Late-For-Dinner Plates ($24/set)
Fiori NeriPlate ($25)
Sweet Stack . Hand Painted . Ceramic Small Plate ($28)
Fashion Plates ($42) set of four different plates
Vintage jadeite jadite Fire King Fantasy leaf plates, available on Ebay
Gustavsberg Bersa Plate by Stig Lindberg ($55-65)
Flirting Birds Plate Set ($85)
Vintage Milk Glass Pedestal Cake Stand, available on Ebay
Vintage cake tin ($25) available on Etsy (White Elephant Vintage) 
American Milk Glass Cake Stand ($78) not vintage, available on Ebay
Bengt & Lotta Cake Dish ($85)
Bird Cake Plate ($80-110) by Whitney Smith 
Undergrowth Design Cake Plate (approx. $190)
Cake Plate ($238) by Frances Palmer
Cake Tray ($240) by Jenni Brant
Vintage Pyrex Friendship Mixing Bowl, available on Ebay
Mini Bowl ($35) by Jill Rosenwald
notNeutral Bowl Set (4 @ $48)
Just He/ Just She - Big blue-black bowls ($60)
Whirl Bowl ($70) by Kim Westad
Handbuilt candy bowl ($87), designed by Aida Dirse, available at Rare Device
Poppy Bowl ($158) by Whitney Smith
Eight Nesting Lotus Bowls ($325) by Whitney Smith
Gwyneth Paltrow, actress, mother, food lover, recently launched a newsletter named GOOP. The blog-like newsletter, which contains the tagline "nourish the inner aspect," is basically a weekly compilation of all of Mrs. Martin's favorite things. The fashion icon shares tips on everything from putting together a great outfit to eating right and staying healthy. She even shares her favorite recipes, which is, in my opinion, the best part of the whole thing! A couple of weeks ago, she offered up a recipe for vegan buckwheat and banana pancakes that sounds wonderful! GP describes them as a "combination of nutty buckwheat and sweet, sticky banana." Yum! I think most people are either waffle fans or pancakes fans, but very few like them both equally. I'm definitely on team pancakes, and banana pancakes are one of my favorites.
- Place the basil, pine nuts, garlic, parmesan, lemon zest, salt, pepper, and oil in a bowl and stir to combine.
- Makes one cup.
This is a very basic pesto recipe done without a food processor so I figure everyone can do this! Having used some sort of processor for all the pesto I have ever made, this was new to me. I have to say I liked its coarse and chunky texture very much! The flavours of the ingredients were more pronounced individually then in the usually paste-like pestos I make. I had some with pasta (excellent!) and it was fantastic dribbled on some store-bought rotisserie chicken!
Please feel free to take this theme and run with it in whichever way fate takes you! You can make modifications to this recipe OR you can make your own pesto recipes using whatever ingredients you want OR you can incorporate this pesto into another dish OR you can make a dish that involves pesto...in which case please have the pesto play an important role in the dish as a whole! Donna has made many versions of pesto herself – aside from regular basil, she’s used coriander, capers, rocket, spring/green onion, mint, and olive! This doesn’t even include the dishes she’s made that use pesto!
As with all HHDD rounds, here are the guidelines:
- Hay Hay it’s Donna Day is open to all food and wine bloggers.
- Entries submitted for HHDD must be made specifically for the current round of this event, although photos may be submitted to photo competitions such as “Does My Blog Look Good In This.”
- The host (that’s me!) will select, make and post an original Donna Hay recipe without any changes (all done!). Participants may make that exact same recipe as is, or put their own spin on the recipe by altering the ingredients whilst remaining with the theme. Or if they prefer participants may share a well loved recipe within the same theme.
- Participants must include a link to the host and the facilitator (that’s bronmarshall.com) in their entry post.
- Entries can be made at any time once the event has been announced, but must be posted and emailed to the host by the closing date.
- I will then assemble all your entries together into a roundup, from where the participants of the round vote to elect a new host for the following event.
Deadline for all posts to be up and submitted is December 12, 2008. I will be posting the round up about a week after that, after which voting will begin!
Please email all your entries to eighty_breakfasts[AT]yahoo[DOT]com. In your email, please include the following information: your blog name, your name, your location, your recipe name, and the permalink to your entry.
So go and pesto yourselves silly! And when you’re done, take a photo and send me the link :) Happy weekend everyone!
Hay hay hay! I’ve got some good news to share :) As much as I’d like to be ladylike and sophisticated about it, I just can’t...I’ve won this round of Hay Hay it’s Donna Day!!! YAY!!! The round was themed Yogurt by my SEA neighbour and blogger-friend Bordeaux of Marita Says and I submitted this Chai spiced version you see here. Being a fan of chai, yogurt, and Donna Hay, you can imagine how happy I am :)
It seems like everyone is talking about Baked these days. There is the hip bakery, the new cookbook, and the interesting flavor combinations. I admit it, I've bought into the hype! I just received my copy of Baked: New Frontiers in Baking and I'm awfully excited to start trying out the recipes, especially the sweet and salty cake and the green tea smoothie. But here's one thing that you may not know about Brooklyn's latest culinary hunks: they don't only sell delicious brownies and mouth-watering cakes at their shop, but they also have the cutest little bird mug for sale AND it's available online, too! Want to check out their goods and dream about marrying them? Click here to view the Baked Web site and dream away. :-) If you're interested in making their Sweet & Salty Cake for yourself, you can click here for the complete recipe.
It was my brother’s birthday last week. My mother is in New York on her annual vacation from us, so we decided to have a quiet dinner out on Sunday evening. Just me, my bro A, his girlfriend B, and C.
I know what you’re thinking. It was fine when it was just C, but A, B, and C? No, I’m not making it up.
So, back to the birthday dinner and my awesome brother who celebrated it. He and I are quite close, as far as siblings of opposite gender with five years between them go. In the beginning, I (and he) admit, it may have been for lack of choice. You see, it’s just the two of us. But after much hair-pulling and face-smacking and blood-drawing (ok, that was only once, and he bit me!), we realized that in a family of four, neither of us would get anywhere with only 25% of the vote. Together, with a 50% share, we had more power. We could watch each other’s back and, even as the junior generation, lobby enough to sometimes change the unwavering tides of parental decree.
It may have seemed strange at times – my Barbies and his Transformers*** co-existing in the same city built of Styrofoam (he used the Styrofoam from old toy boxes). Obviously these games were pretty much silent because Barbie and the Autobots did not have much to say to each other...although they did eat the same birdseed/hamster food.
From these incongruent beginnings though, we discovered strong and fundamental similarities that bound us: the love of books and reading; intense discussions about everything from government, to God, to utopia, to, um, gas; a passion for food and eating; valour in the face of grossness; fondness for things weird and unexplained; an obsession with the way we smell; a predisposition to be unskinny; the conviction that sleep is indeed an important “activity”. And a love for chocolate cake.
As I mentioned here, my brother is one of my favourite people to cook/bake for. His appetite, coupled with his eloquence, make him the perfect envoy of food-related compliments. His favourite baked-by-me chocolate cake, so far, is this one from Chocolate & Zucchini. I have to say it’s my favourite as well – I love this pretty much flourless approach to chocolate cake. This cake by Nigella, though quite different, quickly won our palates.
- Cream the butter and sugar with an electric mixer until color lightens (it’ll go from dark to light brown). Add eggs and vanilla, beating in until incorporated.
- Fold in the melted (and slightly cooled) chocolate. Blend well until just combined but do not overbeat.
- Gently add the flour (to which you’ve added the baking soda), alternately, spoon by spoon, with the boiling water, until you have a smooth and fairly liquid batter.
- Pour into a 23x13x7 cm loaf tin that has been greased and lined. The lining is important because this is a very damp cake. I used a slightly smaller loaf tin and got two cupcakes extra :)
- Place filled loaf tin on a baking tray into a 190C oven and bake for 30 minutes. Turn the oven down to 170C and bake for 15-20 minutes more. An inserted cake tester won’t come out completely clean as the cake will still be a tad “squidgy” inside.
- Place the loaf tin on a rack and wait until it gets completely cool before turning out.
As the name suggests, this cake was moist and dense with a very tight crumb. It also had a surprisingly intense chocolate flavour. That being said, the cake was incredibly soft and light. Puzzling but delicious. On the whole, a cake better eaten than explained.
I used the darkest muscovado sugar I had. As I only have experience with our local muscovado (which is different from our local brown sugar), I have no idea if it’s any different from the muscovado Nigella uses across the pond. Ours is more like powder than crystals, deeply brown, with an earthy molasses-like taste. Is it the same for you? I now realize that in different editions of her book it actually says dark brown sugar. So which should actually be used I wonder? In any case, it worked brilliantly on this cake so I’ll continue to use our local muscovado when I make this in the future.
The loaf pan I used was a bit smaller than what was indicated in the recipe so I got the two extra cupcakes out of it. Not a bad thing that ;)
On a personal note, this must be the softest cake I have ever made. And that is saying something as I am sadly heavy-handed with cake batter (no matter how much I envision myself to have elegance and finesse). Really, I was so amazed at how soft the tight-knit crumb was that I kept poking it gently with my finger, as one would a new feather pillow. No matter what, for now, I will be in Nigella’s debt for that.
And to my brother: I wish you all the happiness you deserve...which is to say an awfully indecent amount! And more chocolate cake of course :)
***Although my brother never developed any sympathies for Barbie, I did kinda fall in love with the Transformers. Yes, I watched the movie. And I’m not ashamed to admit I cried the first time Optimus spoke.
Larabar, creators of what have to be the world's healthiest fruit and nut bars, have recently introduced two new flavors, both of which are, like their previous snack bars, inspired by classic desserts. The two new additions, Peanut Butter Cookie and Coconut Cream Pie, fit in nicely amongst the older bars like Banana Bread and Cinnamon Roll.
- Chop the squash into small cubes and set on one side of a parchment-lined baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil, season with salt, and toss until the squash is pretty evenly coated with the oil.
- Peel and quarter the onions, and place on the other side of the baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil, season with salt, and toss as with the squash.
- Roast in a 180-190C oven for about 30 minutes or until both squash and onions are soft and caramelized. You may have to flip them and toss them around once or twice so they are evenly browned. The reason I roast them on separate sides of the baking sheet is so just in case you need to take the onions out earlier you won’t be fishing for them amongst the squash cubes.
- Make the dressing while your veg are roasting. In a bowl mix the yogurt, cilantro, parsley, and spring onions with 1 teaspoon olive oil. Add salt and pepper to taste, stir, and set aside in the fridge.
- When the squash and onions are ready, place the rice in a bowl, top with squash and onions and a generous splodge of the dressing.
- Serves one.
In my little romance with vegetarian cooking, 101 Cookbooks is my porn, my guide, and my absolute blog-crush. What Heidi Swanson has done to this little pork-lover is nothing short of amazing. She has enthralled me with photos and recipes that make vegetarian dishes seem like a cross between Mr. Big and that Hermes bag that’s got a 5,673-person waitlist. Yup, I’m talking about longing folks, and yearning. She makes me want to eat nothing but vegetables (and nuts and grains and any mixture thereof) forever and ever. I know in my heart that that’s not going to happen, but still. Nobody has ever made me want it like that.
This dish, inspired by a Roasted Pumpkin Salad recipe at 101 Cookbooks, did not only look good, but tasted good as well. And although I’ve deviated from the original recipe, this is my humble homage to Heidi and her genius. The rice I’ve used here is local Kalinga mountain rice from the Cordillera region – a blend of five different native varieties. The rice is sourced from family farmers who still grow it according to tradition. It’s 100% whole grain and absolutely delicious. The little wedge of squash and the red onions were from my veggie basket :)
At the end of the day, you don’t have to be French to enjoy French food, and you don’t have to be vegetarian to enjoy the incredibly fresh and colourful world of vegetarian cuisine. As for me...I’m still a half-breed meat-eater, pork-lover, vegetarian-wannabe. Am I a cheat and a fink for wanting it all? I’ve decided I don’t really care...I’m just happy my veggie-self is out of the closet :)
Being a vegetarian, I won't be sampling any chocolate bar with the word bacon on its packaging, but I had to post it because it's just so odd! I will admit, that after I thought about it for a minute, I decided that it probably does have a really great flavor, but maybe that's because I'm a sucker for all things sweet and salty. At the very least, it would be interesting! If you prefer a little less meat with your chocolate, Vosges offers a slew of interesting bars. There is chocolate with mushrooms, chocolate with wasabi, and chocolate with curry, among others.
- Roast the peppers. I cut them in quarters, remove all the seeds, and then lay them skin side up on a baking tray lined with parchment. Place in a 200C oven and roast until the pepper’s skin is black and blistered in places. Take the peppers out, place in a bowl, and cover with cling wrap. Leave to cool slightly. When the peppers are cool enough to handle, gently peel off skin (it will come off easily at this point), slice into strips and set aside.
- While your peppers are roasting, heat a grill pan. Brush the eggplant and onions slices with oil and grill until they are soft and have respectable grill-marks.
- Place grilled eggplants and onions (the onion rings may fall apart...that’s fine) in a bowl with the roasted and peeled peppers. Drizzle with olive oil. Sprinkle with herbs de Provence and season with salt and pepper.
- Serves two.
This is one of my favourite ways to have peppers and eggplant (aside from tortang talong) -- roasted and grilled, or just grilled or just roasted, then tossed with some good olive oil and salt. The herbs de Provence adds a lovely aroma, but if you don’t have any, feel free to use what you’ve got. Or stick to the olive oil and salt. With great veggies you really won’t need much else. This is good at room temp, so it can sit patiently while you go about making the rest of your meal. You can also add a splash of red wine vinegar and finely chopped garlic (or roast some garlic alongside the peppers and smoosh that in) and you’ll have something approaching escalivada (a Spanish salad I am extremely fond of). If you have leftovers, just park them in the fridge and toss them with some pasta the next day.
Aaah...Lovely simple vegetables! Something tells me this won’t be the last “veggie basket” post...please indulge me :) I’ll try not to be too dull and swoony!
I can't seem to bake anything without getting sugar and flour all over my clothes, so I'm always sure to put on an apron first to protect myself from the mess I'm about to create! If you're a cooking slob like me, check out the super cute aprons ($40 each) at Sur La Table (my favorite is the red cherries version, seen above). They're so adorable that you won't mind covering up your outfit while you're in the kitchen. Frankly, I wish some of these were dresses, so I could wear them outside of the house! Oh, well. Click here to view Sur La Table's complete apron collection.
