Basil and parsley pesto dip
Combining basil, parsley and a handful of nuts into a dip is nothing revolutionary, but the result complements the crisps and crackers so very well.
A simple soy and ginger dipping sauce
This is a dish for those who love all things tasty with chilli, soy, ginger and more. The flavours are apologetically strong. Sensitive souls should look elsewhere.
A good eggy mayonnaise
What if you just want a good, egg-based mayonnaise but without all the fuss? Well, here’s an almost foolproof recipe. It ticks all our boxes: not too oily, no starch, lemon juice rather than vinegar, and delicious.
Starch: the good, the bad, and the ugly
There’s some debate out there about starch in our diets. Some say you need it to live; some say it will make your life miserable. As always, the truth lies somewhere in the middle, and it all depends on your body, your genes, and how you digest food.
Dukkah
Dukkah is a wonderful mix of coarsely ground spices. The idea is to have crunchy bits in there rather than a smooth powder, or even worse, a paste. It’s used as a dip for olive-oil covered bread, or a light seasoning.
Ants? Who wants ants?
Who wants ants like this? Not us, I say. We prefer an ant-free kitchen. Sadly, no amount of vinegar, friendly redirection or anything worked. To get our ant-free kitchen we had to stoop to ant bait made of 1 cup of sugar, 1 tablespoon of borax, and ½ cup of water, all boiled in a…
Rose petal jam (uncooked)
This delicious rose petal jam needs no cooking: it’s raw jam. It’s just a matter of grinding sugar and rose petals into a paste. It is unusual, and you need to be selective with the rose petals: pick the freshest and most fragrant ones you can find. but it’s well worth the effort.
Chicken masala powder
This chicken masala powder from Indian Kitchen seems to be a basic spice mix that could easily be blended with anything else required on the day, including a dry chicken curry I was so desperate to make.
Wordless Wednesday: spring wattle
It’s almost spring here, and as always, the Cootamundra wattle springs out first with explosions of yellow.
Is Modern Wheat Making You Fat and Sick?
When DetoxMama posted this article about modern wheats a while ago, my first thought was ‘that explains it’. My father is intolerant of wheat but not gluten, and now it all makes sense. Why reblog it? Because she’s said it all so well.
The colour orange: a smoothie
We don’t have a juicer, but when the Seasoned Traveler published her recipe for her Orange wellness elixir, I just had to give it a try. A quick google, a grater, a blender and some suitable cloth, and it all became possible: an orange smoothie to match my green smoothie from some months ago.
How to preserve zucchini
We’ve preserved zucchini by drying it (sun drying and in the dehydrator), ready for use in winter stews, and by this wonderful pickling method I found on an Italian vegan website: zucchini, salt, vinegar and oil. The Italian author says this dish will make the winter ‘lick his moustache’: what an excellent way to describe…
Memories of leftovers
Leftovers have been around as long as we have, but it’s only recently that we’ve had such a focus on leftovers. Apart from the ubiquitous bubble and squeak, which started appearing in English cookbooks in the mid-1800s, the focus has been on systematically collecting excess to salt it, smoke it, dry it, cook it in syrup, or otherwise…
How to preserve lemons
Preserved lemons are super easy to make and ridiculously overpriced in the shops. All you need is lemons and salt and, if you want, some cloves and cinnamon. Selma makes it even easier and says you just need olive oil and lemons. We’ve made both this year, thanks to a very generous neighbour with a lemon tree and an agenda of wanting more salted lemons from us.
Is vegan the ideal and healthy option?
Earlier this year, Celeste over at Honk if you’re vegan asked a perfectly reasonable question: Was Noah really vegan? and, by implication, Should we be vegan too? Surely, if we’re designed to be vegan, it would be healthy for everyone, wouldn’t it?
Our national delicacy
If there’s one food that’s uniquely Australian, it would have to be Vegemite. It’s a yeast product loaded with salt and vitamin B. It has the wonderful advertisement that gave us all a way to describe children who are full of laughter and joy. You can now choose from at least three versions, each with their own claim to authenticity, but none of them has kept to the original recipe.
Mrs Grieve’s Modern Herbal
Mrs Grieve’s A Modern Herbal is now online. It’s one of three essential herbal references in this household: the other two are Maria Treben’s ‘Health Through God’s Pharmacy’ and John Lust’s ‘The Herb Book’.
How to make laundry washing powder
Everyone needs clean clothes, even a home cook. I wouldn’t trade a washing machine for the old-fashioned hard-work way of boiling clothes in a copper, but did you know that old-fashioned soap and washing soda wash your clothes just as well, if not better, than that new-fangled expensive washing powders? It’s easy to make laundry powder that really works.
Why we avoid sugar (and other stuff)
Here’s a list of why we avoid sugar and the other baddies of our Western diet. It’s not an ideological crusade to eradicate sweetness from the civilised world. It’s just a lifestyle of trying to eat well when you can, and sugar is the easiest one to target because so much unhealthy food has sugar in it. You can see the reasoning in the Mermaid’s tresses tagline: favourite family recipes: whole food, most of it healthy.
How to make paneer
Paneer is an Indian cottage-style cheese that’s so amazingly easy to make you’ll wonder why you ever went out to buy it. This recipe works for me and the milk we can get in our supermarkets here: the trick is to find the right ratio of lemon juice to milk.
Mermaid's tresses 