out to dinner september - Ferrones Restaurant & Pizzeria, Springwood

One night, we were on our way home and this place caught our eye.... so we did a quick u-turn and popped in for dinner.  We were there just as they were opening on a Saturday night

The friendly waiter asked us if we were going to sing, and indicated to look at the ceiling, which was covered in photos of diners singing.

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We started with Garlic Bread, which was deliciously crunchy on the outside and soft and buttery on the inside.

We both decided to try the pizza, and were brought "pizza-slice" plates to eat it from!

As usual, I went for the Vegetarian Pizza - I asked for it without mushrooms or olives. It was a nice crisp pizza base, with a good amount of topping. Pineapple would have been a nice addition!

Janet had the Meat Lovers Pizza, which was nicley covered in meat.

We had way too much food - this is the left overs, which they put into a box for us to take home.

I would love to go back again and try some of the pasta on the menu. This was a nice, relaxed restaurant, with very friendly staff. The only unfortunate part was that we were sat next to a wall that was attached to the door that the staff walked in and out of, so everythime they went in or out of the kitchen, there was a loud bang, and the wall shook! We didn't stick around for the singing, but that looked like it might have been fun!

foodcourt lunch - loganholme

Another weekend, another foodcourt! We were in search of some suitable attire to wear to a wedding, so we headed to the Logan Hyperdome. First stop was the food court for some lunch!

I tried a Vegie Pattie with Salad from Healthy Habits. THey tried to give me a chicken salad with my pattie, but I asked if they could just make a normal salad with some of the sandwich ingredients instead - I had lettuce, tomato, beetroot, carrot, onion amd some mayo. SOme sweet chilli sauce would have been nice on the Vegie Pattie also, but I didn't think of that until it was too late. Maybe next time, because I thought this was a great lunch - the pattie was very filling, and very tasty! And the salad was great too!

Janet happily had a Rooster Roll from Red Rooster - I always think these look too soggy, but Janet loves them

dinner at home, or what to do with broken crackers...

We had a packet of "Country Cheese" biscuits. When we opened them, we discovered that quite a lot of them were broken. Which is no big drama, they still taste the same.... however, I decided to do something different with them. I put all the broken bits into a plastic bag and bashed them with a rolling pin. Fun!

I then mixed the cracker crumbs with about the same amount of dried breadcrumbs and some fresh herbs from the garden and made Janet a piece of crumbed chicken.  Now my crumbing technique involves lightly flouring the piece of meat, dipping this into egg, and then into crumbs, back into the egg and back into the crumbs.  This makes for a nice crunchy crumbed coating once panfried (or oven baked)

On this occasion, I made some vegie mash to go with - it was cauliflower, potato, sweet potato and pumpkin which I boiled and then mashed with a little parmesan cheese mixed in.

and for me? a vegie burger stack - tomato, beetroot, avocado, a Sanitarium not-burger and onion with some mash.

Lemon Cupcakes

I made these cupcakes to take to  Kara's Hen's Afternoon Tea. 

I used the cupcakes from one recipe and the icing from another.  The cupcakes were made using the "Basic Cupcake Recipe" from Masterchef

Basic Cupcake recipe recipe by Katie Nichols

100g unsalted butter

185g caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract (I left this out and substituted the grated rind of 2 lemons in an attempt to make cupcakes similar to the ones Julie made on the show)

2 rggs

200g self-rasing flour

1/2 cup (125ml) milk

1. Preheat oven to 180c (160 fanforced). line muffin pans with paper cases

2. Beat Butter, sugar and vanilla (or lemon rind) with an electric mixer until pale.  Add the eggs, one at a time and beat until just combined.  Add the flour and milk in alternate batches and stir with a wooden spoon until just combined.

3. Spoon mixture into paper cases. (i managed to get 14 cupcakes from this mix)  Bake for 15-20 minutes or until cooked through.  Remove from oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.  Decorate as desired.

For my icing I changed the "Orange Icing" from the "Orange Marshmallow flower cupcake" recipe from Goodtaste magazine's September 2008 issue (page 95)

Orange Lemon Icing

300g (2 cups) Icing Sugar Mixture

1 tsp butter at room temp

2-3 tbs orange lemon juice

3-4 drops food colouring

To make icing, place the4 icing sugar, butter and juice in a small heatproof bowl and stir until a thick paste forms.  Place bowl over a sauceoan of simmering water and stir until smooth.  Stir in the food colouring.  Transfer to a piping bag and ice the cupcakes.

I had a slight disaster when the plastic bag I was using as a piping bag burdt.  But by then I had iced most of the cupcakes, so some of them were iced with a knife instead.  I decorated the tops of my cupcakes with "Sour Peach Hearts"  Pretty!!

new furniture = chaos

We bought some new bedroom furniture from a new shop on its opening day, which was an expreience in itself.  We practically had to grab a staff member and hold on to them in order to actually get any service. They had what we wanted though, so we made a purchase.

It was all delivered at the end of the week......

in lots of boxes!

 I then had to try and put the bed together. With no instructions

It ended up looking like a bed, with no pieces left over. So thats good enough for me!

one slight issue - our room is too small, so only 1 bedside table actually fits beside the bed.

New Gardens

We finally managed to make our back/side garden look presentable.  We have put down weed matting and cypress mulch all the way along - we think it looks a million times better than it used to!

We also re-mulched and weed-matted the front gardens

 

This is the front of our house in 2007....

And this is the front of our house now

Food Court Lunch - Indooroopilly

When we were at Indooroopilly, as well as stocking up on too many donuts, we also had lunch in the food court - have to love a different shopping centre and a different food court!

Janet had Chicken Nuggets & Chips from Oporto - these nuggets are like flat strips of chicken, tather than the traditional nugget shape.

I finally tried Sumo Salad - I had half a felafel & Sweet Chilli wrap - quite tasty!

Dreamy Donuts

We were at Indooroopilly, so we just had to get some Dreamy Donuts.

what to choose, what to choose.....it was too hard to decide, so we just had to force ourselves to order a 6 pack.....

Of course we chose 2 Cinnamon Glazed - these are my all time favourite!

We had one traditional glazed - I had this one - it was nice, but not as good as cinnamon!

one blueberry filled - I enjoyed the donut part more than the filling, but it was still good 

a chocolate topped - this was Janet's choice - she liked it

and Janet's other choice - cookies and cream, which I believe was her favourite.

Chocolate Brownies

I made some Chocolate Brownies for Janet on the weekend..... the recipe is a hand written one I havein one of my recipe folders. It has no name on it, so I am not sure who it came from. But it is from someone who has neat writing and a red pen :-).  The original recipe is for Walnut Brownies. Obviously if you want them to be Walnut Brownies. add walnuts.  Because these were for Janet, I used chocolate chips instead, since she is not a fan of crunchy nuts.

Chocolate Brownies

125g butter (I used 125g Suncoast Gold Vitality Macadamia Spread)
1/4 cup cocoa
3/4 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
3/4 cup plain flour
3/4 cup of your choice of add-in (I used choc chips, but macadamias would be fantastic, as are pecans or walnuts)

melt butter in saucepan, stir in cocoa and sugar.  Remove from heat and whisk in eggs. Stir in flour and add-in of your choice.  Spread evenly into a slice tin. (I then sprinkled with some more choc chips).  Bake in moderate oven for about 20 minutes.  When cool, cut into squares of a size of your choosing. 

Because I used the Vitality spread instead of Butter (which is made from macadamia oil, it really would have been more appropriate to make these into macadamia brownies...maybe next time!!)

Weekend Lunch at home - fresh bread day 2

Our second day's lunch with our fresh home made bread - toasted this time. Still delicious!

Janet had peanut butter on toast.

I put a little tomato sauce on the bread, topped it with fresh tomato, avocado and red onion, and some colby cheese and put it under the griller till the cheese melted. YUMMO :-)

Work Lunch

I managed to make a wrap for my lunch that didn't look like a big mess, so I had to take a photo. THis one contains avocado, tofu and the ingredient of the moment for me - Woolworths "rainbow salad" - (it contains grated carot, beetroot & brocolli stalks)

and I nearly always have strawberries at the moment - they are cheap and I love them :-) (with some Forme Strawberry yoghurt)

and to cap it all off, some carrot & capsicum sticks with ranch dressing to dip in.  All in my brilliant Lock n Lock lunch box - which I got for subscribing to the Australian Healthy Food Guide Magazine.  I love this lunch box - I don't have to wrap anything in plastic wrap and it has enough spaces for a nice variety of lunch.

Kiwi As chips

I saw these at the "Friendly Grocer" and decided we had to try them. ITs been a while since I actually had a potato chip (grainwaves and corn chips have been consumed lately....) And these were good. Although it wasn't really a very distinctive flavour, if blindfolded, I'm sure I couldn't have guessed it. Still havent met a chip I didn't like!

Phuket Thai - Browns Plains

We got a takeaway menu in our letterbox for a Thai restaurant at Browns Plains. I think is where there used to be an Indian restaurant. So we decided to ge some takeaway....

Some vegie spring rolls, which were very tasty

Stirfry tofu with Cashews for me - lots of tofu in this one, I could only eat half of the container - so there is another dinner in the freezer for another day

Sweet & Sour Lamb for Janet.

Might have to go back here again sometime to eat in, since eating in is always better than takeaway -  although it was a little tricky to get to be facing the correct way on the road to turn into the shops.

Ice Cream!!

A dark Choc Magnum for me .......... YUM :-)

A Golden Gaytime for Janet