Home again

Yet again I’ve just got back from visiting my dad in Gippsland. His partner is currently working over WA for the mines & he’s a bit lonely all by himself! (not counting muffy dog, of course).

The night before I left, I started on some additional medication & I not only slept solidly through all my alarms that day, but I woke up with only one hour to get dressed, made up & ready, & finish packing instead of 3 1/2 hours. It was nothing short of miraculous that I made the bus at all :D.

For the first three or so days, my new meds made me so doped up that when I later thought about the first full day there, I wasn’t quite sure if I’d dreamt it or not. It’s sort of funny because my dad and I were both sort of similarly medicated & not always functioning quite right, although at least my dad wasn’t having dizzy spells J I found our dysfunction, (both physically and mentally) amusing, anyway. (Dad, if you read this, no offence is intended ;) ).

I spent a bit of time trying to organise our family history, dad got all the information together for me & I tried to organise it enough so we could at least give it out to the rest of the rellies. One branch we’ve got going back to the 1700s, which is really cool J. (Here I again point out how much significance I place on family & roots J).

Here are some holiday highlights: Thanks to Dad’s employer, I spent a lot of time

eating the pastries, etc. he’d brought home. Not to mention all the chocolate, icecream, biscuits and home-grown fruit & vegies I ate :). Let’s just say I didn’t come home skinnier…..

mmmm, berries, icecream & more!!

There was an abundance of silverbeet in the garden & I made this bee-yootiful delicious pasta sauce with mushrooms & cream. We both loved that one! The recipe, roughly was:

Chop1 Big bunch of silverbeet, microwave, covered, for 7-12 minutes, until almost soggy.

Dice two garlic cloves & 2 medium onions, fry in LOTS of olive oil (1/2 cup full at least! Hey, it’s olive oil, your arteries won’t mind so much!) in a really big fry pan or a large pot, until softened.

Add 500g mushrooms, cook until mushrooms are softened & coated in oil mixture.

Add silverbeet to pan/pot, add more crushed garlic (used jar stuff this time), ½ tsp ground pepper, 2tsp ground coriander, 2tsp ground cumin, cook, stirring, for few minutes until mixed well. Reduce heat to low, add 200 - 300ml cream & cook over low heat, stirring regularly, until cream has partly evaporated, mixture is not so runny & silverbeet is nicely cooked. Mix in 1/2 cup or more grated cheese before serving.

Serve with little pasta tubes (the ones like fat, short macaroni or half penne noodles!!).

Finishing burning off one of the patches of scrub down by the dam. It didn’t take off like it did when he’d started it, before I came. At least then I didn’t worry too much about the possibility of having to drag dad out from the burning blackberry bushes.

We had those gale-force winds when I was there & as dad was on night shift, muffy followed me around for hours, scared of all the noise, wanting to be picked up every time I stood still. When we went out on the verandah to get wood for the fire, I wouldn’t have been surprised if muffy had blown away, like Toto. I thought the roof was going to come off at one stage, it was so gusty. Dad later reassured me that that house had some special design feature involving beams and the foundation slabs that meant it was more secure than most houses, roof-wind-wise.

Nice bush trip

& evidence of winds

Muffy the dog kept me company when dad was working (nightshift) & I woke almost every morning to a muffy-face leaning over me, very happy to see me awake. I have my suspicions that face-licking was involved to make this happen. She spent (snoring) every night but one in my bed as well.

Hammock time (I did fall on my head the first time I tried to get in. Haven’t actually been that klutzy before!!).

Big breath, I'll finish these adventures later: to be continued!

Rhubarb Pie for me

I have been thinking a lot about rhubarb lately, to the extent that I finally went out and bought two rhubarb crowns & planted them in the garden. They might not be ready to harvest until next year, but I'm very proud of them :). I want to make rhubarb jam one day, but I think that will be happening with some bought rhubarb :)

My mum had been talking about a rhubarb and banana pie she had, which she proclaimed the most beautiful pie she'd ever eaten. I actually vaguely remember eating a rhubarb and banana crumble once. Nice, comforty, creamy dessert.

So, the other day I bought some rhubarb on special & made this lovely pie from this recipe. I actually STILL don't have a pie dish, so I had to use a casserole dish (as you do), and so it wasn't quite mushy enough in the middle, but it tasted (and smelled!) absolutely delicious!! It was very sweet, but I can handle that ;). I'm going to make it again, in a proper pie dish (lol) and serve it with nice home-made custard (not the packet mix kind, either, the proper stuff with an egg yolk & corn flour, etc:)). MMMMMMM. My mum thought it was a hit!

Here's the recipe, too. Pretty easy to make really.

Fresh Banana Rhubarb Pie

Ingredients:

1/2 pound Fresh rhubarb
3 Medium bananas
1 cup Sugar
1/4 cup Orange juice
1/4 teaspoon Salt
1/4 teaspoon Cinnamon
1 teaspoon Nutmeg
1 tablespoon Butter
1 9" unbaked double pie crust

Procedure:

Prepare pastry. Slice rhubarb (should yield 3 cups). Slice bananas (should yield 3 cups). Combine ingredients except butter and crust. Spread into pie crust. Dot with butter. Place crust on top. Bake at 450 degrees F. for 15 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees F. and bake for an additional 20 minutes or until browned. From The Central Market Cookbook by Phyllis Good.

(The pie crust is a little burnt on the exposed bits because I had to use gluten-free flour)

Comfort Food

On a related but much nicer topic, I have had some hankerings for awesome comfort food lately. My list of comfort food is long and never runs out. I forgot to take a pic of the gooey golden-syrup dumplings I made a few weeks ago, but they really weren't very photogenic. My sister visited on the weekend and bought vegie soup and the preparations for some golden-syrup dumplings. Very appreciated, that was :) I don't know what her recipe was, but I used a combination of these two ones recently. I think I use a different one each time! Mmmm, comfort food.... Mashed potato Cake, especially cheese cake Chocolate- although I'm not sure if that really counts, it's just good anytime Milo Rice Pudding Cauliflower & cheese sauce Golden-Syrup Dumplings Chocolate pudding Chips & gravy Custard! Is there such thing as a universal comfort food? I wonder.

Grandmothers and secret recipes

My sister has taken on the mantle of the family special-pastry apple-pie maker and I have been bestowed with my great-aunt's famous Christmas pudding recipe, which I am going to attempt much earlier than Christmas :). One day my great aunt will not feel up to making 20 Christmas puddings for all the related family groups & then what will we do? (My grandma stopped her pudding and fruit-cake making years ago).

I dream of finally getting the secret family recipes for my dad's partner's Christmas fruitcake (with pineapple, carrot and pecans?), and for the iced tea I drank while staying at a bed & breakfast on Staten Island, where the lady comforted me as I sat crying in her kitchen (long story, that one :)).

Wouldn't it be terrible to die and not pass your secret recipes on? Or to have no-one to pass them on to? I found it quite amazing that people even die (as in, in hospital, not suddenly) with no-one even really knowing that they are there, let alone coming to say goodbye or spend time with them. That may be terrible naive of me or something but it really never occurred to me before. I am finding this incredibly depressing.