Goodbye daylight savings

It's beginning to feel a lot like autumn around here. At the markets on Saturday, I listened as a grower told gala apple lovers to make the most of them as they're on their way out, with fujis taking their place. I love knowing what coming and going in the apple world as biting into a floury apple will guarantee I inadvertently pull the most unattractive of faces.

Made my first apple tart tartin yesterday with a mix of granny smiths and a variety of heritage green apples, which I can't remember the name of now. I'd show you, but it's already half eaten.

I noticed even the local Woolworths supermarket has erected a big seasonal list of apple-picking seasons, which I suppose is good but I saw people buying apples the other day that even Woolworths admits must have been picked last July. Each to their own.

We're starting to close the doors on cooler evenings, which is rather nice when the house is full of fresh eucalyptus as it is at the moment as it gently scents the air.

Goodbye daylight savings. Until next year.

Favourite Cakes

As I have a lot of cookbooks, I don't generally look at books specialising in just one aspect of cooking, such as sweets, as I figure I've already got hundreds of cake recipes I've forgotten about in the back of books I already own. But our local bookshop was having a sale and I remember being given a small book by this author, Julie Le Clerc, some years back that I rather liked.

Flicked through Favourite Cakes and knew these recipes were easy and tempting enough for The Child to want to make herself. So far, we've made (okay, she chose it and I actually baked it) the Honey Syrup Cake and have the Vanilla Angel Food Cake with Berry Icing earmarked for today.

The Honey Syrup Cake was a huge hit - tasted like a fresh, moist Honey Jumble biscuit minus the icing - and The Child, who usually values chocolate cake much highly above all others, declared it one of her all-time favourites.

What's nice about this book is that most of the ingredients are simply listed in cups, tablespoons and teaspoons, which I find nostaligically refreshing in this age of celebrity chefdom and molecular gastronomy.

Pass me an apron and call me grandma.

Christmas menu

The Husband and The Child are on their way home after another successful camping trip. I chose to make the most of their absence by cleaning the whole house in preparation for Christmas - and now the house is spotless. I've got an hour, I reckon, before they drag sand, twigs and general camping grime across the pristine floors...

In the meantime, I've been putting the Christmas menu together. So far the options are:

homemade limeade
Stone's ginger wine & Frangelico sparkling cocktail

glazed ham with carmelised onion relish
roast spatchcocks with chorizo and sage stuffing
peas with pancetta and mint
roast kipfler potato salad

pavolva with cherries, berries and passionfruit
mini fruit-mince cheesecakes

Lulu's choc truffles

We usually barbecue a turkey (true) but we're going to be radical and shake it up this year.

The only definite on the list is the ham, as I've ordered a lovely free-range one from the same deli that we buy our favourite sliced ham from during the year.

Might do some things on Christmas Eve and some on Christmas Day. Might change it all (though The Husband is sure to go for the spatchcocks with chorizo, as he'd happily eat chorizo stuffed with chorizo all year round) once I've consulted the others.

That's the fun of planning.

Board games

I picked up a much-needed new small chopping board for the kitchen. It's not only lovely because of its looks but its also sustainably harvested Australian hardwood (camphor laurel) made by a small Australian company based in Queensland. It also smells wonderful and, I'm told, has life-long natural anti-bacterial properties.

The only downside was the company's name, Fab Slabs, was branded (in the old-fashioned burned-on sense) onto the board in a not-particularly attractive typeface. It looked to me like a regretted tattoo after a wild night out so I decided to do tame the beast and perform a spot of abrasive surgery and sandpapered it off.

I'm sure it would have thanked me if it could.

Cutting edge

Have been on the lookout for a pretty vintage knife to cut cakes with. Needed to be broad so slices had a chance of making it onto plates without me making a total mess.

Found it on Saturday at Rozelle Markets. Didn't want to ask the stallholder the original purpose of the knife as she'd just had a somewhat heated discussion with a previous unsatisfied customer and was a bit het up, so the true purpose of its shape remains a mystery to me. Enlightenments welcome.

Picked up an old bread knife at the same time that's going to make weekend toast making that bit more glamorous.

Reckon this was $12 well spent.

Short straw

The Child drew the short straw when it comes to mothers who'll buy, well, straws.

I'm not adverse to buying frivolous stuff, quite the opposite (unfortunately), but I baulk at buying plastic made to be thrown away. So, of course, The Child developed a bit of an obsession with them. I relented once and bought a bulk pack for a party a few years back and she was so happy you'd think I'd done a lap around the world to fetch them rather than just throwing them in the supermarket trolley.

I know there are waxed paper ones online, but they seemed to be too small an item to be paying delivery for so The Child continued to miss out. Until now. Happily for her, I've found a local shop that stocks boxes of the somewhat-odd-number of 144 for $10.

She doesn't even care that the only colour available is grey.

I have, for the moment, been crowned best mother evah.

Brown sugar

I was reminded yesterday that brown sugar is not a less processed form of white sugar. In fact, it's just white sugar with molasses added. Now I can't be bothered making brown sugar every time I need it so am happy to buy it. However, some recipes call for dark brown sugar - and I draw the line at buying that. Instead, I add molasses to either white caster sugar or brown sugar - whatever I have more of in the cupboard at the time.

Above is packet white caster sugar, packet brown sugar and dark brown sugar I've made from pulsing 2 cups of caster sugar with about a 1/4 cup of molasses in a food processor.

Life is sweet. Crowded cupboards aren't.

Woman of the cloth

I love a tablecloth and these are the ones I use all the time. Trouble is, the only room I had for them was on a high shelf, which could be reached but not easily. So would either have to grab the little kitchen ladder to be able to pull one out from the middle of the pile or just take the top cloth every time.

Enter basket bought last week. Basket is perfect height and easy to pull down off shelf. I wish I'd done this years ago. High excitement in our house over this.

Admittedly haven't polled the entire household but would just demand a recount a la Pauline Hanson if excitement vote didn't go my way.

Stormy seas

I start the day with a cup of tea. Tea made in a pot. Every day.

I've said before that I like to collect bits and pieces in stormy colours. These mugs, $27.50, from Bison are no exception. I bought them one at a time whenever passing the Paddington shop so now have four in my favourite Bison colours, which are milk, dove, limestone and the sandy one that I can't remember the name of.

Each one is hand made in Australia and lovely to hold. Particularly when filled with steaming tea first thing on a cold morning.

Another day, another tin

The sparklingly crisp autumn sun shone on Rozelle Markets and lead me to three fabulous things at three different stalls. The old Arnotts tin, which someone has customised into a bread tin, will hold craft supplies. The set of three pudding bowls and four knives are already hard at work in the kitchen.

All this vintage beauty for $40.

Contained

Someone commented that I have a compulsion with tins (in a good way, I hasten to add) so I feel I must also admit to another: boxes. I use them to organise all the bigger bits and pieces that don't fit into tins.

The three I couldn't live without are, firstly, the two that soak up all the plastic kitchen containers that used drive me nuts floating around a cupboard. I was like a dog digging for a bone sometimes trying to find the lid to its matching container. Now I pull the box down to the benchtop and dig away on a much smaller and much less irritating scale.

Ramekins were other items that refused to behave as they wouldn't stack without toppling over at the very softest of nudges or they'd take up an enormous amount of room lined up on a shelf. A third Ikea box contained their attitude in the naughty corner of a kitchen cupboard and we all get along fine now.

Small Things Simple Tins

I'm in danger of having to rename this blog Small Things Simple Tins.

Despite posting that I'm not in need of any more vintage storage tins, I find that I'm the proud owner of yet another tin. As it's not an actual vintage tin, I think I've successfully skirted around my own proclamation. Anyway...

Picked this generously sized tin (27cm x 23cm with a 20cm depth) at Trim's Leichhardt yesterday. Regarded the panettone it contained as bonus rather than a lure, but it is delicious. When I opened the lid, the smell of Italy wafted out (that slightly marzipany sweet almond aroma that I love and The Child loathes).

A great panettone, a new biscuit tin and memories of an Italian holiday all for $14.99. How could I not?

In the can

I remember these canisters from my childhood kitchen, which disappeared in my youth - the canisters, not the kitchen - when my mother, and the rest of the world, fell in love with plastic.

They turned up again recently and I've put them to good use in my kitchen, but not as a set as that's too big a look for me. Some are in cupboards, some are on shelves, depending on what their use is.

They're surprisingly airtight too. We had a problem with pantry moths this year but any flour that was in the tin was always safe. So why didn't I use the so-far-unsed fourth tin for rice, I ask myself?

Winning cup

I kept scanning the shelves at the supermarket for some simple brown-paper cupcake papers, which was proving impossible. The closest thing thing I could find was an offering that was copying muffin cups like those found in cafes. Lovely, but over packaged and over priced. Came across some in a kitchenware shop but they were the type that are hard to get off the cake once they're baked.

Today I came away with these brown-paper cups bought from About Life in Rozelle, and I'm very happy. They seem to have lots of environmental credentials, which is nice, but cake cups can hardly be at the forefront of environmental terrorism, can they? I just like the way they look.

Three boxes of various sizes for $7.50 in total.

Spice girl

I did away with storing spices in jars a couple of years ago because, if you use a lot of them like we do, they just take up too much room. It was also hard to find what you were looking for without picking up each jar or, in the Husband's case, waving his huge paw through them all like a bear trying to snare a fish.

So I bought two CD boxes from Smiggle, several packs of dividers from Kikki K and created my own alphabetical system. Now everything's easy to find. Even when the Husband uses the quickest of man looks.

Initially thought one box would be enough but no, thanks to many spices that begin with 'c'. The first box contains a-c spices only, I kid you not. The volume is bumped up thanks to cumin seeds, curry leaves, chilli powder, dried chilli, ground cumin, cinnamon quills, cardamom pods, whole cloves, ground coriander, brown Indian cardamom pods, celery seed, ground cloves, ground cardamom, whole coriander seeds, ground cinnamon. I could go on. But I won't.

Spooning

I used to have a nice, neat benchtop with wooden spoons, etc, tucked away in drawers. Problem was the rattling around in drawers looking for stuff was irritating.

So I pulled the spoons out and popped them in a big white jug, which soaked up everything. For a while. The currants container was picked up at Milton during the summer holidays and was perfect for the overspill.

Just one last glass jar, I whispered to myself like an addict, to contain all the old cutlery...

Coffee break

I love pudding bowls. I have them in all different sizes and use them for everything from mixing cake batters, eating breakfast cereal, yoghurt and berries, as well as for dips and crackers when friends are over. My favourite use, though, is for my mid-morning coffee.

The smallest size is around $5 from cookware shops and the perfect size for coffee and, because they really are pudding bowls, contain the heat so are not hot to the touch.

Breakfast bowled over

I've gone all Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and have started making my own muesli. It's easy, tasty and I know what's in it. Also looks good in this jar, $6.95, from The Essential Ingredient.

All I do is toss together some rolled oats, bran, dried fruit (last batch was blueberries, raisins and figs), pepitas, chia seeds (seems to be the new goji berry) and hazelnuts I've given a quick roast.

In the morning I soak some in a little in apple juice and then add yoghurt, fresh berries and my own LSA (linseed, sunflower and almond mix). Happy till lunchtime, if accompanied by a mid-morning latte. x