A domestic miscellany

Home oeconomics: the science of managing a household. This is my domestic journal, an intermittent record of recipes, home improvements, and textile crafts.
Sage, apple, and cheddar omelette

Sage, apple, and cheddar omelette

Is this weird? It’s what called to me in the kitchen today, when I staggered in there hungry but feeling sick and unhappy from out-of-control seasonal allergies. 1/3 fuji apple, thinly sliced a few thin slices of red onion butter 3 eggs handful grated cheddar sprig of parsley, minced a...
Homemade muesli

Homemade muesli

According to my (shiny! new!) housemate, muesli is very hip these days. Well, I was into it before it was cool. If that makes me a muesli hipster, so be it. I mentioned a shiny new housemate. Actually I have two of them. I recently moved back to Australia and...
Chickpea, pumpkin, and Israeli couscous stew

Chickpea, pumpkin, and Israeli couscous stew

This is my entry for Presto Pasta Nights, hosted this week by Chaya at Sweet & Savory. I make a variation of this vegetarian, North-African-inspired stew quite often, but this time it’s a little different because I decided to add Israeli couscous directly to the mix to make a one-dish...
Latest entries
Oven ratatouille

Oven ratatouille

So this is basically just ratatouille, but it takes less attention (because you roast the vegies in the oven) and it tastes better (because you roast the vegies in the oven). The perfect day for this would be a cool day during the summer, just after you’ve been to the farmer’s market and got a...
Roasted red pepper and chickpea soup with mint

Roasted red pepper and chickpea soup with mint

This soup’s story starts with me and Emily, last Saturday, going to a new-to-us brunch place. Our plan was to walk down to the cafe in question, then over to the nearby K-Mart to buy Christmas lights, then up to Psarakos Grocery (the big fat Greek fruit-and-veg mecca on High St), then home again: a...
Tomato chutney like Nanna used to make

Tomato chutney like Nanna used to make

We’re definitely getting to that time of year when everything’s $2 a kilo and you need extra arms to carry it all home from the market. The tomatoes were looking pretty good the other week at Preston, and so I got enough to make chutney. I wanted to use an Australian Women’s Weekly recipe that’s...
Preserved lemons

Preserved lemons

How have I never blogged this before? I probably did it on some prior blog and didn’t bring it across. Oh well. Preserved lemons! They are amazing things and not well enough known outside Australia. I mean, they’re not all that well known inside Australia, but I can safely assume that anyone here who has...

Garden notes: early summer with fruit flies, lack of pots

Planted 3 zucchini seedlings (unknown type) from Emily’s mum, who brought them down from their place in the country. They’re in a big tub, and probably too crowded, but I suspect we can give them a few weeks and then pull out one, or maybe two, that is/are flourishing the least well. Planted butternut pumpkin/squash...

A day of varied domesticity

Garden: We have 4 enormous tubs, 3 large pots, and a couple of middling sized pots filled with potting mix and/or various vegetable matter. For the big tubs, I raked up a heap of leaf litter and filled them 1/3 with that, 1/3 with chopped lucerne, and 1/3 with organic potting mix. There’s more lucerne...

Garden!

This is the first time I’ve actually had a garden worth mentioning since starting this blog, so this is the first post in a brand new Garden category. Today Emily and I went to the Giant Garden Centre of Giantness (aka The Greenery, in Bulleen) and got what we need to start a decent sized...

Stewed fruit

More on the “recording stuff I cook and eat, even if it’s not that exciting” theme. I often make stewed fruit, but I haven’t written about it here, yet, I don’t think. I sometimes joke that I have “childhood fruit trauma”, which means that although I like fruit, I don’t much like eating it if...
Not quite kedgeree

Not quite kedgeree

I’ve been thinking a bit about why I have this blog and what I want from it, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t really have any pretentions to being a Food Blogger per se. I don’t think most of what I make is very original or special, and the quality of my...
Preston Market! (and a tabbouleh recipe)

Preston Market! (and a tabbouleh recipe)

It’s a while since I did one of these, but today was my first Saturday market trip since moving back to the Preston Market area, and I got so much good stuff I wanted to post pics. It’s the first time I’ve seen decent looking stone fruit in the market, though it’s still early days....
Fried red rice with kale

Fried red rice with kale

This fried rice was very much inspired by Heidi Swanson at 101 Cookbooks, and a little bit by the Asian (especially Indonesian) food that I’ve been enjoying since coming back to Melbourne. It was also a way to use up a partial bunch of kale (cavalo nero, specifically) that had been sitting in the fridge...

Mediterranean chickpea and kale soup

This is just one of my many variations on onion-tomato-legumes-greens. The base recipe is just those four ingredients, and you can vary the beans (chickpeas, lentils, cannellini, borlotti) and the greens (spinach, chard, silverbeet, kale), not to mention the texture and what it’s served with, to make endless variations on a meal that is almost...