Hot Cross Buns!!

I have been waiting to buy hot cross buns - somehow it does not feel right to me to be eating them in January when Easter is in April! This morning I decided that it was close enough to Easter for me to be start eating them! I decided to take a different bus to work this morning and wandered down to my local Brumby's on Angelo Street.  Two rolls for lunch and a packet of hot cross buns later I was on my way to the office.

I had my first bun this morning when I got in.  How to describe the texture! So different from what I remember hot cross buns to be. Maybe because I bought them so fresh, who knows? The sultanas pop in your mouth, the crust is slightly crunchy and I really enjoyed eating them and not just for the taste!

It is 10.30am and already I have eaten three. I am feeling slightly gross from the large amount of sugar that I have ingested but I have enjoyed every mouthful.

Dessert: Inspiration

C and I went to a wedding down in Dunsborough this weekend at the Clairault winery. There was a great variety of entree canapes - including raw oysters! - and very elegant cheese platters.

Dessert was also canape style, and you can see the (poorly structured) selection on our plate. The selection consisted of:
- Autumn Berry & Cointreau Cheesecake,
- Tartlet of Lemon Curd + Strawberry, and
- Belgian Chocolate Tartlet.

C and I sampled all on offer, and went back for more Chocolate Tartlets. Unfortunately they had been the most popular and I had to settle for another Lemon Curd Tartlet! I am now inspired to try and find a similar filling, the chocolate was warm and quite liquid so we thought that they were most likely filled just before serving.

I did not remember to photograph the cheese platter, but I shall try to use the mix for future inspiration. There was a bowl each of dried muscatel grapes, pear slices and sourdough bread. There were three cheeses - a brie (or camembert, my palate is not refined enough to tell the difference!), a goat's milk feta and a gruyere.

Bliss!

Simple and scrummy dessert idea!

Fresh chocolate and churros. In a mug. Yum!

Image via Polkadot bride

Gelato!

I was terribly disappointed last year to hear that the iconic Western Australian ice cream Peters had been sold to Nestle. They shut down some of our favourite treats, including the Peters Trumpet (to make way for the inferior Nestle Peters Drumstick, soggy eh!) and CHOC WEDGE!! and shifted production of the Connoisseur range to the Eastern States. There went my local ice cream treat!


We do not eat ice cream that often, so it was nice to be able to buy a locally made, reasonable quality product.

I have since switched my take home allegience to il gelato. They have many different flavours of gelati and sorbets.

Gelato is a wonderful product, generally made from milk rather than cream (hence ice cream) and has a nice and smooth texture. If you ever go to Italy you have to experience real gelati. Yum!

It is $13.95 for a 1L tub of il gelato at my local corner store Scutti's. It is not a cheap treat! That is about twice what we were paying for a litre of Connoisseur (before it went Nestle). Our last tub was Ferrero flavoured, and now we are sampling Vanilla bean.

Images from here and here

Banananas

As I took the last banana out of the packet, I was struck today by the irony of purchasing organic bananas from Woolworths and being forced to take their packaging!

I am not sure what Woolworths' policy is on sustainable packaging, so even giving them the benefit of the doubt it still seems unnecessary to have the styrofoam as well as plastic packaging.

There is a lot to be said for being able to pick them out, and have the right to refuse packaging at all!

The other thing that makes the organic bananas that we bought less desirable is that they were packed in New South Wales, indicating that they were grown over east. In general I buy Carnarvon bananas to keep the food miles low and to buy local!

A simple summer lunch

I felt like a simple lunch today. It is warm outside - it made it to 38.3⁰C! So, rice and lentils. I was also inspired by this article on Landline on the ABC speaking about the lentil industry in Australia.

1/2 rasher bacon, diced
1/3 cup green lentils
2 teaspoons red wine
2/3 cup water
1/3 cup frozen peas

In a small saucepan, heat a splash of olive oil. Add bacon and cook. Add lentils, stir, and add red wine.

Add water and stir to mix. Place lid on saucepan, turn flame low and simmer. Let it simmer for around 10-15 minutes, or until the liquid is mostly absorbed.

Add frozen peas, leave lid on and let the pease cook for a minute or two.

Serve with basmati rice.

Notes
- quantities are approximate, I did not measure anything!
- I have enough left over for lunch tomorrow!
- I usually use chorizo for flavour, however there was bacon in the fridge just asking to be used.

The Windsor Hotel

I was a busy girl yesterday, running in the morning, then to morning tea , and finally catching up with some of the hockey girls at The Windsor Hotel in South Perth.

I really like the Windsor, it is a nice and funky pub, the food is generally good and it has a fairly relaxed atmosphere. It has been ages since I went to a Sunday Session, but the Labour Day long weekend in March seems the perfect weekend to enjoy it.

We started by chilling outside on the Mends Street side of the main bar. We sampled a couple of their pizzas as we were all started to get peckish. Eventually the sun forced us inside and we continued there until we went to the Cafe for dinner.

The Windsor has some great bar snacks on offer and the menu in their cafe is even better! I had pork belly and scallops on a green salad and soba noodle mix. Yum!

Image from The Windsor Hotel