Jerusalem artichoke soup with brie and walnut

This is a soup I created from a bag full of Jerusalem artichokes we bought back home from a recent food swap.
Funnily enough in the same week I  had tried them on Friday in Kitchen garden at my kids school. We made Jerusalem artichoke provencale, a simple sauteed dish containing  just onion, garlic, tomato and toasted breadcrumbs in olive oil and parsley and parmesan, the kids on my table loved it, my son.... well he faked a sickie.

60 g butter
8 Jerusalem artichokes scrubbed and peeled, chop to thumb sizes
5 medium potatoes washed and peeled, quatered.
1 brown onion diced
3 cloves of garlic crushed
1 lt of stock veg or chicken
500 ml of water
salt pepper to taste

In a pot, heat the butter, saute the onion and garlic, careful not to burn.
Add the jerusalem artichokes and potato, toss it all around for a few min
Add the stock and water.
Cover and cook for 45 min or till vegies are tender, add more water if needed.
Puree the soup
then add salt and pepper to taste.

Dish it up ,placing a good slice of brie, sprinkle in some walnuts just crushed in your hand.
Some parmasan if you like and extra black pepper.

Enjoy this hearty soup outdoors in the crisp cold whilst watching your partner gardening, hand him a bowl of it to get instant love.

The one about the rainbow cake

When I first saw this cake , I knew that I'd make it some day.

It was several years back, on Martha Stewart's website, that I saw it.  And the waiting began, for the right time.  Well the day came, and my what an epic cake it was. '

It's like ticking off "do a marathon' on your bucket list.

The ingredients (or more so the quantity of ingredients) is a little lets say, shocking. Like 19 egg whites, 5 1/2 cups sugar, and 750g butter. We didn't have an ounce of butter in the house Monday morning.

Then you have the food dye... You gotta let all your nature mamma go if you want to make this cake, just forget it.

I really enjoyed the process of making this cake, and I followed the recipe to the tee, unusually for me.  The texture and softness of the cake is really good, the icing is a swiss meringue, lovely in small doses. The wow factor is really worth it.

Eliza had seen me assemble the cake, as much as she tried to avoid it, so she knew what is was going to look like.  But seeing her face lighting up as that first slice and  came out was just worth every free-range egg white.  And the days of custard that followed, not that the kids (or Aaron) complained.

Although Eliza saw the cake, I will tell you that we like a little secret party crafting round here the night before the party, after she'd gone to bed. Eliza's big sister Beatrix and Aaron and I stayed up way too late crafting pinwheels (that made our fingers bleed and wouldn't spin at night, but somehow did on the day) and ribbon sticks.  Bea had been with me buying the ribbons and embarrassed me in the fabric store, chortling loudly "Mum don't you know the colours of the rainbow?" when I wondered aloud what colours to get. Ahh I love it when she knows more than me.

The party was a big success and so much fun.

My recipe for the perfect rainbow party:

Punch balls in rainbow colours
A string of balloons aranged in the rainbow spectrum
Ribbon sticks in either a bright or pastelly rainbow hue
Pinwheels, just because they are so pretty
Some big sidewalk chalk
(I didn't need games with all this for everyone to play with!)
and of course
Rainbow cake..

Eliza Lou is 5

This little monkey turned 5 today!

 I woke her this morning with whispers of happy birthday, I watched her smile in her sleep.
 I caught a glimpse of the little baby she used to be. She expected to feel different today, bigger, taller, but it dawned on her last night that she was still the same. I love that she hasn't all of a sudden changed, because to me she is perfect right now just as she is.

 Happy Birthday Eliza Lou Storm!

a month gone by so fast?

It's ten-on-ten come round again, hard to believe how much we've been up to since last time. Please do pop over to see other people's photos at Rebekah's a bit of sunshine.

Without further ado, here's the day in pictures.



(Bit late with putting the new month on the chalkboard, we are.)

week in food

The boy turned nine. 

This was his party cake a.k.a. cake #1. We spent the day at Scienceworks seeing the Wallace and Grommit exhibition, Planetarium, and Lightning Room. I took along five boys and Beatrix, and we had a really good day.  Memorable.

Actual day of birthday cake, I thought cake #2 had best be a Pavlova seeing as we still had cake # 1 leftover

Today's breakfast consisted of Ricotta pancakes with strawberry and honeyed ricotta cream.

Testing out my new cast iron baking dish from Aldi, I roasted up some Rhubarb and pear in fresh orange juice and some raw sugar.

I made some custard with the leftover egg yokes from the pav, looks good except you can't see that it actually was curdled.

Roasted up some capsicum for some sandwiches to be had throughout the week.

Having successfully made mayonnaise in the past I thought Id make some for upcoming reuben sandwich feast, except it never worked. I added the oil to quickly and my ingredients were too cold.

Some banana cake which if you look closely you'll notice I over beat it, still getting the hang of the Kitchenaid's might and power.

 Another pan I purchased from Aldi for $24 on Wednesday (along with half of Melbourne, it seemed).  Love the navy blue colour, this is a must-have pan! 

It is shallow enough to braise beautifully and is large enough for my big family. Hey, I was even game enough to joint my own chicken.

I served the Chinese braised chicken with home-grown Pak choy and broccoli on a bed of steamed rice. This meal was so good.

Here is the Reuben, ohh so yum, I have had two versions of this sandwich this week one at 9 pm after the school movie night  and I think I might just have one on Sunday for lunch.