on low, and gradually add the rest of the milk, stirring continually 3. As soon as the custard becomes thick and creamy (which will happen the second you start to think "this is taking too long it won't work"), remove the saucepan from the heat 4. Stir in the sugar and vanilla

Can you guess which is which by looking at these? L-R = the powdered stuff, the refrigerated stuff, the homemade stuff

The outcome of this challenge? Much to my surprise, Mr B chose my homemade custard in his blind tasting! I can't claim that it was up to Nan's Magic Custard Powder dessert standard because a) I never got to taste it and b) possibly I just didn't do the powder justice. But it was nice to get the stamp of approval on my very own creation. The best part was that the Custard Challenge led to a longer conversation about Mr B's Nan and their Christmases in Bendigo and about the kind of woman she was. Which was quite lovely, and exactly what food memories are all about, I think.

This is part of a new regular series exploring food memories from our childhoods. The good, the bad and the bizarre. I explain the whole thing in this post if you're interested. Do you want to join in? Recreate or reinvent some of your best or worst food memories and use the hashtag #naomilovesfoodmemories so I can promote what you're doing. Or ask me to have a go at one of your food memories and I'll see what I can do!