My first venture into food blogging, after salivating over the many food blogs out there occured on a Friday night when I was at home and bored silly. The first food related post was about the Matcha sponge cake Hoi and I made at her place, our attempt at immitating the Matcha Opera Cake made by Keiko (Nordljus) and Hoi's Baked Lemon Slice.
It was then followed by some Jaffa Crepes we made at Queenie's house following the lovely dinner made by Mrs Chan for us.
Third was a quick soba dinner idea for Ali and Ange and we closed off the month of June with a big dinner 'when the cat's away, the mice comes out to play' dinner at FLim's when his parents and Alv's Mum went on another overseas escapade.
July
July became a very 'Bill' month almost 3/4 of the posts were reincarnations of Bill Granger recipes. We kicked off July with some Garlic Prawns w/ Linguine that I adapted from Bill Granger's Garlic Prawn recipe in Bill's Food. Then disaster followed as I misread Cayenne Pepper for Cajun and emptied the bottle onto some chicken tenderloins that was to be my favourite Caesar salad. After that disaster, I dug into some home made club sandwich and pondered where I could find the best club sandwich in Melbourne.
A saturday afternoon saw me playing with Matcha and Chocolate again as I made some matcha and chocolate butter cookies. The following monday, my housemate was out for dinner (she's not a big prawn eater - unless you count lobster as a prawn) so I was able to try out Bill's Seafood stew.. a tomato stew with loads of prawns, mussels and scallops in it and a taste of Bill's famous Ricotta hotcakes. Then a follow up of Bill's Ricotta Hotcakes with some left over batter, Vanilla ice cream and Jeanne's chocolate sauce.. (mmmm.. heavenly dessert..) and a moroccan filo parcel appetiser to round up July.
August
Incidentally, I participated in my first blogging event in August. Up til then, I had been salivating over other bloggers Took me two months to work out the courage to do so but it wasn't too bad of an experience. Eomeote #17 was hard headline to come up with.
Friend Wendy left us for NY in August, and as a farewell we had a small dinner party for 3 at Alv's when he went skiing in Hotham. Dinner for Wendy was a bit of a challenge for me as I had never cooked for a vegetarian before, especially not one as strict as W. But all was good, I made it up with dessert.
That was followed by a small blog makeover and a semi lemon tart disaster that started a long list of terrible meals that ensued. A quick visit to a new organic store in the nearby shopping centre saw me leaving with some lovely spices to experiment with whilst the boy goes off on another skiing escapade.
We had an earlish spring this year, everything in the front and backyard bloomed in late August. I woke up early one Sunday morning and went out to the yard with my little Nikon and snapped to my little hearts content. (blistfully unaware that my housemate snuck a little giant guess in the house the night before LOL)
Breakfast out in trendy Elwood on a nice sunny sunday rounded up the posts for August.
September
Come September, Little Bethany turned a big '1' year old and we had a big bash with loads of yummy food from Great Gran's cherry slices, Aunty Rachel little cupcakes (and cupcake birthday cake) and a fruit tart (from me) and lots of cool pressies.
September was the month I went pistachio "nuts" with pistachio cookies and pistachio cupcakes galore and I came out of my little shell, went all out and participated in 4 food blogging events! Blogging by Mail 2, Hey Hey it's Donna Day 5, Blog Party 14 and Sugar High Friday 23.
Must've been the nuts. ;)
Towards the end of September we took a short weekend trip to Sydney and friend Ali came back from London for her brother's wedding. With the holiday and her return, that last week of september saw us doing so much together that I didn't get around to posting them until october came around.
October
Started off october with another entry to HHDD and a lovely package from Clivia of Clivia's Cuisine via BBM2. I got a taste of Sweden in the lingonberry and cloudberry jams and swedish candy that she sent me as well as a very informative book on stockholm and some dala horse sourviettes.
October was also the month of the impending wedding of my dear friend Mel. With loads of wedding related activities such as hen's weekend at Ocean Grove and Kitchen Tea, I only managed to sneak in a bit of cooking at the Hen's weekend, a bit of petit fours for SHF24 and a cake for my mum's birthday before the wedding. (plus a gastro bug a week before the wedding)
November
Mel's wedding was the most perfect wedding day I have ever experienced/attended. With that well and truly over and Mel lapping up the sun in Vanuatu, I finally found the time for a bit of rest before the crazy end of the year christmas rush began at work. I spent some time playing with chocolate and came up with some Matcha truffles for SHF25, cooked up a farewell dinner at my rental place (I left the rent paying world and moved into the free-loader world) and experienced another oven semi-disaster.
After that, being the good girl friend that I am *wink*, I whipped up some raspberry semi-freddo and a black forest cheesecake for Alv's birthday.
I also managed to make a blueberry vanilla cake with cream cheese frosting that is still parked in my draft folder. It was a little tea cake that I whipped up for a lunch at friend Bec's house before we scooted off to watch her partner kick some butt at inline hockey.
December
Christmas rush at work began, and I barely had time to do any christmas baking until the last weekend before work finished. Cooked up a christmas lunch for the family-to-be (when the time comes) and baked some pistachio cookies that was going in as part of my christmas gift package this year.
Also whipped up some Lime and Honey chocolate truffles that weekend and when I finished work on Dec 20, whipped up some almond bread, chocolate pistachio biscottis and tried my hand at making pistachio brittles.
Alv's mum jetted off to Singapore and left us to fend for ourselves again on christmas day. Fend for ourselves we did as a few our friends joined us for christmas dinner and the rest all rocked up for dessert.
December also saw Menu for Hope 3 raising an amazing US$60,000 in donations for the UN World Food Program.
Last but not least, who can forget New Year's Eve? LOL It's a quiet one this year, a small bbq and the companionship of a Nintendo Wii was how we spent ours.
Hope yours was more exciting than that :)
Happy New Year!
May 2007 be a year full of promises, good fortunes and good food for all of us!
Ed: hmm.. just realised I messed up the photos a bit. November and December related ones especially.
6 comments:
That's a lot of deliciousness for one year! Can't wait to see what you have in store in 2007 :)
Hi Ellie,
Hopefully get around to trying out some of the recipes from Nigella's Domestic Goddess book.
I like this summary! Fun to reflect on the year this way
happy new year!
Hi Bea,
Thanks. I thought it would be a good idea to summarise the year so that I could see how I went this year. :)
Where on earth did you manage to get Swedish food in Australia?
Hi Rosanna,
The swedish food on the post were from a fellow blogger in Sweden.
I believe Ikea in Australia sells some swedish favourites in the food section. I know I've purchased some cookies and sauces from there. So you could try there :)
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