New laundry

Oh, I've also had my laundry remodeled.

I forgot to take a "before" picture, but this is it now:

It's just a large cupboard off my kitchen. To get some idea of what it was like before, imagine it without any of the shelves, and instead of the bench and sink it had this tub …

… on your right, and a top-loading washing machine on your left. It also had a clothes dryer mounted on the wall above the washing machine that I kept banging my head on. I replaced both of those with a combination washer/dryer. I rarely use a dryer, but need it sometimes - like when I'm going on holiday and want every single pair of knickers, except the ones I'm wearing, clean and dry ready to pack.

I love love love my laundry now, it's like having a bit more kitchen bench space and an extra kitchen sink. I can make cheese there without clogging up the rest of the kitchen, and I can use my waterbath there for sous-vide cooking. The tap just nicely clears the top of the waterbath, making it so easy to fill.

A look at pudding bowls, and a pudding

Emily from Kuala Lumpur wants to see details of steamed pudding bowls. I'm not sure, but I suspect that these are unique to New Zealand. Every recipe I see from England (the home of the steamed pudding) just uses a china pudding bowl covered with foil or paper and string.

Anyway, here are my pudding bowls:

This one is "my" one. I've owned it for years, and it's very similar to the one my mother had:

It closes by that long arm on the lid, it pivots around its rivet and hooks under the rim of the bowl, like so:

The short arm doesn't move, it just hooks under the rim on the other side.

My second pudding bowl is "Auntie H's bowl". It belonged to my Aunt Helen and I got it when she moved into a retirement home.

It has a completely different closure, being a nut that unscrews from a bolt that sticks through the lid …

… from the middle of the bowl:

And it makes a ring-shaped pudding. Obviously.

What better pudding to make in Auntie H's bowl than Auntie H's sago fruit pudding. Here's the recipe:

Auntie Helen was a typist and office manager, so her recipes (which I also inherited when she went into the home) are extremely well organised in little folders, and neatly typed.

Two tablespoons of sago …

… with enough milk to cover, and left to soak overnight:

A cup of breadcumbs …

… a cup of sugar …

… and a cup of raisins:

I prefer these "sticky" raisins:

Two tablespoons of melted butter …

… and a teaspoon of baking soda dissolved in boiling water …

… using the same cup I melted the butter in to save dishes …

… all mixed in together …

… put in the buttered pudding bowl  …

… and boiled in a pot of water for two hours:

I think I should have used slightly less milk, as it was a bit gooey:

But still delicious with custard on:

New toys

I don't get to Auckland (New Zealand's largest city by far) very often. My brother lives there and I used to go once a year for Christmas to keep up with my nephew and niece, but since having become a Grandma I tend to visit the little girls in Australia instead.

I had to make a sudden dash up there last weekend however, as my stepmother died last Thursday evening and I had a funeral to attend. Mum had had Alzheimer's for a long time, and to all intents and purposes had been dead for the last three years so it was not an occasion of great grief, more one of remembering what she used to be like when she was herself. We had some good laughs.

It was the school holidays too, so flights were full, and to get reasonably priced ones I had to stay from Sunday to Thursday - which meant I had time to go shopping.

I had never seen these things before:

They're triple scissors for cutting parsley and suchlike. My sister-in-law bought a pair with five blades which were $20, but I wasn't about to spend quite that much on what may well not get used very much. They are cute though so I bought that pair for $10.

This is my collection of round pancake making pans, the one on the top left is a takoyaki pan which I got at Japan Mart in the new(ish) Sylvia Park shopping mall:

The others, clockwise, are a gem iron, a poffertjes pan and an aebelskiver pan, all of which I've had for a while. The poffertjes indentations are quite shallow, whereas the ones in the other pans are all hemispherical. Truth to be told, the takoyaki holes are identical to the gem holes, so I didn't really need both! The gem iron is intended to be used inside the oven though and takoyaki is made on top of a burner.

The other thing I bought at Japan Mart was the tamagoyaki pan on the left:

It's much more solid than my old one on the right, and the end furthest from the handle has a nice curved edge to make rolling the eggs easier. The old one will go in the bin, it's very thin and cheap and nasty.

I'd love to have got the big copper tamagoyaki pan they had, but it was over $200. It's a jolly good thing I only took a small bag up with me, as lack of luggage space is what stopped me from spending far too much money.