Josephine Moon's Blog, page 17
March 28, 2018
Zucchini Rosemary Bread — Recipes inspired by Three Gold Coins
Continuing with food inspired by Italy (where I ate a lot of food in research for Three Gold Coins), here is my recipe for Zucchini Rosemary Bread. Enjoy!
Zucchini Rosemary Bread
(GF and optional DF)
Ingredients
1 cup chopped walnuts, toasted
2/3 cup oil (melted ghee or coconut oil or olive oil)
3/4 cup honey
4 eggs
1 cup of milk or nut milk
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp vanilla bean powder (or extract)
1 tsp Himalayan or Celtic sea salt
1 tsp nutmeg
3 cups grated zucchini
1 cup brown rice flour
1 cup white rice flour
1/2 cup gf rolled oats
1/2 arrowroot flour
2 sprigs of rosemary, finely chopped.
Method
Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius and line two loaf tins with baking (parchment) paper.
While the oven is heating, lay out your walnuts on a baking sheet and let them toast gently till fragrant.
In a large mixing bowl, combine all ingredients down to the milk and whisk till combined.
Add your dry ingredients one at a time, stirring as you go till everything is well combined. (Add extra rice flour if it looks too wet.)
Divide the mixture between the two loaf tins and place side by side on a top shelf of the oven.
Cook for 30-40 minutes or until golden. Allow to cool on a cooling rack before cutting. Serve with butter.
March 27, 2018
How to Throw a Tuscan Feast This Easter
Last Easter weekend, we decided to treat ourselves to a night we’d always remember: a Tuscan-inspired feast, right in the Sunshine Coast hinterland in Queensland. Everything came together to create an evening in which it felt as if a huge magic bubble of wonder and love had descended on our house and infused us all with a lifetime of memories.
The heart of a Tuscan-inspired feast is, of course, family and friends. The joy comes from sharing your home, your beautiful produce and cooking, and most of all your love. So invite as many people as you think your time, energy and budget can handle.
As far as the menu goes, Tuscan-inspired food is rustic ‘peasant’ food. The produce should be so fresh and bursting with flavour that it speaks for itself, rather than having to be fussed over and ‘dressed up’.
From my experience travelling to Tuscany, and my research for my novel, Three Gold Coins, I’ve learned that Italians by nature are incredibly regionally focused and fiercely proud of the food their local area produces. As they should be! What better way to honour a community’s history and culture and look after our planet at the same time?
For our feast, we chose cheese from our local cheesemaker and fresh fruit and vegetables direct from our local farmers. The result was scrumptious!
Here are my top ten tips for throwing a Tuscan-inspired feast.
Keep your menu under control. Although Italians are known for their dining experiences to go on for five (or more!) courses, three great course (antipasto, secondi, and dolce) should do it. Trust me, you’ll still be fit to bursting.
Try to set up your long table outdoors and under trees, if you have great weather. Otherwise, you could do was we did and bring the outdoors in with potted citrus and olive trees and plenty of terracotta pots filled with herbs.
Buy as much of your produce locally as you can—it will have loads more flavour and freshness. Save your food miles for special items, such as prosciutto, which might have actually come all the way from Italy.
Style your space with simple yet elegant finishings, such as wood, branches, leaves and candles, and don’t be afraid to use the food itself as table settings. Fresh honeycomb was a huge hit for us, a gorgeous feature and talking point and it was all gone by the end of the feast.
Consider a separate eating table for the really young children and indulge them with their own special activities and treats. Hire a nanny if you can.
Be flexible with your menu. We decided on tiramisu (naturally) for our dolce (dessert) option, but in the end only four of twenty-three people actually wanted that, instead choosing a far more English option of strawberries and cream!
Flowers and cuttings will make any space feel more welcoming and can give an instant Tuscan feel. Think about the colours of Tuscany—blues, olives, greens, purples, maybe a splash of red. Depending on what’s in season, look for lavender, rosemary, geraniums, olive leaves, roses or perhaps even sunflowers for a big statement. Bunches of herbs of sage, thyme or oregano can look beautiful too.
The right music will add another powerful layer of atmosphere to your feast. Unless you’re lucky enough to have musicians and singers in your family who are happy to serenade you, the easiest thing to do is to create a playlist with your favourite music provider and let it run on random repeat throughout your event.
Remember the red wine, your camera and fairy lights (you can never have enough). Forget checking your phone, clothes with belts or tight waists.
After all is said and done, the biggest thing you can offer to bring this feast to fruition is your love, joy, tenderness, generosity and sense of fun. That’s what will make it a night to remember.
March 26, 2018
Blossom Water Amaretti: recipe from Three Gold Coins
Like all my books, Three Gold Coins is full of food. One of those foods is the delectable amaretti.
If like me you are gluten free, the amaretti biscuit seems to be heaven sent! It’s also a great one if you’re time poor or not very confident in the kitchen. It’s sweet and chewy, freezes well and is just perfect to accompany coffee and tea.
Here is my recipe for amaretti–so easy, so versatile, so yummy! Enjoy!
Ingredients
4 egg whites
350g caster sugar
300g blanched almond meal
50g almond meal (not blanched) **
(**Note: alternatively, use 350g of blanched almond meal in total.)
30mLs orange blossom water
Method
Preheat your oven to 170 C.
Beat your egg whites with an electric beater until stiff.
Use a silicone spatula to fold in the dry ingredients, as well as the blossom water, until smooth.
Place small dollops of the dough onto two pre-greased and/or lined baking trays, leaving about a centimetre between biscuits.
Place a slivered almond in the centre of each biscuit.
Cook until golden brown, approximately 20 minutes.
March 22, 2018
Win a Snag Bag for Three Gold Coins!
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To celebrate the coming of age for this book baby, I’ve put together a snag bag for selfies, “shelfies”, and/or bookstagrams.
TO ENTER
Take a photo of yourself reading Three Gold Coins (a ‘selfie’) or a photo of the book out and about in the world on the shelves (“shelfies”), or in an artfully placed arrangement (bookstagram).
Post it to social media with the hashtag #threegoldcoins and TAG ME (so I know where to find you).
WINNERS
One winner will get a snag bag in the mail! Includes a limited edition spiral-bound Three Gold Coins notebook, a signed poster of The Beekeeper’s Secret, a signed poster of Three Gold Coins, a clutch purse and matching paper fan, and signed book plates for your other copies of my books.
Two runners up will get a limited edition spiral-bound Three Gold Coins notebook.
OR
If social media isn’t your thing, just do the same as above but simply EMAIL me your photo (with permission for me to post it for you) and I’ll include you in the running.
WINNER CHOSEN
Friday 20th April
Good luck! I can’t wait to see your pictures from ‘out in the wild’!
March 20, 2018
March 15, 2018
The Day My Ovarian Cyst Burst Mid Flight
[image error] “Attention passengers, if there is a medical doctor onboard, could you please make yourself known to one of our cabin crew.”
It took me a while to work out that this voice I could hear was calling for help, for me.
Not long after takeoff from the Sunshine Coast, bound for Sydney and a visit to Booktopia to sign stock of Three Gold Coins (something I was very excited about), a sudden, sharp, terrible pain contracted in my lower right abdominal region. It was breathtaking, literally. I tried to get up and walk, I tried visiting the loo, I tried waiting it out. But it kept getting worse, I started feeling horribly sick, and when the world started going black around the edges and I went hot all over, I knew I was going to pass out. I told a member of the crew that I was feeling really sick and that was the last thing I remember before I evidently lost consciousness.
I have fainted many times. Severe illness or severe pain can do that to me. But this one was different. When I started to ‘come to’ I was on the floor of the plane. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t open my eyes, and the first thing I was aware of was a loud, rushing sound, like being trapped in a cyclonic wind tunnel. Then I heard voices, from a long way away, and ones I didn’t recognise. I had no idea where I was. To be honest, I truly thought at that moment that I had died or was about to die. As a bit more consciousness came back, I must have moved because suddenly a female voice was beside me, talking to me, and picking up my limp hand in hers. Someone put something flappable on my face.
‘Your on Jetstar,’ she said. ‘You collapsed. You’re on the floor. We’re giving you oxygen.’
Then I started to gulp air rhythmically, almost like a dog panting. I couldn’t control it and still couldn’t open my eyes. I heard them call for assistance from the passengers and make another call to get an ambulance to meet us in Sydney. Still, my body wouldn’t work. I have no idea how long I lay there like that.
‘She’s hyperventilating,’ I heard the woman say. ‘Her pulse is really fast.’
Then the nausea hit me. I have sobbed, half groaned and rolled onto my side and started vomiting. They brought me bags. They tied up my hair. They assured me I didn’t have to move or do anything. They were unfailingly kind.
It took a long time for me to sit up, though I could only stare at a fixed spot on the floor, all my concentration taken in trying to stop the world from spinning, stop the nausea, stop vomiting.
Eventually, they helped me up and I staggered to an empty row–one they’d cleared for me. The young woman–Jetstar crew–sat beside me, offering me sick bags and paper towels, sips of water and an ice pack as somewhere along the line I’d gotten really hot and flushed. She was so lovely. I’ve no idea what her name was but I remember being impressed that she could sit so close to me while I wretched over and over and still be so kind. The pain was still there but had subsided considerably. Now I just felt weak, shaky and horribly, horribly sick.
The ambulance met us on the tarmac in Sydney and took me to Prince of Wales hospital in Randwick. I was there for many hours feeling a little better with each passing hour. The emergency department was heaving with people and super busy doctors and nurses. But everyone was so kind. I had a lovely doctor–Omid–who was caring, focused, quick to jump in and find a vein himself when success was looking doubtful, and very thorough.
The two main concerns were for a burst appendix or a twisted ovary. An ultrasound confirmed a burst ovarian cyst.
I had no idea I had an ovarian cyst. This event was traumatic enough in itself but for me an equally unsettling aspect is really that I had a nearly three centimetre cyst (apparently, small on the scale of cysts, which can grow up to the size of an orange, while ovaries themselves are around the size of an almond) but had no idea. How easily could that have been a tumour? To be honest, I don’t really give my ovaries too much thought. They are quiet and out of the way, after all. Yet my mother lost an ovary in her mid-thirties to an ovarian cyst. I know women with polycystic ovaries. And I know two that had tumours removed from their ovaries.
If sharing this experience does anything, I hope it gives you pause to consider your ovaries. Do you know the signs of ovarian cysts or ovarian cancer? Do you take them seriously? I say I had no idea that I had the cyst, and yet in truth, I do ignore pains. Having a few rheumatological conditions already, I have a high pain threshold and a great ability to ignore pain and dismiss it as just an everyday companion of my life. But we really can’t afford to be so flippant, can we? Obviously, it’s not practical to run to the doctor for every small twinge or passing headache. But maybe we just need to include a bit more mindfulness about our bodies, actively making time to ‘tune in’ and ‘check in’ when we feel something before hastily dismissing it. Stay up to date with information about signs and symptoms to look for. Check in with your doctor.
Also, I do want to say a huge thank you to the Jetstar crew and to the entire planeload of passengers who were disrupted by my event, and at least one person I know of who had been waiting for her meal and didn’t get it at all. That night in hospital, while waiting for results, I suddenly wondered if people had Tweeted about it and complained but I did a search and no one had, and in this day when people seem so keen to take to Twitter to gripe about everything, I do appreciate that.
I’m also very sorry to say that I obviously didn’t make it to Booktopia to sign stock, so if you were hanging out for a signed copy from there, I am very sorry.
Finally, a couple of people have said to me that there might have been a connection between the cabin pressure and the event and having googled that I certainly came across quite a few women who’ve had this happen on a flight. So if you know you have ovarian cysts, I would urge you to discuss that with your doctor too.
March 5, 2018
Pre-order, Booktopia
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Have you pre-ordered your copy of Three Gold Coins? The good news is that I’m heading to Sydney to the wonderful people at Booktopia on 14 March to sign copies, so you could nab yourself one endorsed with love from me!
Three good reasons to pre-order your copy:
Every pre-order helps the author by contributing to the first week’s sales figures, thereby helping the book rise up the best seller rankings and making it more visible to others.
The second the book is released, the Booktopia crew will pack it up and post it to you without you even having to drive anywhere.
No chance of forgetting or missing out!
I can’t wait till you get this book into your hands.
Here’s what some early readers have said about Three Gold Coins:
Thank you!
February 28, 2018
Events for Three Gold Coins
[image error]We are on the countdown to Three Gold Coins hitting the shelves and confirmed events are beginning to roll in. This is the fun part of writing a book… leaving my seclusion and getting out to meet you, my fabulous readers! You are the reason I write!
So far, I have events on the Sunshine Coast, Brisbane and the Gold Coast, with one still brewing for Sydney and some others in the pipeline. You can check them out on my Contact Me/Events page but do make sure to keep checking back for updates as they happen. I’d love to see you out there on the road!
February 26, 2018
Three Gold Coins, Book Launch Invitation
You’re invited to the official launch of Three Gold Coins.
This is going to be fun!
Antipasti, bubbles, books, Caroline Hutchinson, the wonderful Nat and Lu from The River Read, actual Story Dogs dogs, and me, signing books! I’d love to see you there. X
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January 31, 2018
Pink clothes for boys
[image error]My five-year-old son loves pink clothes and has done from the moment he could see clothes hanging in a shop and knew we had money to buy them. I’ve talked about this on my Facebook page before but here I am again, more than two years later, with the same problem.
I cannot find (easily accessible) pink clothes for boys.
Look, men wear pink business shirts (and I know many of us LOVE a man in a pink business shirt); a local surf lifesaving club up here has fluorescent pink shirts on their members; and male tennis champions (e.g. Nadal, Kyrgios, Federer) are wearing it on the the tennis court. To my knowledge, nothing bad has happened in the world because of these things. No hell broke out, no locusts appeared, no cracks in the mantle of the earth, no worm holes in space. It’s all very normal. But start saying that a little boy wants to wear pink and people start getting shifty… oh, what does that mean? oh, do you think… you know? oh, what are you going to do?
Why can’t young boys were pink too?
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Go into any big chain store and most of the smaller ones and you’ll find clothes that are ubiquitously blue, green, black and white with a smattering of red or yellow if you’re lucky, and to be honest, a whole heap of it is ugly. (For the record, I think there are problems with girls’ clothes too, not least the sexualisation of tiny children, but for now we’ll just stick with the boys’ dilemma of lack of choice.)
Why must we take some sort of hard line action on small boys, as though we must FORCE them to realise that THEY ARE BOYS and BOYS simply DON’T wear pink!!! Seriously, what are we afraid of here? Their role models–grown up men with grown up jobs–are wearing it. It’s time, people. It’s time to bring the little boy clothing line to the modern day.
Please, if you are a designer, I want to talk to you. There is a market for this and I am that passionate about it that I on the verge of creating my own clothing line for boys. They deserve choice too.
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(Pictures sourced just by googling pink shirts for business, surf lifesavers and male tennis players.)
