I made this card for a friend who likes skiing and snowboarding; I bought an A4 page which had circles in varying sizes of the same picture, but with a smaller circle showing only part of the picture each time. The idea is to layer these up with sticky pads to give a 3D effect. I mounted them on a piece of blue swirl backing paper which I thought gave the idea of snowboarding and the finishing touch was a 'happy birthday' label from the same set.
Friday, February 27, 2015
I made this card for a friend who likes skiing and snowboarding; I bought an A4 page which had circles in varying sizes of the same picture, but with a smaller circle showing only part of the picture each time. The idea is to layer these up with sticky pads to give a 3D effect. I mounted them on a piece of blue swirl backing paper which I thought gave the idea of snowboarding and the finishing touch was a 'happy birthday' label from the same set.
Saturday, February 14, 2015
This month's Food 'n' Flix is a lovely Disney film: Lady and the Tramp. It was chosen by Elizabeth at The Lawyer's Cookbook and is perfect for Valentine's day. I must have been quite young when I first saw this film and thought it was lovely, and was particularly taken by Lady (less a fan of the scruffy Tramp!) but I remember cringing when they kissed, in a 'boys are icky' sort of way!
But the scene where Lady and her beau eat the plate of spaghetti and meatballs, and find they are sucking up the same strand of pasta when their mouths meet in a kiss, is iconic. It's been parodied so many times but is actually very sweet. So I couldn't really make anything else for Food 'n' Flix!
I have made spaghetti and meatballs before so wanted to do something a bit different this time. I found a recipe in Slimming World magazine for oven-baked meatballs with cheese melted over the top, which was something I hadn't tried. I adapted the recipe, leaving out the courgette and aubergine as I don't like them.
To serve two, you need:
1 onion, finely chopped
250g lean beef mince
1 tsp dried oregano
1 garlic clove, crushed
salt, pepper
200g tin chopped tomatoes
1 tsp sweetener
200g passata
75ml vegetable stock
100g goat's cheese
pasta to serve
While the meatballs are cooking, boil the pasta according to pack instructions. Serve the meatballs and the sauce over the pasta. I used fusilli but for a true Lady and the Tramp experience you should of course use spaghetti!
As mentioned above I'm sending this to Food 'n' Flix.
Monday, January 26, 2015
I've been rushed off my feet at work and had unexpectedly busy weekend - on Saturday we drove from Surrey to Edinburgh and part of the way back as well! My boyfriend has been looking for a new car for a while and had an exact model in mind, but needed to find one with a low mileage and in his price range (second hand, but still a lot of money for a car). He also wanted to only buy one from an official dealership and eventually found what he was looking for - but the only place that had the right one was in Edinburgh! So I came home from work on Friday night to find he had put down a deposit and was planning to drive there the very next day!
We left at 4am to beat the traffic as it was a 7-hour drive, and made it to Edinburgh (including stopping for breakfast) at about midday. My boyfriend traded in his car, did all the paperwork and paid for the new one and we roared off home in a shiny new (well, second hand but new to us) Aston Martin. I'm really not a spontaneous person so can't quite believe we decided to do that on pretty much the spur of the moment and went all that way just for a day!
By the time we got home on Sunday afternoon - it would have been earlier but we stayed the night near Manchester then stopped at Bicester Village on the way back and my boyfriend bought me a nice little present, if the words Kate Spade mean anything to you - most of the weekend had gone. So the meal plan had gone out of the window but unfortunately so had the grocery shopping I planned to do this weekend! So instead I am going to make do with what we have in the freezer and pick up a couple of bits and pieces during the week then do a big shop next Saturday as we have friends visiting on Sunday.
So here's this week's plan
Monday
lunch: jacket potato with chicken (on the meal plan a couple of weeks ago but didn't have it). I want a hot lunch as I'm out in the evening at a talk about making money from your blog (I can dream!).
dinner: sandwich
Tuesday
lunch: tuna pasta, again as I'm out in the evening
dinner: sandwich as I'm at my cake decorating course
Wednesday
lunch: sandwich
dinner: BBQ chicken
Thursday
lunch: sandwich unless I have time on Weds night to make anything else, but it's going to be a busy week
dinner: my boyfriend is out at work drinks so I'll have salmon and veg
Friday
lunch: sandwich
dinner: out for a friend's birthday
Saturday
lunch: bacon sandwich for him, Quorn sausage sandwich for me
dinner: Slimming World fish and chips for me, sausage in batter and chips for him (on the meal plan for the past 2 weeks but still haven't made it yet!)
Sunday
lunch: friends visiting so I'm going to make Persian roast chicken with walnut pomegranate sauce followed by Nigella's ice cream cake
dinner: something light eg beans on toast
Saturday, January 24, 2015
These goats cheese parcels are delicious and easy to make. We had them as our starter on Christmas day but they would also be a nice idea if you were cooking a romantic Valentine's day meal perhaps. The recipe came from the AllRecipes website and you can find the full recipe by clicking on the link.
Preparing the red onion filling:
Lay out the red onion filling and a slice of goat's cheese on some oiled filo pastry
Gather up like a parcel and secure with a piece of spring onion
Ready to go in the oven
Lovely golden brown, our starter for Christmas dinner
When you cut into the parcels, the goat's cheese is beautifully soft and slowly oozes out. The red onion is a sweet but tangy contrast that works perfectly - I really enjoyed these and am sure you will too!
Tuesday, December 30, 2014
I haven't had time to any crafts for the best part of this year - I put my house on the market in February and we wanted to declutter for the estate agent photographs so all my card making and craft supplies went into storage. I secured a sale on my house quite quickly and we found our dream home almost right away - it was only the second house we looked at! But as regular readers will know, what should have been a straightforward process was held up by our council taking 10 weeks to do the local searches because they were short staffed (they normally take a week to ten days) and our vendors dithering, changing their minds about the place they were buying and 'forgetting' to do any of the necessary paperwork, so in the end we didn't move in until August 28.
We then redecorated the entire house, from getting new wood floors to repainting to buying and building new furniture, so while I have unpacked my craft stuff, I still haven't got time to use any of it! I am very excited though that I have a 'craft room' - a spare room with a futon, desk, and cupboard for my craft supplies, plus a whole wall of bookcases, my dressmaker's dummy and sewing machine. Unfortunately I can't fit all my craft supplies in the cupboard so will have to rationalise them down, or sneak them into the garage and hope my boyfriend doesn't notice!
So while I haven't made any cards in a long time there are still a few I haven't posted on here. This one was very quick to make but I quite like the jazzy style. I used a pre-printed card from a mixed box and some alphabet stickers I got very cheaply from the Works; the pack had letters and numbers so I decided to spell out the recipient's name, the word 'birthday' and his age. It's hardly the most sophisticated looking card but I think it looks quite fun, and this style might be a good idea if you are struggling for ideas for cards for men!
Friday, December 26, 2014
When I visited Vienna in November we went to the Schonbrunn Palace. As part of our Winter Pass ticket, we got entry to the Apple Strudel Show: a demonstration of how to make apple strudel with a piece to try.
Apple Strudel is said to originate from Austria and is a Viennese speciality in particular and the oldest known copy of a strudel recipe is a library in Vienna.
The demonstration was entirely in English which was lucky as though I speak German my boyfriend does not. As it was winter there were only a few of us watching; I don't think the other people were English and there were a couple of children who probably wouldn't have understood anything so I think we were quite lucky!
The demonstrator showed us how to make the pastry from scratch and after rolling it out, she used her hands to spread the dough further, much as people do when they are making pizza bases. She even threw the dough into the air and caught it a few times!
She explained that the dough needed to be thin enough that you could read the recipe through it, and proceeded to show us, which was amazing!
The filling was already prepared in a large bowl; she explained that it included apple, raisins, breadcrumbs and sugar, and then we watched as she placed some of the filling along one side of the dough and rolled it up using a tea towel. Part of the reason for this is that you end up with the rolled up strudel sitting on the tea towel, which makes it much easier to lift and transport to your baking tray.
The strudel went in the oven and I was expecting her to do a 'here's one I made earlier' and take the strudel from the previous demonstration out of the oven, but she didn't and the demonstration ended as the strudel went in the oven, so we didn't get to see it when it was cooked. We did get a piece to eat from a strudel which had been made earlier, served cold, which was really delicious.
We were also given a copy of the recipe to take home and since my boyfriend doesn't like apple, I decided I would make an apple strudel to take to his mum's house on Boxing Day as there would be plenty of people there to help eat it. I made the strudel on Christmas Eve as I knew I would be too busy after that!
To make the pastry, you need:
250g flour type 700 - I'd no idea what this was so used plain flour
2g salt
1 egg
100g lukewarm water (note that is grams, not millilitres)
20g oil
Preheat the oven to 190C. Mix all the ingredients and knead until you have a soft dough - I used my Kitchenaid. Form into a ball and "let it rest in vegetable oil for 30 minutes". I wasn't sure if this meant literally put the dough in a bowl of oil as that seemed like a lot of oil, so instead I rubbed oil all over the dough. My dough had been very wet and sticky but surprisingly the oil took away all of the stickiness.
Heat 50g butter in a pan and fry 100g fresh breadcrumbs until they are golden brown.
To make the filling, mix the breadcrumbs with 140g sugar, 10g cinnamon, 170g raisins, 10g lemon juice and about 1 kg peeled and thinly sliced apples, and a shot of rum. I used about half that amount of apples as it looked like an awful lot, and I knew I wouldn't be able to stretch my pastry out as big as the demonstrator so I didn't think I would need quite as much filling! I also left out the rum.
Roll out the dough on a floured tea towel. Use your hands to stretch it as thinly as possible. I wasn't quite throwing mine in the air and catching it like the demonstrator did, but it was a surprisingly pliable dough and easy to stretch.
I even tried the 'can you read the recipe through your dough' trick and I could - I was amazed as I'm not normally very good at making pastry!
Place the filling along one side of the dough, and use the tea towel to help you roll it up
It just fit into my grill pan with the grill part removed - none of my actual baking trays were big enough!
The recipe said to bake in the oven at 190C until golden brown - it didn't actually give a cooking time. I think I baked mine for about 25 minutes but you really do just need to keep an eye on it. Here's what it looks like from the inside: I can't wait to try it later today!
Friday, December 5, 2014
Pork and Mushroom Adobo may not be new but I have to try it. Every time I visited supermarkets and groceries here in Australia I am always overwhelm with the availability of mushroom in the fresh vegetable sections. I like mushrooms and I have been picking some of it every time or most of my visits. I usually end up thinking what to cook out of them. Below is the list of some of the mushroom dish that I have cooked all these years, click link to check them out.
Vegetrable Stir Fry, Oyster Mushroom
Oxtail with Mushroom Sauce
T-Bone Steak with Mushroom and Oyster Sauce
Chicken with Mushroom Sauce
Pork Chop with Mushroom Sauce
Egg Noodles with Mushroom
Asparagus and Mushroom Spaghetti in White Sauce
Mushroom with Dried Fish Fettuccine Carbonara
Fettuccine with Mushroom and Mushroom Sauce
Mushroom Sotanghon Noodle Soup
Adobong Kabute
Mushroom and Tofu Pinoy Bistek Style
Pinoy Garlic Mushroom
Today I had this beautiful button mushrooms, I just can’t think of anything to cook it, in the end I cooked it the mushroom adobo style with some pork belly.
Here is the recipe of my version of Pork and Mushroom Adobo.
Ingredients:
1/2 kilo pork belly, cut into large cubes
100 grams fresh whole button mushrooms
1/2 head garlic, peeled, crushed, chopped
3-4 pieces bay leaf
1-2 tsp. crushed peppercorns
1/4 cup dark soy sauce
1/4 cup white vinegar
salt
Cooking procedure:
Place the pork in a sauce pan, add all the ingredients except the mushroom and salt. Pour enough water to cover at about 2 inches over the pork line. Bring to a boil and simmer for 30 to 45 minutes or until the pork are tender, add more water as necessary. When the liquid is reduce to about half add in the mushrooms and continue to cook for 5 to 10 minutes until the liquid is reduced to an oily sauce, correct saltiness if required. Serve hot with a lot of rice.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
