Shambolic Living

Retro Recipes – Caramel Walnut Cake

Janine — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 22:51:02 +0000

One of the discoveries of getting through the unpacking of the many boxes (a Project 44 goal) were the old cookbooks that had belonged to my Mum and Nana. Flicking through the browning pages, the fading ink shared recipes and ingredients that have long fallen out of popularity. There’s Tapioca Cream and Gelatine Pudding, an...

What’s Your Favourite Cookbook?

Janine — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 07:56:21 +0000

There is a certain irony to writing a blog post about cookbooks on a night one child in your family is having a hotdog, the husband is having leftover pumpkin soup and yourself and the other child are heating up some frozen spinach and ricotta pasties – Sunday night is gourmet at Shambles Manor. However,...

The Fridge Debacle

Janine — Sun, 17 Jun 2012 22:00:21 +0000

On Friday 30 bloggers were invited to Kirribilli House to meet the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. I wasn’t invited. Something to do with not enough reach or influence I suspect (although I would argue the ten of you I have left after the great blog move are highly influential people). It was blogger power to...

Reading This Week – Love & Hunger – Thoughts on the Gift Of Food – Charlotte Wood

Janine — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 10:03:21 +0000

Every month I take part in the Book Club on ABC Mid North Coast, which means I have books selected for me to read. It’s like a literary lottery, you never know what you are going to get. You often find yourself reading books you wouldn’t normally choose for yourself. This month we discussed Love...

I Make S’Mores

Janine — Sat, 05 May 2012 22:10:14 +0000

The internet is a wealth of information. I’m sure if you search hard enough you could find the cure for cancer or the solution to third world hunger within its trillions upon trillions of pages of facts, figures and general whinging. In the six months I have spent trawling the internet in my quest for...

Sunday

Janine — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 07:42:41 +0000

Sigh, this is why I couldn’t enter the Lifestyle category in the Sydney Writer’s Centre Best Australian Blogs Competition. I try to do a nice photo of my Sunday lunch and manage to capture daughter’s PJ’s hanging on the clothesline in the background. Before I started blogging I used to be jealous of the beautiful...

5 Favorite Recipes for Entertaining

Janine — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 11:49:34 +0000

I’ve never really done link-ups or memes before (watch me gettin’ with the lingo) but liked the look of this one and let’s be honest it’s 10.13pm and I need something to blog about. Over atMoments That Define Life there is is the Listable Life a weekly meme which gives a choice of “lists” to...

Christmas Come and Gone

Janine — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 14:56:39 +0000

Well it’s over for another year. Christmas come and gone in a mad whirl of shopping, cleaning, cooking, entertaining. It was hosted for the first time this year at Shambles Manor. We did successfully clear up enough room for people to be able to physically enter the house, OK it was never going to pass...

The Lunchbox Lottery

Janine — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 20:35:54 +0000

Can the level of a mother’s love & parenting ability be measured in the quality of the lunchbox she provides? I hope not. Because what I’ve discovered about myself is I tend to be an all-or-nothing kind of person. In every aspect of my life, but particularly in the lunchbox arena. I’ve done the figures,...

Cooking With Gwyneth

Janine — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 09:29:33 +0000

Just a disclaimer to start, cooking is not my strong point. Dinner party guests at my house have been forced to flee to the local Mexican takeaway when the fettucine bore a strong resemblance, and taste, to Glag Glue. I once tried to feed six people with one potato (in my defence it was a...