I found the Julie/Julia project online. I was very impressed that it was actually real!! Who knew? I am reading it in my, put toothpicks between my eyelids half hour of 9:30-10pm. This is after my husband has gone to bed and while I wait until it is time to feed the baby and before I collapse in bed completely and utterly exhausted from the day. I have realised, not recently mind, that living here is hard. It is harder then living in Australia. My husband puts it like this, “ Sitting here is like walking in Australia.” That is how hard it is. Everything, and I am not exaggerating, takes twice the effort.

So tonight it is fish, well I only have two meats in the freezer, chicken or fish and last night we had vegetarian so I had better cook some sort of meat or else my meat loving husband will not be happy.

Lemony Fish Cakes p. 50 from this months Donna Hay Mag. I have never made fish cakes before and have always been rather afraid of them but fascinated at the same time. I am afraid that they will flop. I haven’t had too good a record of pattie type things that one shallow fries. Mine always seem to just fall to pieces and I end up having little bits of chard stuff floating all over the fry pan. So we’ll see how it goes.

This recipe requires: mashed potato, a bit of a problem because I don’t actually have potatoes at present but I do have sweet potato, so I reckon that should do the trick, flaked salmon or trout, Hmmm well I have barramundi and nothing else so I just have to use what I have. Lemon rind, got those in spades, one egg, good cause I only have one egg in the fridge, more had better show up on the plane this avo, and last but not least the good old pinch of salt and a bit of pepper, not a worry (hopefully water soaked salt will do cause that is what I have got).

I hope to serve it with a salad, if my vegies show up today, if not. I’m not sure what I’ll serve it with. I think I have a zucchini, a capsicum and some cucumbers in the fridge, I’ll figure something out.

Well it turns out that substituting sweet potato for potato in the lemony fish cakes was not such a brilliant plan after all. The sweet potato here tends to go dry when boiled up for some reason, so I should have probably added a little milk. The rest of the process when fine and they looked delicious and tasted yummy as well if a little dry. The barramundi worked well, though I think trout or salmon would have had a stronger taste so it is a good thing I served it with honey mustard mayonnaise and not just straight mayonnaise.

So I did serve it with salad and it was just fine and dandy. My vegies did show up, hence the half sweet potato/ half potato mix. And guess what!! The eggs showed as well, which was a good thing as I got out too much fish, had to double the recipe and so needed another egg.

All in all though I think it was a successful dinner. So yay for Donna Hay and yay for my lemony fish cakes not turning into mushy burnt bits in the shallow frying process.

Oh Donna

Well I had a thought about what to do with this blog. Actually, it was a thought hatched by my husband and a good friend of mine, and inspired of course by a fairly recent movie. Hopefully it will be fun.

I live in a rather remote part of this lovely earth and am very blessed with V-SAT for my internet.

I shop for my food every two months, putting mostly everything in the freezer to make it mould and ant proof. I get my vegetables flown down from the highlands each week, along with the vegies comes the eggs, which sometimes get left behind.

I love Donna Hay magazine and now, because of some very generous friends (thanks MAG), am a subscriber. Every two months I get said magazine and drool over the “real” food that is pictured and read through each recipe longingly looking for one that I could possibly make here. Surprisingly I have been able to successfully make a number of recipes, some with minor adjustments and they don’t turn out half bad.

To make myself take more advantage of these magazines, which I love and to give myself some accountability, I am going to attempt to make as many of the recipes as possible from these magazines that come my way.

So every two months or so (the mail isn’t too reliable here) I shall scour each magazine and see what I can do. Then I will write about it here in this blog, my triumphs and my, umm, downfalls I guess.

As a mother of a 5 mnth, old whose life is already quite chaotic and stressful trying to live in another country and raise a child, I am not going to make more work for myself, it is to be fun. So I won’t put a number on the recipes I will be attempting, I’ll just see what I can do.

I have actually already mentioned on recipe that I was able to make. The, ‘Coconut pancakes with banana and passionfruit’, in my opening post were courtesy of this months, ‘Donna Hay Mag, issue 49 Feb/March 2010 “Summer Cool, p. 86.”’ All three of those ingredients are in abundance here. I didn’t have the caster sugar but the sugar I used, which in Aussie speak is the equivalent of raw sugar, was just fine.

Note to self; must ask for fresh strawberries to be sent down on next weeks plane. I want to attempt to make, ‘strawberry swirl semifreddo’. I have to keep telling my husband that it has nothing to do with Freddo Frogs.

Hopefully the eggs will make it down this week, it’s a bit hard being eggless.

I still have no idea what I am cooking for dinner. It is 3:40 in the afternoon, incredibly hot mind, the baby has just gone back to sleep (ah blessed silence) Food is in a bit of short supply at the present as we haven’t been shopping for over 2 mnths now. Maybe on Saturday (cross fingers) we’ll hit the nearest decent grocery shop, which happens to be down the rocky, dusty, windy road, 3 hours away or a 20 min flight. I’ll take the flight option thanks, particularly as my husband will be doing the flying.

If people are looking you may as well wave