Some people hate Winter. Not me!
Winter means gorgeous sunsets and stormy skies with rainbows.
Winter means the slow cooker comes out.
It means I can bake to my hearts content and it warms the house.
It means brisk walks in scarves and gloves, and dressing up, and wearing boots.
It means quilts on the armchairs, and the fire blazing...yes even in the Sub-Tropics we have a few weeks of chilly weather and winds whipping our hair...truth!
This week I made sausage rolls, warming the house while I was at it. Always a hit. Sesame seeds are my version of 'gourmet'.
I scoured Pinterest to find the table I want Husband to build for the dining room now that the poor man is finished hanging real crystals on chandeliers. Got to keep the man busy, right?
I'm rather favouring this look, but longer. We currently have 16 family members, so that's one heckuva table for celebrations. Note, this is not our table (yet!). It's one I found on aforementioned Pinterest.
I have 28 chairs picked up here and there for a song. Some I only paid $5 for. I'll unify them by painting them black as seen below, and I'll cover their inset cushions in Coffee Sacks...likewise collected here and there for a song...or for free sometimes!
Then my French Empire Chandeliers and sconces will go up in their permanent positions, and wheeeeeee….!!!
My green soup is an absolute winner for lunches here. It's literally just the end of the celery that has all the leaves on it, a couple of diced potatoes, onions and whatever other limp greens are left in the crisper. A few cups of stock, some spices, whizz it all once cooked. This feeds me for lunch for the entire week AND gives me a good dose of my 5 veg.
Have you seen the price of soup???? That's got to be around $50 worth for pretty much free when you consider most folk toss the celery leaves in the bin!
Veg doesn't just go into soup here. Vege patties for burgers are a regular too. Cook 'em, mash 'em, add lentils or beans, spring onions and spices, pat 'em into egg rings and refrigerate to firm them up. Pan fry, pop on a burger bun....yum!
Vegetarian burgers from the trendy burger bar near us are $21. EACH. I made 8 burgers over the course of the week.
Burger mince isn't just for burgers by the way.
I whacked our burger mince (pork and veal) into a bowl with eggs, breadcrumbs, fresh herbs, pistachios and cranberries. I smooshed it altogether and lined a loaf dish with bacon.
I smooshed the mixture into the loaf tin on top of the bacon.
See? Then I topped that with more bacon....
I popped that into a water bath, and baked it long and slow in a moderate oven, covered with foil, for about 90 minutes.
Once cooked, I chilled it, weighted it down overnight with full cans of beans, then flipped it out and it looked like this above, uncut, and below, cut..
Yum, right?
I'm not kidding when I tell you that I saw a terrine just like this at a posh deli, for $7.50 per 100 grams. That's $75 per kilo or $35 per pound! Mine cost $16 and weighs nearly 3 kilos (6 1/2 lbs). Sounds good to me.
How was your week?
What did you Insource?
...Mimi...
