Lady Lunchalot

Forgive me, dear readers. I haven’t exactly been writing prolifically lately. The main reason is that I haven’t exactly been eating prolifically, because I’ve been busy baking Something Very Special. (Yes, that’s with capital letters.)

You see, for the past twelve weeks… we’ve had a bun in the oven!

In February O and I will meet Baby Lunchalot!

So I’ve spent the past couple of months feeling very green indeed, and culinary exploration hasn’t exactly been high on the priority list. In fact, I haven’t been able to look at a piece of red meat without feeling my stomach churn in quite a while, and I seem to have developed a strange penchant for chocolate milk and Bega Tasty cheese slices.

So please excuse my recent silence. Writing about food isn’t exactly a great treatment for morning sickness - which, I have to say, is the biggest misnomer in the English language. Just ask anyone who’s ever been up the duff. Trust me, it lasts all day.

Food cravings are a strange thing for a food lover like me. For example, one week I became obsessed with oranges, and went straight to the market, bought six navel oranges and had scoffed three within minutes of returning home. The other day I couldn’t stop thinking about the vegetarian fake meat burger patties I used to eat during the vegetarian phase in my early teens (yes, believe it or not dear readers, this die-hard carnivore was once a vegetarian). I hadn’t thought of those burgers in over 15 years, and the first bite was an almost orgasmic experience! I had been terrified they didn’t make them anymore or that I wouldn’t remember the brand, but there they were on the supermarket freezer shelf - what a relief. There’s nothing quite like satisfying a craving when you’re pregnant.

Food aversions and sensitivity to smell are the other strange things. Red meat has become nothing short of repulsive. And the smell of meat, whether it’s in the fridge or on the grill, is enough to send me running to the loo. When I walk into my supermarket I can immediately smell the meat section lining the back wall of the building. O and I recently bought a beautiful new fridge, and every time I open the door I am hit in the face by that plastic new fridge smell, which puts me off whatever I was just about to eat. I even rubbed vanilla essence on the door seals to try to cover it, but it only worked for a day or so before the plasticky smell fought back.

So while I don’t know what weird food topics I will be writing about until Baby Lunchalot makes his/her debut into the world, I can promise to keep blogging throughout the pregnancy. I’m a firm believer that you are what you eat, and in this case, this little bubba will be a product of what I eat. Does that mean I will be giving birth to a vegetarian cheese lover?

I also wanted to take this opportunity to thank the love of my life and Daddy-to-be, my wonderful O, for his patience over the past few months. I’ve been a bit hard to deal with at times, and he’s been very patient with me. Not to mention putting up with night after night of macaroni cheese. And giving me his Singapore noodles when I couldn’t eat my Char Kway Teow. And for feeding the cat because the smell of Whiskas made me gag. And for barely mentioning a distinct lack of his favourite burritos on the dinner table. And for not complaining about a lamb shankless winter.

Thank you beautiful man. You make me very, very happy. I love you madly. And I promise I won’t eat any more fresh pineapple until February.

I was recently talking to marketing guru Stu, who told me some disturbing news about supermarket branded products, such as the You’ll Love Coles range.

Stu explained what had happened in the large UK supermarkets over the past few years when the big supermarket chains over there started initiating their own house brands at low prices.

It seems that the large supermarkets can offer these products at a very low price for a year or so, which is long enough to put major pressure on smaller labels and close many of them down. I mean, let’s face it, when the average mum on a budget is faced with a bag of frozen house branded peas at 99 cents, or Farmer Joe’s frozen peas at $2.50, she’s going to choose the house brand. Farmer Joe can’t stand the loss of business for very long, and before you know it his peas have disappeared from the shelves, along with a few other brands.

Next, we see the price of house branded peas creep up from 99 cents to $1.50, then to $2.00. Before we know it, the supermarket brand has a monopoly on the peas you can buy, and can charge a higher price for them. Farmer Joe’s brand isn’t around anymore, so we can’t turn back to them. There’s really no choice other than to buy the supermarket brand and pay the price the supermarket asks.

So much for competition.

When you multiply this across all the products you buy in your weekly grocery shop, it’s a bit scary. House branded products are everywhere - laundry detergent, honey, butter, breakfast cereal. You’ll Love Coles tinned tomatoes are made in Italy. What about all our Australian tomato farmers who produce a great product and supply jobs here?

It’s important to think about factors other than just price when you’re in the supermarket, because the food you buy today can impact on the food you will be able to buy tomorrow. I know this is hard for some people who are stretching the grocery budget as it is, but I see it as safeguarding my rights as a consumer and a food lover.

Stu’s little lesson really opened my eyes as to how our everyday purchasing choices have an impact on a whole economy. So next time you’re in the supermarket, I urge you to think about whether saving a few cents now is worth having no choice but to shop in a monopolised grocery market later on.

Stu and I aren’t the only ones talking about this. You can read more about it in a Sydney Morning Herald article, Choices fade as Coles Stacks Shelves.
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Years ago, I used to skip breakfast every morning. I don’t know why I did - not organised enough I guess. I stopped as soon as I realised that I was doing myself out of 30 per cent of the meals I was entitled to eat in my lifetime. There’s no way I’m going to pass on a legitimate excuse for a meal!

I guess that’s the problem with breakfast. Most people think it’s impossible to whip up something nutritious and tasty while also juggling a hairdryer, a pack of screaming children and a hot iron. I mean, I didn’t even have the screaming kids, and the only type of iron I ever encounter is the kind found in a spinach pie or a good slab of wagyu beef, and I still found it a challenge.

That was, until I discovered porridge.

Well, I guess I re-discovered it. My first foray into the wonderful world of porridge was led by my culinarily-challenged dad, who had an uncanny knack of making porridge closely resemble a bowl of two-week old wallpaper paste.

But I redicovered porridge through O, who loves a steaming hot bowl of porridge first thing in the morning.

Like all the best things in life, porridge is a dish best cooked slowly with lots of the bad things in life. Like full cream milk. And lashings of cream, like in an Enid Blyton story. However in the interests of my waistline, and to save on a few precious moments in the morning, I usually make mine with low fat milk and nuke it in the microwave for a few minutes.

Sacrilegious, I know.

The most important thing about cooking porridge is to get the oat/milk ratio right. Too much milk and the porridge is too runny and thin (like the porridge in the photo - I overdid it with the milk). Too little and it gets gluggy and, well, gross - like the way my dad used to make it. The best porridge consistency is enough milk to make it soft and creamy, with lots of comforting porridgey curds.

As for flavouring the porridge, nothing beats a sprinkle of cinnamon, a hint of nutmeg, a dusting of brown sugar and a banana. Unless of course it’s real Canadian maple syrup, as supplied by the lovely K & T.

I can understand why Goldilocks was willing to take on three bears to get a bowl of the good stuff.

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Vaguely relevant aside:

Even though I am largely politically ambivalent, for some reason I have always thought there was a striking resemblance between Alexander Downer (Australia’s Foreigh Minister) and a bowl of porridge with two raisins floating on top. What do you think?

Just quietly, I’m quite excited.

I went out into my backyard to get a lemon (for a well deserved post-house-cleaning glass of Frangelico) and I spotted something I’ve been wanting to see for aaaages.

A flower on my passionfruit vine!

It’s been a long time coming. I planted this vine about 18 months ago and have seen two summers come and go without any flowers, which of course, means no fruit. Only months after planting it, the vine grew and grew like something from The Day of the Triffids - from the feeble baby stalk I once planted it now sprawls all over our back fence like a lazy teenager with an Xbox. Does this mean my little Nelly Kelly vine has finally hit puberty?

In other exciting news (stay with me here) today I discovered that the crabapple tree in my front yard is not a crabapple tree at all. The apples are actually quite delicious if they are left to ripen properly on the tree. You see, with all my extensive horticultural knowledge, I had been picking the apples when they were still green (thinking they were green apples) and they tasted terrible, so I thought they must be crabapples.

Genius, I know. But they never seemed to survive the birds or the wind to stay on the tree long enough to ripen!

Today, however, I spotted a bullheaded little apple that just wouldn’t say die. A lone cheery splash of colour high up in the branches! I managed to knock it down with a broom and cut off a piece. Tasted just like an apple should!

I guess I should have realised that if the birds were eating the fruit, they must be on to a good thing.

Does anyone know how I’d find out what kind of apple tree it is?

I admit, I’m a bit of a kitchen nazi, and definitely prefer to cook alone. So when I boot O out of the kitchen, he usually takes himself off to the shed.

If you’d like to check out what O gets up to while I am cooking, check out O’s new blog. He’d love to hear from you, so remember to say hello and leave a comment!

Recently Kathryn and Tim dropped around to our place bringing with them one of my favourite things.

A craving for cheeseburgers!

Tim is a Canadian of the mais oui variety, and his hankering for cheeseburgers was on a truly North American scale.

So our two friends arrived on our doorstep bearing gifts of mince meat, hamburger buns, barbecue sauce and of course…. cheeeeeeese.

Tim made the gargantuan-patties and O manned the barbecue. I didn’t do much other than set the table, which was fine by me. It’s so nice to be cooked for in your own home!

The cheeseburgers really hit the spot, particularly when drowned with that delicious smoky barbecue sauce that seems next to impossible to find in Australia. I wolfed mine down in an embarrassingly short amount of time, which made me feel a little like Popeye’s friend, Wimpy.

Thanks Kathryn and Tim!

I’ve been under the weather lately and have had no appetite at all for the past ten days.

So unfortunately I have no interesting gastronomic morsels to report, except to thank the lovely Clarkasoris for the delicious chicken soup. It was the ultimate comfort food.

Hopefully my appetite will have resurfaced by the weekend.

O and I are in the process of renovating our house, and this includes a whole new kitchen and living area. I’ve been working on the kitchen design in my head for ages, but it’s getting close to crunch time and we need to pick a kitchen and lock down a plan.

Some things I’ve included in the design are:

• A hole in the kitchen bench with a chute to a small bin underneath so I can collect kitchen scraps for the compost bin outside.
• A big hanging pot rack over the bench.
• A portion of the benchtop in stone for rolling pastry.
• An appliance cupboard for the glorious Kitchen Aid mixer.
• One of those beautiful big enamel French provincial trough sinks.
• Drawers for pots and pans, instead of cupboards.
• A walk in pantry. (This should be number 1 on the list. I’ve always wanted one of these).
• Plate racks for storing platters.

So I thought I’d ask all the food lovers out there what you like most about your kitchen?

A friend recently emailed me a really interesting site that appeals to both the food geek and the web geek in me.

Group Recipes enables you to do the usual posting, sharing and rating recipes. But it also has some really cool stuff, like Roger the Recipe Robot, a taste algorithm calculator that predicts whether you will like a particular recipe, or whether you have compatible food tastes to another member. You can also explore recipes by taste, mood, photo, ingredients, uniqueness, rating, and your compatibility according to Roger.

To celebrate their launch they’re running a competition to win a new kitchen. I don’t know anyone who loves food who wouldn’t want to win that, so you can sign up to Group Recipes and enter for yourself (you’ll also be helping me get a few more entries!). Competition aside, it looks like quite an interesting site and definitely worth checking out.

Did you know that the humble ‘nana is the fourth most popular crop in the world, after rice, wheat and maize? That’s a whole lot of banana skins to slip on…
Feel like going bananas? Celebrate Banana Sunday at Chez Lunchalot on Sunday 11 February.