I remember coming home from kindergarten as a five year old girl and having my nanna make spaghetti omelette for my cousin Joanne and I for lunch. While the rest of our kindergarten friends where having cheese and apple and vegemite sandwiches for lunch Joanne and I would be stuffing our faces on Froġa tal- għaġin. Mum used to make spaghetti omelette for us too, but there was something special about having it at my nanna's house with my favourite cousin.

It's school holidays in Melbourne, so that means the kids have two weeks off for term break. These school holidays are usually difficult because it's cold, wet and gloomy. Consequently we tend to hang at home and do a whole lot of nothing (preferably in our pyjamas). Hence, by the end of the first week we are all starting to show signs of cabin fever and are seriously beginning to grate each other the wrong way.

We're not elaborate breakfast people. Actually I should rephrase that and say on weekdays we tend to steer clear from elaborate breakfasts and generally do what is fast and easy and what can get us all out the door by 8.30am. So it's muesli, cereal, and Vegemite on toast, scrambled eggs, toasted bagels and coffee, coffee and more coffee.

But the weekends and school holidays are an entirely different story as we have the luxury of time and can therefore lounge around in our pyjamas until mid afternoon. Hence, a whole other 'breakfast world' comes alive for us as we don't have the pressure of school bells and Connex train timetables.

These orange blossom and cinnamon semolina dumplings are an example of the more elaborate weekend and school holiday breakfasts for us. They're pretty easy to make but rolling tablespoonfuls of semolina mixture into balls and lightly coating them in flour, then egg, then breadcrumbs can be a little fiddley. Hence why we save this breakfast treat for weekends and school holidays.

Some days my fridge is heaving with all manner of possibilities. And then other days it's just a barren wasteland. Today is one of those wasteland kind of days. But thankfully there was a bunch of flat leaf parsley and a good sized chunk of grana padano. Not exactly pesto, but with a handful of almonds and a glug of extra virgin olive oil we have a simple dinner in a matter of moments (well that is if I can find some spaghetti).

Most of the things I eat on a day to day basis do not appear on this blog. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, I have a life outside of this space which keeps me very busy. And secondly, although a lot of the things I eat are delicious, they are incidental and not necessary blog worthy.

I do however find myself tweeting about a lot of things I eat in between. For example, a couple of weeks back I mentioned I was marinating olives and both Denise and Nikki almost instantly tweeted back asking for a recipe. So ladies - this one is especially for you!

Spicy Moroccan Olives

Recipe adapted from Mediterranean (1999)


Ingredients

800g green olives, unpitted & cracked

½ cup fresh coriander, finely chopped

½ cup flat leaf parsley, finely chopped

3 cloves of garlic, minced

1tsp dried chilli flakes or 1 red chilli, finely sliced

1tbsp ground cumin

Juice of a lemon

Extra virgin olive oil

 
Method

1. With the blade of a large kitchen knife crack the olives hard enough to break the flesh, but be careful not to break the stone. Place the olives in a bowl of cold water to remove any excess brine and leave to soak over night.

2.  Mix the olives and all the ingredients together with some olive oil. Pour the olives into a glass jar, adding more olive oil to cover, if necessary.

3. The olives can be eaten the next day but are obviously going to taste better the longer they get to sit in the spicy marinade.

Do you have one of those simple, easy, foolproof desserts that you take with you whenever you visit family and friends? Well this baked lemon cheesecake is my stand by treat.  And this is what I should have made in the first instance last weekend instead of the mascarpone and berry tart blunder that ended up all over the kitchen floor in a pool of berry sludge!

The only complaint I have about this cheesecake is that once you remove it from the oven and allow it to cool in generally splits. The way I get around this annoying attribute is to cover the cheesecake with lemon curd, sour cherries or chocolate ganache.

I have made many variations of this cheesecake over the years and all of them have been good. Actually better than good, they've been down right sensational!  I've made lemon cheesecake with chocolate ganache, Cointreau cheesecake with chocolate ganache, Amaretto and chocolate cheesecake with ganache and vanilla bean cheesecake with sour cherries. As long as you have a good, trustworthy basic recipe like this one the variations are limitless.

As a family we have had our fair share of trials and hardships over the years. We've had to struggle through a redundancy (thank-you tech-wreck), having a child, becoming parents, post-natal depression, having another child, another redundancy, running our own consultancy, falling out of love, a premature mid-life crisis (not me) and falling in love again.

When I reflect back on the last couple of years and see how far we have come I am grateful that 'we' are still here and that we're a family. But above all I am grateful that there is honesty, truth and love.

When inviting someone into your home for the first time to share a meal, it's probably best to stick with the tried and true recipes in your repertoire so to avoid any unforeseen blunders or mishaps. And that is exactly what I intended to do until I saw this recipe for roast chicken with hazelnuts, honey and saffron in Ottolenghi. I'm so glad I decided to break with convention because it was nothing short of spectacular and thankfully our dinner guests were of the same mind.

On Saturday we celebrated mum's birthday by having a family lunch at Hellenic Republic. We chose George Calombaris East Brunswick taverna because we all love Greek food and because this particular restaurant is extremely child friendly. We have eaten there several times before and love it, but my parents and brother and sister in-law haven't. Dad who prefers home cooked meals as opposed to 'fancy restaurants' with small portions was concerned from the outset that there wouldn't be enough food. And my sister in-law is a vegetarian and often finds Greek restaurants a bit of a challenge.

Maggie from Eat Boutique contacted me last week asking if I would interested in participating in Fridge Friday. If truth be told, I have never been asked to divulge information about the contents of my fridge before. As you can appreciate I was a little hesitant about the request because my fridge is a private affair. But Maggie is one of those lovely, genuine souls that I find difficult saying 'NO' to - so I agreed!

Below is the list of questions that Maggie emailed me and my subsequent answers. The images below are images of my 'actual' fridge. Those of you who know me well can vouch that this in fact is my fridge.