In My Kitchen - February 2016

Wow, it’s February. I know I say this every year, but time has seriously flown. Most of the last few weeks has been spent catching up with people post Christmas, lots of big meals with friends and family, and not much time spent in my kitchen. There has been a few new additions and some new toys to play with, which is always fun.

First off the rank is this awesome strainer that I got as a present. My sink usually has dishes in it, so I can’t really place a colander down in it, so I’m always trying to juggle the colander in one hand, and a heavy pot in the other and drain my rice, pasta or whatever other item I’m cooking. This new strainer sits over the top of the sink and I don’t need to hold on to it! Genius!

It was pretty hot on the weekend, so I made myself some ice tea using one of the flavours in this T2 fruit tea pack. It was a citrus blend, and quite refreshing. I avoided adding any extra sugar, so it wasn’t very sweet, but still quite nice.

Staying on the drink theme, and also as part of my Shopping Small mission for the month, I got some Summer Snow apple juice. Summer Snow apple juice is pressed locally at an orchard in Officer (just near Pakenham). The family run orchard originally grew apples to supply to the markets but in the late 90’s they crop was hit by a huge hailstorm and none of it could be sold as fresh fruit. To try and salvage the produce, the family decided to juice the apples and as a result, Summer Snow juices was born. These days the juice business has become the primary focus and the juice they produce is spectacular.

I also made these fake meatballs which I saw on Tara’s Vegetaraian blog. The original recipe calls for eggplant and cannellini beans, but I didn’t have any cannellini beans so I substituted for kidney beans. They were still pretty delicious, but a little bit messy to fry. I was planning to make my own pasta, but I got lazy and instead used some angel hair pasta I had in the pantry.

This post is part of the In My Kitchen series hosted my Maureen from the Orgasmic Chef. Head over to her blog to see what is going on in other people's kitchens!

That’s about all from my kitchen this month! What’s been happening in your kitchen?