Category Archives: Food

Recipe fails

May 16, 2013

Today, I sent the girl and the man off to their several labours with Really Ordinary Muffins.

They contain all natural ingredients and many healthful and tasty things, and yet, the combined total is just… ordinary. Not terrible, but boring.

In itself, this is not a complete disaster. Not every recipe works. They’ll be gone soon. No harm done and my family is way too well house-trained to complain about home-baking that they didn’t make.

The thing that is getting to me is that I HAVE MADE THIS RECIPE BEFORE AND IT WAS BAD THEN TOO. And I tried it again, with some tweaking, to see if I could fix it.

Why do I do this?

It’s not as though the world is short of recipes. The internet is awash with recipes for muffins. In my own recipe stash I have at least five tried and true favourites, at least three of which are at least as healthy as these (and the other two of which are death on a plate).

And yet, I feel the need to tweak a recipe that was boring the first time. It’s as if I can’t leave any recipe behind. I am the Marine of muffins. I must maintain the faith that all recipes are worthy and can be rehabilitated.

But I’m here to say that this one really can be thrown out. I will waste no more muffin cases on these Really Ordinary Muffins. I will move on.

But if feels like a failure.

Am I completely insane, or just a little anal?

Enquiring minds want to know…

(Please note the photo above is not of my muffins. I didn’t have the heart to photograph them. I found this photo on freedigitalphotos.net and put it here as a mute testimony to what my muffins should have been and yet aren’t. RIP best intentions.)

Posted by Imelda Evans in Food, General Silliness, Imelda's updates, Random Silliness, Recipes Tags: Cooking, Fails, Food, Muffins, Recipes

6 comments

Recipes are just a click away…

March 15, 2013

I promised you recipes (there was a twitter conversation with at least one person) and I am keeping this promise. But I’m keeping it over at my fellow wordpresser and RWA sister’s blog.

I’m at Cathryn Hein’s Friday Feast today, talking a bit about food and books and giving recipes for quick hasty tasty Evans favourites: dukkha (as it is not made in the Middle East, I’m sure, but still tasting good), Cajun Rare Salmon, Smashed Potatoes and Greek Salad.

Yes, it is a culturally diverse meal ( I prefer ‘diverse’ to ‘messed up’). I live in Melbourne, a city which has never met a cuisine it didn’t want to absorb and run with. To be honest, the same could be said of much of Australia. In recent years (and apart from the Aboriginal Australians, it’s all recent) we are a country of immigrants so we have a lot of different influences in our kitchen pots. For which I, for one, am very grateful!

Anyway, to encourage you to hop over and have a look at the post, here are some pictures…

AVAGOODWEEKEND!

Posted by Imelda Evans in Food, Friday Favourites, Recipes Tags: Books, Cathryn Hein, Food, Friday Feast, Quick Food, Recipes, Rules are for Breaking

2 comments

Combatting Writer’s Bottom with Jane Wenham-Jones

March 13, 2013

If you’re reading this, chances are you are something of a ‘sitter’. Either because you are a writer, or a reader, or both.

Now, while it’s completely possible to be a writer a reader and a triathlete, I suspect that most of us who are the first two are not the last. So to at least some extent we are all at risk of ‘writer’s bottom’.

I love this term and would like to introduce you to the writer who coined it, Jane Wenham-Jones. (Take note, she wants credit, against the day that ‘Writer’s Bottom’ becomes a recognised condition. )

I discovered Jane and her book on the blog of the lovely and helpful Catherine, Caffeinated (otherwise known as Catherine Ryan Howard and whom ).

I was immediately interested and hied me over to Amazon and got a copy and was delighted to find it was very good. Continue reading →

Posted by Imelda Evans in Books, Food, Random Silliness, Wednesday Whatever Tags: Blogging, Writer's Life

8 comments

An interview and a recipe (to come)…

October 17, 2012

I was all fired up to post a recipe today, then I realised that I don’t have a photo of the finished dish to show you – and you really should see it in all its chocolately goodness.

So I am going out to get the ingredients and I will make one tonight and take a picture, just so you can see it… what? You don’t believe that I am making chocolate pie just for your benefit? Oh ye of little faith!

But in the meantime, you might want to read my guest interview over at my friend Jenn J McLeod’s blog, in which I mention chocolate pie. She’s running a great series of interviews with Aussie writers, so check them out. You might find a new favourite!

I’m off to the shops – come back later and there will be pie!

Imelda

Posted by Imelda Evans in Books, Food, Imelda's updates, Wednesday Whatever Tags: Blogging, Blogs, Books, Food, Interviews, Recipes

3 comments

More Sunday Recipe Frolicking…

July 15, 2012

It’s still school holidays. So I’m still at the zoo. Or possibly the Museum. Or the Art Gallery. Or playing on the Wii.

So, in lieu of doing anything too strenuous for a Sunday post, I thought I would direct you to my other favourite recipe blog, The Nutrition Guru and the Chef.

These two are a couple and seem quite delightful and have delicious recipes that are also mostly healthy. Really, there is nothing here not to like!

The picture above is of their tiramisu and if you click on the link you will be taken straight to that recipe.

Or, for all their sweet and savoury goodness, here’s the link to the blog proper:

The Nutrition Guru and the Chef.

Enjoy!

Posted by Imelda Evans in Food, Recipes, Sunday Showcase, Uncategorized Tags: Blogs, Food, Recipes

14 comments

Frolic among the recipes

July 8, 2012

It is school holidays here at the moment, so I have been barred from doing Sunday posts in favour of visiting the zoo and similar places of interest around our fair city.

But in case you are roaming the blogs looking for diversion and delight this Sunday, I thought I would pop in and say that you really must check out Maggie’s One Butt Kitchen (which, to save you asking, is a kitchen only one butt can fit in at a time).

It is a veritable cornucopia of deliciousness. I want to cook just about everything she posts. Her store of recipes is apparently inexhaustible and they all look amazing.

Get thee hence and check it out. Food!

http://maggiesonebuttkitchen.wordpress.com/

(In case you need encouraging, the picture above is her no-fry doughnuts. Click on it to go straight to the recipe)

Posted by Imelda Evans in Food, Link Catch of the Day, Recipes, Uncategorized

2 comments

What? You want feeding AGAIN? Another quick dinner

June 20, 2012

I’m still trying to produce a big word count this month, so dinners still need to be quick. But lest you think that I ONLY work from the freezer and tinned veges when in a hurry, I thought I’d throw in a mostly fresh example.

This dinner came about because my local supermarket had packs of zucchini, bags of tomatoes and packs of button mushrooms on special. I had bacon and onions at home and dinner was decided. This is a very slight variation on a dish invented by my dear mother-in-law, probably in much the same way!

I made a huge pan of this, because I had bacon I wanted to use up, but it’s an almost infinitely variable thing (as so much of my cooking is; not big on precision around here), so I’ll give you approximate ingredient amounts per person and you can adjust as necessary.

Continue reading →

Posted by Imelda Evans in Food, Recipes, Wednesday Whatever Tags: dinner, Favourites, Food, Life, Recipes, Writer's Life

14 comments

Is that the time? Another Quick Winter Dinner

June 6, 2012

It’s June, which in Australia means winter and in the Romance Writers of Australia means the 50k in 30 days challenge. (For the non-writers, that means trying to write 50, 000 words in a month.)

I’m not doing the full 50k – I’m only(!) trying for 40k.

But this means that other things – minor things, like shopping and cooking – get shoved down the priority list. At times like these, having some reliable store-cupboard-and-freezer ‘recipes’ (if something this easy can be called a recipe) up your sleeve is very handy.

Here, for your delectation (and speedy hunger satisfaction) is one of our favourites. It is known, in our house, as meatball soup, although it doesn’t contain any actual meatballs.

Continue reading →

Posted by Imelda Evans in Food, Wednesday Whatever Tags: Blogs, dinner, Food, Recipes, Writer's Life

24 comments

Gluten-Free Brownies (yessss, Chocolate…)

May 23, 2012

Last week, I was all about the healthy, dinner food. But it’s winter and we need cheering as well as feeding, so this week, it’s brownie time! Don’t be put off by the lengthiness of the method. I like to explain. But these are easy and quite quick to make and taste fantastic.

Gluten-Free Brownies

Backstory: (writers please note: this isn’t a novel, so I am ALLOWED to put the backstory up front. Nernerneenerner!)

I had to make food for the child’s birthday celebration at school. Normally I make the Traditional Birthday Biscuits, cut into whatever cute shape is the craze du jour and ice them. But the child had a coeliac sufferer in the class so I went in search of a gluten-free recipe. The following is based on the normal brownie recipe in Nigella Lawson’s Domestic Goddess cookbook, with gluten-free adaptations based on a cruise of the recipes on the net. It’s a big recipe. It needs two brownie tins (or slice tins) and you can cut each into 24 pieces. If you are just making them to eat at home, you might want to cut the pieces smaller, as you can’t stop at one, and it helps with damage limitation!

Continue reading →

Posted by Imelda Evans in Food, Recipes, Wednesday Whatever Tags: Dessert, Food, Gluten-free, Life, Recipes, Women's Business

8 comments

Quick Winter Dinner

May 16, 2012

I know Wednesdays are supposed to be about reviews and I know it’s probably rude to review your own quick hasty-tasty dinner-making, but if it bothers you, pretend someone else made this okay?

Okay, now we have that out of the way, I would like to introduce you to the very easy, very cheap, quick, really quite healthy and ridiculously tasty (for what is in it) dinner that is my:

Creamy Cauliflower Soup

This soup is the kind of thing you make when you have no idea what is for dinner and you walk into the supermarket and find that cauliflowers as big as your head are $1.50 each. (And yes, I know it looks like high-quality wall-paper paste with speckles, but you try photographing cauliflower soup! It tastes good.)