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  • Transition

    I’m doing Triathlon Pink on the Gold Coast next weekend, an all-women’s triathlon raising money for breast cancer. It’s not a full triathlon – I think I might die if I attempted to do a full triathlon – and there’s three different lengths you can do. I’m doing the longest version – a 300m swim, in a pool, a 9k bike ride and a 3k run.

    I’ve been training away, mostly at the gym, and on Wednesday for the first time I did the full distances of everything as a trial run (except I did about 1k in the pool because my training buddy and I were enjoying the swim and thought we’d just keep going). It was all manageable, and I’m sure I’ll be able to handle the real thing without collapsing, as long as I don’t have my gears up too high during the bike leg and tire myself out before the run.

    I’m more worried about the whole transition area thing, and forgetting something when leaping on my bike and being disqualified (from a charity race. Yep, I’m good at finding completely pointless things to worry about.) I’m not good at being cool and collected when rushing around in an unfamiliar situation. That’s when I do things like reversing the car into the house – not my greatest moment. (Um, it was a new house – I’m fairly familiar with driving cars.)  Anyway, I’ve got over a week to continue to fret about all the things that can go wrong during transition, and figure out a way to get my goggles to stop fogging up.  The spit regime isn’t working.

  • Smoked Salmon and Camembert Quiche

    This recipe from Taste fit the bill when I was looking for a quick quiche to make for lunch. “Oh wow,” said my guest, “you made your own pastry.” Actually, I didn’t, but apparently I’m skilled at manhandling frozen pastry until it looks homemade. Good to know.

    This was wonderful, but I think that’s easy to do when smoked salmon and camembert are involved. More importantly, it was simple, and I still had plenty of time to put it together despite running a litte behind time before my lunch guests arrived.

    ingredients:

    1 large sheet of ready-rolled shortcrust pastry, thawed (I found a special large size that said it was for quiche)
    1 tbs olive oil
    1 leek, finely chopped
    1 garlic clove, crushed
    1 bunch asparagus, cut into 4cm pieces
    100g smoked salmon
    100g camembert, thinly sliced
    2 eggs
    1/2 cup cream
    1/3 cup milk
    1 tbs chopped fresh dill
    salt & freshly ground pepper

    First, let’s deal with the pastry. Preheat the oven to 190°C. Line a 23cm quiche tin (if it doesn’t have a removeable bottom, grease it well beforehand) with the pastry. Either pierce the pastry with a fork a few times, or line the pastry with baking paper and fill with rice to weight it down. Bake for 15 minutes. Remove the paper and rice. Reduce the oven to 180°C and cook for 10 minutes or until golden and crisp.

    While that’s cooking away, you can put together the leek mixture. Heat the oil in a frying pan, add leek and garlic and cook for 5 minutes or until soft. Add the asparagus pieces and cook for a further 2-3 minutes until tender. Set aside to cool slightly.

    In a separate bowl, whisk together the cream, milk, eggs and dill, and add some salt and pepper if you like.

    OK, you’ve got your golden pastry base, the cooled leek mixture (it doesn’t matter if it’s still fairly hot) and the cream mixture.  Spread the leek mixture over the pastry. Top with the sliced camembert, and then the smoked salmon.  Pour the cream and egg mixture over everything else. The liquid will probably sit below the smoked salmon – don’t worry, it will puff up.

    Pop the quiche into the oven for 30 minutes, or until set and golden. Set it aside and let it cool for 10 minutes, before slicing and serving.

  • Bean & Baby Spinach Salad

    I adapted this recipe from a Valli Little recipe in the September 2007 edition of delicious magazine. It’s a lovely tangy salad, with a gorgeous dressing. The original has lots of mint in it as the main leafy substance, while I used very little – I think it could have used a bit more, but I would still shy away from the original two cups full.

    ingredients:

    2-3 handfuls of sugar snap peas
    2-3 handfuls of snow peas
    A few sprigs or a handful of mint, depending on taste
    Baby spinach leaves
    Soft feta cheese (usually described here as Danish or Tasmanian style)

    and for the dressing:

    1 garlic clove, crushed
    2 tbs lemon juice
    1 tsp honey
    100 ml olive oil
    1 tbs dried mint

    To make the dressing, mix together the garic, lemon juice and honey in a bowl, and then whisk in the olive oil and the mint.

    Rinse and top & tail the beans, breaking them in half or into thirds, before putting them in your serving bowl. Add the baby spinach, using enough eaves to fill out the bowl, and toss the beans through with your hands. Crush some feta over the top of the salad, and toss again to combine. I didn’t measure the feta I used – you’ll have to judge according to taste.

    Pour the dressing over the salad, toss gently, and serve.

    (The original recipe used peas as well, and cooked all the beans gently before making the salad. I love the sweet crisp taste of fresh sugar snap peas, so I left them raw.)

  • Mini Raspberry Cheesecakes

    I left it way too late in the day to photograph these little cheesecakes (I was too busy eating them), and as a result neither of these photos are really in focus – hence the small size.

    I had my zoom lens on the camera, and took the cake out to the back steps so that I could stand above it and get a good shot of the raspberry swirl.  You see that small wedge out of the cake on the left?  That’s because while I was taking the photos, a kookaburra swooped down and took a sampling of the cake.

    It didn’t come back for more, so I’m not really sure if I can claim they have a kookaburra seal of approval.  However, they certainly have mine – an incredibly easy recipe, and a meltingly delicious sweet and tangy cheesecake. It’s a delicious magazine recipe from Taste.

    ingredients:

    10 Oreo biscuits (including filling)
    40g unsalted butter, melted
    1/2 cup frozen raspberries, thawed
    2 tbs icing sugar, sifted
    375g cream cheese
    1 cup (220g) caster sugar
    3 eggs
    1 tsp vanilla extract

    Preheat oven to 170°C, and if you’re a prepared sort of person, line a muffin tray with paper cases.

    Put the Oreos into a food processor and whiz until they’re all broken up into crumbs. Add the melted butter and whiz until all combined. Spoon the mixture into the lined muffin tray, pressing down well to make a good base. Bake for 5 minutes, then remove and let cool.

    Mash the raspberries to a pulp with a fork. The original recipe then suggested straining them through a sieve to remove the seeds – I quite like raspberry seeds, so I didn’t bother, and it certainly didn’t detract from the cake. Stir the icing sugar into the raspberry mixture.

    Place the cream cheese into a food processor and mix until light and fluffy. Add the caster sugar in a steady stream, continuing to mix until its all combined. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing away all the while, and then add the vanilla. You’ll probably need to stop the food processor a couple of times to scrape down the sides, and at the end you’ll have a fairly liquid mixture. Pour the cheese mixture over the biscuit bases in the muffin tray.

    Put a teaspoonful (or less if you’ve sieved the raspberries) of the raspberry mixture on top of each cake and use a skewer to swirl it through the cheese mixture. Bake for 10-15 minutes until just set, and then let cool completely before pulling off the wrapper to serve.

  • Springtime Lunches

    The weather’s warming up, the wild ducks have herds of fluffy baby ducklings following them around, and there are gangly calfs lolloping around in the fields.  It’s springtime, and that means it’s time for lunches that stretch into the afternoon and cool concoctions in jugs.

    This is an apple and berry punch – a mixture of thawed frozen rasberries, slices of lemon and orange, mixed with apple & strawberry juice, some lemonade, and several heaping handfuls of ice.  Deliciously sweet and cool, I particularly liked the addition of the raspberries.  While they tend to go mushy and disintegrate after a while, I think it just adds a nice raspberry tang to the drink.

  • In sepia

    I rather like this Photoshopping – Meg, at our last book club gathering, looks very refined and lovely (although I’m sure I should credit that to Meg herself rather than Photoshop. But I think the sepia adds a little something).

  • Lemon & Chocolate Loaf Cake

    Man, I love this cake. It’s so lovely and light and moist and generally the bomb – also I think you could substitute nuts or cranberries or… other things for the chocolate and you would get a completely different cake-vibe. Man. How articulate. Recipe is from an old Women’s Weekly cookbook.

    ingredients:

    125g butter
    1 cup brown sugar
    grated rind of 1 lemon
    2 eggs
    90 grams of chopped dark chocolate
    1 1/4 cup self-raising flour
    1/2 sour cream

    Pre-heat the oven to 180C.

    Cream the butter, sugar and lemon rind together until it’s all creamy and fluffy. Beat in the eggs. Mix in the chopped chocolate or bits of nuts or dried fruit or whatever you’re in the mood for. Mix in the flour alternately with the sour cream (although I never bother to do it alternately, I just chuck it all in and stir away. Perhaps this cake would be even more marvellous if I bothered alternating). Stir, stir, stir. When it’s all well mixed, pour into a lined loaf tin (yes, line it, this cake needs lining).

    Bake for 50 to 60 minutes and test with a skewer. While the cake is still warm and in the tin, top with a mixture of lemon rind and sugar so that it melts a little into the cake. Turn out onto a plate, slice while still warm, and enjoy the lovely lemoniness.

  • Chocolate Chip & Vanilla Buttercream Cupcakes

    I love cupcakes. The perfect serving size, the perfect amount of icing & the prospect of silly decorations. I restrained myself here with pink sprinkles. I sometimes find it a bit of a challenge to make nice moist cupcakes – this particular batch was a little dry but I’m fairly sure that’s because I mis-measured the butter. Oops.

    ingredients:

    180g butter, at room temperature
    3/4 cup caster sugar
    1 tsp vanilla extract
    3 eggs
    1/4 cup cocoa
    1 1/2 cups plain flour
    2 tsp baking powder
    1/2 cup choc bits (either white, dark or a mixture of both)

    Preheat the oven to 160°C. Line your muffin pans if you must, but I usually don’t bother until right before I’m putting them into the oven. I want to get onto the fun mixing bit.

    Beat the butter, sugar and vanilla together in a bowl, either with electric beaters or laboriously with a spoon. Add the eggs, beating away until it’s all combined.

    Sift in the flour and baking powder over the mixture, sprinkle over the choc bits and gently fold it all in to combine. Try not to overmix, this will keep the cupcakes fluffy and divine. Spoon out the mixture into the muffin pan, and pop the tray into the oven for about 30 minutes.

    I used the quick vanilla buttercream icing recipe from Baking Bites – that recipe makes more than enough for 24 cupcakes, and the above recipe only makes 12, so double or halve away as you see fit.

  • Softies

    Our cats are strictly indoor cats for several reasons. Partly because despite them being the sookiest cats in the universe, I don’t want them wreaking havoc amongst the bird/lizard/small mammal population around the house (which is quite a wide and varied population, given that we live in the middle of the bush). Partly because I don’t want them wandering into other people’s properties because god, it used to drive me crazy in suburbia when people’s beloved pets (supposedly) would wander through my yard and shit in my pot plants. Partly because I would worry about them outside on their own (because there might be people like me out there who would plot to poison them. Not that I’ve actually poisoned anyone’s cat. But I’ve thought about it.)

    So, between the walls of the house is their familiar world, and they sit at the doors and watch the outside goings on. Sometimes we put their harnesses on and take them outside on a lead, which does look utterly ridiculous. I have discovered (in the most unsurprising discovery of all time) that you can’t walk a cat like you can a dog – the cats just wander about on the ends of the leads, tugging you where they want to go. They do enjoy having the grass under their paws and spend a great deal of time sniffing intently at things. A few weeks ago Horace got startled by a noise, broke out of his harness and raced away. I panicked for a moment, but then realised he was heading back to the house, where he pawed at the door trying to get away from the unpredictable outside. He pretends to look like a minature lion, but really he prefers to spend his afternoons napping inside the linen closet.

  • Up the bridge & down the other side

    Getting sick two weeks before the Bridge to Brisbane spoiled the Training Plan of Awesomeness (which involved, you know, practicing my running) and the Nonexistent Training Plan was instituted instead, which mostly involved sitting around and coughing.  So I didn’t get a chance to break in my new running shoes, but in flash of brilliance, decided to wear them for the 10k Bridge run anyway.  And I should break in at this point and say that I mostly walked it – partly because of the two week break in training, partly because of my lovely new shoes.

    I decided at the 5k mark that the new shoes were probably a mistake, given that my feet were increasingly agonising and there was a horrible squishing feeling at my heels.  I stuck it out, and then peeled off my shoes when I got home to discover I didn’t have heels anymore, but the most enormous blisters in the world instead.  They look quite disgusting.  I have been wearing backless shoes, cleverly disguised by long pants.

    While I was off destroying my heels, my husband drilled a screw into his finger while cleaning up the garage.  He showed me the blood spatters and his bandaged finger, and asked me whether I thought it would get infected.  Given that he’s drilled into it and then staunched the blood flow with a filthy oil rag from the garage floor, I think infection is probably a certainty.  Hopefully the liberal amounts of betadine I poured onto it will prevent it from falling off any time soon.

    Given that I was up at 4am for the run, I fell into bed at a ridiculously early hour and in the morning had two plaintive messages from my father because I had completely forgotten about father’s day.  Oops.  So, brief summary of the weekend – failed at running, also failed at daughterly love and affection, garage covered in husband’s blood.  It’s going to be a good week.