Part of my Life List challenge to try 100 new recipes ~ #4 Pesto & Cheese Scones
YUM!
If you live in Wellington you've most likely heard that the annual Wellington on a Plate foodie festival is happening. One of the events being held is the Wellington Bake Club, where teams of four or more complete weekly baking challenges. I couldn't get a team of four together, but my sister-in-law & I are following along with the baking challenges anyway, just for fun.
The challenge for week one was savoury scones.
I used this recipe but added cheese, naturally. About a cup in the mix & some sprinkled on the top too. Next time I think I would double the recipe & double the thickness of the scones. Other than that this was a pretty easy recipe that turned out great. Delicious!
~ My new breakfast craze ~ Fresh fruit salad, greek yoghurt, ground LSA w/ super grains, raw mixed nuts. Yum!
~ My friend Naiomi is awesome. Proof:
She bedazzled her ukulele...
...& also her kettle.
~ The Olympics starts tomorrow!!!!!!
~ Kowhai has been particularly lovely this week. It is such a pleasure to be her Mama. I really got a good one.
~ People with great infectious laughs.
TAMER
~ My lovely Apa works super hard. Which is awesome, don't get me wrong, but it would be cool if we got to see a bit more of him. He had a couple of days off this week but Koko & I already had things scheduled. Boo!
Something pretty exciting happened this week; the Marriage Amendment Bill was drawn from the ballot at Parliament. Sarah-Rose's response to this is pretty great.
A fascinating dissection of the TomKat split, that is incredibly thought provoking & at least ten times more considered & intelligent than anything you will read in Women's Day. Worth the read. Trust me. (via Blue Milk)
From my Life List challenge to try 100 new recipes, here's #3 ~ Meatloaf.
Not the most appetising of pictures, I know, but trust me - this was delicious.
I've never been a huge meatloaf fan, but when I heard this recipe on National Radio I thought I'd give it a go, & I knew it would please Apa. And please him it did. He scoffed a generous portion of it and then spent the next half hour or so moaning & sighing & whinging about how full he was. Success!
Here's the recipe:
MEATLOAF
500g sausage meat
500g beef mince
1C fresh breadcrumbs (I used packet breadcrumbs)
1 large onion chopped
2 tsp curry powder
salt and pepper to taste 2 tbsp chopped parsley 1 egg 1/2 Cup milk
METHOD Mix all together and shape into a loaf - cook for 30 mins at 180 C. Drain off excess fat and pour sauce over, bake for a further 30 minutes.
SAUCE
INGREDIENTS
1/2 C water 1/2 C tomato sauce 1/4 C worcestershire sauce 2 tbsp malt vinegar 1/4 C brown sugar 1 shot espresso coffee (I left this out) 25 g butter 2 tbsp cornflour
METHOD
Mix together and simmer for 5 minutes.
We served ours with garlic mashed potatoes & baby carrots. The sauce is the selling point in this particular recipe - it really made all the difference.
A book I did some research work on was released recently, & a there was a review in the Sunday Star Times that was written by someone who had very obviously not read the book. So this article about a New York Times review with a major plot mistake was pretty interesting. (via Nubby Twiglet)
Okay, so there was the whole Daniel Tosh rape debacle floating around the internet this week. To be honest, I tried to avoid most of it, because it's all just the same old story repeated on all sides, & can get pretty depressing. But I did read & like this response.
I LOVE this article about the axing of the Dolly model contest. (again, via Gala Darling. She had some good links this week)
An open letter to teenagers wanting babies. (via The Bloggess)
"When your baby finally falls asleep you’ll try to take the first shower you've
taken in days but then you’ll wake up the baby by thinking too loudly. Nice try,
lady. Back to work."
On my Life List I wrote 'Read a book from/about every country in the world'. It doesn't matter if I've already read a book from or about that country; for the sake of this list I'm starting again. So Afghanistan is the first coutry to be ticked off.
I'm not sure it would be right to say I enjoyed this book. The subject matter is pretty unsettling. The writing, however, was great, & I always like to be transported to a particular time & place when reading. I guess that is the purpose of this exercise ~ to learn more about the world. Before I read The Kite Runner I knew nothing about pre-9/11 Afghanistan, & very little about contemporary Afghanistan, so this gave me a little (very little) background info on the country.
I'd love to include my favourite quote from the book here but I forgot to make note of it while I was reading, & hell if I'm gonna go through the entire book just to find it for you, sorry.
As part of this exercise I am going to learn where each country is located on the world map. This is where Afghanistan is, if you didn't already know.
There's been a lot of press recently about the fat positive & health at any size movements, & the backlash that goes along with such things. I've avoided as much of it as possible, because it just makes me a wee bit angsty, to be honest. Then, by sheer coincidence, I started reading Dawn French's memoir, Dear Fatty. And a mere 22 pages in there was this:
"That's the key, you know, confidence. I know for a fact that if you can genuinely like your body, so can others. It doesn't really matter if it's short, tall, fat or thin, it just matters that you can find some things to like about it. Even if that means having a good laugh at the bits of it that wobble independently, occasionally, that's all right. It might take you a while to believe me on this one, lots of people don't because they seem to suffer from a self-hatred that precludes them from imagining that a big woman could ever love herself because they don't. But I do. I know what I've got is a bit strange and difficult to love but those are the very aspects I love the most! It's a bit like people. I've never been particularly attracted to the uniform of conventional beauty. I'm always a bit suspicious of people who feel compelled to conform. I personally like the adventure of difference. And what's beauty, anyway?"
Amazing. I had this crazy surge of emotions. I wanted to cheer, to laugh, & damn near burst into tears. I had to put the book down without reading further so I could digest that gem of a paragraph. And that, folks, is why Dawn French is my Wilder Woman of the Week.
The music choices that make you undateable. I was congratulating myself for not having any of this music on my ipod...until I reached Red Hot Chili Peppers. In my defence, I have nothing that came after Blood Sugar Sex Magik.
The art of Mica Still. Amazing. I'm pretty sure I was admiring her work on the walls of the Newtown Opporunity for Animals shop recently. (via daisy & zelda)
One of the entries on my Life List is to try 100 new recipes.
Here's #2 ~ Afghans
Apa's been hassling me to bake him some Afghans for a while now, so when I saw Cornflakes on sale at the supermarket I figured it was time. I used the Edmonds Cookery Book recipe, & they were delicious. I don't put a walnut on mine, because I'm not that keen on them. Which reminds me of a major gripe ~ don't you absolutely hate it when you buy an afghan at a cafe and they have only put a small dollop of icing on the middle of the biscuit, just enough to hold the walnut in place? That bugs me big time.
So, all the American blogs I follow were pretty heavy handed on the Fourth of July posts this week. Here's one I was actually kinda interested in: The Best Songs about the Fifty States (via Mighty Girl).
Following on from My First Crushes, here's round two of the men I've been mesmerised by:
Skid Row's Sebastian Bach
I didn't know who he was & I never listened to his music, but for some reason I was compelled to rip his poster out of my Smash Hits magazine & stick it up on my bedroom wall. I'm sure my mother was thrilled by this.
Mark Wahlberg aka Marky Mark
In his CK underwear campaign. Not bad, little Gem. Not bad at all.
Johnny Depp ~ the early years.
21 Jump Street, Edward Scissorhands, Benny & Joon, What's Eating Gilbert Grape...it was all good.
Kris Kross
At my Taita school you had two choices ~ Chris "Mac Daddy" Kelly or Chris "Daddy Mac" Smith. I chose the Daddy Mac (pictured on the right).
Blossom's Dad
Most of my peers were going nuts over Blossom's brother Joey, played by Joey Lawrence. Personally, I thought Joey was so dumb he was practically retarded. Give me tall, dark & handsome solo dad Nick Russo any day. He was a musician! I also had a bit of a thing for Blossom's alcoholic brother, Tony.
Remember my Life List? One of the things on it was Make 100 New Recipes.
Here's #1 ~ Pumpkin & Halloumi Salad.
I based it on this recipe but changed up a couple of things. It consists of baby spinach, red onion, roasted walnuts, roasted pumpkin, eggplant, capsicum & halloumi that were grilled in the sandwich press, & an olive oil & red wine vinegar dressing. And damn, it was delicious! I'll definitely be making this again.
