Before I start I wanted to apologise for last week. I didn't realise the Mr Linky hadn't embedded properly in my post until late on Sunday my time which means people couldn't add in their links. I will do better today!
Last year we discovered the Atlas mealkits which I have posted about a couple of times before (here and here). We haven't been ordereing them quite as often as we had been, but when we do we are still enjoying them.
Since the last time I posted we have done five more boxes - France, America, Argentina and this week China along with a favourites box. That's covering a fair amount of the world without actually leaving home.
Favourites Box
This is when the company puts together a selection of dishes in one box. The main reason for choosing this dish was the Eggplant Moussaka which ironically was our least favourite. I am still on the lookout for a really good moussaka. One day I will find it!
Patatas Bravas, Chicken, Potatoes and Chorizo
Eggplant Moussaka
Porchetta, Fennel, Radicchio and Orange Salad
France
Thyme Roasted Chicked, lentils and goats cheese salad
Steak Frites, Cafe de Paris butter, asparagus
We also had a Tuna Nicoise Salad which I didn't take a photo of.
Our favourite of these was the Steak and Frites. The Cafe de Paris butter was delicious, and the meat that comes in these boxes is always really good quality.
USA - Thanksgiving box
The three meals in this box were:
Thanksgiving chicken dinner with all the trimming
Including apple pie!
Baked beans, corn cakes, peach and ricotta salad
Beef Burger on a potato bun with fries
The burger sauce on this was amazing! So much so that we had normal burgers a couple of days later just so that we could make sure that we used it all. We didn't want to throw out a drop if we could avoid it!
Argentina
Chicken a la Plancha with pasta
Potato and Mozzarella Tortilla (we may have added extra mozzarella)
We also had Beef Skewers with Radish and Orange Salad. The biggest surprise of this was the radish. I could have sworn that I didn't like radish, but it didn't taste anything like I thought it did, and it was delicious with the orange.
China
Char Sui Pork Baos - so delicious!
Da Pan Ji Chicken with Noodles
Tonight we will be having Shitake Dumplings, Sichuan Vinegar Sauce.
Where will be going next? I am not really sure, but it will be somewhere.
Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page.
I am not really sure how it happened but I have joined a lot of bookclub type groups on Facebook. On one of them there has been one book mentioned quite a few times that caught my attention. I can't remember if it was a reading choice or something butafter seeing it mentioned over and over I decided to read it myself. Who says peer pressure ends when you are a grown up? And what is that book? The Winemaker's Wife by Kristin Harmel. She is an author I have heard of before, but I haven't read her before. So far, I am very much enjoying the book and I can definitely see myself reading more of her books...after I have finished this one of course.
I am about half way through listening to The Sun Sister by Lucinda Riley, but I do have a few drives to work coming up so I should be able to make a bit of a dent in it over the next couple of weeks.
I'm watching....
I started watching The Watch last week, mainly because nothing else caught my attention, and I am pretty sure it wasn't worth the effort. It is supposed to be an adaptation of Terry Pratchett's Watch books, which are part of the Discworld series, but it's missing something, maybe the humour or the heart or something.
I think this week we might start WandaVision and see how that goes. I have also got episodes of Us, Discovery of Watches and an Australian show called The End to get to too.
Is anyone watching anything good at the moment?
Life....
I was home alone over the weekend. My husband had to drive up to Queensland with his son and so in theory I had the house to myself. That is the longest we have been apart since he moved in, so I had to try very hard not to mope too much.
On Saturday night I joined some friends at a free Melbourny Symphony Orchestra event. It was reallly interesting. A couple of years ago there would have been about 12000 people at this event, all sitting on blankets in the park, crowded together. Of course,in this new world we had to watch in a COVID safe way, so we all had a pod seated a maximum of 6 people, you could order food from food trucks that you then went and picked up at a nominated time. It was all very efficient and very civilised, and a perfect way to spend a very balmy summer night.
I also managed to track down my first uoouoo. What is a uoouoo you ask? They are a series of painted sculptures that are scattered around the city to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Royal Children's Hospital. I do intend to find at least some more over the coming few weeks.
Welcome to this month's edition of Six Degrees of Separation, which is a monthly meme hosted by Kate from Books Are My Favourite and Best. The idea is to start with a specific book and make a series of links from one book to the next using whatever link you can find and see where you end up after six links. I am also linking this post up with The Sunday Salon, hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz.
I missed last months Six Degrees which was a shame, but I am back this month with a list that contains at least one tenuous link! See if you can spot it.
The starting point this month is Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler, an author who I have never read, although I am sure I should have! I did think about doing books with red in the title but I have a feeling I have done that before, if not in Six Degrees, definitely in a Top Ten Tuesday post, so I took a different direction.
The Secret of the Mansion by Julie Campbell (Trixie Belden mysteries book 1) - My first thought related to the word redhead and that kind of inevitably lead to me to think about my first red headed book crush - Jim from the Trixie Belden books!
Voyager by Diana Gabaldon - Jim was not my only red headed literary crush. There was also James Alexander Malcolm Mackenzie Fraser from the Outlander series. This book, the third in the main series, is probably my favourite. Maybe it is something about a variation of the name James, and not the redhead, but I don't think so.
The Red Scarf/Under a Blood Red Sky by Kate Furnivall - When I checked my handy dandy spreadsheet which list the books I have read since 2004, the author directly above Diana Gabaldon alphabetically is Kate Furnival. I kept on thinking about the red scarf as the link too. This book is set in 1930s Russia, specifically in a Siberian prison camp.
The Tolstoy Estate by Steven Conte - Also set in Russia, but this time during WWII, this was one of my favourite books from last year
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy - An obvious connection here, from a book where most of the action takes place at Tolstoy's house to a book written by the man.
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez- I originally read Anna Karenina as part of Oprah's Book Club back in the 90s. This was the first book that I ever read with the book club! I am not sure I would've read either without my fellow readers and the fun that we had in the forums. I am still online friends with a lot of those people now!
Did you spot the very tenuous link?
Next month the starting point is Phosphorence by Julia Baird, which is going to be interesting to find a connection to. Better get my thinking cap on early for that one!
Last week I tried a new recipe by Donna Hay called Chocolate Mousse Cake from her book Modern Baking. It was totally delicious, but I do find myself pondering if it is actually a cake. Clearly I don't have enough to think about, which isn't true at all. Or maybe it is that I have too many things to think about and therefore I find myself contemplating unimportant things to give my otherwise overloaded brain a break. Either way, I have been thinking it about it a lot.
So let me tell you about this 'cake' and then I will share why I am wondering if it is really a cake.
The recipe starts with a biscuit base, similar to what you would use for a cheesecake. In this case, it is Oreo style biscuits crushed up and combined with melted butter and then pressed into a cake tin.
The second layer is a chocolate mousse which uses whipped egg whites to give it the lightness that you need for a mousse. There is no gelatin. Interestingly it also uses egg yolks and at first I was a bit confused thinking that those egg yolks wouldn't be cooked, but I guess they cook because you add them to a still warm chocolate mixture.
The final layer is a chocolate glaze which is poured over the top of the set mousse.
It was totally decadent, and totally delicious, but was it a cake?
Years ago I remember reading a book that gave definitions of what the difference was between cake and cookies/biscuits, given that they share very similar ingredients. I am fairly sure it was in a book called Cake: A Global History by Nicola Humble, but I could be wrong.
From what I can remember the difference is that cake goes hard as it gets stale whereas a cookie will get softer! In this case, if you left it out of the fridge, the mousse started to melt which isn't really either of these things.
A cake is a sweet food made by baking a mixture of flour, eggs, sugar, and fat in an oven. Cakes may be large and cut into slices or small and intended for one person only.
So unless you count the flour in the premade cookies, it isn't really a cake. Maybe it was called a Chocolate Mousse Cake because if it was called a Chocolate Mousse Dessert, you might expect it to be served up in bowl like normal chocolate mousse.
Oh well, what it comes down to is that it was delicious, and the people I shared it with enjoyed it too, so really that's all that matters right.
Chocolate Mousse Cake (Donna Hay)
300g store-bought cream-filled chocolate biscuits
100g unsalted butter, melted
400g dark chocolate, finely chopped
1/2 cup (125ml) single (pouring) cream
4 eggs, separated
1/4 cup (45g) light brown sugar
1 1/2 cups (375ml) double (tick) cream, whipped
For the glaze
1/2 cup (125ml) single (pouring) cream
2 tablesppons liquid glucose
100g 70% dark chocolate, finely choppped
1 teaspoon vegetable oil.
Line a deep-sided 20cm round springform tin with non-stick baking paper. Place the biscusits in a food processor and process into fine crumbs. Add the butter and process to combine. Using the back of a spoon, press the mixture into the base of the tin and refrigerate until ready to use.
Place the chocolate and single cream in a large heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water (the bown shouldn't touch the water) and stir until melted and smooth. Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly. Add the egg yolks and whisk to combine.
Place the eggwhites in the bowl of an electric mixer and whisk on high speed until soft peaks form. Gradually add the sugar and whisk until thick and glossy.
Add the whipped cream to the chocolate mixture and gently fold to combine. In 2 batches, add the egg white and fold to combine. Spoon the mousse onto the biscuit base and smooth the top. Regrigerate for 4-5 hours or until set.
To make the chocolate glaze, place the cream and glucose in a small saucepan over medium heat and bring to the boil. Remove from the heat, add the chocolate and all to stand for 5 mintes or until the chocolate is melted. Add the oil and whisk until smooth. Allow to cool slightly.
Pour the glaze over the cake, gently tilting and tapping until even. Refrigerate for a further 1 hour or until set.
Carefully remove the cake from the tin and place on a cake stand or plate to serve.
As an aside, whenever I see the words fold it in in a recipe, I can't help but think of this scene from Schitt's Creek.
Weekly Meals
Saturday - Potato and Mozzarella Tortilla
Sunday - Potato and Mozzarella Tortilla
Monday - Pasta Pomodoro
Tuesday - Steak with mushrooms and roast potatoes
Wednesday - Enchiladas
Thursday - Chicken skewers with baked potato and salad
Friday - Chicken and chips(takeaway)
Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page.
Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week's theme is Books Published Before I Was Born, which is a fabulous topic that I might do at a future date, but I really wanted to take a moment to talk about the books of Sharon Kay Penman.
The historical fiction world was rocked a few days ago when the news came out that SKP had died at aged 75. I have long claimed her as one of my favourite authors. I have also been fortunate to connect with others who loved her books, meeting up with fellow fans on a regular basis for several years.
I thought for this week's Top Ten Tuesday post, I would share ten books by this wonderful author. I have also realised in the course of this post that it has been a long time since I read one and I still have several to read! She bought medieval history to life, making these historical figures so real to her readers in big, detailed books that are sheer pleasure to read.
The Sunne in Splendour - my first and probably still my favourite this book changed a lot of people's opinion of Richard III
Here Be Dragons - as much as Sunne in Splendour is still my favourite, this is a close run thing. My grandfather on my mother's side is Welsh, so I enjoyed reading some of the history of this country. One day I will make it there
Falls the Shadow - the second book in the Welsh trilogy, this time focussing on a very divisive figure from history - Simon de Montfort.
The Reckoning - this is the third book in the Welsh trilogy and again was another enjoyable read.
The Queen's Man - whilst SKP was known for her chunky medieval historical stories, her Justin de Quincy stories were really enjoyable historical mysteries! The queen in question.....Eleanor of Aquitaine
Prince of Darkness - the final book in the Justin de Quincy series, although there were many times when I saw people asked if there was going to be more books in the series.
When Christ and His Saints Slept - This book is the first book in the Henry and Eleanor (yes, of Aquitaine) trilogy, and certainly helped feed my fascination with this amazing woman.
Devil's Brood - The third book to focus on Henry and Eleanor and their highly disfunctional family
Lionheart - This book changed the focus to Richard the Lionheart, including the crusades!
The Land Beyond Sea - The latest book to be released, once again the crusades are the focus, but this time the central characters is King Baldwin.
Rest in peace Sharon Kay Penman, and thank you for your books.
I know I am going to sound old when I say this, but where on earth has January gone? How can we be a month into the year already? It doesn't really seem possible, but it is.
I managed to read 5 books during the month, three of which were part of the same series.
Here's what I read:
An American in Paris by Siobhan Curham - WWII and Paris! You know that is my jam! Review here
The first three books in the Granite Springs series by Maggie Christensen, an Australian author. The good thing about this series is that it is a rural romance series which features older characters, which is lovely to read!
The Prenup by Lauren Layne - I read this in one setting. It's just one of those fun reads that you can inhale!
Pretty sure the shortest month of the year will fly by too!
Sometimes you just need a book that you can inhale, and I read one of those this weekend. Vassiliki from Shallowreader mentioned The Prenup by Lauren Layne and I was like that sounds like fun! And it was, plus it was amusing, readable and perfect to read in one setting! The premise is that Charlotte and Colin got married 10 years ago, and have lived on opposite sides of the US ever since, but now Colin wants a divorce. Only problem is the prenup specifies that they have to live together for 3 months before they can do so. Charlotte moves back to New York, which also means that she has to deal with the unresolved issues she has with her family. I will definitely read another Lauren Layne book to see if the magic can strike twice.
Other than The Prenup, I haven't read a lot this week,so I am still going with Ella Carey's book from last week too.
I'm watching....
We watched The Dig on Saturday night and I have to say it was a lovely film. It tells the story of the man who found the Sutton Hoo treasure. It has several big name British stars including Joseph Fiennes, Carey Mulligan and Lily James. There have been some liberties taken with the story in relation to the personal lives but the story of the find is very interesting.
Life...
We are still having a lot of conversation about our upcoming renovations. It's the way that we work. Lots and lots of conversations and then suddenly a plan emerges, and then my husband goes helff for leather and the reno is done! Well, not quite that quickly, but there's definitely a plan emerging.
Yesterday we spent a lovely day wandering around the Yarra Valley. We went to two places that I can't believe I hadn't heard of until recently. The first place was Blue Lotus Water Gardens which is a garden filled with, well, lotus flowers!
We also went to a California Redwood Forest which is in the valley. Until a couple of years ago, no one really knew about these trees, but these days it is quite a popular destination. It was such a lovely place. You took just a few steps into the forest and suddenly the noise from outside is muffled and quiet. I would love to go again!
Wow! What a great start to the challenge! In January, we had 67 links shared which is amazing! Thank you to everyone who shared! I can't wait to see what you all share in February..
I am very excited to have so many of you signed up and linking up to the challenge already this year, and I look forward to reading your reviews throughout the year! I am sure there is going to be a lot of great historical fiction discovered and shared with fellow HF lovers!
If you haven't already signed up, it's not too late! The sign up post is here.
Just to recap what participants need to know. At the beginning of each month I will put up a post which will have a Mr Linky embedded into it for you to add your link.
Please remember...
add the link(s) of your review(s) including your name and book title to the Mister Linky we’ll be adding to our monthly post (please, do not add your blog link, but the correct address that will guide us directly to your review). A direct link to your Goodreads review is also acceptable
any kind of historical fiction is accepted (fantasy, young adult, graphic novels...)
if you have time, have a look some of the other links that are present. You never know when you will discover new blogs or books!
I have created a group on Facebook which you can find here and don't forget to use the #histficreadingchallenge hashtag on the socials.
Here is the link for you to use to share your reviews this month! Happy reading!
