High Tea!

Kara had a marvellous idea, and a high tea was organised! Complete with pretty tea cups, delicious morsels of food, a beautiful garden in the sunshine, and ladies in dresses and hats!











Anita made this selection of tarts, custard and mini pavlova!


Fancy sandwiches by Kara

Lemon tarts

I made these strawberry macarons. They were filled with strawberry almond buttercream.  They didn't quite work as well as my test batch, but they still looked pretty and tasted quite yum! (Will have to keep practicing!)


Those are my choc caramel brownies that are out of focus.... they were nice and gooey!

These little scones were great! I think I need the recipe!!

I also made these little lemon cupcakes!

We only slightly over catered.... (ok, there was heaps of food left over!), but maybe all of the guests just under ate :-) .  Look forward to the next one!!!!

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!

Out for Dinner - Bean To Cafe Regents Park

This is our local cafe http://www.beantocafe.com.au/ - we recently were invited to their "Bubbles & Bites" event, where we were treated to samples from their new menu. So we were keen to get back for dinner! (we had been previously, but not with their new chef!) (they are only open for Dinner on Friday & Saturday nights)


We started with the garlic bread, because we like it! Delicious toasty bread with garlicy butter!


Janet had the Chicken Schnitzel with Creamy Mash & Lemon sauce.  She actually had this last time we went for dinner, but this time, it was much better - the mash was not runny, and it came with vegies! (or salad)


I had the lentil patties with roasted capsicum vinaigrette and salad. I loved this! It is nice to get a vegetarian meal with some protein in it! And the Capsicum sauce was delicious! Thumbs up for this one!

We love the friendliness of this cafe, and we also love the fact we can walk here from home! Next time, we will be going in the morning to try out the Breakfasts!

Dinner from the Garden - Kataifi Pastry Corn Fritters

The goody bag I received on the Christmas Bus Tour contained a packet of this Kataifi Pastry.  We were given a recipe to make some haloumi wrapped in the pastry.  I decided to be a little experimental and put it to use with these fritters....because I din't have any haloumi, and too lazy to visit shops!

To make the fritter mixture, I raided my vegie garden...

In a small food processor, finely chop 1 onion, 1 red chilli, 1 small red capsicum and a handful of fresh herbs.

In a bowl beat together 3 eggs, with a splash of soy sauce, about 1/2 a cup of wholemeal flour and half a teaspoon of baking powder.

TO the egg mixture, add the chopped herby onion mix and the kernals cut from a cob of corn.



Then, with your pastry, make small round rings, and place into a lightly oiled pan.




Put a spoonful of the fritter mix in the centre of the pastry ring



flip over when browned on one side, and cook until done




You end up with a fritter surrounded by nice crispy pastry strands.

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!!!!!