It may not surprise my friends or regular readers of this blog but I don't have much patience for fancy-shmancy pseudo-coffee drinks.
You're likely to get a slightly odd look if you ask me for sugar in your coffee before tasting it - the same way I'll quietly glare at liberal use of salt and pepper before tasting my cooking.
I apologise to the girl behind me in the queue at Velvet the other day who ordered a large skinny decaf with two sugars - yes, I did laugh at you.
So now you see where I stand. Firmly in the uninformed but self-righteous camp.
True Love at Home
Which is why it eventually just wouldn't do to have an automatic coffee machine. While it produced coffee and it was free as it was my father's old machine, we tired of not-quite-good-enough coffee and regular servicing.
Isomac Tea
After a bit of consultation with the friendly people on the coffee snobs forum, a chat with the all-knowing king of self-righteousness himself, Matt from Abstract Gourmet (who will hopefully take that in the good humour with which it was intended) and a friendly tip from baristaapp on twitter, we decided on an Isomac Tea (pronounced Teh-ah).
For those clever about these things, it is an Italian-made HX machine with an E61 commercial group head. All I know is that it will look rather pretty in my kitchen and it makes fabulously rich, almost syrupy coffee.
My long-suffering husband who usually rolls his eyes when I tell him about something we "need" was way ahead of me on this one.
After I told him about various opinions, sent him links to look at and details of our friendly local stockist (thanks Ashley from Five Senses) it was all happening.
It took just one excellent ristretto and a fabulously textured flat white to sell him completely.
Stimulating the Economy - Thanks for the Rudd Bucks
Mazzer Mini-E
I do however know enough to know that there is no point having a great espresso machine without an even better grinder.
I've deployed my Rudd Bucks (for those outside of Australia, there has been an almighty cash handout of up to $900 per tax-payer earning under a particular amount) and bought Miss Tea a friend.
She's a Mazzer Mini-Electronic. Glad to see the money is going to those in need...
The Value Equation
While I'm not an advocate of wanton spending, I do believe very strongly in carefully budgeted luxuries.
My husband and I do drink a fair amount of coffee and we entertain at home a lot too.
Having excellent coffee at home will reduce the temptation to drink coffee out (and with it, often a piece of cake).
I'm also a proponent of the buy cheap buy twice - so always try to buy the best value (not necessarily the most expensive) I can afford.
Our new toys also contribute to one of our major goals - to enjoy time entertaining friends.
Photo credit: Holding Love by nicely85
I'm looking forward to wonderful coffee at home.
Things I do know about coffee
- The skill of the person operating the grinder and espresso machine is an important factor. Accordingly I'm sending my husband to the WA Barista Academy.
- Fresh coffee is everything. We buy our coffee freshly roasted from Five Senses
- Milk quality is important in a flat white or latte. We get Bannister Downs milk whenever we can - it becomes fabulous microfoam very easily.
- Michael at Cafe Grendel knows more than I could ever hope to know about coffee
- I prefer the taste of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe over Kopi Luwak, the world's most expensive coffee, pre-digested by an East-Javanese civet cat.
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]]>Yes. it is Wednesday today, not Monday, but remember that I promote flexibility! Unfortunately I'm getting far more acquainted with my office than I'd like and the whole working for a living thing is getting in the way of blogging at times.
So what are we eating this week?
On Monday, we had spaghetti and meatballs. This is really a cheat's meal and I love it. My local butcher (or his mother) makes lovely italian style herbed meatballs and sells a whole tray fresh for about $3.50.
It's a matter of browning some onion and garlic, sealing the tiny meatballs and then simmering them in a rich tomatoey sauce (try crushed tomatoes plus passata or bottled pasta sauce, with a generous amount of salt and pepper, plus oregano, thyme, parsley or whatever herbs you have lying around) until you can stand it no more, and serving over al dente spaghetti.
On Tuesday we went out for dinner. It is wonderful to take the opportunity to relax over someone else's cooking and talk about the few things we each do at work that isn't classified. Luckily we always have plenty of other things to talk about - a conversation about what was done in 10 hours of work is over within about 30 seconds.
I have the day off on Wednesday so I get to visit the friendly butcher, baker and candlestick maker. Well not really. I don't know a candlestick maker. I am toddling off to the fishmonger to get some freshly cooked crab - to make Angelhair pasta with crab and lemon. This recipe was on last week's menu but was rudely rescheduled due to that silly work thing I do from time to time.
Check back later on for the recipe and run down on this one.
We'll be graced with the presence of my sister and her boyfriend on Thursday night and I'll be making the risotto with tomato, prosciutto and basil that I planned to cook for them last week. My clever last-minute-cooking sister is going to bring something lovely for dessert.
On Friday we'll throw together some homemade pizzas - I'm thinking rocket (aragula), smoked salmon, red (spanish) onion, fetta, capers. We cook the bases brushed with olive oil and spices and then add the other ingredients cold, once the base is cooked.
On Saturday we'll be having some lamb cutlets in a spicy crumb, served with steamed greens, saffron basmati rice, eggplant kasundi and natural yoghurt.
As usual we'll be doing the family thing on Sunday.
Photo: Knife and Fork by nickwheeleroz
So how's your week shaping up? Leave a comment and let me know and then pop over to Chive Talkin' and I'm an Organizing Junkie to see what other people are eating this week.
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]]>On Monday, I told you what I'd be eating this week. Like many of you, I have a somewhat crazy, hectic existence, juggling work, home, family, friends, blogging, admiring handbags and more.
Sometimes things don't go to plan.
In fact, that is why I plan. It makes things easier when it all goes wrong.
The hiccup
On Wednesday, I planned to go to the butcher (opening hours aren't all that open here in Perth-town) but ended up in the office instead.
Surprisingly, I couldn't find any lovely cooked crab or fresh, home-made angelhair pasta or even any beautifully hung sirloin steak in my CBD office. I did however find an overstuffed in-tray, too many emails and a meeting or two. Not that tasty. But hey - I had leftovers for dinner! Thanks, Tuesday!
The complication
By Thursday, my eyes were bulging, my nose was running and my brain was trying to chip its way out of my skull. I DO NOT HAVE SWINE FLU. My husband announced he would be going to the pub after work (sometimes he forgets about the existence of Fridays).
At about 7:30pm it occured to me I should probably find out if he intended to come home any time soon. He told me he'd be getting the 8:00 bus home. Good. Great. I continued to chat to a friend on facebook.
Photo: Bus Stop 3 by Bartek Kuzia
At 8:10 he called when he remembered that there *is* no bus at 8:00pm. So I threw some clothes on, got in the car and proceeded to drive a few blocks past where I said I'd pick him up. A roundabout or two later he was in the car, it was 8:30pm and we were hungry (and he was slightly drunk). We went to KFC and had zinger burgers (no chips!).
Photo: I'm sorry, I can't be perfect by Leeo
It wasn't that bad. I am not perfect.
The plan is dead
So, here comes Friday, my brain had pushed itself halfway out my right eye, the house was spinning and my tongue didn't know how to make sounds any more. My husband called a few times and on the 3rd time I answered it and slurred at him that he should come home early because gobbledegook. I don't know if he responded because I think I hung up then.
He got home at 4:30pm (I was still in bed), he attended to the dry cleaning and then made dinner of some sort. It resembled food and I ate it and I think I felt better because then I went to sleep.
Photo: body by wise.adam
Flexibility - adapt, change, compromise!
A menu plan is a guideline to make things easier for yourself - when grocery shopping, when you get home tired from work and don't have to think about what to cook.
It is not the be all and end all.
It must be flexible.
As Chive Talkin says - you rule your menu plan - it does not rule you!
What now?
So now it is Saturday and I'm about to head off to the friendly neighbourhood butcher to pick up some steak. The herbs and vegetables are in the fridge waiting to be turned into seared beef and noodle Thai-inspired loveliness.
I'm cooking the beef first, not the crab, because coriander and mint can be a little fragile in the fridge, whereas lemons grow on trees. I'm also still slightly delirious and feverish (if you can't tell) and it is always easier to cook something you've cooked a million times.
The angelhair and crab now gets moved onto next week's menu and my sister, her boyfriend and my grandmother can call in a dinner rain check. Easy!
How was it for you?
Did you have a crazy week? Or did things go to plan for you? Let me know in the comments.
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]]>I've previously mentioned how I use technology to plan my meals and write my shopping list. Of course, not everything is digital - I still have handwritten, scribbled notes and many favourite, sauce splattered and annotated cookbooks.
Try something new
I like to try at least one new recipe a week, and this may come from a cookbook, an idea posted on another blog, or something I invented in my sleep (this happens fairly often). This meal is usually scheduled for a weekend or a day I'm not in the office. I like to make things as easy for myself as possible.
Keep it fresh
My planning also takes into account my access to fresh produce. I prefer not to freeze steak or seafood for example, so I will always plan those meals around when I can buy fresh.
Save time with bulk cooking
I also like to ensure that at least one meal a week is something that can be doubled or tripled. I prefer not to have the same meal twice in a week but instead will use the extra from the first meal to make something a bit different. Alternatively I will prepare something and freeze it so we won't starve if I'm sick or I get home late.
This week I spread out some cookbooks and clicked through some favourite foodie websites. My husband chose Jill Dupleix's Angelhair with crab and lemon as the new recipe on this week's meal plan. He gets extra bonus points for choosing something quick, easy and light. He usually doesn't!
Photo credit: Betty Crocker by 427
Keep records
My planning system also includes recording each day's meals on our synchronised google calendars. It avoids the mid-day phone call, "what are we having for dinner tonight?" And here it is for you.
Monday:
Garlic and chilli king prawns stir-fried with onion and still crispy red capsicum, green beans and broccoli, lightened with oodles of fresh parsley, served on steamed Basmati (I use Basmati a lot as it is lower GI than other types) rice. I'd prefer brown rice but I haven't won that battle in my household yet.
Tuesday:
Home-made chilli and herb crumbed chicken schnitzels (oven baked), with macaroni cheese, roast grape tomatoes, baked herb field mushrooms, steamed greens. For some reason unknown to me, my macaroni cheese provokes bizarre reactions of rapture amongst my friends and family. My husband regularly begs me to make this, and due to the fact it is so insanely easy, I do indulge him. My version isn't too heavy either - the sauce is a roux enriched with mustard, cheese and herbs and lightened with low-fat milk.
This meal will give me leftovers - extra cooked chicken schnitzels to go into the freezer (I can then pull them out later, defrost in the fridge overnight, then top with a tomatoey sauce and cheese, then chuck under the grill) plus leftover macaroni cheese to have with a salad for lunch on Wednesday.
Wednesday:
Angelhair pasta with crab and lemon plus a simple garden salad. With any luck I'll be able to buy some fresh pasta from the Italian place down the road, but if not I have some decent quality dried pasta in the pantry. I don't mind making my own pasta but I'm better at ravioli or lasagne sheets that don't need as much precision!
I'm not in the office on Wednesday so I can skip over to the fishmonger and then the butcher for tomorrow's dinner.
Thursday:
Seared beef and rice noodle salad. I can make this one in my sleep and it is lovely and fresh and flavourful.
Friday:
My grandmother, my sister and her boyfriend are coming over for dinner to have my famous risotto. This one will have prosciutto, tomato, basil and baby spinach. We'll go heavy on the carbs with some home-made bread and a few simple salads. Dessert is likely to be sorbet and fruit or perhaps some cupcakes if I get time.
Saturday:
Duck salad with rocket and baby spinach, just warm slow-roasted tomatoes, red onion, capsicum and snow peas, drizzled with chilli jam.
Sunday:
On Sunday nights we usually have dinner with my parents or in-laws. Otherwise it'll be a quiet night at home with takeaway Thai or a wood-fired pizza with a few glasses of wine.
If you'd like to see what other people are cooking this week, you'll find more meal plans at I'm an Organizing Junkie and Chive Talkin.
Check back later in the week for recipe reviews and results!
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]]>As soon as you walk into one your heart sinks and you become a grumpy trolley shuffler, unless you're one of those crazy basket people that goes to the supermarket at 6am after a brisk jog (in which case you should go away and eat a carrot now and leave us all alone), or you're 2 years old, in which case it is your god given right to chuck a giant tantrum.
The traffic inside most supermarkets is just as bad as roads in any modern city. The same women who can't manage to reverse without an oops or two are let loose here on far more dangerous vehicles without a licence.
You'll find those horrid perky athletic types in the supermarket too - jogging on the spot while contemplating whether they want 5 packets of lean cuisine spaghetti low-fat extra-goo or the smooshed up packets of tofu burgers with added tar that are on special this week.
There's always at least one newlywed couple - arms around each other, romantically deciding whether they should have a bright yellow packet of tacos or frozen lasagne for dinner tonight.
The aisles are set up like one of those awful hedge mazes that landscape architects think are "charming" and "quaint" but there is nothing at all quaint about an entire aisle of noodles served with varying kinds of sludge in styrofoam cups. This aisle is a particularly dangerous one and must be avoided at all costs, lest you accidentally tarnish your ears with the existential rubbish that can only be emitted from first year arts students.
When you run away to safer ground you find yourself surrounded by last year's apples, floury and tasteless. Or maybe they're the potatoes? It is hard to tell.
![All Lost in the Supermarket, Pt. 2 [106/365]](http://farm1.static.flickr.com/218/462388595_3730215e6e_m.jpg)
A fact about supermarkets that you should know:
- 'Fresh' fruit and vegetables on supermarket shelves can actually be around a year old when you buy them. The Sydney Morning Herald bought apples from Australia's major supermarkets and sent them to the Sydney Postharvest Laboratory for testing. The tests revealed that the apples were up to ten months old.
Despite common misconception, apples are not grown year round in Australia. In order to meet the year-round demand, supermarkets purchase apples from growers during the short season and then keep them in cold storage. While the cool temperatures can help the apples last longer, it has a negative effect on the quality and flavour of the apple.
So what can you do if you want to eat produce that is actually fresh, full of flavour and nutrients?
photo credit: tanguero (BLOCK, rinse, repeat)
The answer is simple. You need to embrace the slow food movement and buy nearly everything from organic happylands where everyone wears hemp, talks about ecosystems and sustainability and smiles a lot.
The hippies have got it right. The birds sing and frolic as you stroll along at farmers markets or at those wonderful greengrocers that actually source fresh produce. I promise you will taste the difference. Nobody will smack you in the shins with a trolley. You will be able to identify everything on the stands and if you can't, a friendly person over the age of 12 will be able to explain it to you.
So how much extra should you pay for fresh? Almost nothing at all. Sure, the prices look more per kilo but somehow my basket, laden with fresh goodies, costs less than the equivalent from the supermarket.
photo credit: Indiana shutterbug
Fresh lasts longer too, so you won't need to resort to stringy lettuce or frozen peas at the end of the week. Is it any wonder that most kids don't like vegies? Get them to choose the fresh veg from the stands and see what happens next. You can thank me later.
If you can find a quality butcher, fishmonger, greengrocer or farmers market and wholefoods store you will come out ahead financially and have the knowledge that you're supporting your community, your own health and the environment too.
How can neon lights and plastic wrapped in more plastic compete with that?
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]]>However, when it comes down to it - these are the best. The favourites with sauce spatters, smears of chocolate and well turned pages. These are the classics that will endure and will be passed on.
My favourite cookbooks
1. The Cook's Companion: The Complete Book of Ingredients and Recipes for the Australian Kitchen
My younger sister was horrified to see that there aren't any recipe pictures but this book focuses squarely on the basics, fundamentals and classic recipes with little time for frou frou. It is an excellent resource on almost every food one can imagine, a seasonal guide, buying guide and more all in one.
This is the one I always recommend as a starter book for those moving out of home for the first time. This is the solid foundation to build a lifetime of cooking upon.
2. David Thompson's Thai Food
Fabulous, inspiring, challenging, aromatic. David starts with the basics and hammers you with them - stressing freshness and a thorough understanding of Thai food. This is another fabulous resource book with detailed explanations of thai ingredients and methods. If you're looking for pretty cupcake pictures you won't find them here. The text and sheer volume of information is the star.
3. Gourmet Traveller magazines and website
Besides the useful news and events (even though they are solidly eastern-states focussed) they share a great collection of recipes from the very basic to the challenging.
Different to the more pedestrian and commercial offerings from some other cooking magazines, Gourmet Traveller offers an inspired menu and reviews of great places to eat out.
4. My grandmother's index card recipe collection
A family heirloom, childhood memory and guide to a dizzying array of mostly sweet treats all in one.
I've previously written about cooking and eating as a child and I can't stress enough how amazing the gift of cooking and enjoying food is. My grandmother's recipe collection includes jewelled jam drop biscuits, home-made chutneys, casseroles, puddings and more.
While these are the most used sources of recipe ideas in my house, I don't restrict myself. I also happily browse the web and my bookshelves for inspiration and recipes.
I tend to particularly seek out recipes from Claudia Roden, Georgio Locatelli, Bill Granger, Maggie Beer and the venerable Stephanie Alexander.
While I have serious respect for the work he's done to encourage kids (and adults) to eat "real food" I'm not Jamie Oliver's biggest fan and I can usually happily ignore Nigella Lawson's (particularly savoury) options.
For more great suggestions on how to build your cookbook library, you can also check out the wonderful tips from Cake and Commerce.
I'd love to hear which cookbooks are your favourites - share them in the comments below or catch me on twitter.
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]]>I used to just bookmark the pages but I found I quickly forgot about the bookmarks and as a result never used the idea.
Printing out the recipe worked for a bit - but many blogs (like mine) have frilly formatting that makes printing difficult and a waste of paper.
Enter free utility Print What You Like - it is available as a bookmarklet, you can just visit their website or if you have ubiquity installed on firefox (and I recommend that you do install ubiquity - it is a browser changing experience!) you can use it through the PWYL script.
This handy utility allows you to strip pictures, backgrounds and formatting from websites, increase or decrease the font and much more. Once you're done you can print out your amended document or you can save it as an html or pdf file to keep for later.
I like to save the file and send it to google docs. I have my recipes and meal ideas tagged by type, main ingredient etc and they are easy to refer to when doing meal planning.
I'd be interested to know how other people store and manage their recipes and meal ideas. Share any thoughts in the comments.
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]]>Well you aren't so awesome when it's 9:00pm on a Tuesday night, you're starving and you end up in a drive-thru deciding whether chicken nuggets or a fillet-o-fish will go better with a half-empty bottle of sauvignon blanc.
Being crazy perfectionist when planning your meals defeats the entire purpose. Sure you could plan a week of amazing tantalizing gourmet treats from scratch but unless cooking the evening meal is your only job and you have no other responsibilities whatsoever and you are a superhero or energiser bunny you are just flat out lying to yourself.
The reality is there WILL be days when everything goes wrong, you come home late, a friend calls you in tears because the moron you never liked is treating her like crap again, the power goes off or you just plain can't be bothered. If you don't have days like that then we are probably living in different universes. You need to build stuffups into your planning.
A well stocked pantry (and spaces on your meal plan) can help out in times of crisis or laziness. I'm a big fan of carbs in a crisis but go with what works for you.
Some of my pantry basics:
Rice/Pasta/grains:
- basmati rice (to serve with curries etc - and its low GI - bonus!)
- jasmine rice (short grain)
- carnaroli or arborio rice (for risotto - I prefer carnaroli but arborio can be easier to get)
- spaghetti (I like the Barilla Spaghetti Rigate - the ridges hold the sauce better)
- macaroni or short pasta
- thai style flat rice noodles
- polenta
- couscous
Tinned stuff/Sauces
- Tomato pasta sauce or passata
- Tinned crushed tomatoes
- Tinned diced tomatoes
- Tomato paste
- Tinned red salmon
- Tinned mixed beans
- Tobasco
- Woucestershire sauce
- mustards (wholegrain, Dijon, English etc)
- coconut milk
- coconut cream
- curry pastes (madras, vindaloo, thai red curry etc)
- soy sauce
- fish sauce
Oils/vinegars:
- Extra virgin olive oil
- Grapeseed oil (great for frying)
- Nut oil (unless you're allergic like I am)
- White wine vinegar
- Rice wine vinegar
- Balsamic vinegar
- Red wine vinegar
Vegetables:
- Potatoes
- Onions (keep potatoes and onions well separate)
- Sweet potato
- Carrots
- Garlic
- Fresh herbs (in the garden or a window box)
Basics:
- Plain flour
- Self raising flour
- Caster sugar
- Icing sugar
- Quality salt flakes
- Whole peppercorns
- Bicarb soda
- baking powder
- cocoa
- stock (chicken, vegetable)
- breadcrumbs
Alcohol:
- beer
- brandy/cognac
- plenty of wine
The most important thing in my pantry: a folder filled with menus from fabulous local takeaway restaurants. Why grab a whopper when you can get a pad thai instead?
Some quick and easy ideas:
Yes it would be great to only eat fabulous slow-cooked tomato pasta sauces made from your own organically grown heirloom tomatoes with fresh picked basil and garlic but it isn't possible on a daily basis for many of us. (Grendel, you can stop gloating now.)
A jar of Barilla pasta sauce for $2.50 can be bulked up in a few minutes with a tin of 79c tomatoes, some fried onion and garlic and a liberal amount of quality salt and freshly ground pepper. Add fresh herbs if you've got them. A tiny splash of balsamic vinegar or red wine will give the sauce depth with minimal effort.
You can even buy garlic in a jar now if you don't have access to garlic straight out of the ground or you don't add it to everything like I do. Serve over decent quality (egg) pasta with a liberal amount of grated parmesan/reggiano and a generous glass of wine and you'll be a quasi-Italian Mama in minutes.
A couple of potatoes (I like ruby lou or royal blue but whatever you have is fine) brushed, not washed or peeled and some onion chucked into a food processor with a grating attachment can become potato rosti in a flash.
My grandmother likes to fry the onion first but I often forget.Mix the potato and onion with egg and a bit of flour. Season well and form into flat cakes with your hands. Pop them in the fridge for a few minutes if you remember, then into a small amount of oil over medium heat and flip when the bottom goes crispy and golden.
Drain the rosti on paper towel while you wilt some baby spinach in the frypan (off the heat will usually work) and poach or fry an egg or two. Stack up the plate with the spinach, rosti and then top with the egg. No harm in adding some proscuitto if you have it. Serve with beer.
If you've got time to scoot past an open butcher or fishmonger (lucky you!) on the way home your stocked pantry will convert a piece of protein into a meal, stat.
Fridge and Freezer essentials to follow!
UPDATE: While I'm finishing up my fridge and freezer posts, you might want to head over to Summer Tomato. Darya has written a great post about stocking your pantry for healthy eating.
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]]>Ok, so we don't have an elegant matching decoration theme (unless you count half-chewed-by-cats tinsel strewn across the floorboards with baubles and other christmas tree decorations flicked behind the furniture) or an elaborate menu. We do however have plenty of alcohol. And that's important if you've ever met my family.
We're having a cruisy Christmas brunch with none of the trimmings. The menu? Bubbly and freshly squeezed juices, plenty of plump oysters, smoked salmon, bagels, croissants, home-made jams, buttermilk pancakes with lashings of maple syrup, fresh fruit, mince pies, biscuits and jam doughnuts. We'll keep it going with plenty of beer and a barbecue later for those who can be bothered to stick around.
All I need to do tomorrow is chop up the fruit and make and flip a few million pancakes. My long-suffering husband will be in charge of the juice, topping up wine glasses and will then be stuck behind the espresso machine. The rest of the food will be not-so-artfully arranged on the table for everyone to help themselves. There's something beautiful about a non-stressful Christmas.
No matter what you're doing this festive season, I hope it is wonderful and safe and happy. Best wishes to you and yours and here's to a fabulous 2009.
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]]>The important bit is consistency and not wasting too much time stuffing around setting up a system. You will need to sort out what works for you. However, this is what works for me.
Once a week I plan my meals. Ideally I would always sit down in the same place and calmly write it out every week but my life isn't like that. I have two computers at home that I use regularly - a desktop computer in the study and a laptop. I also use a computer in the office when I'm not working from home and occasionally I use my husband's cute little eee pc when I'm out and about.
It is important to me to be able to access my shopping list/meal plan/recipes from all of those places. All of those computers other than the one in the office run Ubuntu linux. The office computer runs Windows XP and I'm limited in what I can install on that one (read: have no ability to download and install anything at all).
I enter my meal plan onto a free google calendar a week or so in advance. My husband and I have separate profiles on each of our computers. All have access to the google calendars (his, mine and the meal plan) from Thunderbird/Lightning (hint: install the provider for google calendar extension to get this going in thunderbird) and our customised iGoogle pages. We both have read/write access on our own calendars plus the meal plan calendar, and read access to the other's calendar. When I am writing the meal plan I can see quickly when my husband is going to be late home from work or when he is going out for a long lunch and is less likely to want a heavy dinner. (Edit: we've switched to using solely Gmail for email now - it is quicker than loading up Thunderbird, particularly on the eee pc.)
As I write out the meal plan, I add the ingredients that I need to the nifty web-based task manager, Todoist. I have a section set up for groceries etc which is divided by shop. As I run out of things during the week I add those to the list as well. As todoist is a web based app it is available everywhere that I have internet access. It also has a portal for access from your mobile phone.
Due to the fact that I'm hopeless when it comes to mobiles (sms is beyond me) and I'm too cheap to pay for unnecessary data, I don't usually access my shopping list on the fly. Instead, once I've finalised the shopping list I open Todoist up in print view, save the list as an html file and send it via bluetooth to my mobile. You could also print the list if you prefer.
The final part of my system is recipe storage. My previous system involved handwritten notes on scraps of paper decorated with dollops of sauce and oil spatters. Now I use Google Docs to manage my recipes. Each recipe is in its own file inside Google Docs.
One of the great things about Google Docs is that you can add multiple tags to each file. So a recipe for fruit mince pies might be tagged with 'baking' 'sweet' 'Christmas' 'fruit' etc. I can set up any individual file to be shared or can allow access to my full recipe repository. Google Docs is of course easily searchable and free.
Some other apps/extensions which make my digital life easier/more fun:
Gnome-do: a quick launcher for linux which includes the ability to quickly add or search events on google calendars
Ubiquity: a fabulous extension for firefox which performs all kinds of wonderful magic
Goosync: a nifty service which allows my google calendars to sync with my mobile phone via the cleverness of SyncML
Soocial: another nifty SyncML service, this time for contacts
Dropbox: a fabulous way of sharing all kinds of data with the whole world, a select few or just for backup. My mum and I have this set up to share all our family photos which are now available in a local directory on each computer. Dropbox automagically updates the folders when one of us adds new pics.
Feel free to ask questions/hurl abuse/offer suggestions in the comments section below. All the best to you and yours for a fabulously happy healthy and relaxing Christmas and holiday season.
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