In My Kitchen: April 2024

Is there anyone else shocked to find that it is already April?? Life with a newborn is so slow and fast at the same time, each day feels like it's taking forever but then somehow I don't get much done! I know, I know, expecting to get anything done with a newborn in tow is a bit of a challenge... Let's take a peek into my kitchen for the last month.

We are doing lots of meal prep so that we can do a big cook on the weekend and it can last a few days. Here it was mushroom rice, a veggie tofu stir fry and lentils with potato/ eggplant. 

Some canelés my mother in law bought on a whim one day, delicious! 

I'm very grateful for my local mums group, a bunch of expat mums who live in the area. My French is improving but when I'm tired and sleep deprived the ability to chat with others in English is priceless! Here I baked some vegemite cheese scrolls for them - the cheese was the "good stuff" because life is short you know, so let's just have the scrolls with 18 months aged comte :)  

(Shout out to Johanna from GGG for the recipe, I followed it with a tangzhong twist and they were excellent!) 

Our new regimen is to have salad or soup for lunch, and once a week when I have a lot of sourdough starter hanging around I chuck a can of corn in it and we have corn fritters. Delicious! 

A croissant from my favourite croissant place La Maison d'Isabelle. Excellent as always (this place has a separate queue just for croissants). This was the last dairy containing thing I ate before I started on my dairy free diet... (to see if it would help with G's reflux)

One day I think G cried for about 7 hours because he was so upset with reflux, and I finally cracked open the emergency chocolate. I have 4 of these from when my friend came to visit from Australia. A little taste of home

Tortellini with parma ham, from when S' sister came to visit us last month. Simple cherry tomato sauce and it was a treat as a light dinner. 

A romanesco cauliflower - they are just the most majestic vegetable, looking like they landed from outer space. Can anyone believe my son is 3 months old already! 

We finally had a friend over for a dinner "party" - as much as we can party with a 3 month old (although the boys did get quite drunk on excellent wine). I made these vegan meatballs with red kidney beans and quinoa  

We ate them along with this salad platter, sourdough pitas, hummus and the white stuff in the middle is vegan mayonnaise (from aquafaba). It was quite a bit of kitchen work but I really enjoyed the feeling of "getting back to normal" with having friends over again. Afterwards the boys had an enormous plate of magnificent cheeses while I went to bed with the baby. I was so sad to miss the cheeses but eliminating dairy has eliminated G's reflux, so maybe it's what I have to stick with... 

For Easter I made the traditional Italian Easter pie called torta pasqualina 

It's usually spinach, ricotta and egg - here I had to replace the ricotta with soy ricotta which was surprisingly easy to make but lacked the creaminess of normal ricotta. It was delicious anyway!

Lastly, some delicious sourdough hot cross buns that I made for mums group. Hot cross buns aren't a thing in France (it's more an UK-Commonwealth thing) so for those of us with hot X bun affiliations, it was a real treat. 

The curveball this month is this glorious cherry blossom tree from the Tuileries garden. We had a week of wonderful warm spring weather followed by a return to cool temps and lots of rain again.  Anyhow, spring is here! Spring reminds us that life is full of rejuvenation and regeneration, and watching the trees bud and grow new leaves and flower brings so many little joys.  

I'm sending this to Sherry of Sherry's Pickings who hosts the monthly IMK series - thanks Sherry and have a good month everyone! 

In My Kitchen: March 2024

Can anyone believe it's March already? G is now 9 weeks old and he's taken to having his naps in the sling while I do other things like housework or study (I know it's insane to try and study...) It's pretty hard to cook with a newborn strapped to one's front - does anyone have any tips on how to manage housework better with a newborn? 

Let's take a look at my kitchen from the last month... 

Something spectacular happened on Chinese New Year - G had a massive nap while we all made dumplings together. I was pretty sceptical that we would be able to manage with a newborn but we did it! My dad made the filling (pork and celery) and I prepared the dough, then I rolled the skins while my dad and S filled the dumplings! They were excellent dumplings, some of the best I've ever made!

The day after Chinese New Year was my dad's 71st birthday and he was so happy to spend it with us in Paris. We followed my family tradition of eating long life noodles topped with pea & prawn. 

My dear friend sent me 10 boxes of my favourite tea, which has been discontinued for a long time in Australia. She managed to buy them on Amazon and shipped them to France!I actually cried when I opened the box. I've marked them with the months (I'm planning to drink one box per month) which will get us through the first year of G's life. 

Celebration of Valentine's day with a special treat from Cyril Lignac, the fancy patisserie near us. 

It was spectacular as we always expect from Mr Lignac! It featured a bourbon vanilla cream around a heart of caramel and crisp Speculoos praline 

Our other Valentine's tradition is this heart shaped bread I started making - in 2022 we were in different countries due to COVID lockdown, in 2023 we were in Toronto, Canada and in 2024 we were celebrating with our son. 

Cinnamon star cookies our friend brought from Germany when she came to visit. 

My dad came over from Sydney to help us out for over 2 months and he was the most incredible help, doing all the shopping and cooking for us while I was recovering. Here was our last dinner together before he headed home, with an amazing wild bass that S got from our local fish man. 

Another difficult day with a newborn, another treat that S picked up when he went out to the post office.

We started visiting Picard, France's favourite supermarket. It's an incredible frozen supermarket full of vegetables and pre-prepared meals. We had an idea to have Friday night Picard dinners, but unfortunately we may have to put a pause on it since something about the frozen dinners is irritating G through my breastmilk. Shame since this salmon & spinach lasagne was so delicious, and the one we had the following week (couscous royal) was also very tasty! 

S' sister and her fiancé came to visit us in Paris for a weekend and they brought us these goodies - some lovely chocolate, parma ham filled tortellini, fresh fruit (not pictured) and an excellent baguette. 

We live next to a pizza shop and we have somehow never been there. But I recently got a craving for pizza so on the way home from G's 2 month appointment we picked up a traditional Italian pizza for lunch (olives, capers, anchovies). It was really good and I will definitely be visiting again!

And the sourdough continues. I'm back to baking our weekly bread, and we get the occasional baguette if we feel like it. Barney is alive and thriving!

This month's curveball: some little flowers from our window planter. We got the bulbs when I came out of the hospital and we watched the jacinthes grow and eventually flower.  A splash of colour in the middle of doomy & gloomy Paris winter. 

A little reminder that Life is wonderful. 

I'm sharing this with Sherry from Sherry's Pickings, who hosts the monthly IMK event. Thanks for visiting and have a great March everyone! 

In My Kitchen: February 2024

This will have to be a super quick one as the baby naps in the other room! Our son G arrived on December 31 just before 2024 arrived, and his first life event was participating in the maternity ward newborn chorus to the sound of the fireworks on Champs-Elysées!

French hospital meals are not bad! Three courses every meal with usually some nice cheese at lunch.

Here was one of the dinners, supplemented by my dad's Chinese home cooked food on the right. I've been eating a ton of soybeans to boost milk production. 

This new patisserie "The French Bastards" (they are bloody brave to call themselves that in Paris!) opened recently up the road from us, and S went to take a treat from there to celebrate my discharge from hospital. This was a hazelnut/praline treat that was light and delicate!

My dad and my mother-in-law have been spending January with us, here we are celebrating my mother-in-law's birthday with a traditional Chinese celebration of long life noodles topped with pea & prawn. 

A pistachio tart from the French Bastards - they are really giving Cyril Lignac (the other major fancy patisserie in our quartier) a run for their money!

My sourdough son Barney went to sleep for two weeks while I had my human son, and here was his first resurrection

Cooking dinner for the first time outside of hospital, a simple mushroom/tofu stirfry and some beans, a bit of kim chi which I really missed

One evening our son forgot to cry and we got to have a candlelight dinner with leftovers. it was wonderful!

My sister-in-law and her fiancé came to visit from Belgium and they brought us this delicious sticky orange cake

This was from one of our low days when G was crying a lot. One of our favourites from Cyril Lignac! You see how sugar is getting us through the newborn daze... 

This loaf got left in the oven for too long because I was feeding the baby, but it turned out pretty good anyway! I'm grateful to be back baking my own bread 

No surprises here, the curveball this month is our beautiful son, who is now one month old. We have had the toughest but the most beautiful month of our lives. Even when it is incredibly hard (like the day he cried for 7 hours) we are filled with love every time I see him. Becoming a parent is an experience like no other, and to see your partner become a parent is also surprisingly overwhelming. To think that we have come this far, from the depths of the COVID lockdowns when S and I were plotting our move to Canada, is extraordinary. The fact that our parents are here with us is also incredible and they are delighted to have met their first grandchild. 

Sending this to Sherry of Sherry's Pickings, who hosts the monthly In My Kitchen event. Have a good month everyone!