In My Kitchen - May 2020

How are you going, my IMK friends?  I'm feeling much better lately, I must say.  I'm slowly getting used to social isolation, and in fact, I may even miss many aspects of it when life goes back to normal.  No demands on my time, nowhere I have to be, nothing screaming for immediate attention.  Perhaps you feel the same?  I hope you're all keeping well, and getting into your Corona routine.

Let's get right into the May IMK.  Can you believe how fast the year is flying?  Nope, nor me:-)  I'll see what I can find for this post: since we've been nowhere and done nothing, it may be a wee bit grim.  (Kidding!)  I've been making and sharing food with the neighbours (our immediate neighbour is nearly 90), taking them muffins and cake and lasagne and chicken soup.  It helps me feel useful, and I love fattening them up.  Just like the wicked witch in Hansel and Gretel:-)  

We've also been doing driveway drinks on Sundays at 5pm.  Yep, we're allowed to have two guests, and of course stay 1.5 metres apart, so no sins committed.  Unlike the rugby players who went camping in a big group on the weekend, and were firing rifles without permits to boot.  What is wrong with these ball-kicking boofheads?  Anyway, let's cut to the IMK chase...

In My Kitchen:

corn muffins

I've done a lot of cooking and baking during COVID-19; I made corn muffins to use up some frozen corn.  They didn't do their puffing-up thing, so they were flat but toothsome.  'Toothsome' - what a wonderfully chewy word.

garlic heads and dried granules

I usually buy garlic from Patrice Newell's farm, but she didn't have a crop this summer, sadly.  So I found these online, and had them sent up from Victoria.  I really love the dried granules; so easy and convenient.

birthday cake

There was birthday cake for Mr P.  This is one of Nigella Lawson's recipes, which I've made often.  For some reason, the icing went thin and weird (I think I misread the recipe), so most of it slid off the cake, which ended up sitting in a puddle of chocolate.  Still good!

garlic cloves

Here's me breaking up the garlic heads into cloves, ready for the freezer.  Thankfully, there always seems to be a bag lurking in the back of the freezer drawers.  I just finished off my last bag from November 2018.  They were less pungent, but still fine.

there was cordial

I made lemon and lime cordial with fruit gifted by friends.  It turned a beautiful pink due to the wild hibiscus sugar that my cousin gave me for Christmas.  I might even try making my own sugar since you can buy wild hibiscus powder online ...

organic limes

And here are the limes from our friends' tree.  Gorgeous green globes full of juice and vitamin C.  

plain flour

You know how hard it has been to get flour?  Well, our mate Mel who runs a cooking school here in Brisbane, has had to cancel her classes during the crisis.  So she decided to set up shop selling flour and yeast and so on.  And she does classes via Zoom these days.  What a whacko world it has become, but interesting.  So I hotfooted it down to her cooking school, and bought some plain flour.  Ah, what a relief to have some in the pantry again ...

honey

I bought this from a local lady; her sister is a beekeeper who lives on the Sunshine Coast, an hour or so north from here.  She normally sells her honey up there to cafés and shops, but due to COVID-19, the need for honey had dried up.  So she had lots of spare honey to sell.  Luckily for us!

the mystery bucket

'What's this?', I hear you asking.  You know that infamous bottom drawer we all have in the kitchen, full of stuff ... like alfoil and baking paper.  Somehow I had ended up with eight rolls of various things lurking there.  I suddenly had a brainwave.  Why not buy a container, shove them all in it, and whack them into the pantry?  I love it!  Problem solved, and I now have a bit of room down there to shove other junk:-)

That's all for this month, folks.  Hoping to see you here.  You know the drill:  add your link as per the button below, or give me a yell via email (sherrym1au@gmail.com) so I can help you add your post.  Cheers till next month.  (Oh, and just a reminder for you Wordpress aficionados - Blogger doesn't have the pingback function so you need to let me know about your post, if it's other than via the Add a Link button.  I don't get notification from your post automatically.)

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