Alice over at Nom Nom Cat has posted up the round-up for Our Growing Edge October. View it here to see what foodies have been pushing themselves with last month. This month’s event will be hosted by Becky from My Utensil Crock. If you have a blog and think you might be trying eating or cooking something new this month, click below to join.
This post is part of Our Growing Edge, a monthly blogging event to encourage us to try new food related things. Alice from Nom Nom Cat is the host for month’s event. If you have a blog and have cooked, eaten or experienced a new food this month, come and join this event. We have been shopping smarter and started a new routine that will hopefully stick. Supermarket: once a month Produce delivery: twice a month Asian grocer: twice a month Free range butcher: once or twice a month Specialty food shop: once a month This results in a shopping trip once a week but the best quality items for the best prices. Westmere Butchery I’ve been meaning to visit Westmere Butchery for ever. Highly recommended by my meat eating friends, they specialise in free range, free farmed and organic meats and their prices are reasonable. They also make award winning sausages on premises. Years ago, a friend brought beef and scallop sausages to a BBQ. That sausage made quite an impression on me apparently. Fat scallops dotted throughout …
Feast your eyes on the goodies over on Sweets and Brains. Thank you to our host Marnelli and to all those that joined Our Growing Edge. The dishes cooked and eaten look mouthwatering. A great range of baked goods, exotic recipes from blogger’s own cuisines, tasty healthy options and decadence. I look upon the round up like a delicious pot luck extravaganza.Can you imagine tasting all those in one sitting? A a girl can dream… Comfort foods and go-to recipes are fine, we all have them. Expanding your repertoire to extend to a larger variety of dishes, go-to recipes and even special occasion recipes are interesting and fun. There is something lovely about food cooked by foodies that push out of their own comfort zones. These dishes have all been coveted and marked worth attempting and failing for. Trying something new can be a bit scary but if you try new things every month, it becomes a normal part of your life. Failure is bound to happen but learning how to salvage something is a great skill …
This post is part of Our Growing Edge, a monthly blogging event to encourage us to try new food related things. Marnelli from Sweets & Brains is the host for month’s event. If you have a blog and have cooked, eaten or experienced a new food this month, come and join this event. The science of cooking both frightens and fascinated me. I cook by taste, touch and feel. A bit of this, a bit of that and dinner magically appears. When science is involved, I have to throw intuition out the window and follow a recipe. It doesn’t sit well with me. I’ve failed and conquered hollandaise sauce and decided to tackle item number 70 on my foodie bucket list: make aioli. Both hollandaise and aioli are emulsions which means they are a mixture of two or more liquids that normally do not mix. Egg yolk and a good beating quickly fixes this. Some vigorous whisking is required for this recipe and requires your full attention for a short time. You could make use of a spare …
A big thank you to Marija from Palachinka for her beautiful round up of Our Growing Edge August. What a delicious collection of new food adventures we had last month! It looks like the pages of an amazing foodie magazine. The calibre of entries this month was top notch! Check out Marija’s round up over here on Palachinka and if you also have a food blog, please join us in September’s edition. I’m still looking for a host for December and future editions so comment or email me if you are interested. Have a great (and delicious) weekend!
I’ve met a some friendly, slightly unhinged goats in my life. I have a fondness and respect for them. Pictured above is a friendly nannie goat and I at a friend’s family farm. Good times. But I have always been terrified of goats cheese. It is too pungent for my taste and if you are Chinese, you may know the word “Soh”. “Soh” refers to a despised goat/sheep smell, not exactly endearing. A couple of years ago, I realised that goats cheese was tolerable as an ingredient. Like any pungent food, like anchovies, fish sauce, even garlic, on their own, they can be overwhelming – but paired with other, gentler foods, they can be wonderful. I mean, I love using fish sauce but I wouldn’t knock back a shot of Golden Boy’s smelly brew. Always looking to expand my growing edge, to broaden my stinky horizons, I decided to take the beaded lady by the horns and cook something with goats cheese for the first time. No stock risotto I’ve opened Pandora’s box and it …
I go weak in the knees for smoked salmon risotto. If it’s on the menu at a restaurant, it is what I’m going to order. Still, I always did feel a little naive paying $20 for a rice dish. After I ordered some Aoraki Hot Smoked Salmon from Naturally Organic, I figured it was finally time to attempt risotto. I used the stainless steel sauté pan that Mum gave me and it was perfect for the job. You need something with decent sides but also plenty room for the rice to absorb liquid in. While it might be possible to use a skillet, you would have to be extra careful while stirring. In hindsight, I could have added a little more stock at the end. While the rice was cooked, it absorbed even more liquid on standing. Some sources say to stop just before the rice is cooked. Once upon a time, you could only get cold smoked salmon but now you can find both in equal abundance. I prefer hot smoked salmon but I …
Every foodie enjoys a good foodie bucket list. We read them like a true/false quiz. Bucket lists really light my fire and several foodie bucket list items were tackled this month right here on Our Growing Edge. We cooked and ate home made pastas, master level baking, new vegetables, social occasions and experiments. This month’s challenge was largely dominated by New Zealanders and we also had bloggers from Singapore, Australia, Canada and the US. Danielle from Keeping Up With The Holsbys conquered one of her culinary nemesis: gnocchi. She even went a step further and made it gluten free! Rants, Raves and Rations made homemade pasta with lovely step by step photos and report to prove it. Jessie from Purple House Cafe made a stunning raspberry white chocolate croquembouche to tick off her bucket list. Jess is Canadian and did a stint here in New Zealand where she learned to pour a real coffee. Over in New York, ex-pat Hayley from Condiments On A City Life whipped up a casual soufflé. Jess from Jessness Required …
This post is part of Our Growing Edge, a monthly blogging event to encourage us to try new food related things. I am the host for this month’s event. If you have a blog and have tried something new with food this month, come and join this event. Growing vegetables gives me a sense of child-like wonder. I get excited about each new advancement and I’m eager to visit the bottom of the garden every other day to view the changes. I’m proud of every little thing and show off each new thing to The Koala and to Tofu the bunny (one is semi-impressed, the other just wants to devour everything). I’ve never tended to a vegetable garden before but I’m sure glad for all the resources available these days. According to numerous websites, radishes take 4 to 6 weeks from seed to harvest. So every other week for the from 5 weeks, I would pull up a finely prickled plant to check if the radishes were ready. They weren’t. They weren’t bulbing and there …
I’m delighted to have guest blogger Bridget Sandorford from CulinarySchools.org write about her own foodie bucket list. An adventurous, well traveled foodie, Bridget is a freelance food and culinary writer and has been researching sommelier training. In her spare time, she enjoys biking, painting and working on her first cookbook. Foods you need to add to your bucket list to try before you die Life is boring when you eat the same foods day in and day out. Too many salads are not good for the soul. You need variety in your life and on your plate! Not only will branching out and trying new foods help you to find new favorites, but it will also give you great stories along the way (even – and maybe especially if – you try out foods that you hate). My husband and I make it a point to try new foods to add fun, excitement and variety to our lives. Even when we find foods that make us turn our noses up in disgust, we’re glad we tried them – and we …
Hope you had a lovely Easter. Our Easter was spent catching up with friends and feasting of epic proportions. We drank a lot. We ate a lot. There were cooked breakfasts, hot cross buns, chocolate, pizza, ice cream, burgers, fish and chips, BBQ…and ended a 4 day weekend with a roast pork and crackling. I could fast for a week on the residual calories. I woke up this morning and squeezed on my skinny jeans to punish myself. Yes they fit, but boy, are they skinny. It’s April already and I’d like to thank Danielle from Keeping Up With The Holsbys for curating and hosting Our Growing Edge last month. Read the amazing highlights over on her blog. She has excellent taste and her blog is totes amaze. April’s event is now up and running so tick off your foodie bucket list or try something new this month. Come and join this link up! I am hosting April and I’m looking forward to seeing some cool new foodie experiences. More info on the event can be …
“A year from now, you will wish you had started today.” – Karen Lamb For those that have been following this blog for a while, you will know about my seasonal to do lists. Since winter of 2011, every season I have written a to do list of about 10 foodie challenges to push my cooking skills and eating experiences. I am leaps and bounds ahead where I was before I started. I feel confident enough to think “Ok, I can do this” as long as I pay a healthy respect to recipes and the advice I glean from those more experienced than I. It’s been an amazing ride. There’s immense smugness satisfaction in telling people that I’ve made bacon or ice cream or cheese or tomato sauce or a pavlova. I guess gloating rights is part of the accomplishment. If you own a sweet car, you want to show it off right? (That’s a genuine question, I’ve never owned a car) Many of the things that went into my lists were foods that I …
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