daikon quandry

What should I do with my daikon? I don’t normally feel like cooking Japanese food in Winter. This is going to be interesting.

Ideas:

Daikon Fritters: Peel and grate daikon. Mix with beaten egg, flour, salt and pepper. Drop and flatten out a dollop into hot oil and turn once while browning both sides.

Braised Daikon: Peel and slice and cook in dashi until tender. Apparently nice with miso sauce and rice.

In Curry: Diced and cooked in Japanese curry with carrots, potatoes, onions etc.

Apparently daikons last a long time, so maybe I don’t need to decide straight away!

vege box huzzah

six kifler potatoes
four carrots
bag of elephant garlic
two beetroot
four bananas
9 citrus fruits, at least two of which are oranges, one of which is a mandarin… I don’t know about the rest
four (teeny) avocados
1 daikon radish
1 giant bunch of watercress
quarter of a japanese pumpkin

The challenges are going to be the watercress and the daikon. I don’t even know how to store them. But I love my vege box so much.

In which our heroine imagines that she is a 1930s starlett

A while back I bought some black, highwaisted, widelegged pants from retrospec’d. It was a bit silly of me, because they are really high waisted, and really wide legged and should probably be worn with heels. But I was in a Greta Garbo mood when I bought them, and wanted to be elegant and frosty. The fact that I have no dinner parties or soirees to go to is a moot point.

I never wear heels, and for a while was imagining that I could take them up and transform into a gamine, ballet flats-clad naif. But I tried them on in the weekend with flat shoes and decided that this was never going to work. Besides, I masquerade as a gamine naif most of the week, so it would be nice to dress up on the weekend now and then and try something different.

It turns out that my only heeled shoes are a pair of beautiful vintage lace-up tap shoes, which tend to look ridiculous with anything other than very short skirts.

So… Plan C. Buy Espadrilles.

Which seem playful. The kind of thing you wear in sunshine, in company. I can’t wait for them to arrive!

SCA okay

I just picked up my first vege box. On first look, the contents seemed a little disappointing. I was imagining masses and masses of produce, but it turns out that a small box really is only designed to feed one. The good thing about this is that it means that I can walk to the pickup spot from home (a very nice 20 minute walk, especially on a winter evening), pack everything into a backpack and walk home again. And even a small box presents its own challenges. Which is the point, right?

So what did I get in my box? 1 leek, 1 beetroot (sadly with the leaves cut off… I adore beetroot leaves), 5 giant cloves of elephant garlic, 2 cucumbers, 5 potatoes, 1 butternut pumpkin, a giant bunch of chinese broccoli, 2 oranges, 5 mandarins and 4 bananas.

The challenges for me are going to be the cucumbers and the chinese broccoli. I don’t normally eat cucumbers in salad in winter, and might try and do something else with them instead, like make a raita to have with curry, or cook them in butter. I’ve never cooked gai lan before, but it seems really easy and I love steamed greens.

I think I should be okay this week, and should manage to use everything up. But this entry about how to use up a vege box by a woman who is in the same scheme as me might come in handy for future weeks. I like that this is making me think about what I cook, and that it will hopefully have been eating better.

Prep

I bought this blazer on etsy the other day, from a great little store called plastic tags.

It’s not the usual sort of thing that I would wear, but I love the colour… that soft dove grey. And I like tailored, feminine clothes that have a hint of the masculine very much.

When it arrives I’ll have to see what I can wear it with. I’m going to Melbourne for two weeks in September, for an academic conference and to see my sister (who has just moved down there and is living in Fitzroy). I’m hopeful that the weather will be nice enough for this new purchase to be the perfect conference and just general gadding about Melbourne (you know… going to markets, riding trams, perusing bookstores) garb.

vegetables to my door

I signed up with an SCA style vegetable box scheme last week with food connect. I’m getting really sick of my erratic cooking patterns, and thought this might be a good way to get into a good routine while also eating lots of delicious things. I have been really craving vegetables lately, and am excited at the prospect of having a selection of seasonal, but otherwise potentially random vegetables delivered to me once a fortnight, and then being challenged to make delicious meals out of them.

So the next month or so will probably be an ode to vegetables. My blog is going to be rather foodie for a short while… but at least I’ll be updating!

In my first box on Monday I get chinese broccoli and beetroot. I love beetroot: in cream, in vinegar, in chocolate cake (!) … grated, roasted, or pureed. I love how red it makes your hands and fingers when you cut it and how versatile it is. But I have never made a beetroot soup or a beetroot rissotto. So I am looking forward to making one or the other this week, depending on how I feel.

It feels so good to be cooking a lot recently. I didn’t cook for a year, and now that I am back to a normal, healthy routine that makes me feel good and nourishes me, I’m finally starting to feel like myself again.