We are off out tomorrow to a fun day at our local farm shop. I have just been outside with the dog and it’s like monsoon season outside again. (thought this was supposed to be summer?) Lets hope it’s dry tomorrow or it could be a day for wellies and the bush hat!
It’s late and I’m tired, but my oven is finally in! Yay! After much cleaning up, I now have a functioning kitchen again. Small sprog and I will now begin the mammoth task of sorting the kitchen cupboards at the weekend. Hubs is leaving me to it, says that’s my department or I would only grump at him for putting things where I can’t find them!
My kitchen is like a disaster zone. My new oven and hob arrived today, so hubs is in the process of fitting it. Now that’s usually pretty straightforward you’d think right? Wrong!
The work bench had to be recut as the old hob was slightly smaller in size. Not an easy job as the only place the cut could be made was at the back of the work bench, which made for an awkward cut angle to maintain a straight line. There was a support strut at the front, so that was that! Combine that with the blasted electric supply socket for the oven is wedged behind a supporting leg for the bench. The tight wad suppliers also didn’t supply electrical cable with the hob and oven. *sigh* So now I have a hob sort of wired in and two ovens taking up my kitchen floor.
Add to that, the island in the kitchen is boxed in on one side with packaging from the oven et all, tools all over the place. I could go on……. Are you kind of getting the picture here?
Maybe by this time tomorrow night, I will possibly have an almost functioning kitchen again!
I’ve specifically set up a new blog to note my bento progress. It will prevent this blog becoming too cluttered with bento posts. So for those of you who are into bento , you can find my new blog at Bento Beginner
Please feel free to come over and have a read, then leave a comment to let me know what you think!
I need to get my butt in gear and focus back to my bento lunches. I have slipped badly over the last lot of weeks and have been grazing on junk :0(
I’m off grocery shopping tomorrow and aim to stock up on tasty and healthy foods for my bento. Variety and ease of eating is key in my lunch as I usually don’t have a lot of time to spare. Mostly I graze through the day to be honest!
Rice balls (onigiri) will be back on my lunch menu as I find them filling, more so than a sandwich. I have some furikake (rice seasoning) in my cupboard which will spice these little boyos up nicely!
Raw veggies don’t appeal to me much, so I think I need to find ways to incorporate that in my daily diet. All good in helping toward my recommended 5 a day :0)
Wish me luck!
Thank you so much to New Mummy for the lovely award! I’m chuffed to bits!
OK so this is what I have to do with the award
1. Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award, and his or her blog link.
2. Pass the award to 10 other blogs that you’ve newly discovered. Remember to contact the bloggers to let them know they have been chosen for this award.
So here are my 10 new blogs I’ve found:
I had a bit of a disaster today. My face came together with a bungee cord. You know one of those springy things with hooks on the end? Well one flew off in the back of my van and hit me square in the mouth! Ow ow ow!! I now have a lovely lump on my top lip and the feeling is just starting to come back into my top teeth several hours later. Needless to say, there were a few choice (not very nice) words said when it happened!
Today I’m having a go at making pulled pork.
I’m using this recipe
Now I didn’t have any barbecue sauce in the house, so I made my own version and it tastes pretty darn good!
This is the base recipe I used for the barbecue sauce, but I tweaked it a little. I ran out of ketchup, so I substituted 100mls of Bulldog sauce instead and a squeeze of tomato puree. I also added a good sprinkle of paprika to the finished sauce. When it had cooked, it was whizzed with a stick blender to make it nice and smooth.
I then followed the recipe to continue making my pulled pork.
I’m serving the pulled pork with creamy mashed potatoes and veggies. The potatoes being home grown of course!
Unfotunately since I wrote this post, the hungry hoarde in my house have vacuumed up a the pork, so I don’t have any pictures for you. Rest assured it was a success so it will be created again. Hopefully I’ll get pictures next time!
These little beauties appeared on my potato plants recently. I was puzzled and thought that my potatoes and tomatoes had cross pollinated, they are after all from the same family. However after a little research on the wonderful world wide web, I discovered that these fruit are actually the fruit of the potato plant.
Good job we didn’t save them to eat though, it turns out that they are highly poisonous!
Yukon gold potatoes are the most likely to produce fruit out of the potato varieties, guess which variety I’m growing?
As it turns out, I could have saved the seed from the fruit to grow more potatoes, ooops! I have them composted now and it’s a bit late to go fishing them out!
You can read more about the experimental growing of potatoes from seed here
Tonight I’m making a beef and Guinness pie for tea. here’s the recipe if you’d like to have a go…..
INGREDIENTS
1 lb steak pieces
1 large or 2 smaller onions sliced
1/2 lb button mushrooms
1/2 pint beef stock
1/2 pint Guinness
Worcester sauce
Flour
salt and pepper
butter
veg oil
puff pastry (Frozen ready rolled sheets are ideal for this, less mess!)
1 egg, beaten
METHOD
Toss the beef pieces in some flour. Plain (all purpose) is fine for this.
Fry gently in 2 tablespoons of oil to seal and brown the meat.
Add oil to the pan each time you fry off some beef.
Do this in batches or you will end up sweating the meat instead of browning.
When browned, remove from the pan and leave to the side.
In the same pan, add a large knob of butter and fry off onions until soft.
Place beef back in pan and add Guinness and beef stock.
Add button mushrooms, Worcester sauce, a large glug! Season well with salt and loads of black pepper.
Turn heat down to low and allow the beef and onions to simmer away very gently for at least an hour.
After an hour your beef should have thickened wonderfully and be meltingly tender.
Remove the beef mix to your pie dish with a slotted spoon.
Boil the remaining liquid in the pan to reduce and thicken it to a glorious sauce.
You can add extra flour here if you need to thicken it some more.
Check seasoning and adjust to taste.
Pour sauce over the beef mix and allow to go completely cold.
When the beef mix has cooled,
Brush the edges of the pie dish with beaten egg.
At this stage if you have one of those pie funnel thingies, pop it in the middle of your pie dish. I don’t so I’m missing this step.
Place your sheet of puff pastry over the dish and press the edges down to seal them up.
Crimp round the edges to help the seal and make it look pretty!
Cut a small cross in the middle of the pie to allow steam to escape, this prevents soggy pastry.
Brush the top of the pie with the remainder of your beaten egg.
Place pie in a pre-heated oven at 200oc for 30 to 40 minutes until pastry is cooked crisply and pie is bubbling hot.
I’m serving this with mash, steamed stir fry cabbage and braised carrots.
Enjoy!!
