Kitchen Love

It was a beautiful Winter's day ... not that anyone would guess that it's Winter!

Here are the temperature ranges in other places around Australia ...

Melbourne   4 - 13C
Canberra.    -4 - 12C
Griffith         1 - 18C
Adelaide       5 - 18C
Brisbane       9 - 21C
Sydney         8 - 18C

Here            13 - 24C

Clear skies and sunshine all day long and sometimes even too hot to sit in the direct sunlight. There was a stiff breeze today, which kept it quite cool.

So it all started at coffee with Lady Lynn, The Blonde Bombshell (aka yip yip) and Beauty. Tweedle Dee was home with a cold and feeling under the weather, while everybody else is away travelling.

After another pleasant morning with the girls, I did some grocery shopping and exited the shop to be greeted by the smiling faces of the The Pom and The Crazy Publican. For the past 8 months, TCP has  endured some very heavy treatment for cancer and I must say, all things considered, is looking incredibly well! Her last results were good and she's hoping the next tests will show continued improvement.

After about an hour with these two lovelies, I pedalled home with my groceries and headed straight to the kitchen.

I had three very large punnets of strawberries, so I topped them all and brought them to a simmer in a saucepan with vinegar, maple syrup and salt to make a tangy strawberry sauce.

I had some leftover pureed cauliflower from last night, so I made a Shepherds Pie with lots of zucchini, carrot, celery, onion, spinach and garlic and then sprinkled it with Cayenne pepper which gave it a delicious bite.

Instead of making the usual Hainan Chicken with my regular order of chicken thighs from the butcher, I chopped each thigh into three equal sized pieces, then lined the baking tray with onion slices. I lay the chicken over the top, sprinkled generous amounts of (Himalayan) salt and pepper over the top, drizzled my favourite maple syrup over the chicken skin and then lay slices of lemon over the top of that.

Popped it in the oven for 25 minutes, removed the lemon, turned up the heat and gave it a further 10 minutes until the skin browned.

That was served to Adoring Husband with a salad for lunch.

Finally, I slid some butter and fresh coriander under the skin of a whole organic chicken, pierced the skin and sprinkled salt and pepper over the top. I stuffed the cavity with chunks of lemon, heaps of garlic cloves and some more butter and baked it in the oven for an hour, turned off the heat and let it continue cooking in the residual heat.

By this time, it was mid afternoon, so I only got about two hours at my desk, where I watched a seminar on 'GSD' which, depending on whether you're naughty or nice, means either Getting Stuff Done OR Getting Shit Done.

I probably need to find a year long course on this subject, because I feel that my biggest downfall is the old favourite 'procrastination' which causes me to NOT get shit done.

There is still more than two hours of this seminar remaining to watch, so hopefully, I'll take on some important motivating information which will help me get stuff done. Haha.

My plan for tomorrow is to work Work WORK!!! I'm going to Get Stuff Done!!! When I'm finished here, I am writing a 'to do' list and then I'm off to bed for an early night.

GO ME!!! *raises fist in the air*

Nite all.