Mecki’s Courgette Cake - Part two

Before I post this recipe I thought I would tell you a bit more of the story behind it.

For those of you who follow this blog and my facebook page you will know I have another blog My Julie/Julia Attempt  On this other blog I am trying to work through a plastic bag of recipes I have collected from all manner of places. You know; magazines, newspapers, flyers, friends, web sites, the back of packets food comes in and just anything that catches my eye. I had originally thought I would make a recipe a day – just like in the book by Julie Powell, ‘Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously’, that was made in to the film Julie Julia starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams.

Since it is just Harry and I at home I am reluctant to do too much of the baking of some food because unless I can freeze it (and there is a limit as to how much I can fit in the freezer!) I have to eat it myself (and yes the weight is going on!) or take it to somewhere where it will be eaten for me.

Now as I have lamented to you before, my vegetable garden was not very successful this year (well of course it isn't – you have to work at it to have things grow) but I have friends (no smart comments thank you) and they have gardens – and abundance of crops.

As in a previous post I was given some zucchini; also known as the courgette and if left for too long – the marrow, and attempted a new recipe to add to my Julie/Julia Attempt. Then I discovered the omission of the amount of flour. But not to be down at the first or second hurdle I finally decided, after the gifting of more zucchinis from Frances, to try the recipe again.

The recipe below is what was posted in the newspaper with the added amount of flour. Now I still think the first cake I made with 2 ¾ cups of flour and being left in the oven for slightly longer was nicer than this one but it was still quite nice.

Mecki’s Courgette Cake,
named after Mecki the German Wwoofers who made it while staying at Annette’s Taylor’s place.

500g courgettes, grated
1 small cup oil
1 ½ cups sugar
3 beaten eggs
3 cups flour
1 ½ tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 ½ tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp salt
1 cup sliced almonds

Preheat oven to 150°C. Line a 22cm coke tine with greased paper.
Combine courgettes, oil sugar and eggs.
In another bowl sift flour and other ingredients except almonds.
Slowly stir the flour into the courgette mixture. Add almonds and mix well.
Pour into cake tin and bake for about an hour. Cool for 10 minutes then remove from tin. Sprinkle with icing sugar, and if desired, slice in held and add whipped cream

My Birthday

I have decided that celebrations are worth sharing and so I am posting this years birthday hap's for me.

After spending the morning at work and then coming home, Daniel came around to get an alternator out of one of Harry's Isuzu's (as you do, as there are six at our place) and Harry finally got to the shower, so we made our way to Hamilton for my treat.

Well we were late and so missed both the two movies I had chosen to see before we had tea (a first and second choice depending on when we got there) so the plans had to be changed.
This time we booked the tickets and then went for tea.

We went to the Foundation Bar at the Base in Hamilton. What a lovely place with awesome food and service. We had never been there before or heard of any recommendations but would certainly recommend it now.
We had a starter of garlic rosemary pizza bread.

Harry had his

• grilled scotch fillet 
• with Potato Gratin, 
• Wilted Spinach, 
• Sauteed Oyster Mushrooms and
• Beef Reduction 

and I had

• Warm Winter Salad of Roasted Kumara, Pumpkin and Honey Glazed Carrots, 
• Spinach, 
• Red Onion, 
• Feta, 
• Radicchio Salad, 
• Orange + Cumin Dressing and 
• added Smoked Chicken.

Like I said the food was awesome and so not only could I not fit in a dessert I couldn't finish my main. I asked for a doggie bag which arrived in a plastic bag and paper carrier bag.We decided we would come back for coffee and desert after the movie.

The movie I had chosen was my second choice but it came with a good review from our Jennifer.

This Is Where I Leave You is a dramatic comedy based on the hilarious and poignant best-selling novel by Jonathan Tropper.
When the Altman family's father passes away the four grown siblings are forced to return to their childhood home and live under the same roof. They don't get along, and they haven't all been together in years. But when the patriarch dies, the whole clan is expected to fulfill his final wish and sit Shiva for him for an entire week. 
Judd Altman was married to Quinn, whom he recently caught cheating on him with his boss, is now newly divorced, newly jobless and has to travel home to face his dysfunctional family. This includes: his hot-to-trot over-sharing mother, who having written a highly-successful guide to raising children, is a celebrity psychologist; 
Paul his sarcastic older brother, the no-nonsense brother who is responsible for the family business. He is married to Annie. She and Paul have been trying to have a baby for a long time;  
Wendy his unhappy sister, a responsible mother who is married to Barry and has two children. She is the ex-girlfriend of her childhood friend Horry who still lives with his mother across the street from the Altman family home due to a brain injury he suffered when he and Wendy were dating; 
and Phillip his too-perfect younger brother, the playboy of the family who is nothing like his father. He is the baby of the family who has grown into perhaps the most troubled of the lot. 
The movie tells the effort they have on one another as family bonds prevent them from killing one another!

After the movie we did go back to Foundation Bar for coffee and dessert. Wednesday nights is 'two-for-one-dessert night' so Harry ordered the truffles and I had Lime and Coconut creme brulee served with coconut gelato.

We couldn't help musing and pretending to be judges just like the cooking competition shows we had been watching on TV over the last few months. Needless to say we gave them high marks!

So then it was home for a cosy night with the fire going as a chill had descended on the night.

New Years Day - Wellington

For us it was a sleep in - no children - and then we went to the movies after a scrummy lunch at Gordon and Di's.

Harry went to the second Hunger Games movie and Theresa and I went to see Philomena.

The movie is based on the 2009 investigative book by BBC correspondent Martin Sixsmith, The Lost Child of Philomena Lee.
It is a true story of a woman who kept secret the fact that she had a baby boy conceived out of wedlock - something her Irish-Catholic community didn't have the highest opinion of - and given away for adoption in the United States.

Philomena Lee searches for her son who was taken away from her when she was forced to live in a convent. In following church doctrine, she was forced to sign a contract that wouldn't allow for any sort of inquiry into the son's whereabouts.

After starting a family years later in England and, for the most part, moving on with her life, Lee meets Sixsmith, a BBC reporter with whom she decides; after fifty years, to discover her long-lost son.

The movie focuses on the efforts of Philomena Lee and Sixsmith and the barriers they come across.

The movie was held at the Embassy Theatre, at Courtenay Place in Wellington. It has changed since the days of old red seats when I used to go there. But some of the interior has been preserved.

The inside has been refurbished and I found the entrance way to the front lounge caught my eye.

The convenience was that Theresa just lives a few doors down so it wasn't far to go from parking the car, which was just as well because by then it was pouring.

Harry got a bit wet running to his film.

On returning to Gordon's I watched some of the native birds feeding from their balconies.



 

A pair of Kaka (New zealand native brown bush parrot) have come to feed. They give them almonds which they are rather partial to.










And the usual Tui's (Parsons bird) feeding on sugar water.





And then we (Gordon, Di and us) were joined by my other brother Stuart and his wife Liz, Theresa and Steven and had a lovely New Years meal and time of family sharing. Relaxing around the table I realized how precious our family are and that we are blessed with good relationships.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

This story is set primarily in the psychiatric ward of a mental institution and focusses on its inhabitants, during the late 1950s. In this classic 1962 novel, Ken Kesey's inhabitants lives are lived in what is described in the book as a constant "fog." The inhabitants of the ward are beaten by the orderlies who are supposed to look after them, and they live in constant fear of the authoritarian head nurse, Nurse Ratched. 

Then, one morning, the hero, Randle Patrick McMurphy, a boisterous, gambling, brawling, fun-loving and smooth-talking rebel swaggers into the world of the mental hospital as the new inmate and takes over. A prisoner from a local work farm he is admitted to the hospital. Many of the staff believe he is feigning mental illness to avoid a stint of hard labour.

The book is narrated by a supposedly deaf-mute half Red Indian patient by the name of Chief Bromden who witnesses and understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the powers that keep them all imprisoned.

A lusty, life-affirming fighter, McMurphy rallies the other patients around him by challenging the dictatorship of tyrannical Big Nurse Ratched and resolves to oppose her. He promotes gambling in the ward, smuggles in wine and women, and openly defies the rules at every turn. McMurphy begins to lead a rebellion against the rules and strictures of the institution. He wins small victories that slowly erode the powerful hold that Nurse Ratched has on the ward's inmates. When the nurse attempts to punish him by not allowing the ward to watch a baseball game, McMurphy and his fellow prisoners whoop and holler at the TV as though a game was on. He then manages to convince one of the doctors on the ward that a fishing trip would be therapeutic for the patients, and the coddled men of the institution overcome their fears of the outdoors and leave the safety of the ward.

But this defiance, which starts as a sport, soon develops into a grim struggle, an all-out war between two relentless opponents: Nurse Ratched, backed by the full power of authority, and McMurphy, who has only his own indomitable will. What happens when Nurse Ratched uses her ultimate weapon against McMurphy provides the story's shocking climax.

One night, McMurphy goes too far and has a party in the middle of the night, inviting two hookers to join them. Ratched finds out and is so cruel to one of the more fragile inmates, Billy, that he commits suicide. In one desperate attempt to be free of the nurse's hold, McMurphy attacks her and is punished by having a lobotomy performed on him. McMurphy is finally neutralised by authority, but in the final pages of the book Bromden takes on his mantle. Bromden throws a water faucet through one of the ward's windows and escapes.

Boisterous, ribald, and ultimately shattering, Ken Kesey's has left an indelible mark on the literature of our time. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest tells the story of a controlling nurse in a mental institute and a patient rebellion against her. The novel is based on the experiences author Ken Kesey had while working as an orderly in a mental institution in Menlo Park, California. In order to better understand the experiences of people in a mental institute, Kesey actually subjected himself to electroshock therapy (a form of treatment for the mentally ill, also called electroconvulsive therapy) and took many of their prescription drugs. After Kesey published the novel, it was made into a Broadway play and later a film starring Jack Nicholson.

This was the first book our book club read for 2013 and for the following book club night we watched the film by the same name starring Jack Nicholson. I had been surprised that I actually enjoyed reading the book. Having seen live in a mental ward of the 21^st century I felt I was cheering them on. I was therefore really looking forward to the film and to see how the different characters were portrayed. I was disappointed not so much in the characters but in that so much of the book being missed out or changed. As with a few movies of books I have now seen that I have read I realise that each must be viewed in their own form of media and not compared. However I do feel in this case the film was missing some good plot points portrayed in the book.

 

Hope Springs

Harry and I went and saw a movie at the end of our anniversary weekend away - Hope Springs. One would wonder why a couple on their anniversary would choose this movie but it was a fun good feel movie and although cute long was certainly one that was a film I am pleased we did see.
As Harry said as we walked out, "Its not a movie I would want to see again but it's worth buying in case the kids have issues and we can just say 'Have a watch of this'".

2hr 1min‎‎ - Comedy/Drama‎‎ - English‎

Director: David Frankel - Cast: Steve Carell, Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones, 

 

Although a devoted couple, 'empty nesters' Kay and Arnold Soames (Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones) are in need of (in Kay's opinion) help to ignite the spark back into their marriage. After their 31st wedding anniversary, Kay was left wanting to spice things up and reconnect with her husband. 

For years they have slept in separate rooms, forgoing any physical affection. Each morning Kay cooks Arnold breakfast before he trudges off to the accounting firm where he's a partner. Each night Arnold falls asleep in front of the big flat-screen in the den to the drone of golf tips. Then wife wakes husband so the two can traipse upstairs to their separate bedrooms. Kay and Arnold aren't angry with each other, or unkind: They're just...average middle-class American zombies in a nice split-level house. 

When she hears of a renowned couple's specialist in, she attempts to persuade her skeptical husband, a steadfast man of routine, to get on a plane for a week of marriage therapy. Kay (who works as a Coldwater Creek employee) tells Arnold  she has paid for them to undergo a week of intense marriage counseling with Dr. Bernie Feld (Steve Carell) in the small coastal resort town of Great Hope Springs in Maine. Arnold, a creature of plodding, unimaginative routine, denies their marriage is in trouble and resists getting on a plane for a week of marriage therapy. 

Just convincing the stubborn Arnold to go on the retreat is hard enough - the real challenge comes in sessions with Dr. Feld as they both try to articulate their feelings, revitalize their relationship, shed their bedroom hang-ups and try to re-ignite the spark that caused them to fall for each other in the first place. In daily sessions in his office, Dr. Feld counsels them together, each time asking increasingly frank questions about their sex life and feelings toward one another. Arnold is angry and defensive, rigidly resistant to change, and unwilling to see the depth of his wife's disappointment. 

 

Discouraged by Arnold's recalcitrance, angry and crying, Kay goes alone to a bar where she vents to the bartendress and learns nobody else is having any sex. Arnold visits a nautical museum. Back together, they spend the night in the same bed for the first time in years, and Kay awakes in the morning to find Arnold's arm around her. At this sign of progress, Dr. Feld urges new measures. They make halting attempts at intimacy on the bed of their budget motel and again in a movie theatre, but this time with disastrous results. Arnold finally takes the initiative to arrange a romantic dinner and a night at a luxury inn, where they attempt to make love in front of a fireplace, but the grand design fails. 

At their final session, Dr. Feld tells them they've made much progress and should take up couples therapy back home. But back in Omaha, old habits resume. Kay offers to pet sit for a fellow employee and packs a bag to stay there, as a first step in a permanent break with Arnold. 

With Kay already in her bedroom, Arnold ascends the stairs to bed and pauses at her door, but does not knock. Both are shown in bed trying to sleep. It is Arnold who arises, puts on his bathrobe, and enters his wife's bedroom. Kay sits up as he sits down beside her and they tenderly embrace. The lovemaking that follows is warm, natural, and quietly passionate. The next morning it's clear that the marriage is in a whole new place after all. 

Later that year, as Kay said she fantasized, they renew their wedding vows on a beach with Dr. Feld present, making promises to be more understanding and considerate of each other.

The interesting spin off from this movie as it has a small weblink "relationship guide" to some hints to improving a tired marriage.