I did it my way!!

On Monday night the kids come for tea and I quite often experiment with recipes I haven't tried before...most times they turn out good, sometimes I get "mmmm, not your best meal Mum!!"

I decided to try 'Bacon wrapped chicken stuffed with spinach and ricotta'. Once I had sliced the chicken breasts and combined the mixture I started to roll the breast, but had trouble with it.....so as I often do, I improvised and decided to line a slice tray with alfoil and lay the fillets out, then spread the mixture over them and topped it all with sliced bacon pieces.

I then covered it with alfoil (sprayed the alfoil first so the bacon didnt' stick to it) and baked in a moderate over for 1½ hrs. When I took it out the oven I had to drain juice that had accumulated but it was cooked beautifully and sliced really nicely (a bit like slicing lasagne!).

Everyone enjoyed it, so I thought I'd do a post about it as I find it's a good way for me to keep track of recipes I make!

The original recipe I was using can be found here. However I made some changes to the ingredients as well. I didn't cook the spinach first, just chopped the fresh baby spinach. I also didn't use the garlic, onion powder or garlic salt, instead I substitued it for a packet of french onion soup. Maybe because I didn't cook the spinach first I had some excess juice, but it still worked out ok and it tasted good.

Interesting picture I'm sure you're thinking!!  At Christmas time, I spilled some oil on my top (pictured). As it was only a couple of weeks old I wasn't impressed, so I googled how to get rid of oil stains from clothes and 'eucalyptus oil' seemed to be the popular problem solver, so I tried it and was really pleased that it worked!  I have many t-shirts with oil stains from cooking splatters, so I might give them a whirl with this too.

I don't particularly like the smell of Eucalyptus as it reminds me of 'Vicks' baths we used to have when we had colds. Fill a large bowl with very hot water, place a teaspoon of Vicks Rub (basically Eucalyptus oil) into it, place your head over the bowl and a towel over your head and the bowl and inhale. It actually worked wonders to clear your nasel passages and I used to use if for our kids as well.

Yay, our locally produced orange juice was back on the supermarket shelves today after their Christmas break. It tastes just like you've squeezed it yourself mainly because they don't add all the extras into it. The shelf life is only a couple of weeks and you have to shake it each time before you pour from the carton as the pulp settles, but it's healthy and not packed with sugar like so many others.

Hope you enjoy your weekend

Just enjoying life!

I enjoy the period between Christmas and New year, where everyone seems to be in chill out mode and there is a lot of the spur of the moment social catchups.

It has been a month since Dad passed away, and life is starting to get back to some sort of normality. There will always be the sadness and my eyes well up with tears when I look at photos of him, but his life was good and we are to be thankful. Mum is doing really well, she is surrounded by lovely people at Resthaven who are keeping her company and involving her in the activities that go on, and she is receiving quite a few visitors too. Such a blessing.

Our newest Cafe in town is within one of our wonderful gift/home shops called Lavilla. It's a great place to catch up for coffee and light lunches with friends, which I did last week. I ad a delicious Turkey baguette and iced coffee.

 

On boxing day when Daniel and Telesha announced their engagment, we went around to their place at night for pizzas and drinks with both families. It was a fun night. One of Telesha's nieces kept coming over to my hubby Paul to get her head rubbed...she loved it.

Paul and I headed down to McLaren Vale for a couple of days and stayed with good friends. One of the nights we got Barnacle Bills and took it down to the beach, we haven't been to the beach for so long. The photo is of 2 of our friends daughters, Lauren and Hannah.

Back in my teenage years I loved reading the Sue Barton series of books by Helen Dore Boylston, which followed the life of 3 friends who started nursing together. There were 7 books in the series. I managed to find the 'Visiting Nurse' book at an opp shop recently and enjoyed reading it. I have the 'Superintendent Nurse' and am now on the lookout for the rest to make up the series.

My favourite find on Pinterst this week was this coffee table made out of wooden crates. How clever! Might keep an eye out for wooden crates now too!!

We are experiencing very hot weather here in Australia, with temps in the 40°C's. Nice and cool inside though which is where I plan to stay!!

Pop the cork!

Yesterday morning we received a text message from our second son Daniel, asking if we were able to go out to their house and help them with something. This wasn't an unusual request as we do that quite often.

So when we got out there Daniel was doing some paving, and after chatting for a while, I said, "well what do you want us to do?". He said "Nothing, we just wanted to let you know that we got engaged this morning!". We were delighted, so there were hugs all round, and tears of joy!!

Telesha's family had also had a message and arrived soon after!!

We ended up out at their place for tea, testing out their new pizza oven and having a few celebratory drinks.

They don't have any plans at this stage for when and where they will be getting married, but I'm sure that will all start to fall into place as time goes along.

Very excited :)

Fun in the kitchen!

We had some friends around for drinks yesterday arvo, so I enjoyed putting some nibbling platters together.

The fruit cheese going down the middle of the above photos is really simple to make and delicious. I find the supermarket fruit cheeses a bit plasticy. The one above is Apricot and Almond and all you do is buy a block of Phildelphia Cream Cheese, allow to soften and then mix in dried diced apricots (Australian ones!) and diced or flaked almonds. Roll into a log and wrap in alfoil, then place in fridge. When ready to use, just slice into discs. They last in the fridge for quite a while. I usually do 2 logs.

 

 

I also made some Spicy Meatballs and served with a toothpick and some sweet chilli sauce for dipping. They were baked not fried...so much easier and better for you.

 

The recipe was:

500g chicken mince

½ cup sweet chilli sauce

¼ cup coriander

½ cup coconut

1 cup breadcrumbs

Mix together, roll into balls and place on lined baking tray and bake in a moderate over for around 10-15 mins.

 

This is not my photo...I forgot to take one once I'd cooked them but they looked like this!

I hope you are enjoying getting into the spirit of Christmas too.

Aahh a few days off!

It's arrived...it's that time of the year when even though there is work to do, people close their offices and take time off, and that's just what I'm doing as of this afternoon...yay!

I've just baked some Almond Crescent Cookes. I hadn't tried the recipe before but they taste quite nice.  I got the recipe from here. I gave up on turning them into crescents and instead rolled them into logs and sliced them into discs. I don't have much patience for moulding into shapes!! Some of these will get packaged into cello bags for small gifts.

I also made a version of the Chocolate Ripple Cake this afternoon as we have a Christmas breakup tomorrow and we were asked to bring a dessert. I layered Milk Coffee biscuits and Chocolate Ripple biscuits between whipped cream in which I had added some vanilla essence, icing sugar and some dissolved coffee. It will sit in the fridge overnight and by tomorrow lunchtime it will be a delicious, soft, cake-like texture. Always a favourite.

 

The letters we have received in the mail over the past couple of weeks have been an interesting mix of Christmas and Sympathy cards, due to my Dad's passing.I received some beautiful flowers too from an association I'm involved with. Simple reminders that we have lots of lovely friends.

 

I'm sure I won't get around to another post before Christmas, so I wish all my blog friends a happy Christmas and hope you can spend it with those you love.

This is my holiday workout plan!!!  Hope you enjoy my humour!!

It's been a while!

The past couple of months has been a real juggling act with my time. With Dad deteriorating daily, there have been many trips to Adelaide to be with him and support Mum.

Sadly, Dad passed away on the 6th Dec, and we had a lovely private funeral with immediate family on Tuesday morning, and then a 'Celebration of his life' service for the public in the afternoon.

We can be thankful that Dad had a very long, happy, healthy and fulfilling life and it was only in the past months due to the brain tumor that his quality of life wained.

In Dad's words..."I've had a good innings"!

Want to come to our garage sale?

Next Saturday morning we will be holding our own garage sale, so this weekend we needed to start getting things together and sorting out what we no longer require.

I have 'many, many' piles of magazines, maily home living type ones. I don't like parting with them but there comes a time when I need to cull to make room for new ones!

Just the start of me sorting through my piles of magazines...more will be done today.

 A few drawers were cluttered with things I used to have displayed around the house. My more minimilistic style these days and move away from the 'country' look will see these things up for sale.

 This box is full of clothes and shoes from my wardrobe cleanout the other week. There will be more clothes coming too from Telesha who also had a wardrobe cleanout before they moved into their new home.

Hubby started going through things down our back room yesterday. These are his magazines up for grabs...PC and car related ones. I'm sure we'll find lots of other things in that room to add to the sale.

Over the past few weeks the boys have been putting stuff in our shed for the sale. This will be added too today as well. 

Let's hope for a nice sunny morning. What we don't sell will go to our local Opp shops.

I work from our home office, and during the week I could hear noises coming from the bathroom. I wandered in looked up at our heat lights and could see through the gap around the globe a bird was fluttering around. I closed the door as I couldn't see how I could do anything to help it out. I texted hubby and he rang me. As I was talking to him on the phone I opened the bathroom door to to find the bird had found it's way out and was flying around!! After about 5 minutes I finally got him captured in an ice cream container and let him free outside!!

Did you notice we haven't painted our bathroom walls yet? That's the last job we have to do to finish the makeover. Once we get that done, I'll load up all the before and after pics.

Lucy...my inheritance!

With Mum and Dad moving into Resthaven, it has meant that their unit in the Retirement Village needed to be cleaned out. Not an easy task when we are all scattered around SA!
However,the task is nearly done and precious items have been distributed to family or kept in storage to deal with later.

One item that I've always loved was 'Lucy'. A lovely statue of a young girl reading a book.

I'm not sure how old 'Lucy' is but she used to sit in my Nana's passage and in her hey day was a glossy, browny/grey colour. When Nana died, about 42 years ago, my Mum took her. In previous years she has lived outside in my Mum's garden, so has wethered. As you can see she is a bit worse for ware, but I quite like the distressed, shabby look! She now sits on one of my bookshelves in our family room and is a lovely keepsake of times past.

I love this time of the year when my garden comes alive with lush green growth on our trees and the roses start to flower.

As you can see above my Pierre de Ronsard is making it's way up the lattice. I have 3 planted side by side. To my surprise though this morning, I noticed that one of them has produced a 'red' flower....quite odd....I'll be interested to see the colours of the buds on that same plant.

When visiting Mum and Dad the other week, one of my sisters snapped a shot of me with Dad.

 

Above: Dad and me sitting in their communal lounge at Resthaven

Well it's time for my breakfast...This is what I have every morning....delicious Vanilla Bean yoghurt, with strawberries and raw nuts....yum!

 Hope you enjoy your day.

From my camera!

Life is starting to get back to some sort of 'normality'. Mum and Dad are now settled into their new 'low care' facility at Resthaven Paradise. It is a lovely complex with very caring and helpful staff. They have 2 rooms which are almost opposite each other, but we have been able to set one up as their bedroom and the other as their lounge room, so they have their own private space away from the communial lounge to enjoy a cuppa with friends and family.

As you would be aware due to many trips down to Adelaide to be with M&D over the past couple of months, my blogging has taken a back seat, so I'll just show a few photos of what I managed to take along the way!

 

One of the great things about heading to Adelaide regularly has been catching up with my sisters more...I usually stay with Bronny (above) when we're down.
We enjoyed a delicious Pizza at her local Italian Restaurant...yum!

Exciting Times....Our youngest son Daniel and partner Telesha, move into their new house this weekend...we've really enjoyed watching it all come together.
Now they have the fun part of making it their home.

 Managed to have a wardrobe cleanout...how many shoes can one girl have!!

Not sure if this is genius or I'm just behind the times with shoe organisation, but a rubber band around the pairs of shoes has made my life so much easier in finding and keeping my motley collection together.

A box ready to go to the Opp Shop.

This was a recipe from Better Homes and Gardens, a Croissant and Hazelnut Pudding...delicious!  Just cut croissants in half and smother with Nutella, place in a baking dish and cover with custard (I used the bought custard)...bake. This tastes amazing and soooo easy. I'd never tried nutella as I thought it would have been too rich but I keep a jar in my cupboard now!

 Isn't this wedding cake lovely...I pinned it from Pinterest.

Hopefully I'll get back into more regular posts from now on and will start visiting your blogs again. Enjoy your weekend.