Friands for Afternoon Tea

Cups of tea

On the days that I am not at work, morning and afternoon teas are the highlight of the day. There are numerous reasons: the weekly coffee group, rainy day visits, sun kissed morning walks or even stolen time out while the little one sleeps.

One of my current favourite treats for such occasions are friands: quick, easy and oh so decadent!

Chocolate and Almond Friands

Chocolate and Almond Friands

1/4 cup flour, sifted

2/3 cup icing sugar, sifted

1/2 cup almond meal

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

50g dark chocolate, chopped

3 egg whites

90g unsalted butter, melted

Coffee syrup: 1/2 cup espresso & 1/2 cup caster sugar (place in small saucepan over high heat, stir to dissolve sugar, bring to boil, cook for 5 minutes, then cool)

Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Place flour, icing sugar, almond meal, cinnamon and chocolate in bowl and mix. Make a well and add egg whites and butter and stir well. Spoon into muffin tray and bake for 10-15 minutes.

Pour over syrup as you serve them – and voila – best enjoyed with a fresh espresso. 

The Pumpkin Chronicles

It must be harvest season. The temperature has dropped and there’s an autumnal feeling in the air. While I refuse to believe that summer is over just yet,  our neighbours have given us two enormous pumpkins from their garden – a sure sign that the seasons are changing.

Pumpkin Time

And with two plus one in our little home, that’s a lot of pumpkin to enjoy…..

From the garden

We should have a vegetable garden. I read about them. I dream about them. I was wax lyrical about them.

Shallots from the garden

But that’s as far as I get.

Luckily for me our good friends have a garden that has bloomed productively this summer. And we’ve reaped the benefits:  zucchini, radishes, potatoes, sorrel, shallots, beans ….. mouth watering goodness straight from the heart.

So last week, we were delivered a nice little bundle of shallots.

I’m no expert when it comes to shallots but after consulting my kitchen bible Stephanie Alexander’s Kitchen Garden Companion, slow cooked, carmelised gooeyness was the order of the day:

Cooked slowly in a frying pan over a low heat with some olive oil for about an hour until soft, dark-gold and melting. Prepared like this, they add a wonderfil sweetness and subtlety…

All you need is time…

Served with Moroccan lamb sausages from Island Bay Butchery, roast potatoes and a raw zuchini salad, it doesn’t get much better than this.

Slow cooked shallots with Moroccan lamb sausages, potatoes and a zuchini salad

Coming up soon – the pumpkin chronicles.

Approach cooking and love with reckless abandon

I’ve been thinking about writing a blog for a long time now (eight months to be precise). It’s a new year and it’s high time for a new theme to take centre stage in this languishing blog. While cooking up a storm for dinner with friends the other day, inspiration hit and I decided to borrow some words from the card in my kitchen to capture my new blogging matter:

Approach cooking and love with reckless abandon.

As I type I’m watching live footage from the devastating earthquake in Christchurch (multi tasking like all mothers do). It’s heart wrenching, horrenduous stuff, in a city we once called home.

And as I see footage of familiar buildings and landmarks crumbling before shell shocked locals, it reminds me of what matters most – and that’s people.

In my little world in Paekakariki, my little girl who is almost 8 months steals the limelight, closely followed by her Papa Jim and friends and family. And of course, the thing that brings everyone together in the best possible way is food. Nothing beats the delight of bringing people together for a meal made with love: tasty, delectable delights, free flowing wine, wild conversation, laughter and noise. Oh la la.

For the last two months we have started to introduce our little girl to the delights of food – part of parenthood that we have approached with great gusto. Armed with inspiration from this blog and that blog, we’ve been tasting, sampling and playing with any food that our little girl can put in her mouth. Yes, we’re following the Baby Led Weaning approach which means that we don’t puree food or feed our little girl. Instead, she feeds herself and eats what we eat.

Starting with strawberries and melon at Christmas, the journey so far has included falafel, turkey, curry, sushi, steak, pumpkin, kumara, avocado, sweetcorn, Morrocan lamb sausages, crackers and hummus, crackers with salmon pate, green beans, and anything and everything in between. Her current favourites are Papa Jim’s roast potatoes with tumeric, chilli and garlic (thanks Gordon Ramsey). Not exactly what Plunket (or their main sponsor/advocate Watties) endorses but it just makes sense to us. And our little girl is thriving. Of course the funny facial expressions of disgust or delight (or a strange combination of both) are priceless.

The pictures speak for themselves.

Curry and Roti

Green Beans

Picnic time

Corn on the cob in one hand and tumeric, chili potatoes in the other

So tonight I’m preparing a new meal for the love of my life – spiced pork with a salad of fresh sweetcorn and greenbeans – a meal that my little girl is bound to enjoy. Thanks Dish magazine (and my lovely friends who gave me a subscription for Christmas!).

Spiced pork with Sweetcorn and green bean salad

Postscript: Of course this all seems rather trivial compared to what’s happening in Christchurch.

Paekakariki Wandering

The Village

My Master Chef

Taking a Break

A Slice of Paradise

Unexpected Delights

Hot Red Flowers

A series of images of my idyllic life in Paekakariki set against a backdrop of the All Whites incredible journey in the World Cup, the possibility of the Australian PM losing his job  and an American Generals fall from grace.

The Waiting Game

The Waiting Game

It turns out that we carried home a permanent reminder of our time in the great Canada north – in the form of a baby…..

So it is that I am waiting for new life and a bold new adventure to arrive – sometime in the next few days!

As the winter solistice has come and gone, and we slowly countdown to the summer, I have been filling my days with online meandering, random tweets, epic siestas and strolls along the beach while voraciously reading and generally pottering around.

As people who have often packed our bags to embark on new adventures to new places, it strikes me that this time it is in fact the great unknown – and may well be our biggest adventure yet. One from which there is no return.

Of course, it’s an adventure that is tried and true, that millions of women embark upon every single day. So let the fun begin!

The Return

Paekakariki Beach

Time has come and gone and we have now returned to the land we now call home – Aotearoa New Zealand.

We have started afresh in a small coastal community, north of Wellington called Paekakarki. So much has happened and I am staring at half finished entries and trawling through half concocted vague ideas…

WATCH THIS SPACE over the next few days for a full and complete update as the birdsof paradise returns!

A new start, a new beginning – starting with twitter. Catch me @bird_o_paradise

Theatre on the Lake – literally

When you don’t have television, you have to look for entertainment outside of the box and theatre on the lake provided just that – good entertainment in an out-of-the-box location, a pontoon stage on the lake. Each summer, our good friends Tennille and Chris produce Theatre on the Lake, a festival of one act plays on the beautiful Frame Lake.

May Fly flutters her eyelashes at her suitor in Time Flies

On the steps of the Prince of Wales Heritage Museum overlooking the lake, the festival was performed during lunchtimes and again in the evenings. You could even purchase delicious lunchboxes at lunchtime and bannock in the evening from the museum cafe.

With a stellar cast, an engaged audience and sunshine, the festival featured local plays like Sitting for a Conversation and The Shockingly Verbose Brain-Death of Jim Whipplestick as well as famous playwright David Ives’s Time Flies and a slapstick improvisation Commedia dell’Arte, Pantelone Gets a Wooden Coin. And what fun we had…

David Attenborough waxes lyrical about the rituals of the may fly

Sitting for a Conversation had a distinctly Yellowknife flavour as it was set on a houseboat with characters the epitomise the north – a straight shooting, hard drinking Aunt Em and a young women searching for meaning and direction in life. The stunning conclusion certainly left room for thought.

On the other hand, The Shockingly Verbose Brain-Death of Jim Whipplestick provided laughter and randomness as an idiot sought to bargain with death for a second chance at life.

My favourite play was Time Flies, an hilarious story about love and life for two may-flies, who only have a 24-hour lifespan. Set in a swamp, the location of the stage on the lake was rather apt and the appearance of David Attenborough was fabulous.

The final play was the improvised comedy, Commedia dell’Arte. I’m no thespian but thanks to Theatre on the Lake (and a quick search just now on wikipedia), I now know:

Commedia dell’Arte (Italian: “the comedy of art (of improvisation)”) is a form of improvisational theatre that began in Italy in the 15th century, maintained its popularity through the 16th century, and is still performed today.Performances were unscripted, held outside and used few props. They were funded by donations and anyone could view the performance free of charge.

And it’s wonderful to see this form of theatre come to life in the knife! The masked cast regaled us with laughter and wit as we watched Pantelone get ripped off with counterfeit wooden coins and then seek revenge. The play even involved audience participation when James was selected from the audience to arm wrestle Valerio for the beautiful Isabella. He didn’t win – but then again, he’s already won my heart.

James arm wrestles Valerio to win the heart of Isabella

Dragon flies, music and sun

For months people had been telling us the Folk on the Rocks music festival was the best weekend of the year in Yellowknife and when the weekend finally rolled around, we embraced the festivities with open arms.

Folk on the Rocks

Our festival started with a potluck brunch at Yose and Maria’s – lots of people and delicious food, including a quiche made with eggs from some of Yellowknife’s only home raised chickens.

The sun was shining and we caught the bus out to the festival site. Located on the outskirts of town beside the lake, we joined the masses of people queueing to enter the dusty festival site. Oh the anticipation….

With over 5,000 people in attendance, the two day festival provided the perfect outlet for a weekend of fun. The headliner was the high energy Sam Roberts Band but my highlights spanned the musical spectrum.

The hip hopping, b-boys from Edmonton, Red Power Squad got the party started for us with swift moves and lots of laughter.  The sweet sounds of Kaley Kinjo, local lyric poet Dana Sipos, french funksters Kodiak and the collaboration of performers playing the Six String Nation Guitar captured my imagination and transported me to a bold new world.

Folk on the Rocks Beer Garden

The beer garden was the place to be and why not – nothing beats a few beers in the sun with live entertainment. We kicked back with 1100 people and enjoyed the cool sounds of Giant Con and others. Kobo Town totally rocked with their old time calyspo and West Indian folk tunes. Their vibe was much like the New Zealand tunes we love. In fact so many people thought that the beer garden was place to be, that the beer ran out by 4pm on the Sunday – eek!

The music continued on the main stage and people chilled out in the sun and then danced the night away while the dragon flies buzzed around. We ignored the  dust, the dirt and the intensely annoying mosqitoes and dined on delicious food that included samosas, pad thai and caribou tortillas. Yum!

A throat singer performing the gull

Thank you Yellowknife for a glorious weekend of dragon flies, music and sun.

Dana Sipos on the six nation guitar

Godson rocking the main stage

Glorious sunset

Hidden Lake

Things have been quiet in blogosphere of late – and that is mostly due the much anticipated arrival of summer. Gloriously long sunny days call for outdoor adventures rather than evenings in front of the macbook we’ve affectionately named Seth.

The greatest adventure so far has been our debut visit to Hidden Lake – a lake that’s not exactly hidden, but is certainly glorious. When the offer of a car and a canoe loan came up, we embraced the opportunity with open arms (thanks Wenyan, Jean-Michel, Yose and Maria respectively) and Hidden Lake was our chosen destination.

Happy campers at Hidden Lake

After a 45 kilometre drive along the Ingraham Trail, we disembarked at Powder Point – the launching pad for our three hour canoe and portage adventure to the beautiful Hidden Lake.

At each portage site, we donned our bug jackets: not exactly a fashion statement but certainly a necessity. The bugs were INSANE – persistent and ever present, I’ve never seen anything like it before. Reaching the water after each trek was a pleasant relief.

And after three portages, where I left the heavy lifting to my handsome husband, we arrived on the lake. Surrounded by islands we meandered around to find the perfect spot to pitch our tent and spend the night. I figured that bears would not swim far enough to bother us here – and even the bugs kept away.

The handsome porter

In the middle of nowhere we found the perfect spot -the sun was shining, the water crystal clear. We pitched our tent, lit a fire, and  cooked up a divine meal of spicy beef, capsicum, mushrooms and couscous. Served with a fine red wine, this was my idea of bliss!

The video of our adventure sums up the experience:

This was just the reinvigoration we needed – and possibly the highlight of my time in Yellowknife so far.