We have a winner...

Thanks for all the comments on the birthday post. There were some hilarious birthday cake stories! The lucky winner of the AWW Children's Birthday Cake Book is....

Anna! from Impeccable Taste

If you send us an email: lovelyweedays (at) gmail (dot) com and let us know your address we'll get it in the post ASAP!

a few of our favourite things

Miriam: I love this dinner for a slightly more healthy version of unhealthy corn chip based nachos. These ones have homemade tortillas chips, a spicy bean and mince mixture, avocado, sour cream and lots of cheese. Lewi, Jane and I sat round the coffee table and ate this for dinner straight from the pizza stone. For a more precise recipe for this, see Sarah's vegetarian version here.

Becs: I am a big fan of Kings Seeds in Katikati. They sell an impressive array of fruit and vege seeds, lots of them being heirloom or organic, as well as flora and fauna. You order your selection via their website (they also send out thick catalogues that are great to browse through, the variety of weird and wonderful vegetables will amaze you) and a courier drops them off a couple of days later. I can never get through a full pack of seeds before they reach their expiry date, so if you want to share some of mine just leave a comment on this post and I will send out one reader a seed selection!

Libby: Cookbooks are about the only books I buy these days. I think of them as "reference books" and to me, they hold so much more value than novels that I'd read once and pass on. My Abuela's Table by Daniella Germain is the latest addition to my cookbook collection and it's easily the most beautifully illustrated cookbook on my shelf. It's a collection of recipes from the author's Mexican grandmother all accompanied by the cutest hand drawn illustrations. This book makes me want to have my own little Mexican fiesta, complete with home made corn tortillas and tamales (if I can figure out where to get banana leaves in Wellington!)

A few of our favourite things...

Libby: This week I discovered the perfect cream cheese icing recipe - it comes courtesy of the Ripe cookbook which I also received for Christmas. For enough icing to cover a large cake, beat softened unsalted butter (100g) with lots of icing sugar (600g) until it resembles fine breadcrumbs in a cake mixer. Then you add cream cheese (250g) and beat for five minutes or so until light and fluffy. This icing is the just the right consistency for piping - it holds its shape perfectly atop these cute little lemon cupcakes I made in celebration of growing a year older. They're topped with another of my favourite things at the moment: fresh raspberries.

Becs: I received a couple of lovely cookbooks for Christmas, Ripe Recipes from the Auckland deli Ripe and A Year's Worth, Recipes from the Dunsandel Store, which is a general store cum cafe thirty minutes south of Christchurch. So far I have made Dunsandel's spiced apple chutney and their amazing smoked pork hock, apple and cider pasties (more on those soon to follow...) From Ripe the toasted muesli, banana and coconut cake, go-go chicken and nutty slaw were all delicious. Both books have lots of recipes for cafe staples of the tried and true variety, Ripe's being a little more cutting edge as you would expect given their urban clientele, the Dunsandel collection is more traditional but very charmingly compiled.




Miriam: This is a great dip that goes well with bread or corn chips. I'm not sure where this recipe originated, but I feel like it came from somewhere like food in a minute(!). It probably only takes a couple of minutes to make - just chop up tomatoes (I like to deseed them first), add parsley and coriander, salt, pepper and bind it all together with sweet chilli sauce. Enjoy.