A Couple of Easy Ideas for Christmas

Here are a couple of easy ideas for Christmas! (and delicious!!)

First up, a simple Pumpkin, Spinach & Feta Salad!

To make this, you simply cut up some pumpkin, sprinkle with the herbs/spices of your choice - I used a pre-mixed "Moroccan Spice Mix", toss onto a baking tray with half a sliced red onion and 2-4 cloves of garlic.  Spray with a little olive oil spray, and bake in a 180c oven for about 40 minutes. You can allow to cool (as I did) or use warm.

Mix together 1tablespoon of olive oil and 2 teaspoons of lemon juice, and add 1-2 of the previously roasted cloves of garlic (chop them up or mash them!).  Take your spinach leaves (or any other salad leaves that take your fancy - I actually used a bag labelled "Aussie Salad" which also had some slithers of grated beetroot in it), and toss with the dressing. Then its just a matter of adding the roasted pumpkin & onion, some chopped feta cheese and some chopped walnuts! 

The second Easy Christmas creation is a fruit salad Christmas tree!

To do this, you take a carrot and a cored apple, and put the carrot into the centre of the apple.  You then toothpick your chosen fruit to this structure until it resembles a Christmas Tree! I used Watermelon, Kiwi,  Strawberries, Grapes and Cherries.  Next time, I will be trying to add some slices of stone fruit as well (to cover more of the gaps!!)

Australia Day - Lunch

As is traditional, we gathered for lunch on Australia Day (26th January) at my parent's place (see  last year's post!)


Once again, the meat eaters enjoyed pies - this one was chicken (see the little pastry chicken on top! - cute!)


And this one was mince!


There was mashed potato


and some delicious sweet, buttery peas


My contribution was this Passionfruit and Mango Pavlova Ice-cream!  Very simple to make - (if I was more organised I would have made my own ice-cream, but using bought ice-cream makes this super easy and quick!!)

Simply soften 2L of vanilla ice-cream, and split into 3.  To one third add the pulp of about 5 passion fruit. To another third, ad the pureed flesh of 2 mangoes. Keep the other third plain.

Line a fluted ring tin (or container of your preference!) with glad wrap.  Into the base spread the pulp of 2-3 passionfruit and some diced mango.  Then, add your passionfruit ice-cream, followed by half of your vanilla ice-cream.  Then add a layer of mini meringues (I bought mine from Woolworths), and cover the meringues with the remaining vanilla ice-cream.  To complete, the final layer is the mango ice-cream.  Put the whole container into the freezer to set. When ready to serve, simply remove from tin, peel off the plastic and cut into slices!




We finished with these delicious lamingtons - surprisingly, the light fluffy cake under the icing - was chocolate! Brilliant alteration!

Christmas Day 2011!

Our day began at home with some gift opening....

Shadow managed to destroy her toy in about 2 minutes....

Monty was slightly interested in the tree



And Jaspa had a ball playing in the paper!

And then we headed off to Pam & Sid's for breakfast....



We began with some delicious fruit salad!


Sid cooked up some ham, tomatoes, hash browns, mushrooms and toast on the bbq

and Pam made some scrambled eggs. This was my plate!

oh, and there were also croissants! A great way to start the day!!

then we headed off to my parents place for lunch....


 


sparkly bon-bons made by my cousin! These bon-bons gave us all a sparkle for the rest of the day!



Prawns for entree


this sesame seaweed was amazing!


instead of prawns, I had this quinoa salad with walnuts and cranberries

and then we filled the table with an amazing array of food!

A crunchy noodle salad made by Jill -


 I made this Cous Cous and sprouted Chick Pea salad.  I saw how to sprout the chick peas on Scandie Foodie's blog.  TO the cous cous and chick peas, I simply added some roasted pumpkin, sweet corn (from our garden) and tossed through a dressing made from lemon juice, garlic, chilli, olive oil and a splash of soy sauce.

I made this potato salad - for the dressing I mixed equal parts of Birch & Waite Aioli Garlic Mayo and EasyYo Greek yoghurt. Then I just mixed in some chives and some cooked bacon (I also set aside some without bacon for me!)


there was also roasted chicken

ham

this magnificent, and massive green salad

and a tomato salad!


Were we full yet? possibly, but there is always room for pudding!

fruit mince pies!


Berries! The berries are my highlight of the Christmas lunch for me! Its not Christmas until I have had a lovely bowl of juicy berries!

There was also a Christmas pudding, but it was chopped up and dispersed to plates before I had a chance to take a photo! believe me, it was yummy!!


MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!

Fathers Day Lunch!

For Fathers Day, we took lunch to Mum & Dad's place, so the food had to be transportable, and, since we were off to a morning tea prior to lunch, it had to be pre-cooked.

I decided to give Pulled Pork a try.

I adapted this recipe from Not Quite Nigella

Since I do not have a pressure cooker, I used the oven. And majorly increased the cooking time!!
Pulled Pork
2kg Pork Shoulder (remove the skin and fat layer
1 onion
bunch of parsley
4 cloves garlic
1 cup ketchup
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons Worcestershire Sauce
2 tablespoons Apple Cider Vinegar
1/4 teaspoon mustard powder
1/4 teaspoon chilli powder
1 teaspoon salt
good grinding of pepper
1 cup water

Fry onion, garlic and parsley stalks, and brown pork in the same pan (if you have a casserole dish that can go on the stovetop, use this, if not, you will need to improvise!).  Mix remaining ingredients and pour over/around pork.  Allow to come to a gentle bubble, then remove from stovetop and place in a 140c oven (put a lid on it).  Cook in the 140c oven for 6-7 hours.  Until pork is falling apart.  Then remove the meat from the sauce and pull it apart with a fork.  I found I had too much liquid, so only put some of it through the pulled pork.  This could be because I used 1 cup of water instead of the half in the original recipe.  Sprinkle with fresh parsley and serve.  (or put in fridge, then transport to lunch the next day, reheat gently in microwave, sprinkle with parsley and serve!) Serve with fresh bread rolls and make pulled pork rolls!




We also had a delicious garden salad from Gina & Scott



and this potato salad which I made (simply potatoes and snow peas in a dressing made with half a bottle of potato salad dressing and the same quantity of greek yoghurt.)

For Dessert, I made @everydaycook's famous brownies (topped with toasted hazelnuts)and some cinnamon donut icecream to go with them....

the icecream recipe goes like this......

Ingredients
2 cups milk
3 cinnamon donuts
extra milk
3 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
2 cups cream

put milk and donuts into a saucepan and warm over a medium heat.  When hot, but not boiling, remove from heat and put lid on saucepan.  Allow to cool.  Strain milk through fine sieve so that no lumps are present.  Measure how much milk you are left with, and use extra milk to make amount back up to 2 cups.

Place the donut flavoured milk into a saucepan with the 3 eggs. Beat eggs and milk together well, stir in the sugar.  Stir constantly over a low to medium heat until the mixture thickens enough to coat the back of spoon.    Cool.  Stir in the cream. Refrigerate until cold (overnight if you like).  I use an icecream machine to churn the chilled mix until frozen