More sneaky peekies!

Here's another for Buzz and Bloom.

From Scrapping Stuff

Keep an eye on the blog for the full reveal and some excellent scrappy inspiration from the whole team.

Two Become One

Two recipes that is. After visiting the little market gardener this morning (see this post for the whole story) I had a bit of a surplus of fresh produce. I thought it would be a good idea to make this Stuffed Red Pepper recipe. But after the last time we had it I knew it needed a little tweaking.

Then of course I had the 2kg of fresh, ripe Roma tomatoes so I thought I would do a traditional Italian sauce. I Googled for a recipe and found this one at grouprecipes.com Turned out great!

Real Italian Tomato Sauce
Ingredients: 

• salt & pepper
• 1 ½ kg ripe tomatoes, quartered
• 1 cup red wine
• 2 cups cold water
• ⅓ cup tomato paste
• 2 garlic cloves, sliced
• 2 tsps brown sugar
• 2 onions, sliced
• ⅓ cup vegetable stock
• 1 tsp Chilli flakes, (optional)

Directions:

Place stock in saucepan & bring to a simmer.

Add onion & garlic stirring until onion is soft.

Lightly season with salt and pepper now and after each addition.

Add tomatoes & sugar & cook stirring every once in awhile for 10 minutes.

Stir in wine & tomato paste.

Bring to the boil.

Gently boil stirring every once in awhile for 5 minutes until liquid reduces & thickens.

Stir in water & chilli flakes. Let simmer uncovered for 40 minutes.

If you like a chunky sauce - puree 1/2 the sauce only.

If you want a smooth sauce puree the whole lot.

Transfer sauce to clean jars while still hot.

Add the chilli if you like a little heat. I have found the sauce reduces sufficiently that you may not need to puree at all. However, a little pureeing does make the sauce go a long way!

Then onto my tewaked bell peppers. The original recipe was nice but needed a little more OOMPH!

Stuffed Red Peppers



Ingredients:

• 3 red capsicums
• 250 g premium beef mince
• 250 g sausage meat
• 2 eggs
• 2 tablespoons flour
• 2 tablespoons grated parmesan cheese
• 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• 1 teaspoon mixed Italian herbs
• 1.2 cup chopped parsley
• 1 jar Real Italian Tomato Sauce
• Welly Boot Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• salt & pepper, to taste
• 250 milliliters boiling water

Directions:

Preheat oven to 150℃

Cut the capsicums in half and remove the seeds. Put aside.

In a mixing bowl add beef and sausage mince, eggs, flour, parmesan cheese, paprika, garlic powder, herbs, and parsley. Mix the ingredients until evenly blended.

Stuff the mixture into each half capsicum, making sure the mixture is no more than half a centimetre above the rim of the capsicum, and is packed in firmly. Now fry the capsicums Welly Boot Extra Virgin Olive Oil for 5 minutes, with the meat side facing down, until the meat is a reddy brown and completely sealed.

Then turn the capsicum over, and fry for a further 5 minutes, for a bit of a charcoal effect. Add tomato sauce and boiling water to the pan. Simmer for 10 minutes on medium heat, then transfer to oven for 30 minutes .

(Serves 6)

I know it sounds a little fiddly but if you don't want to be a masochist (like me LOL) you could prepare the sauce ahead of time and just pull it out when you need it. Otherwise the peppers themselves are pretty cruisy to prepare - and pretty filling. I also reccoment Rita's rocket salad from the original recipe (see link above), as a side. Yum!

It's Times Like These . . .

I love loving in the "country". I say that in inverted commas, because our town has a poulation of around 50K, but still manages to retain a certain rural charm when you can stop on the side of the road less than 1km from the centre of town and get all of this straight from the farmer himself!

From Life

All vine ripened and bursting with flavour. And that's not even the best part. For the melons, and tomatoes he wanted to charge me $6!!! I only had a $10 note so I said "just call it ten". But he insisted on picking some capsicums - bell peppers to our international readers :) - straight off the bush. What a bargain! And I know that I am providing the very best nutrition for my family as they are all in season, not sitting in cold storage for 6-12 months losing all their goodness.

Local girls: You know the farm right. Just after the Shell service station on the Australind Bypass. And he said if he's not left anything out at the roadside, just toot or call and he'll come a runnin'!

Now, does anyone need any watermelon! What the heck I am going to do with all of that? And does anyone have good authentic tomato/pasta sauce recipe? Or should I just google?

More Colour Fun and a Sneak Peek

I am loving colour at the moment. I love putting my little colour schemes together for my LO's and then digitising them at Kuler (I think this appeals to the anally retentive part of my personality LOL)

Here's the latest

From Scrapping Stuff

And the sneak peek is for . . . well a secret! But stay tuned and all will be revealed :)

From Scrapping Stuff

From Scrapping Stuff

Playing along: "My Place & Yours - Kitchen Love"

I went for a visit to Jodie Z's blog today and fell in love with the pics she posted of her kitchen for My Place & Yours. Check it out Jodie's oh-so-cutsie-cute kitchen here:)

So I thought I would play along too. The theme this week is "Kitchen Love". So basically take photos of what you love in your kitchen and post your link here.

I adore the whole shabby chic thing that many of the girls that have already posted have got going on, but it's not my personal style as you will see. Though I do have a few quirky little pieces from my Grandmother that take pride of place. So here is a little tour of my kitchen:

The Big Picture

From Life

From Life

I love having the outlook from the kitchen to the backyard. Makes it easy to potter about and still keep a watchful eye on the kidlets. When we were looking for a house design to build I used to joke that I wanted a "Command Centre". I think that's what I got :)


Favourite Things

From Life

Recipe Books: Including one very full and disorganised collection of recipes, printed off from the net which I have then stuffed into the purple display folder. What can I say? It's a compustion! I should mention that there are blank sleeves in the back of the folder, but I can't be bothered with that so they just get thrown in the front LOL. One day I will make them pretty and file them in the custom recipe tin I made for that purpose. I'm also considering the irony of having the Nigella cookbook sitting right on top of the CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet book :$

From Life

iPod (with speakers): Great for dinner parties, scrap nights and just much easier to do housework while rocking out to a favourite tune or three :)

From Life

The Fridge: Always covered with artwork, shopping lists, bills, school notes and fingerprints. But it looks colourful right?

From Life

The Pantry: Could do with being a bit bigger actually LOL. Complete with little person in the shot, and one of the quirky items I mentioned earlier. That step/stool came from my grandmother's kitchen. It was made by her brother-in-law and I remember spending many hours at my grandma's side on that step, watching and helping her cook. And now my kids do the same with me. It's still steady as a rock by the way:)

From Life

Mmmmmm, coffee: Don't get me started. I think every home should have one of these! Bye-bye instant, helllloooo flavour! That said I have been weaning myself off the strong stuff at breakfast and opting for iced water during the summer. But come winter . . . . look out!

From Life

Marble pastry board and rolling pin: Again inherited from my grandmother's kitchen. I had to wait about seven years to have a kitchen with enough bench space to handle it though LOL. Wouldn't be without it. So handy! In fact, just used it for pizza dough on Friday night. Perfecto!

From Life

Loves of my life: Yep! My dishwasher. I seriously sometimes wonder how I lived without it. Absolute torture while we were building this house as the rental that we were living in didn't have a DW, but we bought this one before we moved in. So it sat out in the shed for about 6 months! In it's box! Not being used! Oh and the ridiculously expensive bin. Well, sometimes a girl just needs a bit of bling. Even if it does hold food scraps and smelly cat food tins? Right???

Well, that's about it folks, and if you're still here 'til now you deserve a freakin' medal LOL!

Oh My . . . What a Find!

I am sooo excited! I have just had a visit to our local little thrift (op) shop! I was in there scouting for materials for my friend Jodie's very gorgeous Etsy shop (you should see what this girl can do with an old lace table cloth!) I digress, while I was fossicking around I stumbled across this board game:

From Life

Not sure if anyone is familiar with this game, but my family were SORRY! mad back in the day. My late grandmother in particular was a board game nut! I can remember spending hours at her breakfast bar or dining table with one game or another (Game of Life, Careers, Ginger Megs to name a few). But this one was the old trusty. In fact I remember Grandma contacting the makers of the game to order new cards and pieces (often!). We just kept wearing them out LOL.

From Life

From Life

And so here am I introducing yet another generation of the family to this fun and - might I add educational game. Just seems so fitting though as this Tuesday just gone would have been Grandma's 87th birthday. Happy Birthday Grandma!

Sneaky Peeky . . . . (Updated)

This

From Scrapping Stuff

goes with that

From Scrapping Stuff

Keep your eye on the Buzz and Bloom Blog for the full reveal

Blogs Away!!!!

Hey-Ho Lovelies :) Just a bit excited that my very first ever project for Buzz and Bloom is up on the blog! Click here to check out my project, but be sure to browse through the inspiring work from the rest of the team.

From Scrapping Stuff

Off to the Show!

If you're in the South West today, come and see us peddling our wares at the Donnybrook Food and Wine Festival. We have the best Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Olives and Dukka in town!

Fun With Colour

I have discovered (through Kevin & Amanda) a really cool site for colour inspiration. It's called Kuler. Check it out, there are literally THOUSANDS of different colour themes to help inspire you. I have just joined up so that I could create and post my very own colour theme, and here it is:

From Scrapping Stuff

I'm using this theme on a layout I'm working on. It's my bandwagon of the month!