Introducing Ollie the Pug

I don't think I've put much on the blog yet about our furry child, Ollie. So here's a few snaps of the cheeky monkey.

Ollie - his first day with us

My cross-eyed furry child, I was worried his eyes would stay like it!

Enjoying a cuddle with my mum, his 1st Xmas

Ollie nowadays

With his favourite toy, squeaky lamb that he surgically removed the squeak from

Butter wouldn't melt!

Till next time,

Let there be light! Our kitchen improvements

We bought our house in July last year, and have whinged about the terrible lighting in the kitchen ever since, it has a ceiling fan with a light attached, more of a bedroom fan & light, a very mellow light. If you're washing dishes after sundown you have to hold each piece up to the light to see if it's clean!  Very frustrating.

Mr Mel & I love to cook, we cook together almost every night, and have a cooking storm weekend every month, as you'll see from my previous post :-)

So last week we bit the bullet, went up to a lighting shop at Rutherford, and after much toing and froing we settled on a new silver ceiling fan with a bright light, looks more industrial than bedroomy, and a 4 spot light silver rod type thing (excellent description I know!)  We will put the rod over the sink, with 2 spot lights aiming directly down at the sink, and 2 aiming along the prep bench next to the sink.

The sparky is at home now with Mr Mel installing them, very exciting, can't wait to cook in good light!

Our kitchen also suffers from a lack of bench space, so we had an island bench made. It's 1200m long, by 900m wide, with a 30mm overhang so we can fit stools under it. It has 3 drawers (soft close yay), and a pull out double bin. It's on lockable rubber wheels so we can move it around.

Our kitchen is currently an older style timber one, it's nice, but not really our style, so we spent a few months going through laminate and benchtop samples, we wanted to decide on our kitchen as a whole, so down the track when we renovate the rest of the kitchen, the island bench won't be out of place.

We settled on:

Benchtop - Caesarstone Almond Rocca, 30mm with a double pencil edge - http://www.kitkitchen.com/images/products/17122007235855caesarstone-almond-roca.jpg
Cabinets - Polytec Createc Cafe Cream Gloss - http://www.polytec.com.au/images/sambles/cafe_cream.jpg
Handles - Brushed steel
Floors - already done, they're a dark biscuit colour
Walls - already done, cream, with a dark biscuit surrounds

We got the island 2 weeks ago and have booked Hunter Valley Granite & Marble to install the benchtop this week.

So by the end of this week we will have lights, more benchtop & storage.  Very exciting!  Will post some pics once done, before & after kind of :-)

Cia for now,

The eventual rainy weekend menu

Well we headed out shopping early, and our planned menu, had a couple of couple of changes, due to what we saw at the butcher, and Mr Mel's 'feel' for the day!We ended up cooking :

Pumpkin soup - was delish, we bought a whole pumpkin, so did 2 batches, we had it for lunch today with some Morpeth sourdough, have a container in the freezer full, and giving our neighbour about 4-5 serves worth.  I do like a thick soup, so next time I might use a little less stock to see if that helps it thicken up a bit. It's a Campbells recipe from the Masterchef site, but we didn't use their stock, just made our own Vegeta stock.
The recipe is at http://www.masterchef.com.au/best-pumpkin-soup.htm

White Chocolate Panna Cotta - we'd never made a panna cotta before, it turned out well, but way too rich for us, due to not having rammekins (spelling?) we filled tea cups about 3/4 full, Mr Mel got through his, but I left just over 1/3rd. The recipe we used from the Taste.com.au website included a Rosewater Syrup, however living in a country town that isn't big on 'unusual' ingredients, we couldn't find any, so I made a syrup from a spare lemon & ginger teabag that was in the pantry.  The syrup was nice. Next time I think we'll try a plain vanilla Panna Cotta, to see if it was just the white choc being too rich.  Also had an issue not being able to locate gelatin leaf, so use powdered, and it seemed to work just as well.
The recipe is at http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/6911/white+chocolate+panna+cotta+with+rosewater+syrup

Pork Ribs with BBQ Sauce - After salivating through a Masterchef Masterclass where Gary cooked some ribs, we had to give them a go. Our butcher didn't have the specified 'Pork Spare Ribs', but recommended his other ribs, they were more 'Flintstoney' with a big curve to them instead of the neat flat ones Gary used. We didn't have time to marinate them for the suggested 3-4 hours or overnight, so ended up cooking them for about 2.5hrs instead of the recipes 1.5hrs!  Some of the ribs pulled out of the meat, and when cutting them to separate the knife went thru like butter, soooo tender.  After about 2 hrs, the sauce wasn't really thick and sticky, so I added about a table spoon of honey an another of flour, to add some more stickiness, and to help the sauce thicken up. We felt quite barbaric ripping into them with our hands, covered to the wrists in sticky sauce, but oh my they were magnifique!! They're definitely going on the party food list.
The recipe is at http://www.masterchef.com.au/braised-pork-spare-ribs.htm

Sambal Oelek - We are growing a chilli plant that just will not stop giving us chillies, it's ridiculous, we had a plastic bag in the freezer, plus some in the fridge, and some drying in the pantry. We haven't tried it yet, but it looks like the photo on the recipe, shall report back once tasted!
The recipe is at http://www.lifestylefood.com.au/recipes/1034/traditional-spicy-sambal

Poached Eggs, Roast Potato, Capsicum, Chorizo, Coriander - We are cooking tonight for dinner, the recipe looks delish, and it's 5 things we love to eat, plus Mr Mel is an ace egg poacher :) Shall report back after dinner! The recipe is from a blog I follow Portugese Kitchen.
The recipe is at http://portuguesekitchen.blogspot.com/

Thanks to Lorraine @ Not Quite Nigella & Portugese Kitchen for your comments :-)

A Rainy Weekend Ahead - Suggestions Welcome :)

We've had about 60mls of rain since 3pm yesterday, with another 40+ due today. Our front and back lawn are waterlogged, and at work the paddocks have puddles, and the lanes are very soggy. A pic from just outside the stables at work below.

I'm not too upset though, it's Friday (woohoo), and I can feel a rainy housey weekend coming on :-)

We're planning to head to the market early and have a cooking weekend, cooking for our meals on the weekend, and to put some in the freezer.

So far the menu is:

- Pumpkin Soup
- Onion Soup
- Zucchini Slice
- Chicken & Zucchini Patties
- Slow cook Lamb Shoulder
- Apple Pie (never made one before)
- we're going to look thru the Masterchef cookbook and online for a couple of new things to try too

Suggestions more than welcome, we're open to challenges :-) 
so please feel free to leave a comment with a suggestion :)

A week down on CM challenge

It's been a week, and the results are getting there, down 1.5 cm on bust, 2 cm on hips, but to be honest at my size, that's nothing!  I've got another 20 days till 'D-Day', so hopefully I can keep on track.

Have been using the WiiFit each morning and got stricter on my diet, so hopefully better results will follow!

Day 8 
Weight - 132.2kg (-1.0kg)
Bust - 122.5cm (-1.5cm)
Waist - 116cm (-4cm)
Hips - 142cm (-2cm)

Wish me luck!

Oh for a camera

Don't you hate those times when you wish you had a camera?
I had one just now, out checking on the foals, and hear alot of flapping and hoofsteps, look over to where our filly is, and there is a family of ducks, 5-6 in total, bolting thru the paddock, madly flapping their wings, in hot pursuit was our filly, with her head down snorting, chasing after them.  The ducks made it thru the fence before she got there, and they took off to the dam. Our filly stood at the fence stamping her foot and shaking her head. Could just see her saying "And stay out!!"
Sometimes I forget how lucky I am to be doing the job I love in a beautiful country spot, I sooo don't miss living in Melbourne, except for the coffee maybe :-)
Below is a pic of our filly before she got old enough to realise the ducks in her paddock were stealing her dinner, not saying hello!

Ciao for now