Try this one - it's delicious!

One positive aspect of having some time out for work has been the opportunity to try out a few new recipes. It seems a little odd to me to use a recipe to make salad but I came across this one recently, made it, ate it and decided I should share it.

It looks great and tastes even better! The quantity of ingredients isn't critical, of course.

Ingredients

1/4 red cabbage
2 grated carrots
1 large or 2 medium grated beetroots
1/2 cup sprouts - I used a mix of different bean and pea sprouts then also threw in mung beans because they needed to be used up
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
1/4 cup pumpkin seeds
1/4 cup sesame seeds
1/2 cup chopped mint
1/2 cup chopped raw almonds

The method is easy - put all ingredients into a bowl and mix.

Dressing
The recipe had the following dressing :
2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
1 tbsp manuka honey

Personally I found this dressing to be too oily so when I made the salad for the second time I reduced the oil to 1 tablespoon, added some lemon juice and swapped the honey for maple syrup. I think you should just use whatever your dressing of choice is.

Enjoy!

Time out in Bali

I've just returned from a week in Bali - a trip that was my celebration for turning 50 in March. I had always planned that my 50th would be celebrated by climbing a mountain. Unfortunately a tramping accident resulting in a broken sacrum put paid to that idea happening any time soon. So, instead, a week in Bali. I'd never been to Bali before. In fact, the only place in Asia I had visited previously was Japan. When planning this trip to Asia I'd considered Malaysia, Thailand and Bali - obviously Bali won!

I flew into Denpasar on Sunday afternoon after transiting through Brisbane (about 9 hours flying time all up). My initial impressions were of warmth (yay!), crowds and chaos. Luckily I was met at the airport and whisked away to a friend's place near Canggu. After winding down a little we headed off to Canggu Plaza for dinner at Trattoria Canggu for a meal of pasta accompanied by a couple of delicious mojitos. The place we were staying is a large compound which houses the main family house, a training centre and several wooden villas.

Pool at Canggu house

Our room was in a delightfully rustic villa which had two other vacant bedrooms. After an early night we were up at around 7 and headed down to the beach (5-10 minutes walk away) for some body-surfing before breakfast.

Our morning beach

With some help we organised a rental scooter for the week and then headed off on a bit of a tiki tour to see what we could see. After the first few minutes of feeling terrified on the back of the scooter I managed to relax and go with the flow. The traffic was super-busy and there is an apparent lack of any road rules. If the traffic slows down the scooters weave through the cars and trucks utilising whatever flat surface there is - often on footpaths. Intersections proved interesting - loads of horn tooting but all amazingly friendly. We never saw anyone get angry or aggressive over the week we rode around Bali. Our first afternoon ended at a cafe on a beach in the Seminyak area. Relaxing in bean bags on the beach was a nice way to end the day.

Beach at Seminyak

That night we headed off to a nearby surf beach to Dian cafe for barbequed snapper and salad for dinner.

The following morning (Tuesday) we packed a few things up and headed off on an adventure. We borrowed a compass from our friend and headed north. After sticking to back streets / roads we made our way to Ubud. This area is known for its crafts and also has a monkey temple and elephant riding etc close by. Of course the area is teeming with tourists so we ate lunch at a small warung and then jumped back on the bike to continue our journey north.

Our lunch spot in Ubud

The road we took to leave Ubud was lined on both sides by numerous craft shops as well as terraced ride paddies. It was crazy busy! We didn't stop along here as the craft shops seemed to be full off quite junky looking touristy stuff rather than anything particularly authentic e.g. mirror-mosaic dolphins etc.

From Ubud we started to climb and climb towards Penelokan, a small town with a great view of Mt Batur and Danau Batur (Bali's largest lake). On the way we called in to a fruit stall on the side of the road where we bought some bananas, passionfruit and mangosteen. I'd never heard of or tasted mangosteen before but it's now my favourite fruit. Such a shame we can't buy them in New Zealand! The fruit has a dark purple skin and white segments of fruit inside. I can't think of any other fruit I can compare the taste to but, they're delicious.

Mangosteen

We stopped at Penelokan for a cup of tea and enjoyed the view of the volcano and lake. The volcano erupted in 1994 and you could still clearly see the lava flow.

Mt Batur

From here we climbed a bit higher before turning off the main road and heading to the coast. It had been quite cold up in the hills so it was a relief to descend down into warmer air. The side road we took wound its way down the hills, through tiny villages until we reached the coast once more. By now it was dark so we started to keep an eye out for some accommodation. We called into one place where we shown a villa we could stay in for the night for a cost of about $100 - way more than we were willing to pay. We carried on for a while before we spotted Marputu Restaurant (in the Bukti district), a cafe along the beachfront that had a banner proclaiming that accommodation was coming soon. On a hunch we called in there to find that their accommodation was open and available (they were waiting for delivery of a new banner!). We were the second group of people to use their guestrooms. The price for the night here was around $40 a night. This was still pricier than what we were looking for but we decided to stay there as it was getting late.

Our home for the night in Bukti

The following morning we swam in the sea, had breakfast at the restaurant and then headed off along the coast towards Singaraja and Lovina. The road along the coastline was a bit rougher than those we had ridden on previously so we needed to keep an eye out for the best path through the numerous potholes. As we entered Singaraja we rode past a large supermarket so decided to "go round the block" to get back to it. Sadly this was more difficult than we expected and, at one stage, we ended up riding along a little track through rice paddies - awesome fun. Eventually we got back to the supermarket and called in to pick up a few supplies. We drove through Singaraja and Lovina before stopping at the beach for a drink (papaya juice - delish!). Today we had the best meal of the entire holiday. We stumbled across a small warung where you could choose your own whole fish from a big bin which they then barbequed and served with rice and vegetables. This place was real back to basics with the meal eaten with no cutlery and you sat cross-legged at little raised tables. The fish was perfectly spiced and cooked.

Fresh fish for lunch

BBQ

We then headed off to look for a place to stay. We called in to a few places before finding a room at Bagus homestay for about $30. Bagus is right on the beach so we were pretty happy about that - until we went to go for a swim before dinner and found that the sea was so full of rubbish we couldn't stomach swimming in it. Luckily there was a swimming pool at Bagus which provided us a clean place to splosh around and cool down.

Rice paddies across the road from Bagus homestay

We saw a sign up the road to a Buddhist temple so zipped up the hill to have a look around.

Buddhist temple

Lotus flowers in a pond at the Buddhist temple

Sunset at Bagus homestay

We headed out on foot to find somewhere for dinner. Sadly the local warungs were closed for the night so we ended up at a restaurant at another accommodation place owned by some Germans. The food and service were both average - the most disappointing meal of the holiday. The following morning we went and had another look at the beach which was surprisingly rubbish-free so had a dip as the sun came up. After breakfast we were back on the road, headed back to the south coast through the mountains. As we climbed into the mountains we took the time to stop for a few photos along the way.

Terraced rice paddies up in the mountains

Lake Tamblingan on the right and Lake Buyan on the left

As we drove from Lake Tamblingan to Lake Buyan we descended down quite a steep hill where we spotted several monkeys on the side of the road. Sadly I missed getting photos of them. As we continued to descend we decided to take a side road to avoid the traffic. This turned out to be a bit of a mistake as there had been some sort of a celebration at a nearby temple so the roads were full of trucks and motorbikes as the event had just finished. We called into a small warung for some lunch before carrying on our way back to Canggu.

Friday was to be our last full day in Bali so we spent a bit of time shopping after the usual swim in the morning. We had a massage at a place close to where we were staying. It cost about $6 for an hour - I wish it was that cheap at home. The massage was fantastic - just deep enough to work out some knotty bits but relaxing enough too. That night we ate out at a restaurant built around it's own lake. Most of the tables were set into individual pavilions where you sit cross-legged on the floor.

Fish restaurant on the lake

There was also a little landing where you could sit with your feet in the water and feed the numerous fish in the lake. We ate a variety of different fish dishes here accompanied with rice and vegetables. Dessert of durian icecream followed - that's an acquired taste which I have not yet acquired. Blergh!

Saturday dawned bright and sunny (as it did every day!) so we headed off for our last morning body surf at the local beach before having breakfast and getting ourselves packed up ready for departure. I wasn't flying out until later that night so headed off to Seminyak for a bit of shopping and wandering around by myself. After finishing off my packing I hopped into the taxi to the airport. Here is a little trap for visitors to Bali. The driver asked me "Price or meter?". I asked him what his price was and he told me it would cost 150,000 rupiahs. Knowing that the price should be more like 80,000 rupiah I went with "meter". We were stuck in heavy traffic for a lot of the way to the airport and I wondered if my choice had been the wrong one. Eventually we got to the airport and the meter showed....... 81,000 rupiah! So glad I went with the choice I did. 80,000 rupiah is about $10 (NZD). Not bad for an hour taxi ride. When I went to pay the driver with a 100,000 rupiah note he declared he had no change. I dug around in my bag and managed to come up with exactly 81,000 rupiah - he looked rather annoyed at that so I reckon his "no change" was an attempt at getting me to pay more. Anyway, I'm glad I didn't get totally ripped off by him.

I was at the airport in plenty of time to check in. Lucky I was, as it took over an hour to get to the check in counter with a very long queue.

In summary, Bali as a holiday destination is great. You can dine and stay there cheaply. Meals at local warungs usually cost around $3 - $4. A lot of places make fresh juice - my favourite is papaya juice. I don't think I missed a day of having papaya juice at least once. The easiest way of getting around is on a scooter - you don't get held up in traffic, they're cheap to hire and cheap to run. Fuel is readily available and is cheap - around 50cents a litre. If the heat on the coast is too much for you, head inland into the hills - much cooler there. Most days the temperature on the coast was in the low thirties - up in the hills it's more like the low twenties.

And now? I'm back in wintry Wellington. A difference of about 20 degrees in temperature, loads of rain and cold wind. Ugh! I need to find a good recipe for nasi goreng - I ate this almost every day, either for breakfast or for lunch.

The trip makes me wonder if I can find a business analyst role where I can work remotely. I can just see myself in a little villa by the sea in Bali getting my work done after my morning swim. I can dream, right?

Gluten free baking

I've been experimenting recently with some new recipes with pretty good results. I've been looking for some recipes that are vegan - more as a matter of interest to see what the results would be like compared to a "normal" recipe.

The first one I tried is from www.healthfulpursuit.com - here's the link Chocolate Banana Cake Bars. This produced a very moist cake - very brownie like - and was pronounced delicious.

The second one is also gluten free and vegan (and has no added sugar either). This recipe only makes a small amount so don't try use a standard size slice tin - more a tin that is about the half the size. It's from a site called femfusionfitness.com - here's the link Chocolate Fudge Brownies. Note also that, even after refrigerating, it's super moist so quite difficult to cut. This one was pronounced very rich and yum!

Both the recipes are pretty easy to make and great for when you're living a vegan gluten free diet and also good to take along when you know people have some dietary restrictions. Chances are that the brownies will be ok for the majority of people to eat.

The other baking I do on a regular basis (generally once a week) is a gluten free banana loaf. Tonight I altered the recipe to make it vegan (replaced the eggs with flax seed - to replace one egg, mix 1 tablespoon of ground flax seed with 3 tablespoons of cold water, let it stand for 5 minutes) and it's turned out just fine. The original recipe was from the NZ Healthy Food Guide site. I just checked their site now and the recipe they have is completely different to the one I make. I had modified their recipe anyway so here it is.

2 eggs (or replace it with flax seed as described above for a vegan loaf)
1 cup sugar (I'll be messing with this the next time I make it to reduce the sugar)
1/2 cup oil
1 tspn vanilla
2 soft bananas
1/2 cup brown rice flour
1/2 cup tapioca flour
1/2 cup potato flour
1 tspn baking soda
1 tblspn gum (guar or xanthan)

Pre-heat oven to 160 degrees celsius.

Beat eggs, sugar and oil. Add vanilla and bananas and beat till well mixed.
Stir in the rest of the ingredients. Pour mixture into a greased loaf tin and bake until a skewer comes out clean (around 40-45 minutes - my oven is a little dodgy so just check the loaf with a skewer).

That's it. That recipe is super simple to make so easy to whip up and bake after dinner. Enjoy!

At last - a great gluten free bread recipe

After many attempts at baking gluten free bread and producing bricks that could be used to build a fortress, I've found a recipe that makes a really nice loaf. The recipe has quite a list of ingredients but the method is pretty simple so don't be put off. I found the recipe on the sheletthemeatcake.com blog in an entry that was published in April 2010.

Anyway, I make this bread several times a week. It's great toasted but also really nice as fresh bread for sandwiches. While I am sure the original recipe works absolutely fine I did make some minor modifications (some deliberately and some by accident). I use organic molasses instead of the honey / syrup, simply because I had some on hand. I also make a single loaf rather than two (because I only have one loaf tin) and I don't let the loaf rest before I bake it (because I didn't read that bit in the original instructions. I also managed to omit the almond meal the other night by mistake but the resultant loaf was fine. That was useful to find out for those times when I've run out of almond meal.

Here's the recipe with my modifications :

1 1/4 cups warm water
2 1/4 tsp active dry yeast
5 tbsp ground flaxseed mixed with cold water to equal 3/4 cup
3 tbsp oil
3 tbsp organic molasses
1 cup buckwheat flour
1/2 cup quinoa flour
2/3 cup potato flour
1 cup tapioca flour
1/4 cup almond meal
1 tbsp xanthan gum (or guar gum)
1 tsp baking soda

Add warm water and yeast in a mixing bowl and leave for 5 minutes.

Grind the flaxseeds and add cold water to equal 3/4 cup of a flaxseed-water mixture.  Stir and let sit while the yeast is proofing.

When the yeast and water mixture has proofed, add the oil, molasses and the flaxseed / water mixture. Whisk lightly to combine.

In a medium-sized bowl, combine the dry ingredients and whisk lightly.  Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and combine.  Stir for a couple of minutes until well mixed. Place the batter into a loaf tin - wet your hands to smooth the loaf.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.  Bake 60 - 70 minutes. Use a skewer to check the loaf for doneness.

Gluten-free, dairy-free meals

The vast majority of food I cook these days is both gluten free and dairy free. That sounds like it would be super difficult but I've found there are plenty of yummy meals I can make as well as delicious recipes for baked goods. Of course most of our meals are also vegetarian (and the remainder include some element of seafood). A few people have said to me that they think making vegetarian meals is really difficult - it's definitely not. In fact I find preparing vegetarian meals is easier than cooking with meat.

Anyway, I recently stumbled across a blog where most of the recipes fit in with our dietary requirements. I've tried three recipes out so far and they are all winners in my book and have been added into our repertoire.

The three I've tried so far are :
Chocolate brownie
Don't be put off by the ingredients for this brownie recipe - cross my heart you will love the result!

Banana, date and orange cookies
These cookies have been extremely well received and are perfect for lunchboxes and for tramping snacks.

Creamy lentil soup
Does the thought of lentils put you off? Don't let it. This soup has an amazing flavour and I've made it twice in two weeks. This soup will be a main staple through winter.

These three recipes are just the tip of the ice-berg - many more yummy recipes will be tried out in the next little while.

I'm not going to share the recipes here. Instead I have added links into the amazing Emma's blog - My Darling Lemon Thyme. Emma is a kiwi who is living in Australia - the bonus being that the ingredients are readily available to me. I struggle with recipe blogs from countries further afield sometimes due to lack of availability of ingredients.

Pop by Emma's blog and say Hi (and get cooking!).

Food glorious food

Most of my friends and family know that I no longer eat meat (apart from fish!). I would have to say that the overwhelming reaction I get from people is not a positive one which I find that difficult to understand.

For a long time I've enjoyed eating healthy food and cutting out meat is one more step in making my diet healthier. It's over a year now since I stopped eating meat and I don't miss it at all. A positive side effect has been a reduction in weight. I am guessing some of this can be attributed to not eating meat. Cycling to and from work everyday and tramping on weekends might also have contributed to the weight loss.

For me, the reasons behind this new lifestyle are health based. It's not an ethical issue for me. I am fitter, stronger and healthier now than I was previously. Maybe this can be attributed to the vegetarian diet. Maybe not. What this has taught me is that I don't need meat to satisfy my hunger. I thought I would struggle with not eating things like bacon and a good steak but this is not the case. What has happened is that this lifestyle change (which is what it is - it's certainly not a "diet") has opened up my eyes to a whole new range of food.

Eating out is not quite as simple as it used to be but that's not an issue as we only eat out on rare occasions. Usually there will be one or two items on a menu that are either seafood or vegetarian. We have found a few great places to eat around Wellington where the menu caters for our needs. One such place is Nature Vegetarian. This is a tiny Asian-style place on High Street in Lower Hutt (across the road from Pak n Save). Their food is pretty good. They do have menu items that include fake meat which we're not into but, if you're after a vegetarian chop, they can cater for you. Their golden fried tofu is a great starter.

Generally ethnic restaurants are a better bet than pubs, etc. We've had some great meals at Indian, Vietnamese, Turkish and Thai restaurants in the Hutt Valley and in Wellington. For the record, Kilim in Petone is the best Turkish restaurant I've eaten at for a long time. They're BYO and their food prices are cheap so it's possible to have a great meal out on a budget.

Hmmm, this post has turned into a bit of a restaurant review edition which was not my intention. I actually wanted to talk more about what we're eating at home. Of course we're lapping up all the wonderful fresh summer fruit and vegetables at the moment. Our grocery bill for the past few weeks has been around $45 for fresh produce from the markets. We've managed to avoid the supermarket for three weeks now although this weekend we'll need to go stock up on a few things.

Two memorable meals in the last few days have been homemade corn tortillas on Saturday night and then zucchini fritters, broccoli soup and fresh sweetcorn last night.

I can recommend making corn tortillas from scratch. They were delicious and super easy to make! We should have made more. For the tortillas you need to buy some Masa Harina. This is available from some New World stores, usually found in their specialty food / gluten free aisle. You can also buy it online - www.tiapablo.co.nz (their website looks slightly broken - especially when you access it via IE6!).

To make the tortillas you mix two parts Masa Harina to one part water to make a slightly tacky dough. Two cups of the flour with one cup of water should make about 12 tortillas. Roll balls of the dough between two sheets of waxed paper, cook in a hot pan with no oil (30 seconds one side, 45 seconds the next, flip back for a further 20 seconds) and you're done! Fill with beans, onion, carrot, lettuce, tomato (urgh), chilli sauce, etc and you have a tasty meal. Like I say we should have made more - the ones we made were inhaled pretty quickly.

If you're thinking of going vegetarian I think the trick is to embrace fresh produce and cooking at home to ensure you eat an interesting variety of food. If it all seems a little too hard you could always try reducing the number of meat meals you have and experiment with some vege meals.

Vegetarian / pescetarian

I've been 99.9% meat free since Christmas Day and it hasn't been as difficult as I thought it would be. My intention was to be vegetarian but I have found, so far, that I am more comfortable being pescetarian. For me this means I have fresh fish perhaps once a week and have tuna in my lunch once or twice a week. I'm happy to continue like this for now but am sure I will phase out the fish in the future. It's also my intention to cut out dairy and cut back on other fats and oils (as per Dr Esselstyn's book.

So what does this change in eating mean for my meals generally? Well, breakfast is either home-made muesli (yum) with rice or soy milk and yoghurt or Vogel's toast with Vegemite. Most of the time I have freshly made juice - the favourite mix currently is carrot, apple, beetroot, pineapple and spinach - delicious! At some stage I will revert back to porridge - probably once the weather gets cooler again.

Lunch during the week is most often a salad or a wrap but is sometimes leftovers (my favourite would have to be leftovers!). Lunch on the weekend varies considerably depending on what I am doing. Today I had a mushroom, spring onion and spinach omelette (with fresh eggs from my chooks).

I guess dinners are the more interesting area these days (for me anyway). I have tried a recipe out of Esselstyn's book called Kitchari - it's a sort of soupy / casserole sort of thing with rice, yellow split peas, chilli, veges, fresh coriander and cumin seeds. I'm not convinced they are all the ingredients but I've lent the book to a friend and can't double-check. The other night I sort of felt like tacos but when it came down to it I cooked all the things I would have had with the tacos and just ate the fillings - so I had brown rice, lettuce, sweetcorn, mushrooms, zucchinis and spring onions - so tacoless tacos. Yum! Vege curries are fairly high on the agenda as are stir fries - all simple to prepare without meat.

I have to admit I feel a little better and more energetic at the moment but I can't be sure that is entirely due to my change in diet.

The other recent change is an increase in exercise. With my finger slowly healing I knew it was time to get back into more activity to regain my fitness and strength. I rejoined the gym so am back to spin classes twice a week and at least one Thai Fit class. On top of that I went for a run the other day - first one for about three months. And on weekends inevitably there is at least one walk up a hill if not more. Next weekend I am off for my first tramping trip since my accident in November and I can't wait! It is also my first trip with the tramping club that I joined late last year so will be interesting to meet some new people.

Life continues to be good - now, if my house would sell it would be even better!

Strange dinner

Coping with one hand sometimes means it is difficult to cook for myself. Luckily I had a huge binge on soup making over the winter. Yesterday I grabbed a container of "something" out of the freezer. As it turned out it was pumpkin soup. I had the brilliant idea of cooking up some brown rice and mixing that with the soup. Some fresh chopped coriander was added and that was dinner. Did you want photos? Too bad - I ate it all before thinking of taking photos. :)

Recipe time - Curried chicken on couscous

It's been a while since I posted a recipe so here is one I tried last night. The recipe is from the latest Healthy Food Guide magazine and I followed it pretty diligently - except I needed it to be gluten free so no couscous. So it became curried chicken on brown rice. The recipe isn't on their website yet but I guess it will appear there at some point. It's a great resource for healthy recipes.

Ingredients :

3 teaspoons grated ginger
1/4 cup lime juice (I used fresh limes)
3 teaspoons curry powder
400g chicken thighs with fat removed (I used free-range chicken)

Mix the first three ingredients in a bowl and then add chicken. Give it a good stir around and set aside while you're cooking the rice (of course you may well want to stick to couscous).

Rice / couscous ingredients :
1 cup of brown rice / couscous
400g can lentils, drained and rinsed
2/3 cup chopped fresh coriander

Cook the rice / couscous, add lentils and coriander. Pan fry the chicken in a lightly oiled pan - takes about 10 minutes. Place the chicken on top of the rice / couscous. Serve with freshly steamed vegetables - I did broccolini and asparagus (yay for spring / summer vegetables).

The dish is really simple but tastes great. I'll be making this one again soon.

Baby-food diet?

I have vaguely (very vaguely) heard that there is a mini-craze out there called the baby-food diet. I haven 't pursued those vague thoughts but imagine it is something to do with eating small amounts of pureed food - correct? Ah well, it doesn't matter if I am wrong.

I find myself on an imposed "baby-food" diet currently. I had some dental work done yesterday - I am sure you don't want all of the ghastly details but basically it involved cutting of gums, scraping (lots of scraping) and then stitching. Sounds horrible huh? Well it was! I spent the entire appointment with my eyes shut to avoid seeing what instruments were entering my mouth.

Now the procedure itself is over and done with but I have stitches in my gums on both sides of the mouth - and strict instructions to not use my molars for eating. Hence my baby-food diet. Today I had porridge for breakfast (the sultanas were a little tricky to squish), soup and dunked toast for lunch and scrambled eggs for dinner. I can see I could get sick of this pretty quickly. In fact I am already craving a nice steak but I am sure that is due to the fact I know I can't have it (unless I puree it and I am sure that would not be the culinary experience I am after).

I am planning a green curry with fish for dinner tomorrow night as that should be nice and mushy to eat.

I guess there may be an unexpected positive out of this experience - there is a chance I could lose that extra kilo or so that has been hanging around for a while.

Yet another soup recipe

Last year at a friend's birthday dinner I tried broccoli and blue cheese soup for the first time. It was delicious and so I tucked the idea of making some of my own into the back of my mind.
One vegetable that is particularly cheap right now just so happens to be broccoli so tonight I made my soup. The recipe is as follows :

2 cups chicken stock
250g broccoli
150g courgettes50g blue cheese
Salt and pepper

Heat the chicken stock then add vegetables. Season with salt and pepper. Cook the vegetables until just tender (and still nice and green). Remove from heat and blend until smooth (or at least not lumpy). Add the blue cheese and blend again. And that's it. Soup all ready to go. I just finished a bowl of it and it is delicious. Of course you would need to like blue cheese to appreciate it. :) Here's a photo of the finished product.

Leek and potato soup

I've been a bit slack posting - mostly due to standard busyness and nothing particularly interesting to post about.

Tonight after dinner I decided to try out making leek and potato soup. I haven't made this type of soup before so wasn't sure how it would go. Luckily my mum emailed me a recipe. I pretty much followed it....... but excluded the bacon, used random fresh herbs (it was dark outside!) and haven't added the milk. For once I remembered to take photos - but, to be honest, it's pretty bland looking really.

I didn't bother sticking to the recipe too closely - especially on the quantity side of things. What I did was : slowly cooked one chopped onion and one sliced leek in a little oil until soft. Added 3 chopped potatoes (volume wise there was probably equal leek and potato), salt, pepper, fresh herbs (I think I ended up with a mix of fresh marjoram and oregano) and enough chicken stock to cover the veges. I cooked it up until the vegetables were tender, cooled it and then blended it until smooth. I tasted it and it was delicious.

The bonus of this recipe is that it works out really cheap - the leek cost me $1.30, potatoes from the garden, herbs from the garden. Yup, pretty darn frugal. :)

Of course I had already had dinner when I made the soup so it's destined to the fridge and freezer. Yum! Here are the photos.

Garden tidy-up with a bonus

For a while I have been meaning to spend some time tidying up my vegetable garden - for one reason or another it hasn't happened - until today! I managed to sort out all four of my raised beds. I was considering taking before and after shots but, to be honest, I was far too ashamed of how overgrown they had got so you will have to be content with the after shots - oh, and some photos of the bonus harvest of the day. :)

So here are the photos of the beds after I was finished. I was very surprised at how dry some of them were - usually at this time of the year we would have had a fair bit of rain but it has been drier and warmer than usual.


I know they look a little bare right now. I am never sure what to try grow through our winter as we get quite hard frosts so most things don't survive. Maybe I will just leave them empty until spring. The next couple of photos are the bounty from my weeding session. Would anybody like some potatoes?


Mmmm, pumpkin soup. :)

Mmmmmm, Thai cooking

Before I get stuck into this blog post I have to apologise for the lack of photos - I was so busy with the class it didn't even occur to me to take any photos.

Anyway, yesterday I went off to my Thai cooking lesson. The class was from 9:30am until 3:30pm and was run by a lovely young Thai woman who has been in New Zealand for five years. She had two other Thai woman to assist her which worked out really well as some things took longer than planned. They were great at helping us catch up when we fell behind. In the class there were eight of us there to learn new skills.

Well, we sliced and pounded and stirred and cooked our little hearts out pretty much non-stop all day. We did have a small pause for lunch which consisted of yummy curry puffs that we had made. They were delicious.

Throughout the day we made the curry puffs (minced pork, potato, carrot, spices and seasoning wrapped in puff pastry), chicken stirfry, pork curry, jasmine rice and a dessert of water chestnuts. The part I enjoyed the most was making our own curry paste from scratch. It's the most that my mortar and pestle has ever been used! We got to use ingredients most of us had never heard of through the day as well as things that smelt like death but tasted fabulous.

My favourite dish of the day was the chicken stirfry which had really simple ingredients of chicken, mushrooms, sherry, fish sauce, garlic, ginger, tamarind paste, water and sugar. Hmmm, I guess that doesn't sound so simple but it was super simple compared to the curry paste we made which had ingredients of lemongrass, galangal, garlic, shallots, roasted peanuts, shrimp paste, salt, coriander, chillies and cumin - all of those were pounded together into a paste. While it took quite a long time to prepare the finished result was divine and totally worth the effort.

So that is one of my cooking lessons off my list of 101 things to do. The next one I have booked is the chocolate one. I am very much looking forward to that one!

Autumn harvest

Today's bounty was unplanned really. I had a self-sown tomato plant appear in one of my raised beds. The plant, with no care from me at all, has managed to produce a decent amount of fruit.
My friends and family will tell you that this is not something I would be especially pleased about it - I can't stand tomatoes. I often wish this wasn't the case as it does place limitations on foods I can eat. I have wondered whether I am just being fussy but the last time I ate tomato I was very ill. It's the only time in my life I am aware of that I was so ill that I burst blood vessels in my eyes from the vomiting. Oops, was that too much information?

Anyway, it's not like me to let things go to waste so I decided to collect up the tomatoes, cook them up with some onion, garlic and fresh oregano and freeze the resultant sauce. Of course the sauce isn't a lot of use to me but will come in handy for my family to use. :) Here are a couple of pictures of the dreaded produce and the sauce I made.

Asian pork patties

It's been a while since I posted a recipe. Yesterday I hosted a Tupperware party and decided it was a great opportunity to try something new. I did a cooking class a year or so ago where we made some chicken patties. The flavours were divine so I made up the following recipe with those tastes in mind:

Asian pork patties

500g minced pork
1 teaspoon finely chopped coriander
1/2 teaspoon finely chopped kaffir lime leaf (or some lime zest and bit a of lime juice)
2 teaspoons brown sugar
2 teaspoons fish sauce
1 finely chopped red chilli

Mix together and roll into small balls and flatten. Fry in a little oil until cooked through and nicely browned. Serve with the following dipping sauce.

1 clove garlic
1 whole red chilli
2 teaspoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon fish sauce
1 teaspoon lime juice

Grind garlic and chilli together, add to other ingredients.

That's it really. Very simple food but rather delicious.

Nutritious, wonderful soup!

With autumn fast approaching here in New Zealand I have a craving for soup. One of my fondest childhood memories is of drinking cups of Mum's vegetable soup while curled up reading a good book. I can never seem to replicate the taste of her soup but it's good fun to keep trying.

Today I bought a bacon hock and a few extra vegetables and now my house is filled with the wonderful smell of soup which is bubbling away. For those trying to lose weight, eat healthier or save money soup is a wonderful meal. I will be freezing meal-sized portions which will make good lunch fodder for the next week or so. Also, living by myself I love coming home from work and having soup and crusty toast for my dinner.

Today's soup has onion, grated carrot and parsnip, sliced celery, silverbeet, barley and, of course, the bacon hock for flavour. Now I find myself sitting here impatiently waiting for it to ready to eat. Yum! Lunch will be a real treat today.

Garden surprises

I would love to be one of those people who has hours to spend in the garden and therefore be on top of everything that is going on. Sadly, with working full-time and having other priorities, that is not the case for me.

The upside of this is that, now and then, I come across little (or sometimes big) surprises. I had noticed a few things seem to have popped up around my compost bin and had realised there were several tomato plants - not much of a bonus for me as I detest tomatoes!

But today I finally had a bit more of a look and I have a pumpkin plant. Not only do I have a pumpkin plant but I also have pumpkins - at least three from the quick look I had this morning. I can see lots of pumpkin soup and other savoury, autumn dishes. Yum!

From the photos below you can also see I am way behind on weeding. Oops!

The downside of holidays

I guess this is preditable but the only negative I can think of from my holiday in Nelson is the 2 kilos I managed to pile on - pretty good effort for one week I think! I think I can put it down to being totally inactive for a week and drinking gallons of beer every day. :) Generally I get to the gym 6 days a week with a mix of spin classes, thai fit classes and weights. So a week of lazing on the beach and not thinking at all about what I ate and drank has resulted in a bit of unwanted weight going on.

Now I am not upset about it. In fact I loved my holiday and if that's the only "bad" thing to come out of it then so be it. But now that I am back home and busy working I am back into my routine and committed to eating healthily (and not drinking beer!). The upside is a focus on finding (or creating) new recipes. Tonight's dinner is an experiment. I had some cooked chicken (which is nice and spicy) and could have had a chicken salad but that is what I had for lunch. So I decided to get a bit creative.

I felt like having something like a frittata and have thrown together a meal that may produce something like a frittata....... maybe! Basically I have stir-fried some vegetables (onion, pumpkin, cauliflower, broccoli and mushrooms) and then have put the vegetables into two ramekins (guess what lunch is for tomorrow?). Then I mixed up some eggs, milk, salt, pepper and chunks of blue cheese and poured that over the vegetables. Now it is cooking in the oven. I am not sure whether the result is a frittata (it certainly doesn't match the frittata recipe I would normally follow).

Here is a photo of them cooking - just about ready I think. Apologies for the poor quality photos but I was in a hurry - I'm hungry. :) Yum!

Harvest time!

I had a craving tonight for fresh vegetables so went out hunting in the garden to see what I could find. This is what I found.

Two eggs from my chooks today so I have at least two laying at the moment. It's quite strange - when I go check on them there is only one who is obviously broody so maybe there are three laying for they are taking turns?

Dinner tonight was grilled chicken with steamed zucchini and silverbeet and with fresh sweetcorn. I have to tell you, the corn was simply amazing - so sweet and tender. The monster zucchini at the rear of the photo is sitting in the fridge while I figure out what to do with it. It may well end up in a pie or cake.

I went and had my massage on Friday. I tried a new place out and opted for a fairly deep massage to sort out my aches and pains. The massage itself was wonderful - a lovely Thai woman used her magic hands and ironed out a lot of the kinks I had in my back. Sadly I won't be returning to this place - the front-desk service was pretty shoddy (to the point of being rude) and the cleanliness etc of the towels was very questionable - plus the towels themselves looked almost threadbare and ancient.