More fudge, lunch dregs.

It's a glorious winter weekend here on the Otago Peninsula. Feels like spring, in fact.


I haven't really appreciated it though, as I learned of the suicide of an old friend on Friday afternoon. I've been in a bit of a daze, and have slept a lot. But as my son said, cooking cheers you up for a bit, so I made fudge. When I should have been making things for this week's bentos.


Same old Edmonds Cookbook recipe, but with, instead of the cocoa, from top left: 2 tsp ground ginger added at the beginning and some chopped preserved ginger added at the end; brandy instead of some of the milk and sultanas added at the end; lime oil included, with 1/2 tsp citric acid added at the end; and 1 dessertspoon of instant coffee included and 70 g walnut bits added at the end.

I can't make up my mind which is the nicest. Ginger, I think.

I also made bread. And ate it.


I sort of made up the recipe myself, after reading "The Bread Baker's Apprentice" which arrived from Amazon last week. It's got my sourdough starter and some yeast, and wholemeal flour with the bran sifted out. I made the dough in the bread machine last night, then shaped it and left it to proof overnight in the cold kitchen. I baked it this morning - in my right-hand oven, as the left-hand one has decided not to work. Have to get the electrician in on Monday.

Friday's bento, a bit late. I had the very last bits of lunch material from the fridge.


Bean curry = ~250 Cal
tonkatsu = 140 Cal
sauce = 7 Cal
mayo = 30 Cal
roast kabocha = 15 Cal
tomatoes = 15 Cal
spanakopita cup = 110 Cal

Total = 567 Cal.

Two lunches, fudge, no shoes.

The weather is too cold for me to wear summer shoes, so I've had to postpone my shoe-wearing until it gets warmer again.

Still have to eat though.

Wednesday's lunch was this:


mushroom omelette = 80 Cal
roast beetroot = 30 Cal
roast kabocha = 40 Cal
spanakopita cup = 110 Cal
roast pork = 90 Cal
zucchini = 10 Cal

Total = 360 Cal

Today's was:

Pea and ham soup = 200 Cal
spanakopita cup = 110 Cal
roast kabocha = 40 Cal
tonkatsu = 72 Cal

Total = 422 Cal

Plus the fudge. The fudge is a terrible thing, very tempting sitting there in my office. Luckily everyone else comes to eat it.

Last night I made two more variations on this recipe - lemon, and rasberry/vanilla layers. Both very delicious.

The rasberry/vanilla I made as a batch of vanilla first. I removed half of it when it was sufficiently cooked and prepared it just as plain vanilla. I added some deseeded raspberry jam to the other half and cooked it a little longer to compensate for the extra liquid, added 1/4 teaspoon citric acid before beating it, then I spread it on top of the vanilla.

The lemon one I made by adding a few drops of pure lemon oil, some lemon zest that had been used to make lemon sugar, and the juice of a lemon.

Feels like spring

We're supposed to be having a high of 15˚C today - and it's meant to be the middle of winter. Something is screwy with the weather.

Same spanakopita cup, omelette, and roast veges as yesterday, but I have some salad greens, tomatoes, and tonkatsu with sauce and mayo. The greens survived being transported with the mayo on quite well.


roast veges = 60 Cal
spanakopita cup = 110 Cal
omelette = 80 Cal
tonkatsu = 130 Cal
mayo = 39 Cal
sauce = 7 Cal
greens = 2 Cal
tomatoes = 15 Cal

Total = 443 Cal

These shoes are starting to wear out, which is a pity.


I bought them in Adelaide nearly four years ago, when I was over there visiting my brand new first grandchild. Emily was just gorgeous. She was a tiny wee thing, just 5 1/2 lbs at birth, although she was full term. It's hard to believe that she's coming up four! She has made up a new song, her Dad told me last night. It goes:

Frère Jaques, Frère Jaques,
Why you sleeping?, why you sleeping?,
'Cos I'm sick, 'Cos I'm sick

Her little sister has been sick recently, and was sleeping a lot!

Lucking out with the shoes!

The weather was truly shocking over the weekend; I was sure I was going to have to do a shoe repeat and wear some of my boots today. But no - it's just glorious outside, so I could wear some summery shoes and postpone having to stop posting my shoes.

My lunch has spanakopita without the pastry, bean curry, roast veges, some tomatoes, and a wedge of mixed mushrooms omelette.


spanakopita cup = 110 Cal
omelette = 80 Cal
roast veges = 60 Cal
bean curry = ~200 Cal

Total = 450 Cal. Pretty good.

Here are today's shoes:


They're Django and Juliette, and I do actually wear them quite often in the summer. I love the dragonflies on them, and they're super-comfortable.

I performed and experiment a few weeks ago. I've been wanting a doughnut-dropper and some rolling pin rings. You'd think these would be easy enough to come by, but no. Not in New Zealand. I could get a fancy-schmancy doughnut dropper for about $800 from a restaurant supply store, but that would be a bit ridiculous. The rolling pin rings, as I've mentioned before, were just unobtainable. I bought some O-rings, which worked OK, but they left black marks on the rolling pin and were only in two sizes. The Amazon shops which sell these things would not deliver to New Zealand.

Anyway, nice Chris Brown from work was going to a conference in Boston and volunteered to be a post box for me. I was a bit nervous about getting things delivered to his hotel seeing he was only there for two days, but the doughnut dropper and rolling pin rings were cheap, and it'd not be a total disaster if my timing was off and they disappeared.

I addressed them to Dr C. Brown (guest 9th-11th July) and tried to time it so they would get there a couple of days before he arrived.

Look what was on my office chair this morning:


Isn't that great? Now I know it works OK, I might try it with the odd book or something. We have people going to conferences in the States all the time.

I'm going to have to get up extra early tomorrow and whip up a batch of doughnuts to give to Chris.

Variations on a fudge

I did some fudge experimentation this weekend. I had a kids' party to go to (my friend's little boy turned three) so that was a perfect excuse to make sweet stuff.

Here we have a double batch of chocolate fudge and single batches of coffee and vanilla, I took these to the party:


And here are green tea, more vanilla, and a different coffee fudge. I'm taking these to work tomorrow:


They are all variations of the Edmond's Cookbook recipe I gave here.

In the batch of chocolate fudge I doubled the cocoa, making some of it normal cocoa and some of it Dutch. For all of the non-chocolate fudges I omitted cocoa, obviously.

To make vanilla fudge I replaced it with 1 good teaspoon of vanilla paste.

The green tea one has a dessertspoon of green tea powder, but I think it may have been better with slightly less. I'm not totally convinced about green tea as a flavouring in very sweet things.

I tried two ways of making coffee fudge. In one, I infused about 2 tbsp espresso-grind coffee into 1/2 cup of hot milk and and used that instead of the milk in the original recipe. It was nice, but could have been stronger. The other I just used 1 tbsp of freeze dried espresso powder instead of the cocoa in the original recipe - that one was a bit TOO strong. And instant-coffee-ish tasting. Still perfectly nice though.

The vanilla fudge I took to the party disappeared in no time flat and drew recipe queries from the grown-ups. A sure sign of success.

Sandwich wrap and new very cute box

Here is another of the boxes in my thank-you gift from Maki. I love the cats and the wee paw prints on the belt and the side of the box, but it's a little small for a proper lunch. It's a snack size bento box.


That red object is a reusable sandwich wrap. I made it from the same sort of cotton material I use for furoshiki-making, and it's lined with that plasticised tablecloth stuff you can buy by the metre and put underneath children when they're making mess. It shuts with a velcro strap, and opens out into a placemat. Same sort of thing as these, although I copied it from someone who copied it from someone … etc. You know how it goes.

I used the sandwich wrap for another beef and lentil toastie pie, and the wee box for some sautéed mixed mushrooms (shitake, oyster, wood ear etc), a devilled egg, cherry tomatoes, some cumin seed cheese, a few almonds, some crystallised strawberries, dried papaya, and razz cherries.

I'm guessing this is a fairly high calorie lunch, but let's see exactly how high …

toastie pie = 318 Cal
tomatoes = 9 Cal
egg = 150 Cal
33 g cheese = 124 Cal
40 g dried fruit = 120 Cal
mushrooms = 10 Cal
10 almonds = 75 Cal

Oh my goodness this is looking bad.

Total = 806 Cal

And I'm not doing a lot of exercise in these, either:


Very cute, but not at all comfortable to walk in.

Calamity Jane …

… is what my boss called me when he saw today's shoes.

Lunch is one of last night's toastie pies, heated up in my panini press, and some pea and ham soup.


soup = 260 Cal
pastry = 257 Cal
stew = 61 Cal

Total = 578 Cal

Which is not too bad for such a filling lunch.

On to the shoes:

I had forgotten I had them. I bought them some time ago in a sale. They were very cheap, and I thought I might want them for a fancy dress at some stage. The heels are quite high, and the toes are very long and pointed. They also fit rather neatly around my calves, which would make them too tight for most people and could be one of the reasons they were so cheap. The other being that they are really rather … erm … tacky?

But wearing them meant I finally had a reason to wear this:


It is a relic of the late 60s/early 70s (which I was a tiny bit too young to fully appreciate) and I rescued it from its original owner when she was going to throw it out about 20 years ago. I have lent it to people for 60s nights, but have never actually worn it myself until today. It's thick suede and is very heavy, but really rather glorious.

Toastie pies

I'm trying to use up stuff from the freezer. This aliquot of beef and lentil stew has been in there too long, and needed eating.


Unfortunately, I just did not feel like eating it with veges in the usual dinner-like way, so I had to think of something else to do with it.

Introducing my triple toastie pie maker:


These are more commonly electric these days, but I like my old soot-stained one. It made many a toastie pie over the living room fire when my son was small and we would go "camping" at home.

Usually you use slices of bread as the "pastry" in a toastie pie, but I've been wondering for a while what my low-fat pastry (a cross between pastry and scone dough) would do in one. Now was obviously the time to find out. If successful, the toastie pies would be great to take to work for lunches.

I made some pastry, deciding to be a bit healthy and using a mix of wholemeal and stoneground unbleached white flour. I rolled it out, cut into appropriately-sized and -shaped bits, lined the lightly greased cold toastie pie maker, and divided the defrosted stew between the "holes":


Another layer of pastry went on top of the stew and I shut the lid …


… trimmed the excess pastry, and positioned the toasties over the wok burner on my stove:


I did a fair bit of adjusting and lid-lifting to check doneness, but after 5 mins or so on each side, I had these:


All nicely browned and sealed around the edges. Not bad, I thought.

Then I became more adventurous with the rest of the pastry and tried a classic toastie pie filling; egg and cheese. The grated cheese goes in first, then a raw egg and salt and pepper:


I ate one of these ones - I wanted to see how well the pastry came out, and how well the egg was cooked:


The pastry was fine, but the egg was just a little softer than I'd like so I cooked the other one for a minute or so longer.

I think these may well become a bento staple.

Low-fat wholemeal toastie-pies

Pastry
Ingredients
1 cup wholemeal flour
1 cup white flour
50 g butter
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
water to mix

Method
Mix dry ingredients.
Grate cold butter into them and rub in slightly with your fingers
Mix to a firm dough with cold water

Toastie pies
Roll out pastry and cut into appropriate size and shape for your toastie-pie maker (some are round).
Lightly grease the pie maker while the pastry rests briefly.
Line one side of the pie depressions with pastry.
Fill the pastry with anything you like. Leftover stew, cheese, ham, raw or cooked egg, tomato, tinned creamed corn, tinned spaghetti is a favourite with kids, bits of cooked sausage. Anything at all. Try things like cream cheese and jam, or chicken, cranberry sauce and brie.
Cover with the other bits of pastry and press the cover closed.
Cook over a burner on your stove, or an open fire, until done, turning every now and then so both sides cook.
You can, of course, use an electric toastie maker - just follow the makers instructions as to cooking times.

Another "bitsa"

Soup and bits and pieces today. Pea and ham soup from the freezer, the last bits of roast veges, a couple of tomatoes, and a devilled egg.


soup = 260 Cal
egg (has butter in yolk mix) = 150 Cal
roast veges = 50 Cal
tomatoes = 6 Cal

Total = 466 Cal. That's better than yesterday.

Shoes today are some green ankle boots …


… $13 from the Warehouse (similar to WalMart, I believe). They don't match any clothes I own, but go beautifully with my office carpet, as you can see. Taking colour coordination to new heights levels.

Crêpes today

I had a yen for crêpes last night, so to prevent myself from totally pigging out I made two of the six into today's lunch. They are filled with broccoli, zucchini, onion, capsicum, mushroom, a little chicken, and some light cheese. They did come to work in my bento box (hence the odd shape), but I removed them so I could microwave them, thus a) making them hot and b) melting the cheese. They are quite scrumptious.


75 g chicken = 160 Cal
zucchini, onion, capsicum, broccoli etc = ~50 Cal
crêpes (1/3 x (1 egg, 2/3 cup flour, 1 cup trim milk, 1 tbsp butter) = 197 Cal
cheese = 150 Cal
roast veges = 100 Cal

Total = 657 Cal. Eeek. Didn't think it'd be that bad.

These shoes were really cheap …


… I bought them because of the colour - I have a cardigan the very same shade.

Gorgeous day today! More shoes.

And stunning shoes they are too.

First things first though, here's my bento for today. Roast chicken dinner (roast kabocha, kumara and beetroot, and a couple of tomatoes to go with the chicken) on one side; dessert and green veges (zucchini with mushrooms) on the other.


75 g chicken = 160
tomatoes = 6 Cal
roast veges = ~120 Cal
zucchini & mushrooms = 20 Cal
fruit = ~100 Cal
yoghurt = 30 Cal

Total = 436 Cal

Here are the shoes:

I bought them brand new a wee while ago on TradeMe; they're leather, believe it or not (or at least if they're not, someone has invented excellent leather-smell), and will go well with a few of my summer clothes. Finding something wintery (it's still cold, even if it's sunny) to wear them with was a bit of a stretch.

Last pair of winter shoes

I have a sort of hotch-potch for lunch today. A couple of the savoury custards I made the other night, and one of the curd tarts. Then there are some slices of marinated and roasted pork under the custards; some sautéed zucchini, onion, garlic, and mushrooms under the tart; and four baked falafels.


2 custards = 120 Cal
curd tart = 90 Cal
4 falafels = 120 Cal
veges = ~30 Cal
50 g lean pork = ~80 Cal

Total = 440 Cal.

This is my last pair of winter shoes.


Unless the weather picks up a bit I'm going to have to pause my "different pair of shoes each day" until spring. I do actually have two pairs of these boots - I bought them when the company that makes them went out of business. I'd been getting my everyday boots from the Last Footwear Company for many years. They were expensive, but worth every cent; they made to measure from a limited number of styles that you could get in any of several types of leather, several colours, and with a choice of sole. They did make some for their stores to sell ready made and these were their very last stock in anything near my size. They have leather soles and slightly squarish toes, which would not have been my choice, but you can put a pair on brand new and walk miles in perfect comfort.

Maybe I can start on my tights collection? Or hats! I have quite a few hats, and the only time I get to wear them is when someone gets married. I think people would look at me very oddly if I started turning up to work wearing fancy hats though. Not to mention that they don't really fit in cars that well, and would be difficult to photograph.

We'll see what the weather does on Monday. As far as the weekend goes, I should have had 3 cubic metres of firewood delivered today, and will have to stack it all tomorrow morning. That's if the road to my house has been cleared yet - I had to come to work the long (and high) way round this morning because a tree had fallen down over the road.

This is not my photo, it belongs to retrotravelbug on Flickr, but it was taken from the road I had to drive on this morning. I was too busy driving (and not driving off the road) to think about stopping to take photos.


If I were standing where the photo was taken, town (where work is) would be to my left, and I live just on the far side of that big sticking-out bit of land half way up the right of the photo.

Okonomiyaki & soup

This is a really piggy lunch, bound to have heaps of calories. Last night I wanted to try out some okonomiyaki mix I had in the pantry so today I have what I didn't eat then, plus some more pea and ham soup. I reheated the okonomiyaki (which could be worse - I had no pork to put on top, so it has shrimps in it instead) on my office panini press, which worked quite well.


pea and ham soup = 260 Cal
okonomiyaki mix = 183 Cal
1/2 egg = 45 Cal
cabbage = 5 Cal
4 shrimps = 10 Cal
2 tsp mayo = 39 Cal
2 tsp okonomiyaki sauce = 10 Cal (assuming similar to ketchup)

Total = 552 Cal. Which is not quite as bad as I was expecting.

Remember these?

Pixie boots - very fashionable in the 80s. Easily became misshapen from treading the heels down as your feet slip out of them when you walk. Really due for the bin I think. Or I could use them for gardening maybe?

Yorkshire curd tart

Yesterday the supermarket had cottage cheese in the short dated bin, so last night I thought I'd try making bento-sized Yorkshire curd tarts (careful you don't spoonerise them) with my low-fat pastry. Worked a treat! I also made little custards with tomato, feta, mushroom and onion in them - I bought a lot of mushrooms yesterday because the Portobello ones were on special. And I have tomatoes and peppadews; stir-fried mushrooms, onions and zucchini; and some "bean tikka" from the freezer - it was made from some beans cooked with bought chicken tikka paste I'm trying to use up.


curd tart = 90 Cal
custard = 60 Cal
tomatoes = 12 Cal
peppadews = 10 Cal
zucchini, mushrooms etc = 30 Cal
bean tikka = ~200 Cal (although Wolfram Alpha insists it's just 78!)

Total = 402 Cal

These old basketball boots I dredged from the back of the wardrobe seemed appropriate today:


It's quite a pleasant day, but was very cold this morning and I was glad of the extra grip on the ground they gave. My front steps were icy.

This is what the view from my front door was like at about 8.30am:

Soup

It's rather cold today. I went for a walk up town and to the nearer supermarket and my nose froze and ran. It's been really interesting going to the supermarket over the last few months, they're enlarging it and rearranging it and generally upgrading it. And this is all while it's still in operation. The further away one is part of the same chain (which is actually a co-operative, with independent owners) and has been finished for a while, but this one is having a more complicated makeover. Every time you go there something is in a different place and a bit more of the floor is new, or a bit more of the ceiling has been changed, or there is some more of the fancy new signage.

Pea and ham soup for lunch today - with left over corn fritters as "croutons". This is because I have no children into whom to shovel the large numbers of corn fritters you get from one tin of corn.


pea and ham soup = 260 Cal
5 corn fritters = 160 Cal

Total = 420 Cal

Finally I'm wearing my impossible to match boots.


That checked dress is the only thing I own that has the sort of butter colour of the boots in it, and I had to wear aubergine tights to go with the dress, and my son's brown flying jacket to tie in the brown of the boots' cuffs. All together it does sort of work, but boy was it an effort. I have found a couple of other pairs of cold weather shoes in the back of my wardrobe, so I don't have to abandon my project just yet. And the weather may improve, you never know.

Paper Chef leftovers

I'm having the leftovers from my Paper Chef entry for lunch today. And I'm using Wolfram Alpha to calculate the calories. Wolfram Alpha is impressive, and becoming more so. It does wonderful things with fractions and DNA sequence and food, and draws great graphs. The more I play with it, the more I like it - I think it will become very useful indeed.


corn fritters = 130 Cal
80 g chicken thigh = 187 Cal
almond dressing = 63 Cal
roast kumara slices = 20 Cal
slivered almonds = 13 Cal
dried fruit = 30 Cal (Wolfram Alpha failed at dried mango and dried papaya, had to use CalorieKing)
greens = 5 Cal

Total = 448 Cal.

This is the last of the four pairs of boots I bought at No1's buy-one-get-one-free sale. They are leather lined with fleecy stuff, were $114, and I got Friday's suede ones free with them.


They have elastic right up the back, so stay snug around my calves. I have fairly thin legs, so sometimes have trouble with boots being too baggy.

Paper Chef entry

I've been sort of half-heartedly following the Paper Chef for a few months now, and have often felt like having a bash at it. I've not been following it closely enough to actually be on time though, until this week.

The ingredients to be used were: corn, chicken, almonds, and fish sauce. I gave myself the further restriction of having to use only my usual shopping and stuff from the pantry. I decided to make a sort of Asian themed salad, with grilled chicken and small corn fritters, and using almond butter to make a vaguely satay-ish but verging more towards a thick salad dressing sauce.

These were the things I had to buy:


but they are things I usually do buy, so that's OK. Those are salad greens in the bag. It's mid-winter here, you understand.

These are a few of the things from my pantry:


I actually ended up throwing out that tin of corn - I think it had been there a bit too long. I used a tin of creamed style corn instead. Those orange things are dried mango and dried papaya. The papaya is soaked in lime juice before it's dried and is very delicious. I often have it on yoghurt.

I used my new juicer to make the almond butter:


The almonds need overnight soaking in water or you get almond flour instead of almond butter. I made way too much, goodness knows what I'll do with the rest.

And here is my finished dinner:


It was really rather scrummy, if I do say so myself. I have enough ingredients to put another together cold - I think it'll make a fine bento.

Tropical Flavours Grilled Chicken Salad

Ingredients
Chicken & marinade:
2 boneless skinless chicken thighs
1 tsp mild oil
1 tbsp fish sauce
1 tsp light soy sauce
2 tsp brown sugar
1 clove garlic, very finely chopped
juice and zest of one lime

Corn fritters:
(makes a huge amount - enough for a bunch of kids to have for lunch as well)
1 425 g can of creamed corn
2 eggs
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 onion, very finely chopped
decent bunch of coriander leaves, roughly chopped
1 cup tempura flour
oil for deep frying

Sauce:
20 g blanched almonds, soaked in water overnight
1 tsp onion, chopped very finely
1 tbsp fish sauce
1 tsp brown sugar
1 tbsp lime juice
a good pinch of chili powder

Salad:
6 large 0.5 cm thick slices of kumara (sweet potato with purple skin and dry flesh)
enough mixed salad greens for two people
1 tbsp mild oil
1 tsp lime juice
good bunch of coriander leaves, chopped roughly
bunch of chives, or 1 spring onion, chopped
a few pieces of dried lime papaya (or ordinary papaya, but the lime stuff is delicious), sliced
a few pieces of dried mango, sliced
some slivered almonds
salt
chili powder

Method

Mix marinade ingredients and marinate chicken overnight. Grill chicken on both sides until cooked (~10 min per side). Oil both sides of the kumara slices and either grill them too, or roast in the oven, until cooked. This grilling can happen while you're doing the rest.

Mix corn fritter ingredients and deep fry teaspoonsful in hot oil (190˚C) until puffy and browned. Drain on paper towels. Keep 10 warm and shovel the rest into the mouths of waiting children. They will then disappear and leave you in peace to cook.

Make almond butter from the drained, soaked almonds. I used my juicer, but you can use a mortar and pestle. Mix in the other sauce ingredients - I used a mortar and pestle for this bit anyway. It wants to be about as thick as mayonnaise. Mash the onions up really well.

Dry fry some slivered almonds with salt and chili powder until the nuts are toasted.

Slice the grilled chicken across into bite sized pieces.

Make a vinaigrette from the remaining portion of oil and lime juice, toss the salad greens and most of the chives and coriander (retaining a little for garnishing) in it. Place 3 slices of kumara around the edges of 2 plates. Divide the greens between the plates, on top of the kumara slices. Sprinkle the sliced dried fruit on top. Put 5 corn fritters around each plate, place one chopped thigh on top of each salad, top the chicken with a good dollop of sauce, and sprinkle the toasted chili almonds and the remaining coriander and chives over the lot.

Hearty lunch

I have the last of my batch of roast veges today, along with some bean curry and a grilled boneless chicken thigh. The beans are some dried ones I had in the cupboard; I was planning to make an attractive dish such as this nimame that Maki made. Unfortunately, releasing the pressure in my pressure cooker instead of letting it cool slowly caused the beans to sort of explode. So they were kind of mushy, with split skins. I just sautéed some onions, added curry powder, some of the beans, a few sultanas, a little water, and about a dessertspoon of dessicated coconut shavings. I simmered it until it was dry again and the sultanas plumped up. Delicious.


roast veges = ~100 Cal
2/3 cup bean curry = ~200 Cal
70 g chicken thigh = 90 Cal

Total = 390 Cal

Here are chicken thighs cooking:


I marinated some in tonkatsu sauce, and some in yoghurt and indian spices, then grilled them on my electric grill. It's part of my stove, but I usually keep it covered up. It makes the best steaks, but it's a bugger to keep clean. From the top down it has: cast iron grill, electric element, scoria rocks that get hot from the element, enamel perforated plate for the rocks to sit on, then enamel dish to catch anything that manages to drip down that far. I also have an absolutely vicious range hood. It needs to be - the grill can produce prodigious amounts of smoke.

Here is the third pair of boots from my boot shopping spree:


Cream suede with fleecy lining. Lovely and cosy, and this is one of the pairs I was watching and waiting for the price to be reduced on. They were $109, but came free with the other pair of leather boots I bought.