Cooking 9/10ths of the time

I'm back to the book. David Herbert's wonderful "Best-Ever Baking Recipes". I have been cooking things from this from time to time, but such is my posting malaise I am only now managing to report back. Why a posting malaise? Not sure really, I note that other, more prolific and famous bloggers also go through this and I imagine that this is my, much tinier and less significant version. In fact a few of my absolute favourite bloggers have slowed right down, if not having stopped entirely. I realise how much I loved those posts, now that I have them no longer. Also some of them used to blog a lot. Thank god for Julia - still posting and still as brilliant as ever. Anyway sticky toffee loaf and all that conjures up. It's winter here, the most beloved season by my household, and I am in full winter cooking swing. Baked risotto, lamb shanks, casserole, curry... oh swoon, all so lovely and rich and warming and EASY. Screw summer with all it's salads. This loa...

I have no compulsion to bake in summer. None. Zero. You may have noticed, if you're a fan of my banal chitchat, that there hasn't been so much of that lately. That's because Melbourne became hotter than Hades. Think eggs fried on bonnets of cars, lungs singed, poets crying and women gnashing their teeth. Mainly me. Not a fan of the heat. At all. That's WHY I live I live in Melbourne actually. Melbourne is not known for it's temperate climate, instead it's known for freezing winds, unpredictable rain and coffee loving inhabitants. When I visited Seattle I felt right at home.  So, no baking. Screw that. It was 45 (113) outside and approximately 32 (90) indoors and I was only putting the oven on if I was climbing into it, and things didn't get that bad. Whilst American swirled in their Polar Vortex (which sounds like an evil nemesis) we sweltered in Satan's Underpants. But not anymore. Here we are in lovely March, the month that used to be the hottest...

Well, you can't blame me for naming the post thusly, the number of trollop style jokes that fly around when you make tarts is disproportionately large. Clearly demand outstrips supply in the provision of tart related joke telling opportunities. Not sure how to exploit this for gain, but theoretically one could. Woohoo! Legs in the air. Not tarty at all. It's was the season to be merry folks and I made a few treats - full disclosure dictates that I need to put the treat making in the context of Book Club and also reference Sue and Michelle. Each year we gather on the Saturday morning before the final book club and we make treats for the group. This year marks the fourth year we have done this and we were as game as ever. And very organised, very, very organised. There is some fun lost when there's no panic - whilst we coasted politely to the denouement of the treat making it was nice, but not frightening and we didn't think that anything would fail. So, yes. Not ve...

Gawd, I have started this post twice now with very good intentions each time. Turns out that good intentions are not enough - apparently you need to sit down and actually do it. First thing to observe, I am writing this from my new Macbook Air. I have never been a Mac user, I have nothing against Apple beyond a vague sense of disquiet at learning a new operating system and their super quiet keyboard. I really love to make a racket when I type. Two things: No End key No back space. How do Apple users do it! I use the end key ALL THE TIME! I like to cut to the end. I like to move from the here and now and get to the full stop. I am lingering a hell of a lot more in the middle of sentences. And what a crappy place to be!  So yeah, if you have the answer. Tell me. Sooooooo - in the interests of full disclosure and also because I simply tend to talk about what is happening right now - I found a parasite on my head. Was it a louse? Well it was certainly a cad.. *weak laugh. Yes, ...

I have never been so enamoured with a cook book as I am with this one... Oh David Herbert... swoon...http://davidherbertfood.com/ My Vagina Monologues actors gave this to me as a gift - oh vagina ladies! Thank you! I love virtually every recipe in it and I want to make them all, so I'm going to. In a fairly haphazard fashion I am going to work my way through this entire book. Much like that movie about that famous cooking lady and that that regular woman who cooks her way through HER book. Much like that. I have already made two cakes from the book and also cookies - If I were a more gracious, thoughtful and regular blogger then I'd blog about them too - but I'm not. So forget that version of me, she doesn't exist and even if she ever did I would have her killed off - in a tragi-comic manner involving deforestation. I made a Swiss roll. I cannot read, say or think the words "Swiss roll" without hearing them sung in an 80's glam band falsetto. T...

In the beginning there was the Baker and the Baker said "Let there be cake". And there was cake. And when the Baker said that he/she was surely referring to the rainbow cake. Six multicoloured layers, each one held together with a meringue icing and then completely covered. A towering monument with a smashing reveal, the most secretive and party stopping cake I have ever made. It was Gabe's birthday again.  It appears to be rolling around with worrying frequency at this rate he'll be 20 and I'll be.... I'll be... GAH! Gabe saw a picture of the cake and his enormous brown eyes grew by another magnitude, his voice grew breathy and he gripped my arm uncomfortably tightly with his precious little pink fingers. "I want that for my birthday. Will you make that? Please? Please? Please" He made that request 8 months before his actual birthday. I said yes because I knew that he, much like a capricious wind, could change at any moment. But no. He never...

I occasionally attempt ambitious cooking projects. This occurs because I have been  lured by keywords "rich, indulgent, silky" etc or by pictures. I am very susceptible to pictures. So when I saw this... I mean. Come on. I am helpless in the face of this. Raspberry and meringue and white plates and scattered fresh raspberries. I was lucky not to eat the computer. As it turned out it was my turn for bookclub and in a totally inadvisable move I decided to make two BRAND NEW dishes. One dish could be seen as clever, two is simply showy and ostentatious and that is why my second one failed. Not miserably, but sort of in a melancholy way - a regretful, half hopeful manner. I wish it had been miserably, then I could have thrown them away. As it was I ended up serving them. I also made a hedgehog slice with dark chocolate and prunes soaked in Cointreau - they were freaking excellent. Very decided. Forceful. Like a naval officer returning for one night and then heading out to...