5 things…

Here we go with another 5 things that made me smile last week – although as always there will probably be more than 5, I never know until I start writing…

Cold mornings

I know I live in South East Queensland but we do get our share of cold mornings, in fact last week it was below 10C at 6am every morning. That meant the beanie got to come out and I double t-shirted. Too much information?

It did make for some fabulous morning colours though.

Blue Skies

Cold early mornings made way for spectacular blue days with temps – both in and out of the ocean – in the low 20s. Winter on the Sunshine Coast…why wouldn’t you?

Forgotten Cookies

These were a kitchen failure. It’s a Nigella recipe to use up some leftover egg whites. Essentially you heat the oven, pop them in, turn the oven off and the theory is next morning they’ll be “cooked”. Yeah, I think there were some user issues there as they were just like squidgy undercooked meringues. It did give me a laugh though…

Wattle

A little bit of gold spied on lunchtime walks this week…

NRL Referees

The news was full this week of the fact that the NRL had appointed its first woman to act as the assistant referee for a weekend game. An absolute first but one, I’d like to point out, was made possible by yours truly who was if not the first then one of the first woman to get an active referees ticket back in the 1980’s. Apparently, they’d given out a couple of tickets to nuns for school football, but I was the first to actually use it and North Sydney was the association brave enough to stick me in the middle of a park with a whistle or a flag (and very ugly shorts and long socks). Just saying.

A whale of a time

Sarah and I went whale watching with Whale One on Friday afternoon. Whale One has had a facelift since we last went out and is even more comfortable than it used to be.

Part of the fun of one of these trips is getting to motor up the river past all the mega rich homes, the yachts and the fisheries to where the river meets the ocean at the rock wall at Mooloolaba.

We walk to the rock wall each morning so it’s kind of cool seeing it from the ocean.

There wasn’t any surface breaching action this time as we happened along a mumma whale with her calf not that far out to sea. The expert on board reckoned the calf would have been less than a month old and momma whale was still showing it the whaley ropes.

The pair of them must have circled the boat four times in the couple of hours that we were out there. A head would pop up and then a fin – the whole thing was such a privilege to watch. Nature at its most nurturing.

Because there was a calf involved the boat had to keep more of a distance than usual so there are no photos. In fact, I put the camera away and just watched the whaley show.

There might or might not have been a sneaky glass of bubbles on the way back…

Mulled wine

There’s a pop-up bar on Mooloolaba Esplanade doing mulled wine and tunes from 4pm Thurs-Sun during winter. Don’t mind if I do.

Fan girl moment

Nigella not only liked but commented on one of my foodie posts over the weekend. Yes, I had a fan girl moment.

It was this pic of the Mooloolaba prawns we had for lunch on Saturday.

Speaking of seafood…

My healthy recipe of the week comes from Ella Risbridger’s, “Midnight Chicken“. It’s her “Stuck in a Bookshop Salmon & Sticky Rice” without the sticky rice and with broccolini instead.

The introduction tells the story of how she was hungry, it was raining and she was stuck in a bookshop because it was dark outside and she was quite suddenly and inexplicably scared – the sort of panic that comes from nowhere with anxiety.

I wasn’t stuck in a bookshop or anxious about anything, but I was very hungry when I made this the other night.

Anyways, the recipe…

Marinade some salmon fillets (this recipe is for 4 but we were 3) in 2 tablespoons soy sauce, 2 tablespoons shaoxing wine (or dry sherry), 2 teaspoons honey and the juice of 1 lime. I also grated in some ginger.

The salmon only needs to be in this for about 20 minutes – which gives you time to chop your veg and maybe put some rice on. Even though I’m limiting my starchy carbs, my family isn’t.

To cook the salmon use a non-stick pan (if you have one) or a tablespoon of oil in your pan (if you don’t) and set it over medium-high heat. Take your salmon out of the marinade and fry them skin side down for about 4 minutes. Turn them and give them a couple of minutes on the other side. This should give you a medium-rare salmon. Don’t be alarmed at the colour of the skin – that’s the honey caramelising.

Serve with rice (if you’re not doing the no carbs at night thing) and green veg (we used broccolini the other night but Chinese leafy greens work really well) that you’ve stir-fried in a little sesame oil with finely diced chilli and some grated ginger.

Saturday night cuisine theme – Mexican

This week’s theme was Mexican.

To start we had some chicken wings with an avocado dipping sauce. Then came some fish tacos (which I’ll tell you about in tomorrow’s Excess Baggage post) and finally a flan that I got from Nigella’s Mexican chapter in the “Express” book. I didn’t try the flan, but apparently it was okay.

The tacos though, were seriously yum. We served them with a corn, chilli and coriander salsa, some lettuce and avocado, and a quick lime-pickled onion.

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Okay, that was my week…how was yours?