I-C-E-CREAM!

When our close friends from Noosa (very soon to be our friends from Darwin!) were packing up there house to move. She decided she didn't want her ice cream maker anymore. And gave it to me. Along with a waffle maker.. The boys were so very excited.

So today we have made Ice Cream. There are many different recipes to make homemade ice cream. I choose a very very simple one for our first go.





The 4 ingredients needed. How easy.





Mixing. The bowl it's mixed in needs to be frozen first for at least 48 hours. The mixture once mixed initially needs to be put in the fridge to cool right down so it freezes easier when it is in the mixer above.



Finished product! YUM!!

I am now looking forward to trying the other variations/recipes and come up with some of my own too!!

xo

Baking!

I've been doing some baking today! And what i have made are YUMMO!




Cheese Biscuits.

1 1/2 cup Chedder Cheese, 1/2 cup spelt flour, 1/4 cup S/R flour, 4 tbsp Butter.

Mix all in a food processor for roughly 2 minutes, or until forms into a smooth ball.
Let it sit for half hour in the fridge.
Roll out to about 1/8 inch thick. Cut with however big or small you want. Cook on 170c for about 10-12 minutes. Until edges are barely brown.

Boys LOVE Them!





Spelt flour, Garlic, Spring onion and capsicum Focaccia Bread. I could have left it to rise a bit longer, but it was almost lunch time and i was getting hungry and wanted to taste me lovely creation!

Work again tomorrow! Hope your having a good week!

Easy As?!

As If!! I'm not as creative with 'Names' as i am other things.. So when i thought to myself the other day, I might start thinking of a name to call my lil natural nail venture thingo... (can i use that?!? cause i got nothing much else..) You wouldn't believe the lists and lists and lists i went through with choosing names for our boys.. Ben hasn't said much. Mainly cause he knows how much i will keep thinking and changing my lists lol. The only thing he has said is 'naturally nailed by Cass' lol hmmmm not sure!


What is REALLY easy though, is a cordial recipe my MIL gave me! OMG! Easiest thing ever.. We haven't tested the end result yet, but it smells pretty damn fine!




Forgot to take a 'before' shot, so he is a 'in the midst of mixing' shot with stuff everywhere lol.




Finished product. Orange cordial and lemon and lime cordial. Still have heaps of limes (thank you to Linda the lime lady from the show) and lotsa lemons on our lotsa lemons tree. So will be making more in due course. We don't drink alot of cordial during winter so we will have it for the warmer months. Providing it keeps that long.





These didn't turn out as good as they should have. Didn't quite have enough sour cream for them, so just a little dry.. But the choc fudgeee goodness was still there! yum!

I'm off to work tomorrow, 10am until sometime in the afternoon.... Then on Saturday we are off to Hervey Bay to use Ben's dinner voucher and pick up the battery he won at the fishing comp. We will be staying the night. And we will get a full day up there so might have a look in BCF (Boating Fishing and Camping) shop!! One of our all time Fav's!!

WHoops forgot to mention, the AWESOME win by the Mighty Maroons last night in Origin!! YAHOO!!! I'll leave you on the Awesome note! Bens not impressed he backs the Blues! hehehehehehe :-)

Our Saturday Night Camp Dinner.

Saturday we borrowed my parents camp oven to do some yummy cooking.




Fire on it's way.





Chook and hard vegies ready.




Mmmmmmmm Chook done, soft vegies boiling away in the billy above the fire. Our whole dinner was cooked on the fire. Dinner cooked this way really warms the heart and soul! Wish we had more time to cook this way.

After dinner we cooked some marshmellows over the fire.



One happy lil cowboy, Loved his toasted marshmellows.




One happy lil Blue Eyes just happy to eat the normal marshmellow off the end of the toasting stick!

Hope you all had a great weekend. Ours was awesome! Family time, home time LOVE!

Food, Food - Glorious FOOD!

I forgot to take a photo of the latest eggplant picked yesterday by Ben and the boys, so instead i took photo's of what we made it into!

For dinner last night we had, Sausage, Eggplant and Tomato Casserole. It is a slow cooker recipe, so it was suppose to be cooked for a few hours. But being that i had to cook the sausages before putting it in the oven (or slow cooker) It didn't really matter that i only cooked it for 30 Min's in the oven. The Eggplant and Tomato mixture also had to be cooked on the stove top as well, so i let it simmer on there for longer before putting it all the oven. With all the added herbs the house was smelling so yummy. The boys stayed down in the bar with Ben to watch the end of the footy. So i turned the radio on and up!! And enjoyed some much needed kitchen time, to myself!



The end result, The boys don't like as many flavours and added extra chunky bits in there dinner, so they got a sausage each and some mash potato!




A close up of our dinner, That is home made bread as an added extra to dunk in the juices left on the plate!! mmmm IT was SO yummy!


After having such a great time cooking yesterday, and not wanting to get out of bed this morning... I decided to do some more cooking to brighten my day!




I did a bit more than i original intended too!

I made 2 loaves of basil and garlic bread, a baked custard, a small batch of shortbread. And finally i got a recipe for chocolate yogo from Ben's cousin, from Tara Brae Farm (She's on my list of blogs i watch!) It is really good, so easy to make and oh so yummy. The boys have already had a couple of serves today. So I'm not sure how long it will last!

I still have more to do today, but having a spell right now, so i dont keel over!! after my rest i have to organise some things i sold on ebay to sell and do some cleaning! So time for me to go. :)

Why i shouldn't experiment without BEN!!!

Today I'm not feeling the best (think I'm getting a head cold yuk!). So to try make myself feel better i decided to do some cooking. I pulled out one of my 4 ingredients books and found a nice sounding cake recipe*. So i said to my cowboy we would bake a cake while blue eyes is sleeping. While i was getting it all ready cowboy suggested to do cupcakes (muffins as we only have a muffin tin be he doesn't mind, more to eat!) and i thought what a wonderful idea. Even though i had never made this cake before i thought why not. And then i asked cowboy if he wanted to make it different colours, that went down with a loud yelling YES!!! Off we went making the cake putting it in the muffin tray. All going well so far even with a little helper..

Here they are before going in the oven.

After a few minutes in the oven, i had an after thought.... i think they might overflow... Cowboy and i checked them, and what do you know they are starting to overflow...

Usually when i want to experiment Ben is here, and he is my voice of reason. He talks me out of doing things that he knows instantly wont work. Me on the other hand am not thinking about what happens in the middle to get to the finished product, just the fun idea of multi coloured muffins!! Luckily i made it in time to put a tray on the bottom rack so i wouldn't have burnt mixture and smoke all through the house, my brain works sometimes lol..

Once they had finished cooking, not as much at dripped off as i thought was going to.

How they looked upon coming out of the oven. Not burnt either cooked just perfectly!

The offcuts after trimming.

The final result after trimming, they looked pretty good after alot more work for a pretty simple recipe!

Now to something i made this morning that had no problems with it!

Pasta Salad! We love pasta salad. I think it works out every time i make it because pasta is easy to cook and so are boiled eggs! I can't really fail with it!

Tonight we will have roast chicken with the salad, i was going to do this today as well. But after the muffin incident i think i might leave it to Ben when he gets home from work!

Hope your having better luck with your baking! xo

* 1,2,3,4 CAKE

• 1 cup of butter
• 2 cups of sugar
• 3 cups of self raising flour
• 4 eggs

Preheat oven to 140c.

Using electric mixer, cream butter and sugar for 5 minutes or until pale and fluffy.

Add eggs one at a time.

Beating well between eggs.

Fold through sifter flour.

Spoon into prepared pan and bake for 1 1/4 hours (cover with alfoil if cake is Browning to quickly.) Cool in tin before turning out.

Our weekend at home.

This weekend we stayed home pretty much the whole time. We did pop out to see Granny and Pa on Saturday arvo for some play time though!! We didn't do a great deal this weekend, some more spring cleaning, tidying, cooking and normal cleaning!!

This is our Jacaranda in full bloom without it's foliage yet.

This is my clay pot, my mil gave this to me for my birthday, and i finally found a recipe to cook in it that is designed to be cooked in a clay pot. Its called Turkish Lambcooker, more or less it's a stew. But an oh so yummy stew!! Would be great for winter. Luckily yesterday was very overcast, rainy and cold so it suited perfectly! Here is the link for the recipe, it is so very easy, 10 Min's prep and 80 Min's cooking time in the oven.

http://www.cookadvice.com/recipes/turkish_lambcooker-48686-recipe.htm

I love the idea of putting everything together in one pot and cooking, so easy and the flavour's go through all the food yummo!!


Yesterday we finally got some rain, we need alot more but this was a start. Our cowboy was so excited to see rain, no matter what we said he would sneak outside to play in it.. Cheeky!!

This is the view from my kitchen window, looking out at our vegie garden and jacaranda, and into our neighbours side yard. I love watching the rain, its even better when i have something nice to watch the rain hit like our vegies!!

I gave our cowboy the umbrella to play with out in the rain, seeing as he wouldn't stay out of it, best idea ever, he had a blast!!

Having lots of fun mum!!

Sunday was a rest day for us, Ben spent most of the day in his bar watching Bathurst, playing computer games and napping hehe. I forgot to take a photo of him asleep but i got one of him multi tasking. Watching the car race as well as playing games.. And who said men can't multi task... hehe

Honey who is winning the race????? "oh i think Holden is in the lead, i can't remember" hehe Love you Honey xo

This is a geisha girl after our rain, wasn't sure if the photo was going to turn out, I'm not as good as Ben at taking plant photo's. I just use the Auto on the camera, Ben fiddles with the settings. I know you get better photo's with that, but usually i take photo's of little boys and they need to be taken quickly!!

Speaking of little boys, while we were playing after the rain, our cowboy wanted to have a go at taking some photos. He did a pretty good job, he took heaps. I will do a post this week with some of his photos in it. Here is a sneak peek. He likes to be like daddy and take photo's of the plants!! Budding cameraman and gardener i think! Hope you have a great start to the week. I've done some more sorting of our cupboards so i need to go and move it all to where it now belongs (bin, Vinnie's, or try and sell). xxoo

Loves his gumboots, got a few good shots of them, hehe.