Potato, leek & cheddar croquettes

I am crazy over mashed potato, or anything potato for that matter. I think it's the Finn in me, we love our starch. It's funny how even the smell of potatoes on the boil takes me back to my childhood. I recall watching my Mum as she peeled boiled potatoes using a knife with the potato stuck on a fork.  I have no idea why I specifically remember that, it's just a vivid childhood memory. Potatoes were a regular with our meals as kids and they're still one of my favourites. 

I stumbled across a croquette recipe in Masterchef Magazine and decided to create my own little recipe. Tried and tested. You’re welcome.

I am hooked on panko bread crumbs at the moment, you can obviously substitute with plain bread crumbs if you don’t have panko. I find panko so much crispier than ordinary bread crumbs. You can make your own fresh crumbs by removing the crusts off day-old bread and processing in a food processor. Also, if you are not a fan of coriander, flat leaf parsley would go well as a substitute. I pretty much add coriander to everything!

Ingredients (makes approx 15 croquettes):

4 medium sized potatoes

2 tbs butter

2 tbs milk (if you want to be super naughty you can use cream)

2 egg yolks, beaten

½ leek, cut lengthways and sliced finely

1 cup vintage cheddar, grated 

¼ cup fresh coriander, chopped
½ cup plain flour

1 cup panko bread crumbs

Sea salt & pepper

Vegetable oil for frying

Add ½ tsp salt to a pot of water and boil potatoes in their skins until soft (15-20 mins). Once soft, peel then mash, adding butter, milk and beaten egg yolks to create a creamy texture. I learnt a little trick from my Mum to get super creamy mashed potato, and that is to use a hand mixer to whip into a smooth blend. I use a stick blender, works perfectly.

Add leek, cheese and coriander to potato mixture, season with lashings of freshly ground sea salt and pepper and combine well. Stir in flour, then refigerate mixture for 30 minutes. Once cool, gently roll 2 tbs of filling into an oval shape and coat with breadcrumbs. Repeat with remainder of the mixture. Tip: do this with wet hands as stops the mixture from sticking to your hands.

Fill a small saucepan 5cm deep with oil and heat over medium heat. Without overcrowding the pan, fry the croquettes for 3 minutes each or until golden brown, turning halfway. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towel.

Serve. Unless like me you eat them all yourself first!

Joining in Veggie Mama's Meatless Monday linky today. Do yourself a favour and head over to check out some awesome dishes! 

Grab life by the lapels

Well here we are, in the second part of 2012. How fast do the days go by?! Only eight months ago I was planning to pursue my dream of working part time so I could focus on writing, and I now have merely 4-6 weeks of work left. I am so very excited. So excited.

I look back at the first half of 2012 with extreme pride, sadness, joy, relief and happiness, so much has happened that I am baffled at the velocity at which time flies by. I feel like I blinked and here we are. That inspires me, the fact that time eludes us and passes by so quickly. It inspires me to make the most of every day. It inspires me to grab life by the lapels and push fear aside to do what it is that brings most joy into my life. I have also undergone some serious life changes and although change is good it hasn’t always been easy. Taking each day as it presents itself with as much positivity as I can muster is how I get by, tomorrow is a new day and I don’t want to waste today worrying about that which I cannot change.

The day I decided to pursue my dream I wrote this post. “A year from now you will wish you had started today.” Even six months on from the start of the year I am seriously chuffed I acted when I did. I would be disappointed in myself if I reached December 2012 and I was still sitting in the same spot, thinking about my dream. Life is long, and I want to ensure mine is full of passion and dreams that come to fruition, I don’t want to wake up every day and plod through life feeling uninspired and find myself settling. I want excitement and fire in my belly, and the only one responsible for that is me. It all starts at me. 

Fittingly I started my first writing course this week. I am completing my first assessment today on the first day of the other half of this year, and the rest of my life.

If you are putting your dreams into action, what was it that inspired you to leap? 

Contentment

Some mornings I make my way down to the river near my home and I just sit for five minutes and ponder. Clearing my head of the rush and the craziness of the morning before I set off for work, I love to take in the stillness of the water and just be in that very moment. It is my five minutes where I am not preparing my child for school, or myself for work, nor am I answering phone calls or checking mail or fighting the traffic or listening to music. It is my five minutes to just be.

This morning during my five minutes I noticed an elderly man walking his dog. He approached me on the footpath, stopped to call his dog, turned and smiled warmly at me, then went on his way. A few things went through my head as I was watching him – who is he and where did he come from? Where is he going? Is he happy, what stories could he share with me if we sat down for an hour? What are his regrets, his joys, his loves? I often watch elderly folks and I find myself curiously wondering what they could share about their lifetime.

Life brings with it is so many challenges, once we move past one challenge another fills its place. In between the challenges we have joys and accomplishments, we have moments that will create our favourite and most treasured memories. Our days are made up of millions of moments, some of the smallest ones will be the ones we will remember and cherish for the rest of our days. With all its complexities life brings with it so many miracles that we will one day look back on with joy in our hearts and a smile on our face. Today this gentleman had the most genuinely happy smile, he seemed content. After everything we go through will the moment walking the dog by the river on a cold winter morning where you smile at a stranger and mean it be the moment you look forward to all your life? A moment of contentment, a moment of solitude and peace.

Is he content? I have no idea, but I like to think so. I look at elderly people and often imagine they are content. I don’t imagine I would like to look back in 30 years from now and still be worrying about what someone thought of me way back when, or remember the anxiety I felt over a job or money or something someone said that offended me at the time. So this makes me wonder, why worry about those things now? Why would I waste time feeling anxious about something I cannot change or control? Why would I stay in a situation I am unhappy in? Every choice I make is mine, where I am right now is where I want to be, where I have found myself through choices I myself have made. The frustrating drivers who can’t merge on the freeway every morning won’t be significant in any way in 30 years from now, neither will the friend who treated me badly or the person who cut me off and took my car bay in the shopping centre carpark, so why now? Why do we allow such seemingly insignificant incidents and people affect us in moments when we could instead be enjoying the very things that actually mean something to us, the very things that warm our soul and make our hearts happy? This has been my thought process for some time now, and I love the result. I don’t sweat the small stuff, I am more focused on the good stuff and my days are much more enjoyable for it.

In 30 years from now when I am walking the dog by the river on a cold winter morning and I turn to smile at a young lass who is sitting and enjoying her five minutes, I hope she sees how content I am.

Calm over ego

Image by Anna Inghardt

I had an interesting conversation with my stylist Tanya yesterday. I enjoy our discussions. We often discuss books, what our families are up to, culture (she is a proud Greek who oozes culture), celebrities we think are hot (Ruby Rose comes up a lot, by me) and yesterday, self-development and behaviour. We were discussing how we handle confrontation and conflict, and I shared with her my newly adapted approach to handling aggressive people.

When someone approaches me with anger and clearly they are looking for a reaction, I have adopted this glazed over look. I just stare at them, making serious eye contact but neither smiling nor frowning. Just blank and expressionless. I imagine to the aggressor it’s not really obvious if I am even present or not. Lights are on but blondie has well and truly left the building. I wait until the rant is over, then I sit for about 10 seconds, to which I then respond, “What would you like me to do?” The reaction I have received to this approach so far has been surprise, stutters of “um, er, well…” and sheer confusion. You see in my opinion, as the owner of an aggressive side in the past, someone bursting into your space with rage and a mouthful of anger is simply looking for a punching bag, someone to cop their irate babble. And I am sorry to say that I am not that person. Actually, I am not even that sorry.

On my own little journey of self-development over the years I have learnt something very valuable. No-one can make me feel a certain way. How I react to someone’s words, opinions or actions is totally within my control. No person can make me feel anything. So when someone approaches me with aggression looking for someone to blame their anger on, I make it clear with nothing more than a blank expression on my face that they got it wrong. I am not the reason, be it direct or otherwise, for them feeling angry. They choose to be angry. And if it is over the way I acted, still their choice to be angry. I can apologise for my behaviour if I did wrong, but I will never, ever accept I made someone feel a certain way. You know I can’t make you feel angry, right? Right.

In my 20s I was very fiery natured. I had a hot temper and I could fly off the handle within seconds over the smallest of incident. Over the past few years however I have found myself mellowing, a lot. Recently a very laidback friend told me I am very ‘laidback’. I know I am, but it still surprises me coming from someone who is mellow themselves, as I always remember how feisty I used to be. My  mellowness even surprises me sometimes. 

Tanya asked me if I have always handled confrontation so calmly, and I told her I haven’t. I know from my own experiences that handling it in a calm manner feels best. When you allow yourself to be overcome by emotion as a result of someone else’s aggressiveness you gain nothing. Ego wants us to respond, ego wants us to argue, ego wants us to ‘win’. But you know what, I am more than happy to let the aggressor ‘win’ if it means not responding or engaging. I’ll take inner calm over victory for the ego any day.

Winter beauty

I think winter sends people a little batty. By people, I mean me. I have long loathed winter. The chill in the air, the way it makes skin dry, noses runny, bones achy and folks sickly. I much prefer the sexiness that is summer – bronzed shoulders glistening in the sun, shorts, sandals and legs out. This tights-every-day, scarf-covering-neck, long-sleeves, heater-on bizzo is just plain annoying.

But last year I made a pact with myself that I would no longer whinge about the cold. There is absolutely nothing I can do about it, it will roll on every year, same time, same place, so what is really the point of complaining? I can’t do much about it. Unless of course I move to the tropics, but that’s another story.

I spent three years living in the tropics and have long escaped our cold climate to head to where the beach is. I was born a summer baby, I have loved the heat from as long as I can remember. As a kid I would spend the entire summer running around in my bikini, I loved everything that epitomises summer. Still do. So when winter kicks in and I find myself shivering from the cold and my bones ache no matter how rugged up I am, my neck burdened by permanent pain (from a childhood neck injury) and the only relief I have is codeine and a mountain of blankets over socks, scarf, jammies, hoodie and whatever else I can find that looks warm, my head kicks into glum overdrive. I can’t help it. I try not to let the climate control my mood but by God I get grumpy. 

This morning was a particularly crappy morning, you know the one where you’re running late for school for the fifth day in a row (what IS it with this week), you realise all too late that there is no bread for lunches (who put the bread back into the freezer with crusts only - oh wait, that'd be me), your skirt needs ironing but then you discover it is marked with caked on washing powder so you have to spot clean it, your car has no fuel and it’s SO FREAKING COLD your fingers could very well snap off as you lock the front door. And then you drive around the corner to see this:

The stillest, calmest, most beautiful sight for tired eyes. Maybe I could appreciate winter beauty after all.

Have a fabulous weekend people. You will find me snuggled up on the lounge, heater on, head hidden among layers of scarf. If you're lucky you might find me lurking around the river, but I guarantee you won't find me whinging. Well at least not out loud.

What the world doesn't see

Image by Annak Williams

As sure as the sun rises each morning I make a conscious decision about how my day will roll out. Wake up, open eyes, choose. It is my choice despite circumstances, events or the way people will treat me as the day moves along. My choice.

Some days it is all too hard. Tired, plain exhausted, deflated. Using every ounce of energy to make it positive takes up way too much energy. Every so often I have a day where for once, just once, I would love to hide away from the world and my pain and grief and uncertainty under the refuge of my doona, resurfacing only to gasp for air before submerging again. I don’t. I get up, shower my blues away and cry in the mirror as I apply the smile on my face that the world deserves to see when I walk out my front door. The world doesn’t see my pain, my grief, my uncertainty, I leave that behind in the deep confines of my soul tucked away for another day. The world only sees my smile.

Everyone has their own struggles, I know this all too well. During one of my darkest moments my brother rang me and asked how I was doing, just out of the blue. I don’t often share my sadness, I rather keep it welled up inside revealing itself only to me on those mornings when I least expect it. I mostly hate sharing my self-pity with him, my strong, fearless brother who found himself in a wheelchair, changing life as he knew it for 38 years. How pathetic of me to whine to him about my pain, what would I know about pain? Rationally, I know it is all relative, but I genuinely feel guilty sharing anything but my gratitude for my able-bodied life with him. I do however tell him. He reassures me all will be okay. I believe him.

Some days are just tough, man. Trying to summon the will to see the good in life and to ignore the bad. The bad is always present, but when it festers and manifests in the good parts of the mind it’s hard to see past it. It’s always how we view it, what we choose to focus on. It’s as simple and as painfully complex as that. But if someone was to say that to me as I am clawing around for a glimpse of positivity in my head on those mornings, I wouldn’t see it. On those mornings I want relief, not perspective. I want escape not reality. I want goddamn peace.

Tomorrow is a new day. The sun brings with it a new choice, a new battle. How I choose to live it is still up to me. I will try to ignore the deep-seeded exhaustion from the ever-lingering grief that rears its ugly head and the questions it brings with it. I will try with all my might to exude gratitude for my able-bodied and simple, beautiful life. And as I walk out my front door the world will see nothing but the smile that hides away my pain. Just like it does every other day.

Sidewalk escape