A good orange cake

Problem is, I didn't use a recipe, nor measuring cups, spoons... and my camera is on holiday!

Anyway, friends approve. So here is what I did.

~60g butter
~2/3 cup sugar (raw is good)
Rind of 1 orange, or 1/2 a giant orange
~2/3 cup plain yoghurt
~2 tbsp oil
~50g almond meal
2 eggs
pinch ground ginger
~1/2 cup SR flour
~1/3 cup plain flour

Cream butter, sugar and rind.
Mix in the wet stuff and almond meal, combining well (no little bits of egg).
Fold in flour.
Bake 20+ minutes depending on your tin. In a moderate oven.

Study company

When you're sitting at a desk all day reading and analysing stuff, and occasionally writing, it's nice to have something keep you company. I like a bit of music now and then - preferably not things that you've performed or studied, because then you focus on that instead - and of course, a hot-water-based beverage.

It's better to stick to one coffee and/or one or two cups of tea a day, because that feels better than more. But I still want a hot drink. One day I just put cinnamon in boiling water. It was good - simple, and better than many herbal 'teas,' or 'infusions' as the French more honestly call them.

And then there was a ripe pear. Overripe for my taste: soft. 

Apple green tea

The best fruit tea/infusion ever:

Cut off some juicy pear over a cup (you don't want to miss the juice that will drip out) and pour hot water over it. Sprinkle cinnamon over if you like. Put the pear aside for later.
Leave until drinkable temperature, and stir if you want the pear to come through sooner.

And you get to eat the fruit at the bottom :)

Also excellent with green tea, especially if you like green tea weak and can therefore get two cups or more out of a green tea bag.
Apple is good too.
Also, cinnamon and orange peel.. what else could you do?

Days like this

I'm sure that at least some of the people reading this blog would know what I'm talking about.

Food, eating, problem, thinking. Exercising perhaps.. and just consuming a bit less.

Fine for many, many people in the world.

For many others, less so.

If someone ever recovers from an 'eating disorder,' which at its core is less about eating than other, maybe more vital things inside - the kind that make life worth living -
If total recovery is possible, what does it look like?

I'm writing to say, if you ever eat two normal lunches' worth of lunch or dinners' worth of dinner and then feel guilty, and then feel guilty for feeling guilty because you're meant to be over that, and because it's indulging yourself in a weird torment, and you consider then eating more (as if that would help)
it will pass. Don't overcompensate. There are better ways to spend the day.

And there are so many people doing exactly the same thing, right now. Let them do the worry. You just get on with life; it will forgive us all if we let it.

A good holiday. 2: Indonesia

We went to Bali, Lembongan and Java.
The coffee is good everywhere, although at Lembongan they also had Nescafé. As the kids say these days, fail.
Java had the best pisang goreng. As I mentioned in a previous post, their bananas taste brightly coloured - in fact, they look brightly coloured - and are almost sour.Indonesia has tiny bananas!
We had fresh guava juice.. my life is changed for the better. I also discovered manggis (mangosteen). Wow.

My favourite place was this little village in Java.They farm cassava and corn, among other things. I didn't know until we went there that tapioca is made from cassava! We saw how they make cassava crackers (like prawn crackers). It's a highly manual, labour-intensive process.This is the bank, apparently. Why aren't Australian bankers as cute?That lady with the basket of cassava isn't wearing shoes.

It was nice to be somewhere people don't have Internet. Or running water, I think.. -to wash her hands, our host got the water from a well.
One of my best holidays in a while. :)

Lazy bakey cakey

So. I collected 3.6 smallish (for Australian) bananas to sit on the table.

Made a chocolate cake using two of my housemate's eggs. That she bought from the supermarket. Chook eggs. And some of her cream for the icing (about 2tbsp worth, because it was a ganache that I wanted to set but not be straight chocolate that would fall off when you try to eat it). And a college neighbour's loaf tin.

The 3.6 bananas were now the perfect spottiness.

What would you do?

I know you can freeze peeled bananas, but they're sort of weird when you thaw them. All the water comes out and they look, well, strange.

I wasn't going to steal any more eggs - in fact, didn't really want to use them because they are evil cage eggs.

The solution, of course, was to make another cake: marvellous, amazing, incredible eggless banana bread, courtesy of Archana's Kitchen.

Deliciously ugly.

It's not quite like anything else. Quite dense, strong/bright sort of flavour, slightly chewy crust with a slight sticky date flavour. Excellent warm. Probably not for the faint-hearted sponge lovers (don't get me wrong, I like a good sponge) or those who don't like banana.
Actually, what I mean by calling it a 'bright' flavour is that it's got character to it, a bit of bite. Bold flavour, that's the word. It reminds me thus of pisang goreng in Java, where the bananas are sweet and a little bit sour, like a still-firm mango.

So recipe for eggless bananana bread, based on Archana's:

• 1.5 cups flour
  
• 1/2 to 3/4 cup sugar of some description (I used raw)
  
• 1.5 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 cup melted butter (~60g)
• 1 cup mashed banana
  
• 1 cup yoghurt (I used milk mixed with vinegar)
• 1/4 cup rough-chopped nuts, seeds, or weapons of your choice
• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence (I had none :( )
  

You know what to do! Mix it all together
(instructions:
Combine melted butter with sugar, mix till smooth.
Add the sloppy ingredients (banana, yoghurt, vanilla), mix around a bit.
Add the other stuff and mix through, trying not to overmix unless you feel like a rubbery cake.)and bake in a prepared vessel at 180C/350F until cooked. Depending on the tin, probably 35-50 minutes or so. Be aware that it's quite moist, so will leave evidence of itself on any testing implement, but not huge amounts of thickened batter.

A good holiday. 1: Spainelaide

A good holiday is what I just had, and in it, I hardly touched a computer. So.

I first went home to Melbs. No photos there.. in fact, I had hardly any time there because we spent most of it in the country with my grandparents, who are STILL getting older (which may well be better than the alternative? But it's sad when any brain decides to go a bit funny and confuse itself).

But then, I went to Adelaide and met some amazing people. Extreme nerds, most of them, in one way or another. Mainly all in the same way, heartily including myself.
Did you know that Adelaide has SUPER pelicans? They are enormous!
I stayed with a half-Spanish family, which reminded me more than anything ever has of France. The mum and daughter have the same first name - the daughter reckons being at their house is just like being in Spain - and we ate Spanish food.Paella!
Apparently in Spain, they fight for the bits of toasted/burnt rice on the bottom of the pan. Not everyone likes them... mmm, a very enjoyable experience. We had some nice wine too, but the best part was sitting around the table feeling like part of a large Spanish family.

emergency post

With 2500 words due on Monday, and a sister arriving in town in 53 minutes, and a full day tomorrow, there has never been a better time to blog.

1. Vegetables and simplicity. Beauty.
Eating college food is teaching me to appreciate what I can get. Tonight, said sister arriving, I'll be eating with her, but thought I'd have a few vegies in the meantime (it's a nice chance to have a study break and socialise with people too).
Shredded iceberg lettuce, steamed baby peas and carrot (just boiled carrot discs) with pepper and a small squirt of salad dressing. I don't know what is in the dressing, if anything, other than white vinegar, oil and salt. But this was delici.
And pieces of capsicum with grated carrot to go with some desecrated coleslaw like the tiny hacked up coleslaw you get from the supermarket. Not bad.

2. Pizza Capers tonight! They're pretty unique. If you're not from Brisbane, and you find yourself there one night with nothing to eat, and you want something takeaway, find a Pizza Capers.

3. Rant.
New sign up in the college kitchen:
MEAT IS FOR MEAT EATERS ONLY. Vegetarians please stick to your vegetarian option. Thank you one & all, College Kitchen.

Replacing old sign:
Vegetarian food is for vegetarian's only. Please keep to your meat choices. Thanks one & all.
(Yes, that comma was on the sign.)

I'm going to complain. I mainly stick to the vegetarian food at college, partly for environmental reasons, partly for health (meat 2 times a day x 7 days a week isn't good for anyone) and partly because it's not as bad as the meat most of the time. Sometimes it's awful. Like when they give you the same stir-fry for lunch, dinner and lunch, and then dinner is deep fried frozen vegie burgers. And the stir-fry isn't even good.

Mind you, it is a pain when you find out there was felafel for lunch, and now it's all gone because everyone wants felafel because it's amazing. The moral of the story, however, is not 'Eat only vegetarian options' or 'Eat only meat options' but 'Make more felafel.'

Now.. how much can I write in the next 15 minutes?

P.S. Latest creation, using up things in the flat, was surprisingly very very good.

80g butter
1/3 cup raw sugar (creamed with butter)
1 egg (the other one was cracked :( )
1/3 apple, grated (because the sugar ran out... pink lady was what I used)
tbsp honey (all I had)
2 carrots, grated (it was meant to be some sort of carrot cake)
1/4 cup almond meal :)
1 1/3 cup SR flour
shake of mixed spice
2 shakes ground ginger
handful of sultanas
some milk (as much as it takes to get a cake batter consistency)
walnuts on top

Bake as long as it takes to do the dishes. Or until it looks done and doesn't leave itself on the knife, or skewer if you're lucky. Texture is divine, especially when hot.

Actually inspired by the first time they made muffins at Graduate House breakfast.

P.P.S.
This is my 61st post. If you're interested. I was surprised there were so many.