Dinner at home - Nigella's Kitchen!!

I got the new Nigella Lawson book "Kitchen" so I have been trying some of the recipes!! When my Mum & Dad came for dinner to see our now unpacked new house, I made "Spanish Chicken with Chorizo and potaotes" for the meat eaters.... This was a super easy recipe, which involves throwing everything into a roasting tin and baking in the oven!!
I halved the recipe, since I was only feeding 3 rather than 6. 

( I also cooked some pumpkin and peas to go with)





This recipe got the thumbs up from everyone - Janet had the left overs for dinner the next night.





for myself, I made roast vegies with haloumi - I threw potatoes, pumpkin, sweet potato, onion and halved tomatoes into a roasting tin, sprinkled with oregano and a little olive oil, and put some slices of haloumi on the top, and baked along with the chicken dish.  MMMMM delicious!!!

For desert? Nigellas Chocolate Key Lime Pie! This was a chance to use my new flan tin! Another easy recipe with great results!!! No baking involved here - just whizzing up digestive biscuits, cocoa, choc chips and butter for the base, and beating together condensed milk, cream, and lime juice for the filling. If I made this again, I think I would use chocolate wheatens for the base, to eliminate the need to use choc bits!

Breakfast At home - haloumi, spinach, tomato & toast

This is the delicious breakfast I enjoyed Saturday morning when I came home from training.  I will admit to having a bit of an addiction to haloumi cheese at the moment :-) .

This is a super easy breakfast to make and I think its better than any breakfast I have ever gotten out at a cafe!

I simply put some sliced haloumi into a non stick frying pan with some sliced tomato and cook until the haloumi is deliciously golden on both sides. When that is done, I move it to the side of the pan and pop in some chopped red onion, once the onion has softened I add some baby spinach leaves and a splash of balsamic vinegar and cook briefly until the spinach has wilted a little. Then serve with some wholemeal toast!

Happy Birthday Janet!

Janet turned 40 on the weekend, and we had a "Young at Heart" party for her.  This has kept me rather busy cooking over the past few weeks!!

We were expecting about 40 people, so I made lots of food - I cooked most of the finger food in advance and froze it.

We started with lots of different nibblies.....

Cheese, dip and crackers

Chippies!!

Cheezles!!

and of course some lollies!

The "healthy plate" - I made a big bowl of hommus. In fact, I am still eating it now :-)

Then we moved onto some hot finger food....

a pile of sausage rolls

I made 3 different kinds of meatballs - mexican beef, sweet chilli turkey & honey, rosemary lamb

I also made a batch of corn fritters, 2 kinds of puff pastry pizza scrolls (bbq meat lovers & roasted vegie), and Nigellas Ritzy Chicken Nuggets

We had a wonderful gang of waiters to help hand the food around - thanks kids!!

and because it was a "young at heart" party, we also had to play a few party games - we "pinned the nose on the koala" and also played "pass the parcel!!!

And then we had dinner!

I made 2 rather large lasagne's - one meaty and one vegie (I forgot to take a photo until after they were outside in the dark)

My Mum made this delicious salad, and there was also a potato salad from Chevonne, that I neglected to photograph! Garlic bread too!!

YUM!!

Then, there has to be some desert......

We did have a fruit platter, but we kind of left it in the fridge. oops

every kids party needs fairy bread!!

the jelly cups were a big hit!

Pam made these fairy cakes

and Janet specially requested chocolate crackles, so Chevonne & her kids made these snazzy looking ones!!

And of course, no birthday is complete without a cake..... Janet selected this one from the Women's Weekly Birthday Cake book, and I made it for her.....

HAPPY 40th BIRTHDAY!!!!

New Year Barbeque

We went to my parent's place for a barbeque just after New Years......

There were mystery sausages - in that some were beef and some were not, and no-one knew which was which.  THis did not concern me, as I had my own vegie sausage :-)

Delicious smashed potatoes - with rosemary- these potatoes had such delicious crispy bits, as well as soft fluffy centres!

A Salad with just about anything you could think of - feta, tomato, capsicum, onion, mushrooms, avocado, YUM!!

Some marinated barbeque chicken

Crusty bread - with real butter :-)

And for dessert? Well this was my department, so I made individual pavlovas with fruit salad.  Basically, I piped out meringue into the appropriate shapes (and they actually were not too wobbly looking!!) and baked them.  I made them the day before, so I wanted a crunchy meringue, rather than a chewy meringue which may have gone soggy with the wait in the fridge....  I assembled the pavlovas just before we ate them - I put a little Vanilla Fruche in the bottom and topped each one with a pile of fresh fruit salad - I chopped up all the fruit quite small, so that everyone got a little bit of everything in their little pavlova.

dinner at home - times 2

for me - Quinoa with broadbeans, butter beans and assorted other vegies in a tomato sauce. This was my first try of Quinoa - I bought it on clearance at one of my Woolies stores :-). It was quite tasty!

for Janet - Sausages with potato cakes - I grated the potato, squeezed out the liquid, mixed in a little garlic and salt and then squished the mix into egg rings to fry.  They turned out nice and crispy on the outside, soft and tasty in the middle.

Out for Breakfast - Coffee Club Village Square Browns Plains

Another Coffee Club Breakfast (due to car service :-) )

The Coffee Club at Village Square has table service, and they bring cold water and glasses to the table almost as soon as you sit down. The staff are nice and friendly here also.  As you can see, we ordered an Orange Juice (for Janet) and a Diet Coke (for me) to have with our breaky.

I was brave this time and ordered something other than my usual salad sandwich.  I had an omlette, to which I added Spinach & Onion.  It was a rather large omlette. And I was greatful for the offer of tomato sauce from our waitress, because well, it was a bit too eggy for me. I am not a big egg eater, so an omlette was probably a silly thing for me to order, but  I was trying to have a breakfasty breakfast! I think next time i will return to my salad sandwich, because it is the most delicious thing ever!

Janet had the bacon, eggs, tomato & toast with the addition of a hash brown, and the removal of the tomato!  AS usual, this was much enjoyed!

Sunday Dinner - Far East, Browns Plains

We grabbed some takeaway from "Far East" at Westpoint, Browns Plains. We were late home and I hadn't organised any dinner, so this was a lovely solution! Its a busy shop.

Janet had lemon chicken



I ordered from the "noodle" menu. Although I didn't have noodles - I had steamed rice, Tofu, vegies in sweet Thai sauce. Delicious!

We also had some vegie spring rolls, which were excellent!

Breakfast @ The Coffee Club

We took Janet's car to get serviced early on Saturday morning and walked home, via the new Coffee Club at Browns Plains Village Square. They actually have table service there. Amazing!!

I was a little bewildered to find they didnt have the salad sandwich I usually order on the menu. But they made it for me anyway - YAY!!! They billed it as a cheese sandwich with no filling with extra salad. Delicious turkish bread salad sandwich.mmmmmm

Unlike the Coffee Club near K-mart in Grand Plaza (where poached or scrambled is the only choice) you can have your eggs here in many ways, so Janet got the Eggs, Bacon, Tomato & Toast minus the tomato, with the eggs fried.

Homemade Pizza

Yes, we love pizza. Recently I have been using Greek Yiros bread from Woolies as the base. (Instead of making it from scratch) It works out great, and makes for very speedy Pizza. Takes about 10 minutes in a hot oven.

Pepperoni Pizza for Janet

Vegie Pizza for me (with zuccinni, onion, tomato, avocado & not-bacon)

YUM!!!!!!