Picnic Lunch

This is our kind of picnc - the kind that involves stopping at the bakery on the way to the park!!

We called in at the Jason Lee BAkery at Westpoint shopping centre, Browns Plains and grabbed some lunch to eat at the Berrinba Wetlands

I got a Salad Sandwich.  They were extremely generous with the grated cheese. It fell everywhere. I love bakery sandwiches because they are made with deliciously fresh bread!

Janet had a sausage roll - she is a big fan of the sausage rolls from this bakery.

Shadow had some leaves and sticks. And some lettuce that fell from my sandwich.  She had a lovely time watching small children ride by on bikes

she also rather liked playing with this empty Coke bottle.

dinner at home - noodles

Noodles and vegies with some sort of meat from the freezer :-)  (possibly veal!)

Noodles and vegies with Tofu!!

I marinated both the meat and tofu in soy, brown sugar and lemon juice before pan frying.  The noodles and vegies were simply stir fried with some of the marinade from the tofu. Easy and delicious dinner!!

dinner at home - pasta 2 ways

I'm on 2 weeks holiday at the moment, so not really spending a great deal of time on the computer. But heres something I prepared earlier :-)

For Janet - because she loves bbq meat lovers pizza, I made bbq meat lovers pasta! This was mince, pepperoni and bacon, cooked up with some bbq sauce and tossed through wholemeal pasta, with grated mozzarella on the top. Big thumbs up from Janet for this one!

for me - I cooked up red capsicum, onion, grape tomatoes, baby spinach and fresh basil which I tossed through the wholemeal pasta with some parmesan cheese on the top. Yum - I could just about eat tomatoes for every meal and be very happy :-)

Friday Night Dinner - Souvlaki Hut

A trip to Souvlaki Hut has become a bit of a regular occurance for us on a Friday night.

 

Janet always gets the Fish & Chips. (And I always steal a few of the deliciously crunchy chips)

I always get a vegetarian Souvlaki, minus the cucumber and olives, with some hommus. Sometimes I get regular, sometimes I get small, depending on how hungry I am! But it is always absolutely delicious! I love the squeaky haloumi cheese, and the stripy bread, mmmmmmmm!!!!

We always eat in, beacaue the one time we took away, by the time we got home (only about 5 minutes drive) the souvlaki was soggy :-(

Easter Baking disasters!

We invited Pam & Sid over for morning tea on Easter Sunday. Janet asked if I could make a chocolate cake and some cookies. As is usual, I started looking through my cookbooks and magazine clippings for some inspiration. I found a recipe for a chocolate sponge roll that I had kept from a baking tin I bought, so decided to give it a go. This was my first disaster. I think I cooked it wrongly, because it was a little crunchy on top, an when I tried to roll it, it just folded and broke into pieces. I tasted a bit of the broken cake, and it didnt even taste any good.  So the cake AND the recipe went in the bin.

So I moved onto the cookies while I waited for some more butter to soften for Cake take 2.  I chose some choc chip cookies from a generic tyoe of cookie and slice book that I have. Never cooked from the book before, may not do so again :-).  The cookies looked ok when they went into the oven, they puffed up and looked fine when they were nearly baked, but when the timer went off and I looked in the oven, they had flattened like pancakes! Oh dear. These ones didn't go in the bin.  We tasted them and decided they were still edlible - we renamed them "pancake cookies"

Onto cake number 2 - I made Nigella's Sponge cake recipe from "Domestic Goddess", substituting some cocoa powder for some of the flour. I like this recipe because everything gets thrown into the food processor!

My 2 sponge cakes came out of the oven looking nice and even! YAY another disaster avoided.

I decied to fill the cake with mock cream & grated chocolate, since I didnt want to go to a shop.  Heres a tip - don't make mock cream in advance because (d'uh) when you put it in the fridge it goes hard.  To fix this small problem, I just beat it up again, and added a couple of tablespoons of "Philadelphia Cream" yes, cream, not cream cheese! They have a new "cooking cream" product - its not for whipping though, so by mixing it with my mock cream, I softened the mock cream, and thickened the Philladelphia cream! Brilliant!!

the cake was goooooood!!

Out for Lunch - Melange, Roma St Parklands

I met up with a lovely bunch of ladies from "Calorie King" for lunch at Melange, Roma St Parklands

Nadine had spoken to the chef, who had agreed to create some "lighter" options for the purposes of this lunch.  He came over to our table and talked us through a few items that weren't on the menu

I chose to have the "chefs special" vegie salad.  This had delicious morsels of roast vegies tossed through the salad leaves.  Suprisingly, my favourite part of this whole dish was the mushrooms! They were amazing!!

Other peoples choices included:

Salt & pepper calamari, fresh lemon aioli

Smoked salmon, hash cake, avocado salsa  sour cream

oven baked salmon with salad (chefs special)

fruit salad with yoghurt

Out & About - Roma St Parklands

I was meeting for lunch at Roma St Parklands in the city one weekend (food post to follow!), so I got there early for a wander around.....

Dinner at home - Pasta 2 ways

Both of these dishes started off in the same way - in a frying pan, I heated a little olive oil, and added a chopped onion, some chopped pumpkin and some chopped sweet potato, and fried until tender.  I was planning on tossing this through pasta for both of us, but as I cooked this mix of vegies, it put the idea of making a pumpkin and chick pea curry.

Since Janet doesnt like curry, I took half of the vegie mix out of the pan and popped it into a seperate pan with some bacon.

I then tossed this through the wholemeal pasta I had already cooked and bingo - bacon & pumpkin pasta

With the remaining vegies in the original pan, I added some kofta curry paste and a small tin of chick peas....

and there you have it, pumpkin & chick pea curry with wholemeal pasta!

Delicious!!

Out for Breakfast - Coffee Club VIllage Square

Another Saturday morning car service means another breakfast at Coffee Club Village Square. Friendly table service, with water bottle and glasses placed on the table as soon as you sit down!!

I tried something different this time - Haloumi & Mushrooms served with toasted turkish bread, baby spinach and pesto. Except I asked for no mushrooms, and for some grilled tomato (I decided to not risk overdosing on mushrooms).  Delicious!!!! (Another slice of tomato would have been nice)

Janet had the bacon, eggs, tomato & toast (again!!) minus the tomato - and loved it (again!!)

I was a little suprised when I read the bill (after we had paid and walked out) to see that they had charged me extra (I think $2) for my one slice of tomato. Even though I had not had the mushrooms, and Janet had also not had tomato. Only $2, but really, I think they could have just thrown it in!!

Dinner at Home - Tomato Soup & Cheesy Garlic Toast

mmmm tomato soup would be one of my favourites. I made this for a weekend dinner - a simple soup made by frying up some onions, garlic and fresh herbs, along with some red capsicum, before adding in a tin of tomatoes and whizzing up until smoothish. Add vegie stock or water to thin down if needed, and stir in some fresh basil before serving!

to dip in the soup - cheesy garlic toast - spread a little garlic onto a piece of bread, sprinkle with grated cheese and pop uder the griller until brown!

Dinner at home - breakfast for dinner!

We had eggs that needed using up, so we had some breakfast for dinner! (yes, I could have done some baking, or made a more "dinnerish" dinner, but this went down quite nicely!)

For Janet - fried eggs, bacon and wholemeal toast

for me - an omlette filled with onion, red capsicum, grape tomatoes and a sprinkle of parmesan, with some wholemeal toast.

(I simply sauted the vegies, removed them from the pan to cook the egg, and then added them back in with the cheese before folding the omlette over - not the prettiest thing to look at, since it kind of stuck to the pan a little, but it certainly tasted delicious!!)

Out for Lunch - Just Poppys - take 2!!

We were going to be in the area, so we just had to go back and try Just Poppy's again!!

They have a wide selection of different soft drinks in their fridge - Janet had the Lime, I had the Raspberry Cranberry - YUM!!

We both tried different burgers to the ones we had on our previous visit -

Janet went for this Lamb Mince Burger - "Ewe Bewdy" - Lamb mince seasoned with lemon, basil, thyme, on onion, lettuce, tomato & bbq sauce.  (minus the tomato and onion) This was a big hit - she said she could really taste the seasoning in the meat, and it was delicious!!

I tried the "Salt of the Earth" burger - pineapple, egg, cheese, mushroom, grilled onions on lettuce, tomato & beetroot with sweet chilli sauce & Mayo. (minus the egg).  This was a great burger, although a little on the drippy side, as could be expected with the pineapple, sauce and mayo.

Dinner at home - Vegie not-Burger!

This is one of my favourite dinners at the moment - super easy too - mixed salad leaves from a bag (that includes grated carrot and grated beetroot), tossed together with some chopped tomato and drizzled with a little mayonaise and topped with an oven baked Sanitarium Not-Burger and some onion. (the onion on this one went a little crispy in the oven - oops!)

Out for Lunch - Luigi's, Sunnybank Hills

We went here for a Sunday lunch - it was the day after Janet's Party and we were very sleepy!

We started with some buttery garlic bread. Which was delicious, but unnecessary, since it filled me up way too much.

Janet tried the Meat Lovers Pizza (just for something different??? :-)  ).  It had a nice crisp thin base and a decent amount of toppings, without going overboard.

I had the spaghetti Napolitana, which had mushrooms through the sauce - chopped up mushrooms that I was able to eat with no dramas.  It was a nice thick, chunky tomato sauce, just what I felt like!!

Luigi's is in the Pinelands shopping centre on Mains Road. I'd go back to try the vegie pizza :-)