Dragon Musings

Jumping on the bandwagon... Yeah, I'd eat that!

2008-08-20T10:40:00.003+10:00

The Omnivore's Hundred.

Discovered at Very Good Taste; a list of things he thinks every omnivore should eat. Everyone seems to be posting this one at the moment, so I'll be a lemming too. I'm not a seafood eater, not for any reason other than I generally don't like the taste, but I'll try (almost) anything once. I have it on good authority that Haggis is disgusting, but as long as I'm allowed to pit it out if I agree, then I'm willing to give it a go. I'v only eaten 25, but with only one cross off, I willing to get that higher!

What he wants you to do:

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. ~~Roadkill~~
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

Menu Plan Monday

2008-08-18T09:09:00.000+10:00

Monday Beef with Mushroom & Sundried Tomato (slow cooker)
Tuesday Freezer Suprise
Wednesday Beef Olives (slow cooker)
Thursday Chicken and Vegetable Pies, Caramel Rice Pudding (slow cooker)
Friday Cauliflower Soup with Tomato Quinoa Bread
Saturday Pioneer Woman's Lasagna
Sunday Croquettes

Only Monday and Thursday last week made it as planned, everything else got shuffled around. We are on a new schedule of shopping now, Fridays instead of Wednesdays, so that threw a spanner into the works, and I discovered that the shopping list was way too long, and likely to go over budget, so I switched some things around a bit and added in some frozen leftover meals to the plan. On the plus side, this means a bit more relaxed week for me.

As usual check out I'm an Organizing Junkie for literally hundreds of other menu plan blog posts.

"Red" Pasta

2008-08-16T21:35:00.001+10:00

Again, I am unashamedly cooking a meal purely for a blog event. This time, it's not even something we would normally eat. I made this up specifically for the Food in Colours event. I was going to submit the Strawberry Cupcakes the kids and I made two weeks ago, but submissions had to be vegetarian (no eggs), so there went that idea. At least I saved a lot of food colouring, in making them pink and not red ;)

I was planning on using sun dried tomatoes in this, but chickened out at the last minute because I know DP doesn't like them. So, this was simplicity in itself. I boiled up some penne, and when it was done, added a jar of char grilled marinated capsicum strips, some red wine, a little balsamic vinegar (almost red!), some delicious tomato paste with basil and oregano in it, and about two tablespoons of garden vegetable pasta sauce, only because the pasta wasn't 'red' enough for my liking, and the sauce was very thin. I dished a bowl up for DP, and then added fresh tomato wedges. I quite raw tomato in my cooking, especially pastas, because you get a bit of texture, and a little burst of freshness. DP doesn't like his tomatoes raw though, that's why I served him first.

The funniest thing was, even though it was so simple, everyone loved it! Maybe less really is more!

This was an entry for Food In Colours: Red

Slow Cooking Thursday - Chicken & Mushrooms

2008-08-14T22:06:00.000+10:00

Chicken with Mushrooms
2 tablespoons of oil
1kg chicken thigh fillets, diced
250g button mushrooms, sliced
2 small leeks
1 cup white wine
2 cups chicken stock
2 tsp cracked black pepper
1 tsp of salt
2 tbsp of plain flour
3/4 cup of cream
3/4 cup sour cream

1. Heat oil in non-stick pan. Add chicken in batches and cook over a medium heat until lightly browned. Place chicken in the removable crockpot.
2. Top chicken with mushrooms, leeks, wine, stock, pepper, and salt. Cover with lid and cook on low for 8-10 hours or high 4-5 hours.
3. Stir in blended flour, cream and sour cream 1 hour before end of cooking. Replace lid and continue cooking.

I served this with rice, and it was so good, I threw roughly a cup of rice into the slow cooker with the leftovers, and cooked on slow for another 4 hours, resulted in a lovely risotto. I stirred it once or twice, I should have stirred it a little more often than that, as some of the rice didn't get under the liquid often enough to cook as well as I'd like. I'm looking forward to the leftovers!

Master Four tucking in

Miss Two not sure it will taste better than it looked (she finished the whole plateful though!)

Kids Cooking Thursday: Fruit Salad Bread

2008-08-14T15:20:00.000+10:00

This week for Kids Cooking Thursday, we made something for breakfasts. Since the first thing I do of a morning is feed Master 2-Month-Old a bottle, I don't generally get time for a sit down breakfast. In fact, I usually don't even get to drink a coffee until he's finished, which can be up to an hour later. So if I want breakfast, I have to be able to grab it and eat it, in the time it takes for the kettle to boil, and then hot water to heat the bottle. (about 3 minutes all up) Hence the cupcake sized bread. That, and I only had one loaf pan.

This recipe lovingly stolen from Cookie Baker Lynn. You can check out her original recipe at that link, the recipe below reflects how we cooked it.

Fruit Salad Bread

4 cups all-purpose flour
1-3/4 cups sugar
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1-1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter
2 eggs
1 Tbsp grated lemon zest
1-1/2 cups fruit juice (I used Apple & Mango with a Hint of Lemon Myrtle)
3 cups mixed chopped fruit* (We used 3/4 punnet strawberries, 3/4 of an apple, 1/2 a banana, and 225g dried apricots.

Preheat oven to 180°C. Grease 2- 9 x 5 inch loaf pans (or one, and put out 20 patty pan cases into muffin tins). Realise you have no baking paper, so you can't cut pieces of parchment paper to fit in the bottom and up the sides of the pans, or put the parchment paper in the pans and grease. Or you could read the recipe properly before committing to cook it, and buy paper, then you could actually do that step. I didn't.

Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, soda, and salt in a large mixing bowl; rub in butter with fingertips until mixture resembles coarse meal.

In a medium bowl, toss the fruit with 1/4 cup of the flour mixture.

Combine eggs and juice in a large mixing bowl. Add the flour mixture, stirring well. Gently fold in the fruit.

Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan, and the rest into the paper cases. Bake in preheated oven for 1 hour and 10 minutes, or until a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean. For cupcake/muffin sized, that's about 20 minutes. Cool in pans 10 minutes; remove the bread from pans, peel off the parchment paper, and let cool on wire racks. Leave the paper on if you have cupcake sized, it'll help keep them moist for longer.

* Note on fruit- If you're using leftover fruit that's very juicy, put it in a sieve to drain off the excess juice. You could use that juice, combined with confectioner's sugar to make a glaze for the warm bread.

Yield: 2 loaves

This was a little more detailed than most of our Thursday recipes, but the kids took it in their stride. Above you see Miss Two setting out the patty cases. Our mix was fairly stiff, it was more of a blob operation, than a case of pouring the batter. I really recommend the Native Blend juice we used, it gave a lovely lemony, limey, mango taste to the bread, and the most divine smell to the uncooked batter. The Apple, Strawberry and Rosella Flower flavour would have worked equally well I think. Perhaps we should make another batch to see. :)

This was an entry for August MBP: Fruit Fare, hosted by My Diverse Kitchen. Monthly Blog Patrol was dreamt up by Coffee @ The Spice Cafe.

Mini Quiches - Retro Blog Party

2008-08-13T21:29:00.002+10:00

Mini Quiches

It's Blog Party time again!
Stephanie over at Dispensing Happiness has been running Blog Party for 3 years now. I've managed to attend once. I almost made it to the Chocolate Party in June with our Mini Mars Bar Cheesecakes, as I know Stephanie has a weak spot for cheesecake, but I never managed to blog a chocolate drink in time. Well, I had big plans, but Master 2-Month-Old's arrival and the moving of house a week later kinda interfered with those (in the nicest way). But now that I am back in the swing of blogging again, and keeping up to date with all my favourite foodies, I felt I should at least attempt to attend this month.

Stephanie describes the theme thusly:
For the purpose of Blog Party, 'retro' refers to the period from 1920 through the late 1960's. Other people may have their own ideas, but they're not running this blog, are they?!?

So, anything from my parents first twelve years of marriage then. I asked my parents what they were eating around then, and they suggested quiche. We eat quiche quite often, in fact the kids help me make it almost everytime we have it for dinner, so I thought this would be a nice dish. (It doesn't hurt that Master I-won't-eat-egg Four is more likely to eat the small ones!)

Making a big rectangle one for dinner.

"Look, I know it's your turn, but you are pouring too slow!"

The recipe is back here, the only difference to these ones were I had no onion, so I used half a green capsicum instead. They weren't quite as nice as usual, but I think I got away with it.

"I'm not sure this one is good enough for Blog Party Mum, I might have to eat it."

Two year old not included, shown for size illustrative purposes only

Go join in the retro fun here until the 21st, and look for the round up around Saturday. (Will post that link then)
Ooooh, almost forgot a drink. (That always gets me with blog party!)
Well, period or not, we served these with glasses of water and mugs of coffee. I'm still not on alcohol yet, so jello shots were out of the question, and somehow I doubt they were around back then, despite everything having 'jello' back then. How about I take a page out of last month's theme then, and instead of Blogger's Choice, I make it Reader's Choice? I'm sure you can all think of something more exciting than coffee. Though to come to think of it, a lot of the old photos of Mum and Dad when they were young had people drinking coffee. Or at least, something out of coffee cups, but I'll give them all the benefit of the doubt ;)

Braised Steak and Onions

2008-08-11T19:46:00.003+10:00

My slow cooker is my new best friend

Since having children, well, since moving out of home really, I've been trying to cook a lot of my favourites of Mum's dishes. Steak & Onions in particular I really loved, but somehow I just could not get it right. Tonight was no exception, but I'm getting a lot closer, and at least we didn't have to eat onion flavoured shoe leather. I tried this dish using my slow cooker, and the only problem was there was too much water at the end, which would not have nearly been so bad had I not run out of gravy powder.
Steak & Onions
500g stewing/braising/blade/whatever steak
500g or more onions
40ml vinegar

Fry the steak brown and then cover it with water and let it simmer until it just about falls to bits. Take out of the sop. and cut very fine. Put aside. Fry the onions slowly, until nice and brown. Add them to the meat. Add vinegar and let the whole lot simmer for a few more minutes.
Thicken with gravy mix, stir while you are adding the gravy mix. Serve with mashed potato.

Or at least, that's what my mother emailed to me. I used a kilo of chuck steak, browned in the frying pan and then placed in the slow cooker straight away on Low, with the vinegar and just enough water to cover. Then I fried 1kg onions in the same frypan (in batches), tipping them into the slow cooker after each batch browned. Then I deglazed the pan with some more water, and tipped that in too. That brought the water up to cover the onions, which was too much. Next time I'll just cover the meat, and it'll be perfect.

I've said before that the best thing about a slow cooker is the wonderful smells through the house all day. And while that held true today, the best thing about a slow cooker is actually the luxury of getting to mid-afternoon and not needing to do half a dozen things so that dinner can be prepared, and getting to late afternoon and not having to frantically rush around, cooking and feeding and cleaning and screaming... ah, I mean... it's nice to be able to spend time with the kids, and not just around the kids. Not only does everyone have more fun, you can get some great photos too.

Miss Two loves to dance!

Weekend Eats

2008-08-11T09:49:00.003+10:00

If you need me to tell you how to assemble a burger or make mac and cheese, I think you're at the wrong blog. I won't teach you how to boil water either. ;) Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying those meals aren't post worthy, it's just that this time I bought premade burger patties from the butcher, and used packet mix mac and cheese. What? Don't give me that look, it was the weekend. Besides, for lunch yesterday we had Rabbit Mornay with steamed veg and fried potato slices. Both the children even ate a *shudder* steamed Brussel Sprout each. I didn't cook that though - we went to Mum's for lunch. So they plenty of 'real' food enough to be able to justify Pasta with Orange chemical sauce for dinner.

But since it's habit now to take a photo of every meal I cook, and the burgers looked so great, I thought I'd share our last two meals with you anyway.

I thought these burgers looked just like ones on tv

With very 'rustic' oven baked wedges

Mac & Cheese - my camera doesn't like the new tablecloth

Menu Plan Monday

2008-08-11T09:45:00.001+10:00

Monday Braised Steak & Onions (slow cooker)
Tuesday Mini Quiches
Wednesday 'Red' Pasta
Thursday Chicken and Mushrooms (slow cooker)
Friday Chickpea & Leek soup with h/made rolls
Saturday Pasta with Meatballs
Sunday Beef with Mushroom & Sun-dried Tomato (slow cooker)

Lots of extra 'baking' this week, lots of blog events, and lots of bulk lots for freezing. Come back on or around the day listed for the recipes or links, as well as photos and children's opinions.

As usual check out I'm an Organizing Junkie for literally hundreds of other menu plan blog posts.

Dutch Pea Soup with Stuffed Crust Rolls.

2008-08-08T20:39:00.005+10:00

Soup and Cheesy Rolls

One of the first soup recipes I wanted to try when I started the soups on Fridays for Winter was my mother's pea and ham soup. Not that we referred to the ham, to us it was just 'pea soup' and very tasty. I've gone as far as to put this on my menu plan several times, but for one reason or another, I hadn't gotten around to making it until today. Here is the recipe as my mother emailed it to me.

Dutch Pea Soup
1 Smoked Hock
500g green split peas
2 large leeks or 500g onions = 6 onions
3-4 celery sticks
4 beef cubes
3-4 litres of water
2 potatoes opt.

Place hock in water and bring to the boil and let simmer for about 2 hours or until the meat falls of the bone. (I usually do it in the evening.) When the meat is cooked take it out of the water turn the heat off and place your split peas in the water and leave over night.
The next day bring the peas to the boil and then place all the finely cut vegetables in it with the beef cubes too. Let it simmer for about 1-1 1/2 hours until the vegetables and the peas are well cooked. I personally then bamix it all very fine. Only then do I put the finely cut pieces of meat in it that I cut off the bone etc.

Mum was here today and she looked after the kids while I made this - it was nice to cook for a change without having to answer endless questions about ingredients, methods and the nature of the universe from Master Four.

I'm too cute for soup - can I have dessert now?

Hey, I can be cute too, can I skip as well?

I forgot the beef cubes, but didn't really notice the difference in taste. The potatoes really aren't optional, this soup needs to be thick, like a winter scarf.

Piping hot rolls - if you look closely you can see where the cheese leaked

With the soup, I made the usual bread rolls, but stuffed the inside with some grated cheese just for something different. The kids both ate all of their two rolls each, which was a first, so I guess that's a keeper.

Chocolate Mess and ice cream

I promised you all a special slow cooker dessert tonight, and here it is. I found this in a slow cooker recipe thread on a parenting forum I used to frequent. It sounded so interesting I had to try it.

Chocolate Mess - Posted by Sarah_H
1 pkg chocolate cake mix
1 220g container sour cream
1 pkg instant chocolate pudding mix
1 cup chocolate chips
3/4 cup cooking oil
4 eggs
1 cup water

Spray crock pot with non-stick cooking spray.
Mix cake mix, sour cream, pudding mix, chocolate chips, oil, eggs and water in bowl by hand. Pour into crock pot.
Cover and cook on low 6-8 hours (or high 3-4 hours).
Serve hot or warm with ice cream or whipped cream.

Freshly cooked mess

Slow Cooking Thursday!

2008-08-07T23:24:00.005+10:00

Now, I know, I hardly need another regular blog event, let alone another weekly one, since I continue to struggle with posting daily, but this is different. I mean, I was cooking a slow cooker meal on Thursdays anyway, to give me plenty of time in the afternoon to cook with the kids and not worry about having the dishes cleared in time to feed Master 9-week-old before cooking dinner. So when I saw that Sandra over at Diary of a Stay At Home Mom was hosting Slow Cooking Thursdays I just had to join in.

Not exactly the fanciest looking thing I've ever cooked

Tonight's dinner was adapted from an oven recipe for Beef and Red Wine Casserole over at Taste.Com.Au. Adapted in that I did the frying and the liquid boiling in a frypan, and tipped it into my slow cooker, then just left it to cook all day. I wasn't sure of the time I should have cooked it for, but as everything in my slow cooker just gets left until dinner time, I figured it really didn't matter. After all, isn't that the point? To be able to leave it all day? This was great anyway.
I saw a bottle of alcohol free shiraz in the supermarket, and used that for this dish. I only ever use wine for cooking anyway, so I prefer not to give the kids alcohol if I can help it. This made so much, I've got enough for a full meal in the freezer (that will possibly have leftovers) and I didn't even serve it with bread. I think when we have the frozen meal, I'll serve it with some barely steamed broccoli, and crusty homemade bread rolls.

This dish is officially approved by Miss Two

Oh, and come back tomorrow for a special treat: a slow cooker dessert called Chocolate Mess!

Kids Cooking Thursday: Strawberry cupcakes

2008-08-07T17:22:00.004+10:00

Lots of cupcakes - yum!

Miss Two and I have started planning her upcoming (November) birthday party. Well, ok, I have been planning her party, and every now and then she throws me a bone and helps with a detail or two. Like the theme. Now, normally, you'd think that would be the most important decision in planning a child's birthday party. The essential, first thing, that everything else hinges on. Yes, it is. Of course, it's not terribly helpful when your two and a half year old little girl, when asked what sort of party she'd like for her birthday says simply "blue". I tried offering other themes, Dora, circus, cooking, rainbow, but nothing would sway her. Blue it is, and blue it is staying.

Fine, that makes decorations easy. And food too, since a quick google for 'blue food party' came up with many people complaining that the food prepared with copious amounts of food dye for their blue themed parties went mostly untouched. There is no true blue coloured food in nature, be honest, anything called a blue food is really purple with another name, and so the brain just can't trust a blue food. So I don't have to theme the food. Just the games, and a flash of inspiration drawn from Master 8-Week-Old's Baby Sesame bottle led me to Pin the Cookie on the Cookie Monster.

See? He's blue!

But what about the cake? Of course I could just make any plain vanilla cake and add food dye, but I was pretty sure she'd want blue icing, and there is such a thing as food dye overload. So I did the simple thing, and asked her. The response was deceptively simple. She wants a strawberry cake with blue icing (see, I told you). Now, the icing I can deal with when the time comes, but a quick search of the net revealed that strawberry isn't that common a flavour for a cake. There were strawberry 'poke' cakes (made by pouring unset jelly over a just baked cake with holes poked in it then refrigerated) and people adding a packet of jelly crystals to a boxed white cake mix (which I may try some other time), but no real strawberry cake recipes from scratch. So I put out the call for help on the forums at Taste.com.au and Queenie shared this with me. Of course, we had to try it out to make sure it was good before her party, but as we don't really eat a lot of cake, so cupcakes it was.

Strawberry Cake - from Cooking a Fairytale

for 25-28cm baking pan
baking time = 50minutes @ 180C
suitable for freezing

5 egg whites
1 egg
3 cups SR flour
2 cups caster sugar
1 cup strawberry flavoured yoghurt
2/3 cup olive oil
1/2 cup buttermilk
2 tsp vanilla essence
1 tsp strawberry essence
a few drops of red food colouring

Place all ingredients in the mixer bowl and beat for 4 minutes, to form a smooth, fluffy, homogeneous mixture.(Try and keep the mixture in the bowl as much as possible)
Can you pick where Miss Two was sitting?
Transfer mixture to a well buttered and floured baking pan and bake the cake at 180C for 45-50minutes.

Look how pink this mix is!

We're going to have to keep looking for another strawberry cake recipe I'm afraid. This was a lovely, light cake, but the flavour was a lot more subtle than I was hoping for - I wanted the strawberry to really stand out. However, these are really great cakes. I've already eaten far more of them than I should have, they are so more-ish, and because they are so light it's hard to stop at one. Thankfully, I've put the rest in the freezer, wrapped in sets of two, in foil, so I can pull them out on days we'll be in the car or away from home at afternoon tea time, or for when we run out of snacks and haven't been shopping yet.

So, does anyone have a good strawberry cake recipe? I'm open to all suggestions, but I'm really not looking to make a poke cake, as I'm not sure how that would go with icing. Please leave comments, I'd really like to hear from you all on this.

Crunchy Chicken and Hutspot

2008-08-06T23:08:00.002+10:00

It's hard to photograph tri-colour moosh well

Another relatively simple meal tonight. 2 carrots, 2 onions, and 2 potatoes per person chopped and boiled all together in one pot till cooked. Then mashed with a little milk, butter and some cheese (because I was feeling decadent). Meanwhile, I fried a couple of chicken schnitzels that I bought precrumbed (because I'm lazy, but also because I can't get crumbs to stick to anything other than my hands). I sprinkled them with some tarragon, I really am loving that herb. I'll have to source some fresh whenever it comes into season and see what it really can do.

Hutspot (the aforementioned mash) was a dish my mother frequently made when I was growing up. The onions really give your mash a distinctive taste, and it makes washing up easier too. I liked it when the kids were just starting "people" food, because once they'd tried all three ingredients, I could give them the same thing the family was eating, saving me from having to cook multiple meals. It's a lot tastier than just potatoes mashed on it's own - probably the reason both my two food-eating children loved it so much back then.

Baby Spinach Alfredo Fettucine.

2008-08-05T21:17:00.002+10:00

Master Four just couldn't wait long enough for me to take a photo!

Ok, so I cheated a little, but this was a great meal, and if you don't include the water, only needed 5 ingredients: milk, butter, alfredo pasta and sauce packet mix, cheese and baby spinach.
Considering I bought the pasta from Aldi, it was still pretty cheap too!

Menu Plan Monday

2008-08-04T08:16:00.003+10:00

Monday Baby Spinach and Alfredo Penne
Tuesday Chicken and Mushrooms (slow cooker)
Wednesday Chicken Schnitzels with Hutspot
Thursday Beef and Red Wine Casserole (slow cooker)
Friday Dutch Pea Soup with h/made rolls
Saturday Hamburgers with Oven baked Wedges
Sunday Mac & Cheese

Hutspot is a dutch mash dish made with potatoes, carrots, and onions. A friend of mine in primary school used to call it baby food, but I make it more for myself than the kids!
Friday we're also having a dessert done in the slow cooker - something called Chocolate Mess, which I am looking highly forward to.

As usual check out I'm an Organizing Junkie for literally hundreds of other menu plan blog posts.

Homemade sausage rolls

2008-08-02T19:59:00.007+10:00

I didn't get out to do the shopping until after lunch yesterday, which meant it was too late to start the pea soup, so we had leftover Chicken and Sweetcorn Soup from the freezer for dinner last night. To make up for the lack of post (since what can I really say about leftovers I blogged about last week?) here's a pic I took today of Master Eight-Week-Old.

Isn't he cute?

Tonight we had the sausage rolls I'd spent all afternoon cooking.

Today's bounty

Now my freezer is restocked again, after having Miss Two and DP demolish the last of our sausage roll stock while I was in hospital recently with the boys. I tend to make these every two months or so, because I like to always have some in the freezer, in case of emergency meal failure due to un-defrosted (would that be frosted?) meat, or not being here to cook, or just plain laziness. It's good to have a standby I can have on the table in under 10 minutes straight from the freezer, and it's even better because I know pretty much what's in them too (aside from the sausage mince - I'm not sure I want to know what's in that anyway.) Last time I made these with 100% beef mince instead of sausage mince, but it failed miserably. Now we live near a Coles that has Roo mince, so despite the fact that DP doesn't like eating roo, I really want to try making roo meat sausage rolls. perhaps I can half the recipe or something, make them for a party.

Speaking of parties, I've served these at all my kids parties and they always go down a treat. That's why this is my submission for the Perfect Party Dishes blog event over at Dhanggit's Kitchen. Her gorgeous little girl is turning one, and she needs party dishes. The great thing about these is you can dress them up or down as you like. I've changed the herbs, tried different meats (as I said above, you need sausage mince, but you can use half that and half other meat). Those vegies spreads Kraft and Ixl are good for making them a little fancier, or you could add pesto or semi-dried tomatoes. Just don't leave out the apple - that's the secret to this recipe. The recipe, of course, (if you didn't click the link above) is in one of my earlier posts, from when I made them a while ago.
So Happy 1st Birthday Mayumi. May it be merry, and free from tears, and may there be many more to come.

My monthly reads - July

2008-08-01T11:34:00.000+10:00

Chocolat - Joanne Harris

Venetian Beef

2008-07-31T20:22:00.004+10:00

Tonight's dinner was the easiest slow cooker recipe I've tried yet. I got it from Tasty Crockpot Recipes and the only 'effort' (if you can call it that) was chopping up the beef.

It made the house smell fantastic, and I'v got enough to make a small pie leftover... going to have break out the pie maker that we got left along with the furniture at our last house! Next time I think I'd use a little less oregano, or I'd make a 'double' batch by adding 1/2kg more of meat, and an extra tin of tomatoes. Still, was great as is too.

Kids Cooking Thursday: 'Eat Me' Cookies

2008-07-31T14:49:00.006+10:00

Peanut Butter and Choc Chip Cookies

I saw this recipe over at Apples and Butter and thought it looked so easy, it would be a good recipe to use to start up Kids Cooking Thursday again. I underestimated the stiffness of peanut butter dough, but they had fun eating the chocolate chips at least. Once these came out of the oven, I realised it hadn't said anywhere in the recipe to flatten the balls, and that almost a cup of peanut butter just won't cut it with these cookies. They turned out very crumbly and tasting of over-browned brown sugar, but that hasn't stopped me from eating 3 out of the 12 already. The choc chip bits are sort of chewy though... it's like a salt crust baked choc chip cluster, only instead of a salt crust, it's a sugar crust. Very nice, very rich, and very moreish, but I don't think we'll be making these again, it's really no good for my teeth!

Indigo over at Happy Love Strawberry is turning 18 soon, and asked for themed food for her (Alice in) Wonderland party. I was thinking about making little mushrooms out of meringues, complete with gummy caterpillers, but we don't eat meringue that often, and it's a lot of effort to go to when you aren't going to the actual party ;) But the first thing that popped into my head when I found this recipe was to make "Eat Me" cookies using the chocolate chips. I actually only made one like that, the rest I stabbed in with a tip of a knife, but the writing didn't show up too well once they cooked.

Close up of chips

***View the Round Up for more crazy recipes.***

Cheese, Capsicum & Broccoli Bake

2008-07-30T20:44:00.003+10:00

Cheese, Capsicum & Broccoli Bake

300g macaroni
2 heads broccoli, broken (or chopped) into small florets
250g cottage cheese
1/2 cup chicken stock
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 tsp dried tarragon
2 cloves garlic, crushed
200g char-grilled capsicum slices, drained
grated tasty cheese

Preheat oven to 190°C (170°C fan forced).
Cook pasta until slightly firm, (about 7 minutes) then add the broccoli and cook for a further 2 or 3 minutes, until pasta is al dente.
Mix together all the other ingredients except the grated cheese.
Pour sauce into cooked, drained pasta, and place in a casserole dish. Cover with cheese.
Cook for 20-25 minutes or until cheese has melted and gone golden.

(Adapted from a low-fat recipe in the latest (August) issue of Recipes+)

This was a no brainer. Really simple to make, fairly cheap (except the capsicum) and very filling. The kids loved it, but then, I think I could almost serve dog food with broccoli and they'd eat it. Well, they'd pick the broccoli out and eat that most likely. So ok, the kids liked this for more than the broccoli. But it's hard to go wrong with a cheesy pasta dish really. The original recipe, apart from using all low-fat alternatives, called for 1/3 cup chopped flat leaf parsley, but I didn't have any so I substituted the tarragon instead. I also used garlic salt instead of fresh garlic, simply because I was running so late, and I don't have a crusher.

See Miss Two attempting to steal mine while I took the photo?

So there you have it... by popular demand, the most requested recipe on my blog ever!

Menu Plan Monday

2008-07-28T07:29:00.002+10:00

Monday Calzones
Tuesday Chow Mein
Wednesday Cheese, Capsicum & Broccoli bake
Thursday Venetian Beef (slow cooker)
Friday Dutch Pea soup with h/made rolls
Saturday Homemade sausage rolls
Sunday Crumpets

We've been so busy lately, meals keep getting switched around and put off... thank goodness for freezers and Tupperware! I'm trying to be more organised though. Tonight we are having the Calzones I didn't make last night because Miss Two had gastro. It's most likely that we are going to DP's parents place for lunch on Sunday, so it's a light tea for that night, as no one is hungry much after the 1 1/2 hour drive home again.

As usual check out I'm an Organizing Junkie for literally hundreds of other menu plan blog posts.

Pizza Scrolls

2008-07-27T21:03:00.000+10:00

Crunchy!

Here's another tried and true recipe I've done before, but this time I thought I'd try something different. Somewhere in the multitude of reviews on the recipe at Taste.com.au, someone mentioned they'd made this with puff pastry instead of using the scone-like dough in the recipe. This idea appealed to me, as I liked the concept of these rolls, but not the actual dough, although DP quite likes them. Also made them a lot quicker to make too.

Master Four polished off his, and half his sister's (she made up for it by stealing half his soup) and asked for more. Normally he'd nibble at one and then leave the rest, so perhaps this is a better way of doing things. Next time I'm going to try using bread dough made in the bread maker, either cooking scrolls in the oven, or squishing them together in the bread maker's pan and cooking as a pizza bread loaf - that might be interesting! I'll be sure to post it either way, and keep you all up to date with the best way to Pizza Scroll!

Easy Chicken and Sweetcorn Soup

2008-07-25T20:00:00.004+10:00

Mmm... soup!

This was incredibly simple to make, but tasted so authentic, even though I skipped out the ginger.
This was a Taste.com.au recipe, and took a total of about ten minutes to cook! There was enough leftover for me to freeze so all of us could have another bowl some other night. I"m leaning towards the 8th, in honour of the games - tacky huh?

Miss Two's appropriately themed bowl

Chicken & Vegetable PIes

2008-07-23T20:52:00.001+10:00

I've made these before, several times actually, but this time they turned out awesome. Partly because the oven here worked great for a change and gave a great colour and crispness to the crust, but mostly because I finally got around to buying some Tarragon. Can I just say, if you have been like me and just skipped it because you had none, go buy some! It really makes this dish, and I'm sure I'll be finding many othe dishes to sneak this great herb into. Seriously, it makes this dish!

Look at how golden these are!

Hawaiian Casserole

2008-07-22T12:31:00.001+10:00

We have a doctor's appointment in Melbourne this afternoon, so I got in early with this slow cooker recipe from Best Recipes. I had dinner cooking, and my washing being hung out, and for a brief moment I fet like a lady of leisure... until Master 6-Week-Old wanted a feed, and the older two decided they wanted lunch as well, and the house went from peaceful and super organised to noisy and running behind in three seconds flat.

Dinner cooking

DP hanging out the washing

***EDIT*** But all that effort was worth it when we got home. Wasn't particularly sweet, just nice, even stone cold - which is how I ate mine an hour after everyone else, once I'd fed the baby! I even had enough leftover to be able to make into a little pie tomorrow with spare pastry.