Chicken salad

I have loads of lovely small butternut pumpkins from the vege garden and felt like some roasted pinenuts.
No photos of it though...got gobbled up really quickly, nothing left to photograph but an empty salad bowl..


Chicken and spinach salad

Baby spinach leaves
2 tablespoons of pinenuts (pan roasted)
1/2 red onion, sliced
2 chicken breasts
butternut pumpkin
4 cloves of garlic
bacon slices, cooked and diced
mushroom, sliced
lemon juice or balsamic vinegar for a dressing.

Drizzle olive oil over butternut and garlic in an ovenproof dish. Roast.
Pan fry chicken breasts and bacon.
Dice chicken, pumpkin, slice garlic, throw it all in together, salt and pepper.
Add dressing as required.

Not sure what is going on with the uploads but I managed to grab a pic of the salads tonight before it all got eaten.
This time we had it without the chicken but with steak on the side.
Gotta keep the carnivores happy....

A kitchen revolution that isn't for the faint hearted....

And I'm talking about the prices here of the latest kitchen appliance that is touted to be the next "big thing."

Is it possible that the way we cook, eat, use processed food is on the brink of big changes?

Thermomix, Thermochef, Cooking Chef, Hotmix Pro to name a few of the new list of appliances that will revolutionise the way we cook etc etc....


In Australia at least, we'd need to be able to justify the kind of expenditure that would make you wish your children were still only a concept that considers some thought...next year maybe..
Back when all I did with paychecks was buy kitchen appliances, bedding and entertainment, I could have almost justified spending the amounts being asked for some of these kitchen luxuries.


I'm not jumping at anything just yet, I still like my trusty little Sunbeam Stickmaster Pro. It mostly does what I need. Except for a few little.....gripes..(tiny bowl is the worst of it and of course it doesn't weigh or cook...I have a brain that mostly still works so I'm not so worried....it's free at least if a little glitchy some days...)

I've liked the Thermomix recipes I've tried. Of course I have to discriminate between the possible recipes and the impossible ones. (Yes, there are some..) I'm still having fun trying different things.


My favourite "thermomix" recipes so far: (made with the trusty $75 Sunbeam.)

Garlic and Herb Dip.

Ingredients:
Small bunch fresh Parsley
1 small clove garlic
2 shallots/spring onions
250 g cream cheese
2 tbsp yoghurt or 10–20 g Milk (optional)

Method:
Do you need one? Bung it all in, turn it on, blitz it together, scrape out.
Not hard.


Beetroot and Carrot salad. 

Ingredients:
400g raw beetroot (peeled & quartered, or just do what you gotta do...)
100g carrot, quartered
1/4 small red onion
1 green apple, quartered & deseeded
1 handful of fresh coriander/Italian parsley leaves - like coriander the best.
2 tbsp olive oil
juice of 1/2 lemon
1 tsp Rapadura sugar
pinch salt

Method:
Once again, bung it in, a bit at a time if you need to, blitz, scrape out and mix it all together.

Juicy Lucy (an adaption inspired by passion4fruit.)

Ingredients:
1 pear, deseeded and quartered
Heaps of watermelon, deseeded and roughly chopped (I can't tell you how much, experiment, the pear is a pretty strong flavour) Probably a quarter of a melon would do for starters though..
Freshly squeezed lime juice, depends how tangy you like it but I'd start with the juice of 2 limes. Add more if you need to.
Ice. Depends on your fp and how it smashes ice but I use the thinnest pieces I can, freshly frozen and not too hard.
Water - can be sparkling.

Method:
Blitz the fruit with the juice. Try not to splash it all over the bench top because you don't have a fancy dancy $2000 kitchen appliance, give up trying not to splash it all over the bench top..because it just. does.
Blitz the ice...whatever works, rolling pin in a plastic bag...ah, the old fashioned way....
Pour into a jug.
Add the sparkling water. Slowly.
Add vodka/tequila/poison of choice, because you've made such a mess it's going to take you "some time" to get the stickiness out of the kitchen.
Drink in the kind of glass that is made for such decadence.
Leave the ants to clean the kitchen.
(well not really, I'm a little obsessive compulsive when it comes to bench tops, ants and summer....but I won't be upset if you do..)

Ah, the joy of trying new things..!! :)

Here's to hidden treasures!

Bye to my nice organised looking garden. Hello cucurbits who pay no attention to boundaries, real or otherwise!

All is forgiven. I found a hidden rockmelon today that I never even knew was there...
:)

Harvest!

After being away for 3 weeks over summer, I was over the moon to discover nothing had died (in the vege garden at least) and I had fresh veges to pick for tea.
Small consolation at least because we'd had hot weather and RAIN!
Humidity is NOT my friend!

P.S. the eggplant is a happy surprise. I have 2 "restored" plants from my previous vege garden...of over a year ago. The eggplant was the sole survivor of 3 plants that got riddled with worms and I gave up on them. Overgrown with weeds I was amazed to discover it living on in unbelievable conditions. My mint plant also survived. It's got tough leaves but I'm sure that will change with time..
I guess some things in our gardens are tougher than we give them credit for!

Dressed for dinner - potatoes with extra virgin olive oil and lemon juice dressing

Thanks Jamie!
Food tonight consisted of barbequed steak to keep the men happy with potatoes dressed with olive oil, coriander, chilli and lemon. All served up on a wooden cutting board a la Jamie Oliver.

1 medium potato
2 sweet potatoes
1/2 lemon
1 fresh red chilli
A bunch of coriander
50g feta cheese

Serves approx 4.

Wash the potatoes and halve lengthways. Put them in a large microwave safe bowl with 1/2 a lemon (I used the whole lemon, it was small so I just chopped it in half and put the two halves in cut side sitting up)

Cover and microwave on full power for 15 mins.

Drizzle evo over a large wooden chopping board, sprinkle coarsely ground salt and black pepper over it.
Finely chop the red chilli (I used only 1/2 in case it was too hot...it wasn't, I'll use more next time) and most of the coriander on the board, mixing as you go. Add the feta and keep chopping and mixing.

Pull the potatoes out of the microwave, check they are cooked and using tongs squeeze the lemon halves over the potatoes. Discard the lemons. Put the cooked potatoes onto the board and chop them roughly combining the cheese, chilli and coriander.

At this point I probably should have drizzled with more oil. I will next time. Although the recipe doesn't say to do it, the potatoes and cheese absorb the oil on the board fairly quickly. You could probably drizzle with a bit of lemon juice as well.

I may never make ordinary potato salad again!
Really, really, awesomely easy summer food.
Let me know what you think if you make it.
:)

It's been a bit hot

It's no good trying to garden or do anything productive when it's so warm.
I decided that my very worn gold polish needed an update. After pulling out the Revlon gold again and a sparkly Miki teal colour and of course my current fav, China Glaze Watermelon Rind I was on my way to a fun afternoon.
I quite like fiddling with gradients, it feels a bit like I imagine painting with oil paints must feel like. This one was relatively simple with just the 3 colours. I did however go over the graduation lines a few times to try to soften the boundaries as much as possible.
I painted the gold on first, then I went over with a very light coat of the teal but starting a third of the way up the nail to make sure some of the gold was still exposed. Then I did the same thing with the Watermelon Rind starting two thirds of the way up the nail, trying to contour the boundaries a bit. Then any hard lines I wasn't happy with, I just went over with one of the lighter colours until it all blended well enough.
A top coat of Seche Vite and it's all done.
It's really much less difficult than it looks and works really well to make even short nails look snazzy!
;)

Christmas manicure

I can't quite remember where the inspiration for this came along. It was probably a combination of wanting something more simple than a candy stripe (stripes...! I can never get them all "just right.") and making christmas tags over the years using coloured pens and pencils.

So I started with a lovely simple French manicure.
Paint on your french white. No need for perfect lines this time, the dots will hide any imperfections. :) Put your usual coat on over the french white as normal.
Before the top coat goes on, use a dotting tool (mine is a pin pushed into the top of a pencil) to dot on 3 red dots in a cluster around the line of the white near one edge of your nail. Then use a festive green (I used China Glaze Watermelon Rind) to dot a line of green along the edge of the white and then drag two lines either side near the cluster of red berries to make leaves.

If you are one of those people who like every single nail to look exactly the same, this probably isn't for you.

But the way I see it, I'M the only one who actually looks that closely and it's a bit like scrutinising your own handwriting. It's never exact or perfect no matter how many calligraphy classes you do...

Have fun! ;)