Good stuff: Seasons

Having grown up in Australia, experiencing a genuine change of seasons is a relatively new experience for me. I was used to rainy, cool and rainy, warm and melting. In New York, there are SEASONS. You need a couple of different coats, like a light one, a warm one, and a ridiculous puffy marshmallow one. I don't think they even sell the last kind in Australia. It's also acceptable to wear hats, in fact, it's advisable. You wear these with your wellies when it snows. It's great, this socially sanctioned public wearing of wellies. And it's everywhere!

Having a very visible change of the seasons is lovely. When the leaves have turned for Autumn, they not only look beautiful, but you appreciate those warm days even more, because you know it's all going to change soon. There's pumpkin pie and Winter produce in the markets, and you start to think about a scarf and a cup of warm cider to walk around with, instead of iced coffee. The first snowfall is very exciting. Before the yellow spots from dog pee, and grey slushy bits of god knows what come along, it's perfect and clean and white and quiet. The first nice day of Spring brings cherry blossoms and women in floral dresses and bare legs, and everyone smiling, sitting outside sharing happiness that the cold bits are behind us. They sometimes come back, but that just means you get to do the first bit again. Summer is HOT, it's really, really hot, and it's awesome.

It's dramatic and lovely to mark the passage of time like this, it helps to really commit memories when you can remember what it was like outside when something happened.

Good Stuff: Marriage Equality

This ad is truly beautiful and moving. I welled with tears when I saw it for the first time. It's particularly timely for me as it's coming up to our wedding anniversary. I am lucky to be married to the man I love, and able to build a life together. All the ups and downs life entails are made easier by that support and the love he gives me in return. I can't imagine what it must be like to be lucky enough to find someone you'd like to make a family and a life with, and then not be allowed to due to a discriminatory law. I was proud to be a New Yorker when they passed their law, and I hope I get to be a proud Aussie too.

Beautiful Things: Clothes with birds on them

Good stuff: Living near the ocean

We are so extremely lucky to be staying with friends on the Spanish Island of Ibiza for the next few months. It's quiet, relaxing and beautiful. We are so, so lucky and grateful for this. We could be cooped up in our apartment in New York, Wee Man methodically destroying the house out of utter boredom while the vitamin D leeches slowly from our bodies, OR we could be here. I am so happy we're here.

The most amazing part about it all is being surrounded by water. My mother always said that water had healing properties, that by just being close to it, you were able to achieve a sense of calm, and that it helped you think. This is really true for me, whatever mundane or stressful thoughts I have racing through my head, stepping outside and seeing the water glinting in the sunlight immediately stops me in my tracks to think: "Wow, that's really beautiful." The things I was worrying about just don't matter that much when you line them up next to the vastness of nature.

We are up on a point with a port to one side, and cliffs and beaches on the other. It's really spectacular. It's beautiful in the sunshine, but the rainstorms bring big dramatic black clouds and an unusual purple and blue light. I like it both ways.

I've been giving a lot of thought to what I'd like to achieve during the coming months here, and what I'd like to experience in Spain.
I have it narrowed down to three things:
1. Develop enough knowledge of Spanish to at least try not to open every interaction with: 'hablar Inglés?'
2. Enough exercise to finally stop looking three months pregnant, since this state of being was now a year ago.
3. Something fun and new for Wee Man, every day.


Achievable and fun goals, wish me luck.

Good stuff: A baby, on a flight, being good.

We're talking New York to Madrid, with a delayed connecting flight to Ibiza. No tears, no tantrums, no mess. Thirteen hours of Dream Baby. Hats off, Wee Man.

Yum Stuff: One Chook Dan Chicken

My friend Dan had been travelling the world for almost 18 months when he came to visit us in New York for dinner. I made the dish below. I had one piece, Mat had another. We then watched in amazement as Dan slowly and methodically ate the rest of it. There, in our kitchen, we watched one man eat almost an entire chicken. He only stopped periodically to exclaim : 'It's so great to have a home cooked dinner!', and to take the occasional breath.

That is how the legend of One Chook Dan was born, and the One Chook Dan Chicken got its name.

One Chook Dan Chicken:

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
• 1 28-ounce can diced tomatoes, drained
• 1 small to medium sized jar of apricot jam
• 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
• 2 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 3/4 teaspoon black pepper or peppercorns
• 1 whole chicken cut into pieces.

Directions

1. Heat oven to 400° F/200C. Heat the oil in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute. Stir in the tomatoes, jam, vinegar, 1 1/2 teaspoons of the salt, and 1/2 teaspoon of the pepper. Simmer until the sauce has thickened slightly, about 15 minutes.
   Alternatively, you can just make the sauce cold and pour it on, this gives you more juices to pour over everything at the end.
2. Meanwhile, rinse the chicken and pat it dry with paper towels. Arrange the pieces in a 9-by-13-inch baking dish and season with the remaining salt and pepper.
3. Pour the barbecue sauce over the chicken. Roast, spooning the sauce over the chicken once, until the chicken is cooked through, about 1 hour.
4. Serve with mash or rice, something to soak up the yummy sauce. Broccoli and beans are nice with this. 
   Make sure you get some for yourself before Dan takes it all!

Yum Stuff: Tuna Rice Bake Comfort Dinner

Eating Tuna Rice Bake is like being hugged by your dinner. It's good for when you're feeling a bit sad or a bit sick and need a warm full belly to feel better.

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons butter, and enough for greasing the dish, or grease it with PAM.
• Big tin of tuna in water, drained
• 1 small onion, chopped finely
• Pinch cayenne pepper
• Couple of minced garlic cloves
• 1 package frozen spinach, thawed, drained and chopped, or peas and carrots and corn
• 1 cup milk
• 2 eggs
• 2 cups shredded sharp Cheddar, plus extra for top. Parmesan is also good.
• 4 cups cooked brown or wild rice
• 2 stalks of celery, cut small
• 1 teaspoon freshly chopped parsley leaves
• 1 teaspoon freshly chopped thyme leaves
• 1 teaspoon chopped basil leaves
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper. Lemon pepper is nice.

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter a large casserole dish.

In a large pan over medium-high heat, saute onions with 2 tablespoons of butter and cayenne until translucent, add the garlic and the celery towards the end, just enough to soften them a little. Add the spinach and cook for 3 minutes. Set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together milk and eggs.

Add the tuna, cheese, rice, parsley, thyme, basil and spinach mixture and combine well. Season with salt and pepper.

Pour into prepared casserole dish and top with extra shredded cheese. Bake for 45 minutes until the cheese on top is nicely browned and it's bubbling hot.

*Some people might like to add paprika to this at some stage, I think that's gross. Each to their own and all that.

Beautiful Things: Not too polished bags

All of the bags from Forestbound are made using recycled materials. They are beautiful to look at it, and you know the leather will last a long time, becoming moulded to your body and faded and soft in a ruggedly attractive way. 

The top one is salvaged material from a WII duffel bag, which is interesting. Good to know the fabric will last a while.

I bought Mat a leather satchel type man bag thing in a very similar leather about five years ago with the hope it would do the faded lived in look thing, and it has. It's also masculine and rustic looking, and you know, not a murse or anything. Really, it's not. It's shiny from rubbing on his body every day, and soft in just the right way. 

Pleather has its place (S&M clubs?), but a good bag is made of good leather, and there's no way around that.

Beautiful Things: Awesome ugly wine glasses

Are these are the most ugly or awesome wine glasses in existence? Could they be both? I think so! Think of a scale that ranges from ugly to awesome, try maybe this at one end and this at the other. Right at the centre point of this scale of attractiveness, where the two meet, you have these glasses. They are kind of amazing. And I have four of them!

Fun Places: Central Park, particularly the roller disco.

Sheep Meadow

Roller disco folks having fun in terry towelling.

Lovely stuff.

Central Park is a great place to go, pretty much any time of year, unless it's raining or you really, really need to go to loo. SO short on loos there. The leaves in Autumn are gorgeous, it's fun the see the snow and you're a bit sheltered from the wind due to trees in Winter. Summer and Spring are self-explanatory.


At any given time, there will be a lot of people there, and more than a few will be hurling flying objects around. It doesn't matter what anyone else is doing, though, because it's so enormous in Central Park that you'll have personal space, and everyone gives off an air of benevolent goodwill. Who could be unhappy in a giant, beautiful park?


A hot tip is that the guys rolling wheeled carts around and selling: 'Water, water, ice cold water!' are most usually also selling beer. Sometimes jello shots too. This is on the down low, because there are undercover cops booking people for public drinking. And they are undercover! The one I saw ticketing a man looked almost exactly like the guy I'd just bought a beer from. Great cover. Or deep cover? I know the lingo. What could be better than a round of tipsy Frisbee? Central Park is ace. 


My favourite day to go to Central Park is Sunday, because that's roller disco day. Anyone with the urge and roller dancing ability can join in, and the music is funky and fun (and available from a crazy looking guy for $4 a CD, or the bargain price of 5 for $20, um). 


These are some serious characters on skates, my favourite is Terry Towelling Mountain Man, an enormous, ripped dude in home-made pants, whose size belies his grace on wheels. Sometimes he'll even pop a water bottle or three on his head to show off. There's also an older woman who was clearly some kind of professional in an earlier life, she is beautiful to watch.


There's lots of active stuff you can do personally: bird watching, tours, punting. I haven't done any of this stuff, because the grass is soft and green, and you can lie straight on it with no picnic rug and take your shoes off too. I'd prefer to do that, because it's inadvisable to lie around shoeless in many places in NYC. It's really special to have places like this in a big city, soothes the soul and all that.

Yum Stuff: Apple Loaf

Thanks Donna Hay!

This is what I intend to do with the excess apples I have with tiny bite marks in them from last week's apple picking.


It's entirely borrowed from Donna Hay's website, here is the original recipe. I have a bit of a girl crush on Donna Hay. Whenever I make something of hers, it's yummy and easy, she even includes both f and c temperatures, so I don't have to Google it like other Aussie recipes I make here in the US. Then, the people who eat it are really nice to me, and say lots of lovely things about what a good cook I am. I'm not, especially. So, thanks Donna!


I change a couple of things (in brackets).


Ingredients:

• 2 cups (300g) plain (all-purpose) flour
•  ⅓ cup (75g) caster (superfine) sugar
•  2 teaspoons baking powder
•  ⅓ cup (55g) sultanas (I sometimes leave these out, or use chocolate chips instead)
•  ½ cup (125ml) milk
•  ½ cup (125ml) pouring (single) cream (I just use another 1/2 cup of milk, so one in total. It turns out just fine, and I never have cream).
•  1 egg, lightly beaten
•  2 tablespoons white sugar

apple filling

•  2 red apples, peeled and chopped
•  ⅓ cup (120g) brown sugar
•  ¼ teaspoon mixed spice (I use pumpkin pie spice and double it, spicy, spicy)

I do all of this stuff like she says:  

Preheat oven to 160ºC (320ºF). To make the filling, place the apple, sugar and mixed spice in a bowl and toss to coat. Set aside.

Place the flour, caster sugar, baking powder and sultanas in a large bowl, mix to combine and make a well in the centre. Gradually add the milk and cream and stir until a soft dough forms. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic. Roll the dough to a 20cm x 40cm rectangle and top with the apple mixture. Roll the dough to enclose mixture, brush with the egg and sprinkle with white sugar. Place in a 27cm x 7cm loaf tin and cook for 35–40 minutes or until cooked through when tested with a skewer. Serve with double cream or ice-cream. Serves 8.

YUMMO.

Yum Stuff: Lemon Slice

Not my slice, but it will look similar, especially if you add coconut, which maybe I will after seeing this picture. 

Photo credit!

This slice is good, it is so, so good. Mat ate it for dinner once, the entire thing in one sitting. I could easily do the same. I want some right now, just because I've brought it up here. This slice is a problem I have. I love it too much.

Ingredients

• 1 can of sweetened condensed milk
• 100g butter
• 200g Granita biscuits, or if in the UK use a packet of Digestives (small size) or if in the US use Graham crackers, almost the whole box but not quite.
• 1 cup desiccated coconut
• Finely grated zest of two lemons, or limes or oranges, all are nice

Lemon icing

• 2 cups icing sugar mixture
• 1 lemon, juiced (or lime or orange, depending on your theme)

1. On a low heat, melt the condensed milk and the butter together.

2. While that's happening, smush the biscuits into crumbs in a large mixing bowl (I use a meat cleaver to do this, but do as you feel). When this is done add the coconut and the rind and mix together. This usually takes as much time as it does for the butter to melt - efficient!

3. Make a well in the middle of the crumb mixture and pour the melted butter and condensed milk in. Stir well until it all holds together.

4. Press the mixture into a slice tin, and then roll a glass along the top of it until it's all flat on the top and packed in. If it's been packed well, you can do the icing straight away, but if in doubt, pop it in the fridge and let it set for an hour or two first.

5. Make the icing. I just add a bit of juice to the icing sugar and stir until it's on the runny side, but not so runny that it won't set.

6. This is the hard part - you have to let it set in the fridge overnight! I usually cave and have a piece too soon, but it's mushy, and is much better when it's set.

Slice that slice and enjoy.

Fun Places: How do you like them apples?

This past weekend, we went apple picking in Connecticut, at Beardsley's Farm. They were probably the most expensive apples we'll ever have, given we hired a car to get there and home, but it was worth it. I have two words for you: cider donuts. Both of those words are great on their own, but together, it's really something special. I realise that donuts and donut-related stories are taking up a disproportionately large amount of space on this nascent blog. This is reflective of the space they took in my weekend. I had a donut every day. And every day I was happy. Coincedence?

Apple picking was good fun. It was nice to get out into the countryside. It was beautiful, relaxing and smelly in parts. This is what the country is like, and it's nice to be reminded of this from time to time. As a country kid turned city slicker (who should know better), I wore impractical shoes and got allergies. Maybe there should be more country outings around these parts. We got a pretty good haul, all in all, and like I said: the donuts.

I did a bit of research before we left, maybe too much because all the farms and their features blurred together and I thought we were going to an organic farm with a hayride. We were not, it featured neither of those things. However, the donuts. They did have those. Oh yes, they did.

America is just beautiful, and unlike anywhere I have lived before, almost immediately after you leave the city it just gets gorgeous. Leafy, green, beautiful light, lots of animals. It's fecund verdant out there.

Perusing the Macintosh section of the orchard.

Tiny taste tester makes sure it's all apples.

Fun Places: Smorgasburg Food and Flea Market

People loving the action at Smorgasburg.

Smorgasburg is an extremely addictive bad habit that we've picked up this Summer. I say 'bad' Beastie Boys style; not bad meaning 'bad', but 'bad' meaning:'good'. But also meaning bad, as in bad for my thighs. Very, very bad news for the old thighs. But the taste buds, now those guys are happy! 

'Let's go to Smorgasburg today' the taste buds pipe up of a Saturday morning. 'Great idea' echoes belly. 'Dear God, no' shudder the thighs. 'Pipe down, Nerd, you're overruled' say the taste buds and belly simultaneously (they are bullies).  And with that settled, we head off.

A large outdoor market featuring local and artisan foods, there are a large number of interesting options at Smorgasburg, and they're all good. Slow cooked pork rolls from Porchetta are a big fave, the pizzas made in a mobile pizza oven by Pizza Moto are pretty amazing too.

But it is these that are my weakness, the ultimate diet kryptonite. They are just so freaking good: Dough donuts.

People lining up for their crack donuts from Dough. Holy moly, these things are amazing.

Cafe con leche donut. Largely responsible for my change in pants size.

Littlest donut fan is man of taste.

The view at the Waterfront as you eat your snacks ain't too shabby.

The flea market component is also pretty amazing. On Sundays the focus shifts from food, more heavily to flea. There's a vendor who only sells vintage spectacle frames, which is pretty fun. There's lots of vintage leather bags in great condition, and ugly sweaters to wear ironically if you're so inclined. 

What I most enjoy is the hand-crafts, there are some beautiful pieces of hand-made wooden furniture and art. I don't know what happens to Smorgasburg when it gets really cold and windy, but we'll be rugging up and going as long as they will.

Fun Places: McGolrick Park (Foo de fa fa)

McGolrick Park in Brooklyn is one of my favourite fun places. This park is a hidden gem. I almost don't want to tell anyone about it, because I am a selfish, fun-place-hogging person! Ok, I'm not really, because I am telling you about it, but I do hope it stays relatively quiet and nice. I can only think that people don't know about it, or else everybody would go there all of the time. Like I do! Or plan to, and then get too lazy to leave the house. Either/or. It's so special to have places like this in the city.

McGolrick Park not much further from the subway than the dusty, overcrowded and much more popular McCarren Park. I am not hating all over McCarren park, but there's drawbacks. There you are likely to be pelted in the face by a hipster's errant, ironic kickball, but not at McGolrick! Go during the week, and it's like a private park. A private, leafy, beautiful paradise! Except I will be there, probably. Or not if it's a lazy day. So a private paradise with you and one other person. Maybe.

McGolrick Park: a TV star.

Where: McGolrick Park, Greenpoint, Brooklyn, NY.

What: a lovely park with swings and lots of grassy areas.

Pros: Shade, soft grass, nice playground, loos, dog run.

Cons: Occasional dog fights, and ticks. I've only witnessed the first one. 

Yum Stuff: Super Yummo Lemon Chicken

This is one of those recipes which is cheap and easy, but really tasty. Basically, it's excellent.

INGREDIENTS

600g chicken thigh fillets or thighs and drums (with skin, go on, treat yourself).

¼ cup soy sauce 

2 tbsp mirin or shao sing rice wine

Zest and juice of 1 large lemon

1 tbsp grated fresh ginger

2 cloves of crushed garlic

3 sprigs of thyme

2 sprigs of rosemary

2 tbsp honey

2 tbsp cornflour

METHOD

Put everything except the cornflour into a bowl and stir well to get the honey mixed in. Marinate the chicken for as long as you can, I usually do it in the morning for dinner, but an hour or so is better than nothing. 

Pre-heat oven to 375F or about 200C. Line a baking tray with wax paper (it gets sticky in there).

Heat a non-stick fry-pan over high heat and add all the chicken and marinade. Stir well and turn the chicken until it has started to brown, this takes about five minutes. The sauce will be bubbling away and starting to thicken.

Mix the cornflour with two tablespoons of the sauce from the pan, and then add it back into the pan with the chicken. It will instantly go thick and chunky, but lumps are fine, and in fact make a yummo crispy skin when baked. They are good lumps!

Remove the chicken from the frypan and arrange them on the tray so they've got some space around them.

Roast for one hour. They'll end up with a rich brown glaze on them.

Eat and enjoy! This freezes really well for lunches and leftovers, and goes really nicely with mashed potatoes, rice and Asian greens.