Kandy Shepherd's Blog, page 3

A slice of deliciousness

Many families seem to have a favorite treat that’s always requested for special occasions. In our small family it’s what has become known simply as “The Slice”.

Down Under where I live, a slice is a name to cover a sweet treat made in a rectangular baking tin (but not necessarily baked) and cut into squares or rectangles to serve. In other countries it might be known as a bar or a tray bake.

Whatever it’s called, it is invariably calorie dense in the extreme and totally irresistible to people like me who were born with a sweet tooth!

When my teenage daughter asked me what she could make me for Mother’s Day this past weekend, I only had to say “The Slice” for her to know exactly what I meant.

“The Slice” as served to me on Mother’s Day

“The Slice ” is correctly called Apricot and Coconut Slice and I originally found it on a Nestle ad in a magazine. It’s a decadent concoction made with crushed sweet biscuits (of the Australian and British type of biscuit), finely cut dried apricots, dessicated coconut, condensed milk and chocolate. (In Australia a Morning Coffee biscuit works brilliantly, in Britain a digestive, in the US, I think a graham cracker would substitute.)

One time my daughter and I made a tray the night before we had visitors due to our farmhouse. I’ve ashamed to say we ate the entire tray by the time they arrived and had to whip up a quick batch of cookies instead. (Needless to say we never confessed, because the visitors love “The Slice” as well.)

Last time we made it with marbled dark and white chocolate

The recipe is easily located on the Nestle Australia website for Apricot and Coconut Slice. But I’ll share it here anyway. (Note: Australian standard measuring cups are used in the Nestle recipe. An Australian standard measuring cup is 250ml, an American one is 240ml so there isn’t much difference in a recipe like this. For an excellent resource in converting baking measures and ingredients from other countries, visit Joy of Baking  .)

Recipe Ingredients

(Makes 24)

250g plain sweet biscuits, crushed
1 cup (150g) roughly chopped dried apricots
1 1/2 cups (120g) desiccated coconut
395g can NESTLÉ Sweetened Condensed Milk
125g butter, chopped
1 1/4 cups (185g) NESTLÉ Milk Melts, melted



How to make

1. Grease and line the base of a 28cm x 18cm baking pan with baking paper.

2. Combine crushed biscuits, apricots and coconut in a large bowl.

3. Place NESTLÉ Sweetened Condensed Milk and butter in a medium saucepan; stir over medium heat until melted. Stir into dry ingredients. Press mixture into prepared pan.

5. Pour NESTLÉ Milk Melts over slice, allow to set. Cut into squares to serve.

NOTE: Allow setting time.

Preparation time:

15 minutes

Cooking time:

3 minutes

 

Food somehow plays a part in the novels I write–think I might have to work “The Slice” into one of them!

 

 

Update on Ancient Albert

I sometimes wonder what a nearly 21-year-old cat dreams about.

Ancient Albert dreaming

My darling Albert looked so content and happy when I took this snap of him on the sofa. In a deep sleep, his head was tucked on his paw, ears and paws occasionally twitching. Memories of long ago mouse hunts? Meals? Who knows? His waking time revolves around wailing for food, nibbling at food, turning his nose up at food that he deems unsatisfactory, sometimes needing to be fed by hand (and I mean literally from the palm of our hands) and snuggling with his humans at any opportunity. Always a sociable cat, he totters down the hallway to greet visitors, still wanting to know what’s going on, still wanting them to make a fuss of him. So maybe he’s dreaming about food and parties!

It isn’t just us who looks after him. Our younger cat Tabitha–well, relatively young at age 12!–looks after him too, grooming him and letting him eat first. So sweet to see them together.

Tabitha (behind him) keeps him company

As the weather cools Down Under, Albert needs to keep his frail bones warm and loves nothing better than baking under the wood combustion heater. It gets hot under there and he eventually comes out for fresh air and a drink. He’s done it for years–so do the others–and it doesn’t seem to harm him though the vet is horrified to hear it.

Can you sport a cat under the old wood combustions stove at our farm?

There he is, baking his bones!

And when the fire dies down at night, he finds his favorite spot of all, snuggled under the covers with us. (My husband, who never had a cat in his life until he met me is unfailingly loving and patient with Albert. I never write a hero who doesn’t love animals–no wonder when my own real-life hero is so wonderful with them!)

Love that cat!

PS. People often ask me where I got the feather-embroidered pillow in the top photo. I got it online at Lands End, sadly they don’t have it any more.

Of cabbages and cookbooks

The other day I was given a magnificent, whole red cabbage. After I admired its beauty for a few days, I had to decide what to do with it.

Red cabbage--beautiful inside and out.

Although I love red cabbage raw in a salad or steamed, I decided there was no choice but to make my never-fail red cabbage side dish. It’s from one of my cherished vintage (sounds so much better than old!) cookbooks Irish Countryhouse Cooking by Rosie Tinne, first published by Gill and Macmillan Ltd in 1974.

One of my favorite vintage cookbooks

The book comprises recipes from grand Irish country houses and country house hotels of the time and the list of contributors have titles like Countess, Viscountess, Lady, and The Hon. Each recipe has the name of the house at the top and the signature of the contributor below.

My favorite and utterly delicious recipe for Red Cabbage comes from a page in the book headed The Glebe, Leixlip, County Kildare. A Google search doesn’t show a match, so I don’t know if the house still exists. But the recipe lives on. Here, I share it with you (I’ve put metric equivalents in italics).

My very favorite red cabbage recipe

RED CABBAGE

1 small red cabbage (about 2 lb) (about 1kg)

1 large onion—sliced

2oz butter (about 60g)

1 oz flour (about 30g)

2 apples—peeled, cored and cut in chunks

3 tablespoons white or wine vinegar

2 teaspoons brown sugar

3-4 cloves

3-4 bay leaves

salt to taste

Wash and shred cabbage. Heat butter in fairly large saucepan and lightly fry onion. Add flour and cook for a minute or two, but do not brown. Add ½ pint (about 300ml) water, apples, vinegar, sugar, cloves, bay leaves, salt to taste and the cabbage. Simmer, stirring at intervals, until cabbage is tender (about 1½ hours to 2 hours). There should be no liquid to throw away.

I serve this cabbage dish with pork, but it could easily go with steak or even duck. I keep it in a sealed container in the fridge and eat it by the spoonful!

When I Googled Irish Countryside Cooking, there seem to be copies available at various vintage book stores, as well as Amazon.

I lived in Ireland as a child and, though I don’t remember very much, love reading books set in Ireland–and reading my Irish cookbooks.

Let me know if you like the recipe!

 

Photo of cut red cabbage

© Akarelias | http://www.stockfreeimages.com

Chickie centerfolds

My hens have made their modeling debut!

My little flock of Isa Browns feature in the beautiful new cookbook Belinda Jeffery's Collected Recipes, published by Penguin Group (Australia) under the Lantern imprint. Here they are across a double page spread. Very photogenic, don't you agree?

My chickens star on pages 162-163 of Belinda Jeffery's Collected Recipes, photographed by Rodney Weidland

So how did my chickens get their feathers into a cookbook? They were photographed by my friend Rodney Weidland who did all the magnificent photography in this cookbook. You know the term "food porn"? It could have been invented for this recipe photography!

A fabulous cookbook for family meals and entertaining--I love it.

Belinda Jeffery is well known in Australia for her cookbooks, magazine work and TV appearances. Her recipes are sublime—utterly delicious but easy to make. I'm pleased my chickens make an appearance in this wonderful cookbook!

We inherited the original Isa Browns when we bought our farm. Totally ignorant of poultry keeping, we've muddled along and learned as we go. Somehow we've managed to keep them healthy and happy. They have a nice life in their roomy hen house (known as the Hen Hilton in our valley) and the freedom of a large fenced grassy area. This freedom can come at a cost—one brown girl got taken by a hawk this past weekend. I heard her distressed squawking and ran outside to see her in the clutches of an enormous bird. It flew off with her in its claws but my screaming at it caused it to drop her. Scary stuff. At the time of writing she is okay, though suffering from shock, we hope she will survive.

Some of the girls--photographed by me

Our chickens are more pets than livestock. We keep them just for eggs and when they finally drop off the perch (sometimes literally!) they get buried with ceremonial honors in the garden.

We treasure their beautiful (and delicious) eggs

Lucky my pampered hens don't know that their photo is used to introduce a section of chicken recipes in the cookbook…

Writing (and shopping) retreat

My friend, author Cathleen Ross, and I had the farmhouse to ourselves for the weekend—peace and quiet to write, write, write. We wrote, we read, and we… I was going to confess we ate the chocolate Easter eggs we bought for our families but maybe I might deny that.

To take a break, we went shopping at some of the not-too-far-away shops and a market that has several floors of antiques, bric-a-bric and gadgets. We had a fire at the farmhouse last year and nearly everything was destroyed by flame or smoke.  What an excuse to scoop up a few replacement bargains!

First up was this gorgeous jug. Who could leave it sitting there with its $5-reduced-from-$20 label? It would have been downright mean to reject it.

And then there was this pre-loved silver-plated spaghetti server. At $7, I felt it would add a touch of luxury to the simple pasta meals we share around the farmhouse table. (Must beg Cathleen to make me some of the awesome spaghetti sauce she learned to make from her Italian father-in-law. It's truly deserving of a silver server!)

I don't know what these beautiful candle sticks are made from, some kind of enamel possibly, but I fell in love with them and was happy to pay $16 for the pair. Practical as well as pretty—we often lose power when storms rage through our valley and it's reassuring to have candles to hand when it suddenly goes dark.

Sweeping the floor is never much fun, but I rather think I'll enjoy it more with this cheerful $6 dustpan and broom. Those extended handles should make the chore not so backbreaking.

And then there was this print on canvas, my most expensive buy of the day for $18. I love botanical prints and while this certainly isn't the real deal, that didn't stop me from taking it home!

We spent a while hunting through shelves and shelves of secondhand paperbacks and Cathleen found a wonderful selection of favorite out-of-print romances.

Then we went home and wrote again. And I came up with some creative explanations for my husband for just why we needed a silver spaghetti server!

In praise of plums

Our plums on the tree

One of the very special things about an old house is the garden that comes with it.  Our farmhouse is graced with wonderful fruit trees—some of them more than fifty years old, our neighbors tell us. The star is a gnarled old plum tree that each year bears an abundance of superb plums—more than enough for us and for the flocks of birds that also appreciate its fruit. The windfalls are enjoyed by our chickens, horses and little bulls.

Never happier than when picking his birthday plums

A cool, gray wet summer this year meant we didn't get much bounty from the other fruit trees or the vegetable garden. But the plum tree more than made up for that by giving us hundreds of perfect fruits. My husband has a particular love for the plum tree, it bears fruit around about his birthday in January and he sees the crop as a gift just for him. He's very possessive of them!

Happy harvest!

Over the last few years, I've learned how to save the plums as jams and preserved in jars (though nothing like the perfect preserves I admire made by the experts). I freeze them too, but our electricity supply can be erratic when storms rage through our valley so I don't like to risk too many in the freezer!

Stewed with vanilla and cinnamon

The family favorite is plums stewed with sugar, a vanilla pod and a cinnamon quill. "Make enough for the whole year, please," demands my daughter who likes to eat them with muesli and yogurt for breakfast.

Stacked ready to freeze

I did my best to fill her order, with hubby helping to wash and stone and cut (and snack!).  But in spite of our best efforts, work and writing and everything else got in the way and I didn't quite manage a year's supply this time. Preserving fruit is hot, hard, time-consuming work! However there is a still a satisfying number of containers stored away in pantry and freezer. And, yes, I confess, I'm guilty of holding open the cupboard doors and gloating over them!

Plum upside down cake - yum!

We have no idea what variety our plums are—we just enjoy them and hope we'll be enjoying them for years to come…

Go gadgets!

Some people go crazy for shoes. I'm a sucker for kitchen gadgets. Each year, I treat myself to a new one—something quite different to the ones I already have. I allow myself plenty of time to traipse around a kitchenware store, browsing and marveling at all the gadgets I never knew I needed until I chanced upon them.

It juliennes vegetables

My latest acquisition is this gadget for julienning vegetables. Just slide down the carrot and you have fine, even slices.

Aren't those carrots beautiful?

Here is my julienner in action. I'm entranced with it! My husband not so much. He thought it was a vegetable peeler and scraped his fingers trying to peel potatoes with it. Maybe I should have told him about it. Maybe I didn't want to hear him asking me did I really need it!

This year I did something I usually never do—made a repeat purchase. This nifty quiche tin was last year's impulse purchase and I used it so often I began to fear what I would do without it.

The perforated base is the secret

The holes in the base make for wonderfully well-cooked pastry in savory or sweet tarts. When I saw one sitting on a 30 percent off table, I pounced on it. Now that I have two residing in my kitchen, I rest easier.

My favorite cheese and caramelized onion tart with thyme from the garden

Okay, so I might have left this particular cheese and caramelized onion tart in the oven a tad too long and the pastry shrank—but my lunch guests (some writer friends) did not complain. We enjoyed talking about our latest works-in-progress—and of course I showed off my tin with the holes in the base and graciously accepted all compliments.

I bought these Mickey Mouse baking measures at Disney World in Orlando some years back at the Romance Writers of America annual convention—the one that got relocated to Florida when Nashville was flooded.

Childish? Heck no!

 

They're almost too cute to use! But use them I do, as they are American-sized measures, very useful for when I want to cook from American recipes. (The Australian standard measures are slightly different.)

The apple really doesn't fall far from the tree, as look what my darling teenage daughter brought home for me last week. For no reason. She just saw them and knew I'd love them. Of course I love them even more because of her thoughtfulness!

A gift from my sweetheart of a daughter

My love for kitchen gadgets is a fickle one. Sometimes the love affair is over all too soon. The favored ones live in the top drawer. Below is a drawer full of discarded toys that didn't fulfill their potential in one disappointing way or another. Sorry, gadgets, but it's not you, it's me!

Oh, and by the way, I go crazy for shoes too…

My hot, hunky new hero!

 

My new contemporary romance e-book Something About Joe is now live on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords and other e-retailers for the special price of $0.99.

Something About Joe is a reissue of my first published novel (then called Mitchell's Nanny, published by a small independent publisher.

Even years after the novel was published, readers let me know how much they loved that story of a stressed out single mom who falls in love with her toddler's new nanny—a hot hunk on a Harley who roars into her heart. When a copy went for a surprising sum at a charity auction at a romance reader's convention, I began to wonder if Joe and Allison's story might reach a wider, new audience.

First thing I did when I decided to indie publish it as an e-book, was to change the title from Mitchell's Nanny (an author often doesn't have a choice of their book title) to Something About Joe. The second was to commission a lovely cover from the mega-talented designer Kim Killion at at Hot Damn Designs. The third was to update some of the details in the book to make it sit happily in 2012.

Something About Joe is already getting some wonderful feedback from readers—and five-star reviews!

Reviewer and blogger Katrina Whittaker says: "I'd give Something About Joe more than 5 stars if I could. It's a delightful and heartfelt romance between two unlikely people who complement each other to perfection."

"Joe is every woman's fantasy man!" says another reader.

My hero Joe Martin is hot, smart, great with kids and an amazing lover. No wonder heroine Allison Bradley has such trouble fighting her attraction to him. These two really have quite a lot to work through before they get their guaranteed romance novel "happy ever after" ending!

Here's where to find Something About Joe. If you read it and enjoy it, please let me know!

AMAZON

http://www.amazon.com/Something-About-Joe-ebook/dp/B0076WJSSK

BARNES & NOBLE

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/something-about-joe-kandy-shepherd/1109155752

SMASHWORDS

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/130749

Blog brag

Dusting my study (a rare occurrence!) I couldn't help admiring my trophies.

In the middle is my award for Favourite Contemporary Romance awarded by the Australian Romance Readers Association for Love is a Four-Legged Word. I was amazed and delighted to win—the winner announcement was one of the most thrilling moments of my life. The award on the right is for the same category in last year's awards for Home Is Where the Bark Is.  I really couldn't believe that I'd won two years in a row. The winning of these awards is all the sweeter for the fact that my Berkley Sensation novels are not readily available in Australia.

Perhaps even more thrilling is that the Awards are on again tonight and I am a finalist in the Favourite Contemporary Romance category for my indie-published  e-book The Castaway Bride. This book is an Amazon bestseller and was recommended by The Wall Street Journal to its readers. But to final in a competition voted by readers is beyond amazing.

On the left is an award won for my "day job" in publishing. The award for Customer Magazine of the Year is from ACP, the biggest magazine publisher in Australia for the Coles Magazine—a food magazine that is free in Coles supermarkets (Australia). It has a circulation in the millions and is highly successful. The award is to the wonderful editorial team but, as the editor of the magazine, I got to collect it. It has to go back to the office but it's been fun having it on my shelf.

Best of luck to all the finalists in tonight's ARRA awards—I'll be there cheering you on.

Kitty companions

In my study, I have two identical chairs covered in a dusky pink fabric. They've come with us through various moves and don't fit in any other room in this house. Two of my cats, Ancient Albert (twenty and a half years of age) have taken to choosing a chair each to keep me company as I write. Maybe they think that acting as feline muses I might include more cat characters in my dog-character predominant books. Who knows?

Whatever, I love having them there!

Albert chooses the chair next to me

Tabitha likes to be nearby