Kitchen Catch up.

It's no secret that I enjoy being in the kitchen almost as much as I enjoy my needlework. And on occasion I show things off here on my blog. Like my friend Janice, I love to try out new things and experiment with recipes. Unlike Janice, I forget to take photos and blog about food more often.  Moving countries has opened up a whole new avenue of cooking for me as I have discovered new chefs and food authors.  One, or rather two of those authors are Simon and Dame Alison Holst. (Mother and son)  I had already purchased one of Alison's books while we were here on holiday in 2009, but since my immigration, my collection of her books has grown. Recently we have visited this one a few times. In fact last nights dinner was the cover picture.

Sweet and sour chicken, which I served on noodles rather than rice. 

I enjoy doing stir fry style dishes as the food is always fresh and Tony joins me in the kitchen. 

He likes to take charge of the wok. 

Another recipe we recently tried was spiced Indian mince, which came out a lot like biriyani. 

No pictures of our creations, sorry, we ate it!

As you can see from the markers, there are one or two more recipes we want to try soon.

I have a whole three tier bookshelf of recipe books, below you can see less than half of it. That lovely collection which forms the image of macarons is rather special. It was released as a weekly or fortnightly thing while mum was ill. We spied book three I think on the shelf and grabbed a copy. We were both hooked, so I subscribed and made sure to get the back issues.

Sadly we didn't have time to make many of the recipes and my lovely mum passed before the collection was  even halfway complete. The last issue was delivered to the house just days before I left the island for new Zealand. I haven't made many of the recipes in those books, but recently that has changed. Last weeks chocolate and walnut brownie was out of book three.

And so is this weeks gingerbread brownie. I had to say, I did much better this time. It turned out as a very deep, sticky, gooey brownie. Just like brownies are supposed to be.

I'm not a huge fan of ginger, but had to give it a go for Tony.

As well as crystallised ginger being sprinkled all over the top the batter had lots of spices added including chilli!

The bite I stole from Tony was very, very good and not too gingery. 

I might be tempted to try a half a slice!

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It's not all been about the kitchen though. 

I've been busy with I stitch. Here is Octobers block.

I'm not sure what happened while I was preparing the blocks for stitching, but my circle in the garden was not very circular! And it had some extra lines. I could have just pulled it out and drawn another block but decided instead to challenge myself to hide my mess. Which I believe I did.

I had a look around on pinterest and found lots of lovely ideas there, but not the right one. So I pulled out some of my stitchy books and eventually came across whipped chain stitch. Hmm, I didn't take a close up photo to show you but I did a green chain stitch and whipped it with a variegated pink/peach thread. I think it looks a little like flowers growing on a vine or bush. 

And here you have September and October sewn together and awaiting November.

I'm all caught up with I stitch and with my Christmas Ornaments, yesterday saw me start on Octobers. Once that is complete I'll need to find something to keep my hands busy in the evenings while I sit in my comfy chair. I'm sure there is plenty I could do, it's just making that decision. 

You all know how that goes!

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We've had some ups and downs in temperatures over the last few days going from as high as 24 C to as low as 8 C. I was cool while sewing yesterday and pulled a blanket over my legs. Never one to turn down the opportunity to snuggle on a blanket Belle joined me.

I got such awful looks when I had to move for any reason. LOL

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I'm not feeling 100% so having a few days off work this week, maybe a couple more stitching days will help to readjust the balance.