Survivor: Kitchen

I'm still pinning things like a crazy lady on Pinterest . At this rate I'm never going to run out of recipes to try. To be honest, I seem to be pinning a lot of chocolate and dessert recipes so I can see some very interesting dinners in my future line up. I'm not one of those people that gets all fussed about dinner having to be a savoury meal. Or even proper food really.

This week though, the recipe I chose was proper food which is just as well because a friend dropped over with my wine barrel delivery on Tuesday night (don't get all excited -they were empty - but still smell like wine so that was a bonus because perhaps we'll get drunk off the fumes ) and I had arranged for them to stay and have dinner with us. 

And I figured the best time to cook something new was when I had guests coming because if it was brilliant I'd look like a cooking genius and if it was horrible I could say "yeah that was a new recipe - and it was  crap, I wont be cooking that again" and my reputation would be completely saved. 

Here is the original of this weeks recipe including the link. I had to go buy limes at $1.79 each which hurt a little bit because that's an utterly ridiculous price for limes. However this recipe is called Coconut Lime Chicken so it wasn't an ingredient the recipe could do without. 

Coconut Lime Chicken 

And here is my version that I completely forgot to put sauce on,even after doubling the marinade recipe and reserving half of it so I could do the sauce! And my picture isn't half as pretty as the original. 

I actually ate those salads and they were delicious 

I used chicken thighs for this recipe and palm sugar when the recipe called for sugar and then I bullied Mr. P into gently throwing these onto the barbecue to give them some final flavour. They were an eight  thumbs up kind of recipe and the tribe voted them in as a definite keeper. I love anything curry based and with lots of spice and these fit the bill. I was a bit worried when I did the marinade that they would have too much bite and not enough sweet to balance it out but the flavour combo was perfect! 

You could double this recipe and use the leftovers for a kick arse chicken salad too!

Next weeks recipe is  Vietnamese Steak Sandwiches . Mr. P is already dreaming about it. If you're looking for a fast easy recipe this is the one ! 

Survivor: Kitchen

Australia is a bloody big place. And while America is larger in land mass (only because they cheat and count Alaska) unlike America, over 70% of Australia is outback or desert and 85% of our population lives crammed within 50 kilometres of the coast line.

So I guess you might be wondering what do we do with all that land we cant grow anything on? Well we shove sheep on it.  Lots of sheep. There are more sheep in Australia than people. So we raise cute sheep and sheer them for the wool and then because we don't want them to get together and plot to take over the country we eat them.  In fact Sunday lamb roast is practically our national dish. Along with Lamingtons. 

This weeks Pinterest recipe challenge involved lamb. I'm a huge lamb fan, and I love feta too and because this dish had red and green and yellow colours in the recipe I could kid myself I was eating actual salad at the same time. 

Lamb Stacks with Mint Relish Recipe 

I followed this recipe exactly and even used mint from my own garden. I also roasted a yellow capsicum because I couldn't find any that came in a jar. And I mooshed my feta into the dressing so it was even more delicious. LOVED this recipe. It was a perfect dinner for a warm day, and took all of 10 minutes to make. That's my kind of dinner. 

The tribe has spoken. This one is a keeper!

What do you do when there's no tomorrow ?

On Fridays I think about the glorious 63 hours that stretch ahead of me and all of the things I could potentially do with MY TIME OFF WORK. I think of it in capitals because it's so exciting that I feel like shouting and dancing a jig.  And every weekend MY TIME OFF WORK ends up being taken up with washing and cleaning and all those other boring tasks that ensure I can function like a regular human being for the next 5 days that I have to go to work.  Whoever thought up the 5 days work/2 days off thing was an idiot. It would work much better for me  if it was the other way around.

The trouble with my life is that there is no tomorrow. I can't put off stuff and say "I'll do it tomorrow " because tomorrow I'll have another list as long as my arm of  things that need to be done. And if I start adding today stuff to tomorrow I'm really going to get myself in trouble because most of the time I can barely cope with today.

You may have picked up that I've been thinking about life balance a lot lately, and what I've realised is that I don't feel like I have it. So instead of sitting and whining about my lost weekends, I decided to take ownership of the problem. I bit the bullet and arranged for a house cleaner. I figure I'm buying back some of my life so it's totally worth whatever it costs. Just like my window cleaning dude and the personal shopper that does my grocery shopping and Ronald McDonald and the Colonel who do my cooking a lot of the time.  These people are an indispensable part of maintaining my sanity. I can't wait to come home to a clean house once a week that I didn't have to personally clean. 

So in keeping with the new regime, I didn't do any house work this weekend. I went mad with spray paint instead. I rescued this poor sorry looking thing from the "going to the rubbish tip "pile  and gave it a quick spray paint makeover because I think it will make a fantastic dessert display cabinet for Christmas Day. 

Mr. P had to evict a family of redbacks so I could take the before picture. Of course he told me that as I was cleaning it and I just heard the "redback "part and nearly peed in my pants.

 And here it is after...looking all white and pretty and redback-less.

 Then I broke out another spray can and went mad on this antique wrought iron beauty.

 Looks so much better black. 

 I finished a quilt top too. Now to decide how to quilt it. 

And immediately started a new quilt.....for my favourite grandson. And I have a super hero quilt to make for another special young person so I'm really going to have to get weaving on both of these to finish before Christmas. 

I'm anticipating much more crafting time with the new world order.  

Survivor: Kitchen

They say the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem so I come before you all today to confess that I am an addict. A Pinterest addict.

To start with it wasn't a problem. I had it under control. I opened an account about 8 months ago and occasionally added things to it that I saw and liked. Mainly quilts. And then I didn't do any pinning for ages proving that I could  stop any time I wanted. I knew lots of people who had thousands of pins and I felt really sorry that they'd started something they couldn't control. But I've been pinning daily like a crazy lady for about a month now and its starting to take over my life. 

For the uninitiated , Pinterest is a fancy schmancy way of bookmarking all that awesome stuff you see on the net and might want to come back to later. And you can pin onto boards that you create using pictures so stuff is so easy to find unlike my bookmarks bar on my computer that has approximately 3874 things in it , and is so long I can't be bothered looking when I need something. And you can search other people's boards for inspiration and re-pin stuff that they've pinned which means that every single person on Pinterest is basically an enabler. 

Little Miss Sunshine and I were chatting the other night and commenting that our respective food Pinterest boards were in danger of becoming a graveyard for stuff we've pinned but never got round to making .So I suggested we choose a  recipe once a week and both cook it and report back to one another about the results. Kind of like a virtual cooking class that extends your dinner time repertoire. I tend to make the same 40 things for dinner because by the time I get home from work I'm brain dead. Sometimes I'm so brain dead I eat chips or breakfast cereal for dinner which in my humble opinion is perfectly acceptable if you don't have children in the house. And we decided to name it Survivor: Kitchen because we get to vote out recipes that we wouldn't put in our respective cook books to make again. I want to point out that I am a fussy eater, and so any voting out is probably not about the recipe per se. It's more about me only eating about 18 foods that exist on this planet. 

Since Little Miss Sunshine loves vegetables and I'm a complete carnivore and carb gal ( if I ever get stuck on a deserted island I'm praying a cow, crackers and cheese will get washed up with me) this brilliant idea is probably going to make for some really interesting eating for both of us. Recipe tweaking is not really allowed but I'm pretty sure it'll happen anyway. 

So the first recipe we decided on was this.

Creamy Dijon Chicken (recipe can be found by clicking this link) 

I loved the idea of a punchy creamy lemony mustard sauce married with moist chicken breast. As far as I'm concerned big flavours rule!

There was absolutely nothing wrong with this recipe but it wasn't exactly what I expected . I was expecting more mustard flavour (and I cheated and put extra in) so I wonder if it lost something in the translation between American Dijon mustard and the Aussie mustard variety? Maybe they are completely different? If I was to make it again I'd leave the lemon out altogether and tweak the mustard so it had a sharper more intense flavour. This would be a great meal though for a family dinner because it's mild enough for kids to enjoy too. And it was quick and easy to cook which I love. And it had leeks in it so I can pat myself on the back for eating a vegetable this week.

Creamy Dijon chicken: The tribe has spoken - it's time for you to go. Pop on over to Marg's to see what she thought. And if you'd like to play along next week email me and I'll send you the recipe we're planning to use. It's fun to see how close we can get to the picture and I'm sure there will be at least one burnt down kitchen by the time we're done. Last time I had a fire in my kitchen I went and bought two fire extinguishers and a fire blanket so damage should be minimal. 

By the way I wanted to have Jeff Probst do the Survivor line for this post but he didn't return my calls. 

Finishing off the Farmers Wife

At the beginning of the year I announced I was getting in on the Farmers Wife craze. So along with some other awesome quilting chicks that I know in real life I've been toiling away on making blocks when the mood struck me. That's the beauty of a sampler quilt,  you can do a few blocks in between other projects. I'd been wanting to do a sampler quilt for ages. 

The other lovely thing about the Farmers Wife quilt is that you can make the quilt whatever size you like based on the amount of blocks you complete.  So you make blocks for as long as it's fun and then bang it up into a finished project. 

I decided in August that I had enough blocks to start putting them together into a finished project. My enthusiasm for these blocks was non existent by that stage. I was so over the whole "it'll be fun to make a sampler quilt" thing. It wasn't fun. It sucked the big one.  So I counted up my blocks and was thrilled to discover I had enough to put together two projects! 

Behold my Farmers Wife Potholders ! The most amazing pot holders in the Southern Hemisphere or dare I say it? possibly the world. 

Things I discovered about myself during the making of these gorgeous pot holders?  Small pieces of fabric and I don't get along. The Farmers Wife is a cow.  And Sampler quilts are a completely stupid idea. 

Last week I showed you my new napkin rings. Napkin rings mean you have to have actual napkins. Cloth napkins just ooze class and require laundering and ironing and so I've never felt the desire to own any. But since I'm turning into a little old lady and liking things I have never liked before it was off to the sewing room to look for some suitable Christmas fabric. I'm going with a gold and white  theme for Christmas this year and these will look lovely as part of my table scape. And because I had the fabric in my stash these napkins were free because it's a universal law of sewing that once fabric hits your stash , it didn't cost anything. 

And lastly I've been working on a quilt made from bandanas for the last few weeks. Have you ever had an idea that is so ridiculously simple that you know it'll only take a  day or so to whip up? This was not that project. But it's done and I'm happy. 

I spent the weekend on Pinterest, baby sitting little P who watched the Christmas pageant on TV and has been calling Father Christmas  "Christmas Father" ever since, and running from one project idea to the next. I can't believe it's Monday already . 

'Twas the Month Before Christmas

The Christmas spirit galloped full pelt into my head on Saturday. I have no idea where it came from. I have 5273 ideas running round in my head (all of which require significant effort on my part) and it's time to start pulling my finger out and getting some of them started. Because this year Christmas is here. At my house. All day. 

We're doing an "open house/roll up when you like" deal so I sort of have to keep the food flowing all day and into the evening. Oh who am I kidding? My sister is coming, so by 4.00pm the cocktails will be flowing like the Murray River and I won't care what people are eating.  Maccas is open Christmas day isn't it? Maybe I can just get a load of Happy Meals and blitz them in the microwave when people look hungry. Regardless of my brilliant Maccas plan I've been collecting ideas for Plan B over the past few weeks for yummy (easy) eats I can serve that wont entail me being chained in servitude to the kitchen all day. I think I finally have that part nailed, at least in theory. My "all day food" menu is written up and includes things I haven't cooked before so I've been using Mr. P as a guinea pig to try them out. He has a cast iron stomach thankfully.

Spinach and Persian Feta Tartlets . These looked and sounded better than they tasted. If I'm going to make these I need to find a way to zing them up a little. Personally I prefer to eat the feta right out of the can , guiltily standing in front of the fridge forking it into my mouth while hoping Mr. P doesn't walk in and bust me but my inner spidey sense tells me that's probably not the way to go with guests. 

Ham, Cheese and egg cups. A great breakfast idea to feed a lot of people but I really should have covered them with alfoil after 10 minutes of cooking like the recipe said so the rolls didn't get as hard as rocks. And I would have done that if I had any alfoil but we've been alfoil-less here now for a month.

Ginger Molasses Cookies. They taste like Christmas in every bite. Seriously. I'm thinking maybe I could dip one side in chocolate to make them even more delicious but they are the bomb. Definitely making these for Christmas day.

Last week I was in Spotlight (the Australian version of Joann or Hobby Lobby )  and I saw some Christmas napkin rings.  Since I have never owned napkin rings before because I have never owned actual napkins, I decided to get some for my Christmas table. I grabbed 4 packs and sauntered up to the counter to ask the price where I was duly informed that they were $17.00. Per pack ! I'm one wild and crazy girl but even I'm not insane enough to pay $68.00 bucks for 16 metal Made in China napkin rings that probably cost them 2 bucks to make. So I set out to make my own and saw an idea on Pinterest using old spoons and forks which I thought was quirky enough and cute enough for my Christmas table.

Take that Spotlight! It cost me $3.36 to buy the cutlery and an hour of my father in laws time and muscle to bend them into napkin ring shapes. I love that they're all slightly different and think they're going to look fabulous on my food laden table.

Speaking of my Christmas table, I'm planning to have a new one by then. The dogs like to take tap dancing lessons on our current outdoor table when we aren't at home, so I've been plotting how to foil their dance -fests. 

This table is about 14 years old. It's moved from my parents house to my house and has seen many meals and crafts and quilts being basted on it. Consequently  it's looking pretty trashed. My inspired idea for a replacement involves a bar height table with a twist that I am going to make myself. Stay tuned. Whenever I touch power tools (or knives) it's odds on that someone is going to get hurt.

It's nice to be starting Christmas projects. Let's see if I'm still saying that 6 weeks from now !

I'm off to see what you've all been up to since I haven't been anywhere this week except the Bloggers Quilt Festival posts.  

There's a moral to this story

This past weekend was full of great food and it was cooked by other people. I didn't cook a thing. Not even toast. That's my favourite kind of food. Stuff that magically appears with no effort on my part. In a previous life I think I was a Princess and people fetched and carried for me  and I didn't have to lift a finger. Somehow I've retained the memory of those wonderful times and I'm spending a lot of my current life pissed off that I have to do all of those things myself. 

On Sunday, we went to Cheesefest so not only did I eat my weight in cheese samples, I also managed to chug down some chips fried in duck fat (mmmm healthy) and a pork belly burger with caramelised apples and some funky (in a good way) BBQ sauce. I'm thinking I may try to recreate those burgers at home. It'd be a great meal to do for a crowd and it was delicious. 

We bought some cheese.  Oh how we bought cheese. I am a cheese-a-holic and if I ever turn into a serial killer and wind up on death row I'm going to ask for a cheese platter as my last meal. And since we have 43 blocks of cheese I'm all ready for guests so if you want to come over please feel free . Bring crackers. Cynthia, you're in charge of bringing wine. 

  

When I got home on Sunday , I felt the urge to bake. Cookies no less. The idea has been rattling round in my head for about a week and would simply not be silenced. That was my first mistake- listening to the voices in my head. I've been trolling Pinterest and the internet looking for inspiration. And I continued searching when I got home from Cheesefest yesterday. Because I was so full of cheese I needed something sweet. After two hours, I finally narrowed it down to Ginger Molasses Cookies or Chocolate Chip.

Then I decided I was feeling way too lazy to bake cookies. 

An hour later, in  a flash of motivation I decided it was now or never.   And I chose Cinnamon and Brown Butter Chocolate Chip.  I'd have those babies done in time for warm cookies for a late supper. That was the plan as it played out in my head. 

This is a slightly complicated recipe. First you have to brown the butter without burning it.  Then you have to cool it to room temperature. Then in another bowl you have to get some of the dry ingredients together. Then you have to add other stuff to the cooled butter and beat it until your arm falls off. Then with your other arm you have to add the dry ingredients. Finally you have to add the chocolate chips and stir them in by hand with a spoon. I used every bowl, measuring cup and spoon in my kitchen.

That's when I took a breather and decided to clean up a bit and turn the oven on to heat in preparation for the delight of baking my own cookies. So I flicked my eye over the recipe to see what temperature the oven had to be on, when out of the corner of my eye I saw this in the recipe. 

Cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap, and refrigerate the dough for at least 12 hours. 

I'm pretty sure I said WTF! out loud. And you all know how much I abhor swearing. I've heard of resting pastry and even refrigerating cookie dough but for 12 hours? Really? The dough didn't do anything but laze around in the bowl. If anyone deserved a 12 hour rest it was probably me, not that lazy arse cookie dough. But I was determined these cookies were going to be awesome and so I accepted I was just going to have to get up at the crack of dawn and bake those cookies before I went to work. Every time I deviate from a recipe I end up scraping stuff off my ceiling. 

That early am cookie baking? Didn't happen. I got distracted by a load of Bloggers Quilt Festival posts. I excel at finding things to distract myself. 

So when I got home tonight and told Mr. P it was too hot to cook dinner and that I hadn't even eaten lunch until 3pm so I wasn't all that hungry anyway I had totally forgotten I had 23 hour old cookie dough cooling its chips in my fridge. Until I opened the fridge at 7.00pm to get a drink and saw it sitting there looking at me with accusing eyes. By this stage I had 23 hours of my life and about 17.00 bucks in cookie ingredients invested in a finish.

I said WTF! And you all know how much I abhor swearing. And then I took the cooking dough out of the fridge and sat it on the bench to come to room temperature as the recipe called for (making the whole resting in the fridge for 23 hours kind of redundant if you ask me since it was at room temperature yesterday before I put it in the fridge) and then I rolled those cookies into balls and threw them in a 180C degree oven to torture them for 10-14 minutes.

These cookies are da bomb. Cinnamony and chocolatey and buttery deliciousness.  Mine are also the size of man hole covers, so I can eat three without feeling a shred of guilt. Run off and make them now. Just don't forget about the 12 hour compulsory rest after the first leg of the race. 

  

The moral of this story. Things are only ever effortless with food when someone else takes responsibility for it. ( I just sent Mr. P down to the shops to get my dinner - a pack of salt and vinegar chips) Lessons learned: Read the freaking recipe BEFORE you start cooking. 

Blogger's Quilt Festival October 2012

It's time for the Blogger's Quilt Festival hosted by Amy from Amy's Creative Side.   There's so much eye candy out there I go into sensory overload.

My name is Shay and I suffer from PCS. (Pattern Challenge Syndrome) I read instructions and they always looks like they're written in gibberish. So my usual modus operandi for quilting is that I eyeball a quilt I like and decide in my own head how it makes sense for me put it together. Then I cross my fingers, warn my husband that things are going to get scary so he can leave the house for a few hours, days,  weeks,  whatever , lay in a supply of endless swear words and jump in where angels fear to tread. 

But when I saw this pattern, I desperately wanted to make the quilt and I had no idea how it was done. So I realised I was going to have to suck it up and learn to read Cantonese, or Aramaic or whatever language it was written in because I was totally in love. And love can triumph over anything. Even language barriers. You can imagine my excitement when I discovered that the pattern for Merry Go Round was written in honest to goodness English. Bless you Sandy Klop.  You're my hero.

This quilt was full of firsts. First quilt from a pattern, first try at angled binding (I could have taught a few sailors some new swear words during that part of the process) and the first time I ever used Batik fabrics. Don't let anyone tell you they're grandma and horrible because they aren't.

Because a pile of seemingly Grandma Batik strips managed to morph into this.

I love finding the perfect backing on sale for 4 bucks a metre. 

 I picked something soft and curvy for the quilting as a contrast to all those angles and sent it out to my quilting fairy so she could really make it shine.  By the time I got to the quilting stage I was packing death that if I touched it with my machine I'd ruin it forever.  The quilting fairy used rainbow coloured variegated thread to match the colours in the quilt.  

This is my most favourite quilt ever.... 

Vital Stats:

Quilt Name: Merry Go Round 

Size:  74 inches by 80 inches 

Quilting: By Sharon Parkinson at Patchwork on Parade 

Special Techniques: Angled binding, AND I used a pattern! 

Best Category :Favorite ROYGBIV Quilt

A huge shout out to Amy for hosting and to everyone who is stopping by from BQF. Its lovely to have you visit. Please feel free to have a sticky beak around while you're here. I'm off to take a squizz at what everyone else is showing off !

I got it all going on over here (finally)

I finally brushed the cobwebs off my sewing machine this past weekend. It had been so long since I'd touched it that I was afraid I'd forgotten how it worked. 

I have been promising to sew the wings onto this fairy costume for about 6 weeks . It took all of three minutes and I did it this weekend.

Flurry finally got finished. Another WIP bites the dust! And I have yet to make a Christmas type quilt that I adore. Maybe it's time to give up?

I'm 6 hexies away from having enough to finally assemble this into a  quilt top, so I went virtual shopping on Sunday and bought some fabric for the blocks these are going to be appliquéd onto. Yes - I'm taking the easy way out. If I have to do a bajillion more hexies by hand around all of these I'm going to tear my hair out.  A couple of other things not related to this project may have slipped into my cart at the same time. That seems to happen to me a lot.

We acquired a smaller kennel recently (for free  which is always my favourite kind of acquisition!) that I thought would be a great replacement for the manky cat baskets we had out the back and so I cut a chair cushion in half and sewed it shut and voila! instant cat cushion. I love projects that take 10 minutes.  Too bad the cats don't really like their new home...Mordecai in particular has been looking at me with voodoo eyes ever since his cat basket disappeared. 

And I worked on my Briar Rose quilt. I started this one in August at a sewing workshop and I'm hoping to get the top finished by the end of the month.  I'm a lot further on than this picture shows, so the goal of a finished quilt top is actually looking like a serious reality. It's actually prettier in person than my crap photography would have you believe. 

I haven't shown my Farmers Wife quilt progress for ages and that's basically because there hasn't been any progress. It's been sitting in it's plastic tub mocking me. I'm calling it . The blocks are about to make the coolest pot holders ever. Stay tuned to be amazed. 

Mrs Green Thumbs

You may wonder where I've been and what I've been doing in my absence. I have been doing ...wait for it..gardening. When you've all stopped laughing hysterically (I'm pointing at YOU Little Miss Sunshine ) I'll show you some pictures. You see, while we were away Mr. P commented how lovely the gardens were at a couple of places we stayed. Neither of us actually like gardening and since we live on a large block we've kind of our garden go back to nature and said that "one day we'll do something with our garden".  I have a black thumb and I wanted to make sure the things I've been haphazardly planting round here were going to pull through before I committed to an entire garden do over. 

I decided that " one day " was this Spring and so I've been madly pulling weeds (which is pretty much the whole garden actually) and working out which bits I need to napalm with Roundup so I can start to have a garden that doesn't look like the deepest darkest parts of the Congo. I'm going to be buying Roundup in 44 gallon drums. It'd be easier to get a crop duster in to do a fly over. Seriously.  And getting my garden to a state where its actually fit to show in it's entirety will take years. But someone said that a  journey of 1000 miles starts with the first step and if I don't start this now I could very well be dead before it even gets close to completion. So I've weeded and pruned and transplanted and watered and fertilised this last couple of weekends and now I can actually show you pieces of my garden that don't look completely feral. 

My rosemary has survived. The basil turned up its toes though. 

 These agapanthus have survived 18 months of neglect. I finally fertilised them and stripped all the dead bits off last weekend. Now I just have to get Lola to stop thinking this bed is her own personal digging patch. Right after I get the cats to stop thinking my leek planter is a toilet. 

Last time I had a ficus I killed it within a month. This one has survived at least 6 and has been under planted with lilies which have also miraculously come back looking healthy and like they might actually make it. 

One of our big achievements-  This garden bed is new and has hydrangeas all along it. Once they're big and bushy its going to look gorgeous. And that retaining wall is new too and looks fantastic as you come up the driveway.  

This is our front veranda. I'm not all that keen on the quilt on the miners couch but I have some fabric coming that's going to be perfect for a purpose made quilt for that spot. I plan on doing some snoozing out here at some point in the not too distant future. 

My potted hydrangeas which I've kept alive for over 4 years and grew from  dead looking sticks. I am the hydrangea whisperer...

I bought a curry plant today to replace the massacred basil.  Mr. P asked what you do with a curry plant. DUH!

And this is the next project. This is going to be my new vegetable patch. Any vegie growing tips anyone? 

Lastly in all the madness that happened in the week or so before we went away I forgot to show off one of the most thoughtful gifts I have ever received. The wonderful Cynthia at Home Matters 1st sent me one of my favourite things in the world- Pyjamas. But not ordinary every day pyjamas. I got personalised pyjamas that make me feel like a rock  star every time I wear them...see that crown? That's from my blog header ! Are these not the most fabulous pyjamas you've ever seen? 

Sewing happened for the first time in a long time this weekend, and I'll be back to show off the fruits of my labours sometime this week. I even finished something!