Dinner or Lunch! - Not-Sausage Rolls!!

I got this recipe from the where's the beef? blog. I was a little sceptical that the rolled oat, cottage cheese & pecan filling would resemble anything like a sausage roll, but magiaclly, it does!! It even kind of tastes like a sausage roll (not that I have eaten one in living memory, but Janet had a taste and proclaimed them to be tasty!)

the only change I made to the original recipe, was that I added some fresh herbs to the mix - thyme, rosemary, sage and parsley (this is whats in my garden at the moment), and I used a teaspoon of stock powder, rather than a cube, since the powder is much easier to mix!

I highly recommend giving this recipe a try - it made about 10 large rolls, which I cooked, and then froze, so I have a supply on hand for when I am too lazy to cook my dinner!

Morning Tea - Cinnamon Tea Cake

Is there anything better than the aroma of warm cinnamon? This is a simple cake - quick and easy to make, that tastes absolutely delicious!!

ingredients
60g butter or margerine (softened)
1 teaspoon vanilla (extract)
150g caster sugar
1 egg
150g plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/3 cup milk

extra butter - melted
cinnamon sugar (made to the ratio of 1 teaspoon cinnamon to 1 tablespoon caster sugar - I always keep a jar in the cupboard!!)


preheat oven to 170c
grease 20cm round cake tin & line base with baking paper

beat together butter/marg, vanilla and sugar until light and fluffy. Ad egg and beat well. Add (sifted) flour & baking powder with the milk. stir.

put mixture into cake tin, and bake for approx 30 minutes. Turn out, and flip back over so the top is at the top!!  Brush the top of cake with melted butter and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar.

enjoy while still warm, and remember the times when your Gran used to make a cake just like it.

out for lunch - Sizzler Redcliffe

for Janet's birthday, I caved in and said we could go to one of her favourite dining destinations - Sizzler.  I chose Sizzler at Redcliffe so we could go for a nice walk along the water as well as eat!

We both had the salad bar for lunch - and below are our first plates.....its probably not too difficult to work out which is which...



Janet's plate (hmmm a little bit of green seems to have snuck on there...)




and here is my plate.  I was a little dissapointed they didnt have a tomato based vegetarian sauce for the pasta - I ended up putting some roasted capsicum soup on it! Sizzler salads always annoy me, because so many of them have meat in them! But it ended up being a fairly tasty lunch - I managed to make my own salads anyway!




and the "famous" Sizzler cheese toast. I let Janet have half of mine, because I am very nice :-) and because I wasn't really all that fussed on it! oops!




then it was off for a wander along the water! (we drove to get to the water)

dinner at home - tacos

here is an easy dinner! it just takes a little organisation and putting stuff out in containers! For our tacos, I made 2 fillings, 1 with beef mince, 1 with Quorn mince. The beef mince, for Janet, I cooked up simply with some bbq sauce. The Quorn mince, I cooked up with some red kidney beans, chilli, cumin and tomato.

The other fillings we had were - baby spinach, grated cheese, corn, fresh tomato, greek yoghurt, and taco sauce (this came in the packet with the taco shells).

I bought a box of "hard & soft Taco kit", which is perfect for us, because Janet likes the crunchy tacos, and I like the soft tortillas!

food court lunch - oporto mt ommaney

I wonder if you can guess which lunch is mine?  haha

We were at Mt Ommaney, so had lunch in the food court there. Janet loves Oporto, and since it made life easier, I decided to get something from the same place for a change!


Janet had the Chicken nuggets (I think they are called something else, but they are fairly chicken-nugget-like!)



I tried the veggie burger, and unfortunately, my no-deep fried food rule went a little off balance, because they deep fried the vegie pattie, which stupidly didn't occur to me!

dinner at home - garden marinated chicken/tofu

I marinated the Chicken & Tofu in mostly things I picked from my garden - I pounded together in the mortar & pestle -  lemongrass, chilli, basil, and a clove of garlic (from the shop!), with a drizzle of vegetable oil, and rubbed this over the chicken and the tofu, then left it in the fridge for about an hour.  I then simply panfried until the tofu was crisp, and the chicken was cooked.




I served both with some steamed rice and some braised vegies (cooked with a little soy sauce).

Delicious and Simple!

Dinner at Home - Pumpkin & Feta Ravioli

I finally got around to making ravioli with actual fresh pasta rather than with wonton wrappers. And yes, it is worth the effort.  I did not go to the trouble of cutting out circles to make my ravioli - I cut rectangles, which meant that I didnt have to waste any of my pasta sheets.  A more patient and perfectionist-minded person would probably have taken more time to make sure that all the rectangles were the same size, but I just cut them with a knife using my eye to roughly guess the right measurements :-)

I filled the ravioli with pumpkin I had cooked with some garlic, onion, fresh herbs and olive oil in a frying pan, mixed with some danish-style feta.

I put small amounts of the filling onto one side of the pasta rectangle, brushed the edges with egg and folded in half to create roughly square-shaped ravioli. Once the pasta was cooked in boiling water, I tossed it through a light tomato sauce (simply tossed some diced tomato through some butter, garlic and onion in a pan)

This dish was based on the below recipe that I got when I did the Perfect Pasta Class at Focus by James restaurant at Springwood last year - just substitute some homemade pasta for the wonton wrappers and add some tomato to the butter sauce.



Ravioli filled with Roast Pumpkin, Persian Fetta, Garlic and Lemon Thyme, with a Sage Burnt Butter Sauce

Ingredients – serves 2:




¼ pkt fresh wonton sheets
100g butternut pumpkin
1 brown onion
¼ bunch fresh basil
¼ bunch fresh sage
¼ bunch lemon thyme
1 clove garlic
35g Persian fetta
75g grated parmesan cheese
100g butter
1 egg
olive oil
salt and pepper


1. Pre-heat oven to 200°C
2. Cut pumpkin into small pieces place on roasting tray, splash a bit ofolive oil and lemon thyme over it and roast until soft

3. Meanwhile, dice the onion and garlic finely

4. Fry onion, garlic in the pan on a low heat until soft, add pumpkin

5. Chop basil and add to mix (save some leaves for garnish)

6. Add fetta to the mix. Season to taste, take off heat

7. Put large pot of water on the boil


8. Brush outside edges of wonton wrappers with egg

9. Place filling in centre of each ravioli, and fold circle in half to form pasta parcels, press edges together to seal, then trim edges

10. Cook ravioli in boiling water till pasta is soft and rises to the surface. This should take about two minutes


11. Grate parmesan with microplane while you wait


12. In a frying pan, melt butter and add chopped sage


13. Cook on medium heat until butter just begins to brown, andsage leaves go crisp

14. Season to taste


15. Immerse cooked ravioli in sauce briefly to take up sauce

16. Plate the ravioli, and sprinkle with parmesan cheese and topwith saved basil leaves


17. Serve hot and immediately

baking - Rhubarbwhines Lemon Cookies

When I saw the recipe for these Lemon Cookies on Rhubarbwhine's blog here -Rhubarb Whines Lemon Cookies - I just knew I had to make them. It has taken me a while to actually get around to it - but I can see these cookies being made many times in the future - they are quite delicious!

A couple of notes about the recipe - it took me 4 lemons to get the required amount of juice, which was fortunate, since I only had four lemons to hand (hopefully this will change when I get my own lemon & lime trees in the near future!).

The recipe makes more icing than you will need - so next time, I would reduce the quantity to avoid having to "taste test" so much of it :-)

Out to Dinner - Urban Burger, Browns Plains

Urban Burger opened a while ago at Village Square, Browns Plains.  They grabbed my attention by having not 1, not 2, but 3 different vegetarian burgers on their menu! I hae visited them four times now, so have had a chance to try out all 3, and have settled on my favourite.

Janet has had the same burger each time we have been there - the BBQ "100% prime beef, cheddar, bacon, bbq sauce, salad, relish, aioli" ($10.90). 




Janet also added snack fries and a drink for $4.50. I skipped the fries. Due to my no deep fried food rule for this year.



my burger of choice was the Urban Red "chickpea & red vegie pattie, brie cheese, basil pesto, salad, relish, aioli" ($10.50). I think this is my favourite vegie option here, because it has heaps of flavour, and the cheese doesn't hurt either! my next choice would be the Vegan Vibe - it has a lentil & kidney bean pattie, and comes with avocado!

I like the rolls that they serve the burgers on, as they seem to be quite light and airy, so don't completely fill you up before you get to the burger part!  Urban burger also have gluten free buns available.