Lets see what we can mix up this year!

A new year, new ideas and more cooking and travel.  I was thinking the other day about what I would like to write about this year and a recipe popped up on my facebook page with a picture and recipe for a baked custard!  Well that got me thinking about all the food we ate back from the 60’s to now and how some of them have gone out of fashion even though they taste so nice!  My thoughts…  Let’s look back at some of the recipes I remember from my childhood and maybe try to recreate them.

As I did part of my growing up in the US and part in Australia there are ingredients that differ so I may need to change things up a bit to get the right result.  So it is off to the kitchen I go to do some recipe testing and writing, which I know Wayne will love as he gets to taste it all!  Better make sure we get out and do lots of long bushwalks so we can keep the waistline in check!

Speaking of keeping the waistline in check, I have also been thinking about healthier eating.  We have always eaten fairly healthy meals but as we are human we do have our vices.  We want to be able to enjoy those vices as well as eat healthily.  And with all the new cookbooks and blogs about the new super foods and new healthy ingredients it shouldn’t be that hard.  Although I must say the prices you pay for some of these new foods seem exorbitant to me.  If they are good for us and we should be eating them why are they priced out of range for the normal household!?  Hmmm…  I will be checking these new cookbooks out and will let you know what I come up with.   I still believe we can achieve good health by eating a balanced diet (everything in moderation) and getting outside to enjoy the sunshine, fresh air and a good long walk!

Some of the new healthy and super food cookbooks I want to try out!

So today I’m thinking what sort of food from my childhood should I share.  Let me see, how about pork breakfast sausages, baked custard (of course), chocolate pudding pie, chocolate chip biscuits, Swiss steak, crazy cake, pound cake, pumpkin pie, beer bread, prawn cocktails, meatloaf, deviled eggs, pot roast, sweet and sour pork.  I could go on as there are so many more.  I will be looking through my old recipes and books and talking to family to see what we used to eat and see how I can update them.  Of course some things are just best left alone as they are already yummy!

So stay tuned as my first recipe for the year will be pork breakfast sausages.  My memories of these are that we always bought them pre-made in a package (not knowing what was in them) and cooked them up for breakfast with eggs.  They always tasted great but when you make them yourself adding herbs and spices to suit your taste they always taste so much better and are healthier to boot as you control what goes in to making them. Nothing artificial thank you!   I make them with fresh pork mince and lots of herbs and spices.  Now I am off to the kitchen to tweak the recipe so I can share it with you.  Breakfast for dinner tonight I say!

Herbs and spices…  So much flavour we can add to food naturally and so healthy for us. Even the critters love the herbs in our garden.  So much so that we have to cover them each night so the wallabies don’t eat them as they don’t mind a herb or two for dinner! When we arrived home from holidays our herbs had gone wild so I took to thinning them out and planting some new ones.  I have sage, oregano and thyme drying in the laundry room and now have 2 types of parsley, some coriander, basil, tarragon and of course still have oregano and thyme growing in our little herb plot.  You can’t go wrong with a few basic herbs growing in a garden, on a deck or balcony or even on a window sill.

Fresh herbs from the garden drying in the laundry room.

Also this year I want to share with you some more of my travels.  We recently spent 4 weeks in New Zealand and what a wonderful trip that was.  We jumped in a car and drove around without too much planning (although we did have some idea of places we wanted to see) and had a fantastic time.  That was until an earthquake hit and we had to head home early…  Lucky it was only a couple of days.  And it hasn’t scared us off as we plan to head back over there again to catch up on all the places we missed out on.  I think it may take us a few trips to fit it all in.

And as per normal we are always checking things out in our own back yard.  More walks, more trips around Tasmania as well as Melbourne and Adelaide.  We have a few things planned and I look forward to sharing all the places we visit and interesting things we find with you.

Have a wonderful 2017!

Just a teaser from our New Zealand trip!
Whangarei Falls