Granma's Ginger Biscuits

One of my favourite memories from childhood is coming home from school when it was cold and wet and my mother had been baking. As we came in out of the rain and dried off in front of the heater, the room was steamy from our wet clothes and other clothes drying on the airer and there would be the delicious aroma of warm, freshly baked biscuits.

It makes quite a sticky dough

This recipe is one my Granma passed on to my mother and is treasured all the more because of the memories it engenders of Granma. It is similar to gingerbread in many ways, soft, chewy, spicy biscuits, perfect to warm you in every way on a cold winter's day. Just be careful not to overcook them or they will quickly become hard - although 5 seconds in the microwave does wonders to soften them up, or you can dunk them in your cuppa!

GRANMA'S GINGER BISCUITS

Roll the dough into logs

Ingredients: (metric)

225g golden syrup or honey 

2 ½ cups plain flour

½ cup sugar

1 egg

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp ginger (I used 2tsp this time - it was quite spicy, but tasted great!)

1 tsp mixed spice

(I also added 1 tsp cinnamon)

Method:

Cut rounds about 1cm thick 

Place all ingredients in a bowl and mix thoroughly. You can start with a knife, but in the end, you just have to get your hands in and kneed it well. When it is completely mixed, roll portions into logs (not too long or they tend to squash down to nothing as you cut them). The logs are around 4 - 5 cm square. Using a well floured surface, slice off the biscuits at about 1cm intervals. Lay them on a tray lined with baking paper. Be sure they are well separated as they do grow substantially. 

Pop them in the (pre-heated) oven at cook for around 15 mins at 180° C, until just starting to change colour. As I said earlier, be careful not to overcook them as they will go rock hard!

Makes 30 - 35+ biscuits.

The finished product - especially delicious
when just out of the oven

Not another foodie blog number 1 - Roasted Sweet Potato Soup with the lot

My adventures in food preparation began when I was quite young. The first baking I remember doing was as a Brownie Guide, to get my cooking badge. I think it was hedgehog. I remember having to bash a plastic bag of biscuits with a rolling pin to make the crumbs – this was before the days of food processors.

As I continued this journey into my teens I think I nearly drove my mother mad with my need for constant reassurance that ‘this’ was close enough to half a cup or ‘that’ was a dessert spoon full. It took me a long time to relax with my cooking and realise that there is often a little lee-way with those measurements.

Back in the seventies, though, the average family wasn’t that daring with food. Most new recipes in our household came out of the CWA (Country Women’s Association) cookbook or from friends. For my family, a real shift came when my older brother did ‘Home Economics’ at high school - must have been a progressive school, as this was generally ‘girls only’ territory. He came home with a recipe for Spaghetti Bolognese. It was such a change from the bland stews, watery curries, lamb chops and roasts that were our standard fare. Not to mention that it was from another culture! (Moving out of home it was actually my signature dish - the only thing I really cooked - for some time, but that is another story.)

Fast forward a few decades. More recently, I have realised that I can actually trust my own instinct in cooking. While I might use another recipe as a basis, I find that often I can’t find one that uses exactly what I would like and so I have been experimenting more. This blog, therefore, is not just to share my creations, but also to record them so that I can remember what the heck I did next time I want to make that recipe!

Down here in the southern hemisphere, we have quite abruptly (or so it seems) entered into soup season - otherwise known as Winter! As it gets colder, I suddenly find myself desiring warming comfort food. What is better than soup to satisfy this craving?

I decided to make some soup a few days back for my husband - he had just arrived back from Indonesia (at some 30°C) to home, which was sitting at about 8 degrees. However, I really wasn't in the mood for my stock standard soups, so went on the hunt for something different. I had a couple of sweet potatoes, and the idea of sweet potato soup was quite appealing, so I started my search. Although a couple of recipes sounded ok and had a few nice ingredients, they all sounded a little bland given the sweetness of the sweet potato. (One recipe actually roasted the potato in maple syrup!)

Anyway, failing to find a recipe that combined all that I wanted, I decided to put them together and make my own. And even my daughter loved it, so I thought it must be ok! (Although she did ask, a little sarcastically, I may say, whether it was dinner or dessert - it was that sweet. However, she finished it up likety split, so can't have been too bad.)

So here it is (makes about 4 serves as a meal, unless you have someone like my hubby who will eat as many serves as you allow him!):

ROASTED SWEET POTATO SOUP WITH THE LOT

Ingredients:

2 medium size sweet potatoes

1 large carrot

1 clove garlic

1 onion

1 large red chilli

olive oil/cold pressed coconut oil

1-2 teaspoons of turmeric powder

chicken/vege stock powder

1 cup of coconut milk

coriander leaves

2-4 (shortcut) rashers bacon (depending how much you want!)

Greek yoghurt

How to:

Peel and cut up the sweet potatoes and carrot into chunks (the smaller they are, the quicker they'll cook - probably about 5cm chunks). Toss them and the peeled garlic in a little olive oil and place on a baking tray (I use baking paper to save on scrubbing!) in the oven at about 200° C for about 20-30 mins. They should be just starting to caramelise, but not burn and be nice and soft.

While they are cooking, chop up the onion and chilli and cook in a heavy based saucepan (at least 2-3 litres) with about 1 tablespoon of oil (I used coconut here) over medium heat until the onion is clear and just starting to caramelise. (They only need rough chopping as it will all be processed later)

When the veges are roasted, add the turmeric (I used about 1 1/2 teaspoons) to the onions and lightly fry until fragrant. (I usually turn the heat down with spices to make sure they don’t burn.) Then add the roast veges and toss through. Don't let it catch at this point - you don't want to destroy the turmeric flavour.

Add to this mix about 3 cups of hot water (depending how thick you like your soup - you can always add more later) and 1 cup of coconut milk. I use the Ayam brand coconut milk powder (1 sachet), in which case you may need more water. Add in 1-2 teaspoons of stock powder as well (I use the Massel powder, which is quite concentrated). Bring it all up to the boil, and when you are sure the veges are cooked through (which is probably quite quickly), take it off the heat and blend thoroughly with a stick blender (or can use a food processor, but I guess you would need to cool it a bit before putting it in).

Reassess the consistency - here you can either add a little more water (and stock if you want), or boil it down if it is a bit runny. From experience, it is always better to add less water to start and add more if you need it.

Meantime, chop the bacon into smallish pieces and brown until crispy in a small frying pan. Roughly chop a handful of coriander leaves for garnish.

Serve soup in deep bowls with a sprinkling of coriander leaves, bacon pieces, a dollop or two of Greek yogurt (or sour cream) and some nice crusty bread.

Enjoy!

NOTE FOR THE UNWARY: Use turmeric powder with care - it stains anything and everything yellow. The advice I got when looking up how to get turmeric out of clothes was to use scissors!! 

If you would like to something completely different, why not head over to my other blog at www.ruthembery.com/blog?

A few of my favourite things

Lately I have become aware that I am not the only one noticing that our culture seems to have become obsessed with bigger and better experiences. Looking at Facebook, so many describe their lives using terms like "the best" or "the most (wonderful, fantastic, awesome)" to describe their event, spouse, child or whatever. Aside from the fact that I wonder where it leaves anyone else’s event, spouse or child, it would seem that even though many of us have more time and money to do all these things, most are still not satisfied or even happy. Even Jim Carrey, who would know, is quoted as saying “I hope everybody could get rich and famous and will have everything they ever dreamed of, so they will know that it's not the answer.”

On the flip side, sometimes I feel like my life is made up of far too much of the mundane. Washing clothes, cooking meals and other menial household chores can feel like repetitive drudgery. Every now and then, though, I suddenly find the pleasure in doing them again. My latest cosy is a great reminder of the satisfaction I find in washing hanging out in the sunshine and breeze and the fresh smell the clothes have when you bring them in. 

As we get to the end of a long winter when I rarely bother to hang my washing outside, this cosy evokes the memories of summer, the scent of freshly mown lawns, the warmth of the sun, and crisp sheets waving in the breeze. The anticipation of the Spring and Summer to come re-energises me.

Doing another of those repetitive chores - the dishes - the other evening, I was struck by the homeliness of my wooden spoons. There is something about them that says "home" in a comforting way. The stories they could tell about the meals they have helped cook, and the fellowship and family that has been enjoyed and shared around those meals. And they also tell a story about me, as each spoon seems to have ended up with quite specific uses. I couldn't really tell you why, but I am quite obsessive about it.

Thinking about all these ordinary things, many of which we are trying to minimise our time on, by using dryers, dishwashers and now the thermomix, (which apparently does all these things and more – perhaps the next generation will call them “Mother”), I can’t help wondering whether perhaps we are losing more than we gain. Many an important conversation has been had over doing the dishes, as well as a lot of fun. Some of my fondest memories from childhood include preparing and preserving food. My mother preserved peaches, pears, apricots and cherries to name a few. Not only was it labour intensive but usually in the peak temperatures of summer. She also made all our jam at this time, and we used an old fashioned mincer as shown here.

 As small children, we were excited when we were deemed old enough to turn the handle without the fear of losing our fingers. It was family time, where we bonded around preparing food for the colder months, but could also contribute to the well-being of the family as a whole. I think our children have missed out on something special here.

What are some of the simple things that give you pleasure, or memories of such you have? I would love you to share them here.

A Change of Brew

My second creation was for my little one-and-a-half cup pot. I saw this little 'tea-set' one Christmas and said to my husband that I thought it was sweet, and it ended up in my presents. The pattern in Tea Cozies 2 was for a standard size teapot, but I managed to "guesstimate" it down to size. By some good chance, I had some leftover wool from another project which worked perfectly for this little cupcake cosy.

At this point, I was really getting bitten by the creative bug. One of the problems with knitting these days, though, is finding wool stores. The other is that using a book published in the UK means trying to find equivalent wools in Australia, which is not always easy. Fortunately, the internet is generally a reasonable source of answers for this sort of thing. So, letting my fingers do the walking, I found a wool shop not too far away, and headed on down one Saturday morning to browse and get inspired. I came home with wool for another two tea cosies that I thought I would enjoy making. So the third one was the Purple Berry, partly because I found some wool I thought would work, and partly because the pattern was quite an unusual stitch that I'd never done before and I wanted to experiment. Although it called for knitting with two strands at once, because the wool was actually a heavier weight than the pattern, this seemed to produce a quite tight/stiff cosy, so I used a single strand instead. I think it turned out ok.

Starting this hobby is quite amusing to me. As a child, tea drinking was quite an integral part of my family life, so me being a non-tea drinker was a source of concern or at least cause for comment. Being the not only the middle child but also the only girl in five children, I already felt somewhat on the outer, and perhaps there was something of the perverse in me to extend those differences. Or perhaps it was because I was the first to definitely fall into the ranks of being Gen X, the generation of 'question everything' and so, I did not accept that just because it was 'normal' or 'accepted practice', that I had to conform. What a rebel!

However, there was a definite issue with me not drinking tea in at least my wider family and I have a fond memory of my grandma who felt that drinking tea was an important social grace that I did need to conform to. She despaired so much of my lack in this area that when I was staying with her at age 11, she decided that if I just drank some tea, I would get to the point of enjoying it. I remember her suggesting I add more sugar which, to me, simply made it taste like sweet dishwashing water. By my late teens, however, I found that I was actually more normal than I realised, having a number of other friends who drank neither tea or coffee. And my life as a non-tea drinker continued quite happily.

But, here I am, to all indicators of my early life, doing something totally unexpected and surprising. Perhaps it is a sign of (finally) growing up, or perhaps it is simply a normal part of the maturing process. Is there anything that you do now that no one would ever have expected from your childhood? Maybe yours is a little more exciting or unusual. I'd love to hear from you.

Why tea cosies?

My life is about to radically change. For the last 13 years, I have been chief taxi driver, dictated particularly by the school bell. The last five and a half even more so due to the lack of before and after school care - there is only so much you can lean on friends. Anyway, my baby is about to finish her secondary education and shortly after will (God willing!) get her licence. And, so, my life will have a whole new freedom. The past three years I have been studying an MA (the MAVP at Tabor College, Victoria), and with that finishing and my parenting role going through yet another metamorphosis, I have been looking at what I do with my time.

Now, don't get me wrong, it is not about a lack of things to do. There is always plenty. The problem is more one of motivation and energy. There are only so many repetitive tasks you can do in a day without getting seriously de-energised. At least, that's the way it seems to go with me. I realised that I need to do creative things that I both enjoy the process as well as the outcome. The tea cosy idea came out of my time studying.

I  never was a tea drinker until more recently and though I'm not sure the reason why this changed, I have got particularly into green mint or just plain peppermint tea. When I was studying, I got into the habit of sitting with my pot of green mint tea. Better for the figure than snacking, and also good for keeping the fluids up (and getting you out of your seat every half hour or so for a loo stop). However, I discovered that, even in my little one-and-a-half cup pot, the tea was getting cold too quickly, and I realised that the tea cosies my grandmother always used (no matter how hot the weather) were actually very functional. My fascination with tea cosies, though, goes a long way back, as can be seen by the photo below. This is a particularly ugly one from the 1960's, but it obviously tickled my fancy!

Anyway, in one of those rare moments, my enjoyment of knitting, the need for all my friends and family to return to the  comforting days of having tea cosies, and my need for small craft projects collided with the fact that, as is often the case,  I am not the only one realising our need to return to keeping our tea warm in pots, rather than using endless, messy teabags. If you go looking, there seem to suddenly be a number of books of patterns for tea cosies (as well as actual tea cosies), one of which, my lovely daughter gave me back in April for my birthday. Since then, I have already knitted five, although two are still in the finishing stages. The first was for my sister-in-law's birthday, and is pictured here. And the book, to give credit where due, is Tea Cozies 2, published by GMC Books.

So here I am. Now it is time for you to put the kettle on, make a cuppa or a pot and share some of your stories, thoughts or creations as I continue to share mine.