Potato, Red Pepper and Onions

My toddler isn’t a fan of plain, steamed vegetables (and to be honest, I’m not that crazy about them either!), so I’m always on the lookout for tasty side dishes. Here’s one we really enjoyed, that’s quick and easy (another must when you’ve got small children!)

Ingredients

4 medium potatoes
1 red onion
1 red capsicum (bell pepper)
4 large cloves garlic, crushed or chopped 
3 teaspoons rosemary 
1 teaspoon dried thyme leaves
Salt and pepper to taste
2 tablespoons olive oil

1.  Preheat oven to 200°C (400° F).
2.  Cut potatoes, onion and capsicum (pepper) into approximately 1 inch pieces.
3.  Place all of the vegetables into a large bowl or plastic bag. Sprinkle with the garlic, rosemary, salt and pepper. Drizzle with the oil and toss well to combine.
4.  Spread into one layer on a baking tray. Roast until potatoes are tender, approx. 45 minutes.

You could use thyme, Italian herb mix or a Cajun spice mix instead of rosemary. You could also use green capsicum (pepper) instead of (or in addition to) the red capsicum. Brown onions could also be used rather than red. So many options for a tasty side dish!

Do you have any quick and tasty side dish recipes? Please, please, please let me know in the comments (I could really do with some inspiration!)

My Creative Space

I’m not organised enough this week to have an actual craft post, so I thought I’d give you a glimpse of what my craft room is looking like today:

Felt everywhere as I’m making my son a playmat for all the cars he got for his birthday (although it’s going to be a bit more than just a playmat…stay tuned…)

A bit of fabric about for my first foray into quilt squares, for Quilts for Queensland, coordinated by Corrie at Retromummy, and a few potholders in progress (after hubby set fire to my last efforts).

And Stitch by Stitch, by Deborah Moebes open to the bias tape making page, also for the potholders.

Must find the time to take photos and type up some of my finished projects, but I want to finish that playmat, and those potholders, and those pesky kids want attention again…

Happy Australia Day!

Happy Australia Day to my fellows Aussies, and anyone else who wants to join in the celebrations!

So what am I doing to celebrate this fine day? Catching up on housework. Normally, I like to get out and about on public holidays (just like everyone else), but the state of the house has been getting me down since I got back from holidays. Bub is 3.5 months old now and the gradual decline of our standard of living since her arrival has finally hit breaking point.

Having hubby home to entertain the small folk is just what I needed to hit housework hard. Mt Wash-iuszko was conquered (I was going to call it Mt Washmore, but thought I’d go with an Aussie theme - three loads of washing done and folded away), clean sheets on all the beds, fresh towels in the bathrooms, upstairs mopped, kids’ bathroom cleaned and a bit of dusting done downstairs, plus general tidying as I go. I’m exhausted but happy that I’m back on track with the housework. Now just have to settle into a routine to stay on top of things.

Hubby is now doing his gardening chores. The plan is to head out and do something fun on the weekend. I’m going to enjoy it that much more without all that housework hanging over my head.

Do you ever use public holidays to catch up on housework? How did you celebrate Australia Day?

Quick Pesto Chicken Mini-Quiches

When I’m asked to bring a plate of finger food to a gathering, I like to bring something savoury. Mini-quiches always go down a treat. I made these just before Christmas for a neighbourhood party. As an added bonus, they taste just as good cold as hot.
Ingredients
3 sheets puff pastry
1 small barbecue chicken, meat shredded
1 cup grated cheese
4 eggs
2/3 cup sour cream
1/4 cup basil pesto sauce
Procedure
1.  Preheat oven to 200°C (400°F).
2.  Lightly grease a 12x 1/3 cup muffin tray (or spray with oil).
3.  Cut 4x 10cm (4 inch)circles from each pastry sheet and line each hole in the muffin tray.
4.  Divide the chicken and cheese evenly into the pastry cases.
5.  Beat eggs, sour cream and pesto sauce in a jug with a fork until well mixed. Pour into the pastry cases.
6.  Bake in oven for 20-25 minutes, or until centres are firm.

Alternatively, use a mini-muffin tray or silicon mini-cupcake moulds with 6.5cm (2.5 inch) circles (I actually used a drinking glass as my cutter) and cook for 15-20 minutes. You could also use  ham, tuna, salmon, corn, capsicum, sun-dried tomatoes etc instead of (or with) the chicken.

What are your favourite finger food recipes?

Weekend Update

Blog posts have fallen by the wayside this week. I returned home to soggy Brisbane after 2 1/2 weeks at my parents’ place whilst my husband was overseas. I’d scheduled a few posts before I went away, and naively thought I’d be able to write some posts in the evenings after the kids went to bed. What was I thinking?

Bub didn’t go to sleep before 10pm most nights and by then, I was exhausted after full days of catching up with old friends, single-parenting (hats off to those who do it all the time!), and getting up to the toddler multiple times some nights. It was great to have a couple of extra sets of hands with my family, but being in someone else’s house meant much more closely watching what the toddler was up to. So it’s great to be home with hubby back! But heart-breaking to see some of the flood damage all around our area.

So please check out the flood auctions organised by Toni from Make It Perfect close tomorrow (Monday) night, with more on Facebook coordinated by the Oz Material Girls. Some of the raffles have been extended to Wednesday. All proceeds go to the Premier’s Disaster Relief Fund.

The plan is to get back into my word of the year – ROUTINE – this week. I think we all need it. It’s my boy’s second birthday today so time to head back to play with the new toys!

Ooshka Babushka

When my little girl was born, my BFF decided to buy a present for both Mum and bub (Thanks Cat!):

An Ooshka Babushka kit from The Red Thread

The kit includes a pretty fabric face panel as well as instructions/templates for appliqueing your own face.
It is a very cute and simple project, and was great to get back into the swing of sewing after having the baby with an easy project. It is definitely suitable for a beginner. The hardest part was picking out fabric! I chose a selection of yellow, green and purple fabrics (that’s the colour scheme of the nursery) from my stash. Fabrics included a yellow linen remnant I picked up in a thrift store, a flowery pillowcase also thrifted, and two prints from the Mingle by Monaluna range from Robert Kaufman Fabrics.

The doll is huge (about the same size as bub), and so pretty and cuddly. I definitely recommend this pattern for a quick and fun sewing project.

 

I think she likes it! I’m looking forward to having a go at making my own face next time…

Floods in Queensland

As you may be aware, an area the size of France and Germany combined is currently submersed in water in Queensland, here in Australia, with flooding expected to hit the city of Brisbane in the next day or two.

Toni from Make It Perfect along with a heap of other generous bloggers has organised an auction to raise funds for flood victims, starting on Monday:


I encourage you all to check out the auctions and give if you can.

Fortunately, our house in Brisbane is on high ground and is unlikely to be affected. The kids and I are also currently interstate visiting my family while my husband is overseas on a business trip so we are well away from the chaos.

Our hearts go out to those already impacted and implore those who are near floodwater to be sensible and stay safe.

Triple Decker Chocolate Treat

Friends living in a small country town recently visited us, and requested Thai takeaway for dinner. I was more than happy not to cook (especially as I usually go over the top when I have guests), but I couldn’t not make anything. A simple dessert was in order – a small tasty treat after mountains of Thai food:

Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate (baking) soda
pinch salt
pinch ground black pepper
1 egg
2 teaspoons vanilla essence
1-1/3  cups  plain (all-purpose) flour
1/2  cup  cocoa

Icing/Frosting
1-1/2 cups icing sugar 
3 tablespoons cocoa powder 
3 tablespoons butter 
2.5 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Extra icing sugar for dusting

Procedure

1.  Cream butter and sugars in an electric mixer.
2.  Add bicarbonate soda, salt, and pepper and continue to beat until combined. Then add egg and vanilla essence and beat until combined. 
3.  In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour and cocoa powder. Gradually beat into the creamed mixture.
4.  Divide dough into two portions. Shape each portion of dough into a 4cm (1-1/2-inch) diameter log (about 20cm (8 inches) long). Wrap each log in plastic wrap and chill for 1 hour or freeze for 30 minutes or until firm enough to slice. 
5.  Preheat oven to 180C (350F).
6.  Working with one roll at a time, unwrap chilled dough and cut into slices about 1/2 cm (1/4 inch) thick. Place slices 5cm (2 inches) apart on an ungreased baking tray. 
7.  Bake in the preheated oven for 8 minutes or until edges are set. Cool on cookie sheet for 1 minute. Transfer cookies to a wire rack to cool.

8.  For the icing/frosting, sift together the icing sugar and cocoa.
9.  In a large bowl, cream butter until smooth, then gradually beat in sugar mixture alternately with the milk and vanilla. Beat until light and fluffy. If necessary, adjust consistency with more milk or sugar.

10.  For each three-cookie stack, spread 1 teaspoon icing/frosting evenly over the bottom side of one cookie. Top with a plain cookie, top side up. Spread with 1 teaspoon icing/frosting. Top with another cookie, top side up. Lightly dust with icing sugar to serve.

This is adapted from a Better Homes and Garden recipe. The original recipe had a chocolate ganache rather than a butter cream icing. This would have been more decadent and rich, but I didn’t have any cream, so I made do with what I had in the house. It was the perfect bit of chocolate-y sweetness to have with coffee at the end of a big meal. The biscuits are also tasty just by themselves or with a bit of icing.

Bedroom Door Name

Here’s a quick and easy project to start the year off – wooden name for a bedroom door. Yes, I’ve done this before, but thought I would show off the version for my daughter’s room.

All you need is wooden letters (available in craft and hardware stores), different colour paints, a paint-brush and some Blu-Tak. I’m sure you can work out the steps. Too easy!

Scrambled Egg Mess

I’m not a big fan of eating eggs, so cooking them is my husband’s domain. While I appreciate his cooking, the frypan is usually left looking like this:

Baked-on egg is tough to remove. My usual trick of throwing everything in the dishwasher and hope for the best just does not work with this stuff. The frypan looks exactly the same coming out as going in. It’s hard labour and not very effective to scrub off (with the risk of damaging the pans).

I’ve read that using a little oil in the pan before cooking prevents the problem, but if I try to tell hubby how to cook eggs, it’s a sure-fire way to get him to stop cooking for me. I’m not willing to take that risk!

Fortunately, the internet lead me to the solution: the Vinegar Book by Tip King states:

soaking your pan with hot water and a half cup of vinegar will clean up the pan easily

I gave this a go, and the pan was back to sparkling clean with a quick wipe.

Do you end up with the same mess when cooking eggs? Is there another food that refuses to budge from your pans? Let me know in the comments.

Felafel

falafel; felafel
[feh-LAH-fehl]
A Middle Eastern specialty consisting of small, deep-fried croquettes or balls made of highly spiced, ground chickpeas. http://www.epicurious.com/tools/fooddictionary/entry/?id=2474#ixzz19Yx69gtG

I’ve always been a big fan of kebabs (gyros/yiros/any other names?), especially in the wee hours of the morning after a groove at the nightclubs (OK, it’s been a LONG time since I’ve done that.). I always noticed felafel on the menu, but never understood why someone would eat something vegetarian when there was all that tasty meat rotating on the spits.

One afternoon when walking down Acland St in St Kilda (when we lived in Melbourne),  kebab shop was giving taste-tests of felafel balls on the street. Hubby and I decided to be brave and give them a go (maybe we were feeling pre-guilty about the cakes we were going to eat). And WOW! What tasty little treats they were!

It then became a tradition for us to walk down to our local Felafel Kitchen for Sunday lunch, and see how many felafel balls we could sneak into our pita pockets. What a yummy and healthy lunch!

We moved away and don’t have the convenience of a local felafel kitchen here in Brisbane. With an abundance of flat-leaf parsley growing in our garden, I decided it was time to try making felafel.

Here’s the recipe:

2011: A Whole New Year

Image from Free Digital Photos

So it’s a fresh and sparkly New Year. Time to reflect on the past and set some goals for the year ahead.

Quite a few blogs are using a word (or three words) as a focus for the year, and I’m going to join in on the trend. My magic word is:

ROUTINE

I like order and organisation – it’s the engineer in me. 2010 was a year where my routines and order disappeared. I blamed fatigue in my first trimester, colds and flus in my second trimester and again fatigue and being big and uncomfortable in my third trimester. The year rounded out with me blaming the chaos that is having a newborn and toddler for my lack of routine. The house slowly descended into chaos. Most of the time, I managed to do just enough to keep the place looking tidy enough to the outside eye, but I knew where the dust (literally and metaphorically) was building up.

With a new year, it’s time for a fresh start and to get back into the swing of things. It’s going to take a while to catch up and get the house in order, but I’m just going to do a little bit extra each day.

Routine is not just about the boring and mundane though! I also want to include in my routine more focused activity time with my two kids and a few more adventures with the whole family on weekends, as well as routine craft time for me!

Here are a few of my more specific goals for the New Year:

Cook
52 New Recipes (I tried this in 2010, but only got to 41, using the excuses above – still a pretty good effort though!)
Make my own bread (This was originally going to be no store-bought bread, but I’ve decided that’s a bit too ambitious. I am going to count how many loaves of bread I buy as my measure.)

Craft
Learn to use my DSLR camera in manual mode
More sewing – clothes for me, clothes for the kids – bring on the Kids Clothes Week Challenges!
Crochet – Finish the cardigan I’m currently making, and add some more toys to the crochet collection.
Felt food week to boost our modest collection.

The plan is to get a bit more routine in my blogging as well, with a Cook, Clean and Craft post each week (I may need some guest posts to keep this up – email me (see contact page) if you’re interested!), and a weekend round-up of favourite links and what I’ve been up to.

I’m looking forward to sharing my adventures of 2011 with you. HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!