Well used in my kitchen

At the moment there are three main books I use in my kitchen for cooking at the moment. I am one to try new recipes regularly. I love keeping the variety of food that is eaten in our home fresh and exciting. I hate the whole traditional Australian way of meat and three veg. Soooooo boring and lacking any real flavour and making the dinner meal especialy a family affair. I really love having the family all sit together and eat together at the dinner table. It certainly makes you set good values for your children and keep communication open and free between all family members.
One well used book is Homemade which I have previously blogged about here. If you were to look through my copy you can see that it has been well used and that I am bit of a messy cook, in that there are water marks through the pages as well as the odd smear of spillt ingredients.
my other favourite to use at the moment is The Australian Women's Weekly Slow Cooking book. This is great for the busy family and with the weather cooling right down here in The Blue Mountains food from the slow cooker is fantastic.

We eat from this book at least twice a week. I have tried a great many recipes from it. So far the family favourite would probably be the Spinach and date Beef Tagine, with that one I substituted Beef cheek for chuck steak. Beef cheeks are way too expensive for us and if slow cookers are good for anything it would be the fact you can use the cheapest of cuts of meat available and have the most amazing taste and tender meat. I love slow cooker food for the main fact you touch the meat and it falls to pieces.

then for the sweet tooth moments I am loving The australian Women's weekly Easy baking. So many yummo recipes in that one. My favourite has been the Chocolate and Raspberry brownie recipe.
Baking can be a nightmare here as our rental home has the most terrible oven. It burns the bottom of things a lot before the entire thing is cooked and the back of the oven can be a source of charcol on many occasion. It is also a pain for cooking meals as the grill is in the oven so you can't grill any food and bake at the same time. So I always am at a loss as to bother baking. I have to watch things like a hawk and check from halfway on for the cooking time said in a recipe. Which in itself can stuff up the process as we all know opening the oven drops the temperature dramatically (well it does in my oven).
Lucky for me the landlord is renovating the kitchen in the near future....the sooner the better! That week will be a lot of slow cooker eating I think.