First try at Bento

I have an online friend, Obsi, who makes the most amazing Bento meals and blogs about it.  After seeing her creations for several months we decided to have a try.  The pictures are pretty bad, the only camera we could find was the video camera and stills on it aren’t that great.  So apologies for the fuzzies.

This is the bottom layer of Dian’s meal.  Nutella sandwiches cut into hearts, cherry tomatoes (amazingly still growing in this cold weather), and a bear shaped egg.  Biggest lesson here – the extra large eggs that I use for cake making are NOT good for bento, they’re way too big.

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Top layer for Dian.  Snow Peas, mushroom, carrot, broccoli florets, california rolls with a tiny bottle of soy sauce.

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Bottom layer of my dinner – california rolls.

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Top layer of mine – a fish and a star moulded eggs (two eggs is way too much), carrot, mushrooms, broccoli florets and snow pea salad, and a bottle of soy sauce.

Lavender and Lemon Cake

I’m not dead!  Really!  I’ve just been MIA for the last six months.  I’m back in the land of the living again, so this blog should liven up a bit.  And over time I’ll post about what’s been happening up to now.

I’m on a bit of a baking kick at the moment.  I’ve always enjoyed cooking, but I’m usually cooking savoury food, main meals etc.  Except for my Creme Caramel that I’m still working on getting perfect (it’s a lot of fun trying!), I don’t make a lot of desserts.

Then I found SWEETAPOLITA.  Rosie has very quickly become my object of hero worship.  Not only are her cakes divine to look at, the recipes work (you’d be surprised how many online don’t), and she’s amazingly talented, plus she responds to comments on her posts!  Yes, it’s a bit of a ‘thing’ with me – if I take the time to comment or ask questions, I’d really like the blogger to respond.  That’s the whole point of comments, to have a two way conversation.  So I’m totally star struck at her fantabulousness!

Last week one of the students in the other Auslan class (Australian Sign Language) brought in a huge bag of lemons from her tree.  I took several and joked that I’d have to make a Lemon Meringue Pie with them and bring it to class.  I’ve never made a Lemon Meringue Pie in my life before, although I do love eating them.

Instead of the pie, I made Rosie’s Lavender and Lemon Cake and took that into school to share with both classes.  It’s a big cake, 20cm/8″ around and about 15cm/6″ high.  And we ate well over three quarters of it!  Note that the photo’s are taken after the cake had been in the car, and on my daughter’s ipod as I forgot my camera.  Actually, this pic was taken ON the car….

The layers didn’t appreciate the drive too much, there was a bit too much lemon curd in between each layer and they moved slightly during traveling.

But they still tasted great!

And now there’s none left, although I’m a total convert to culinary lavender.   After tasting this cake I went and bought my own culinary lavender plant (Lavender Angustifolia) as buying it dried is pretty exxy.  So hubby and the kiddo are going to be having some interesting dishes with lavender flavouring in the future.  :-)

Rainbow Rice Salad

We had lunch at my brother’s place on Monday and he – as usual – served us an amazing meal.  One of the dishes was a rice and bean salad that he’d adapted from another recipe.  Dian tried it just to be polite and loved it.  So we asked what was in it and made it when we got home.  It didn’t really have a name so we titled it “Rainbow Rice Salad” as it’s so pretty.

Be warned, it makes a LOT of salad!

Click the link to download:

Rainbow Rice Salad

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More Bread

This is a version of sourdough bread.  It’s from the book  Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking but there’s the basic recipe online at http://www.motherearthnews.com/print-article.aspx?id=142688 I’ve ordered the book, and in the meantime I made the basic recipe.

I made it up about four days ago and it’s been sitting in the fridge ever since.  This afternoon I followed the instructions and made the basic white loaf.  It’s delicious.  Probably one of the best breads I’ve ever made.  I’ll definately be making this one again!  The loaf is probably about six inches across, so it’s only a small loaf.  Big enough though, as we’re not huge bread eaters.  Yum!

bread bread_cut