Dresses & Snacks

easy as pie

I am all about simple and delicious at the moment. For whatever reason, I'm a little extra-exhausted at the moment so my kitchen energy is being devoted to easy, quick dishes that are nutritious (enough).

This little recipe came together last week when I had an undying craving for baked eggs and silverbeet. I made it up as I went along, so these amounts are approximate, but just eyeball it and trust you instincts. There's a lot of 'ish' with this recipe, but let's be honest, it's bacon, eggs and cheese - it's going to be delicious whatever you do.



You will (roughly) need..

4 sheets puff pastry
1/2-2/3 bunch of silverbeet washed, stalked snapped off and chopped into inch-ish wide pieces
4-6 rashes on bacon, rinds removed, torn up as you go
8 eggs + 1 extra
3 tablespoons of natural yoghurt
150g brie (or other similar soft cheese), ripped up as you go along
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 180°C

Grease a baking dish well and line with puff pastry. Break two eggs into the base of the pie and top with a layer of silverbeet. Next, add about 1-2 rashers of bacon torn up, scattered over the silverbeet. Break two more eggs into the pie. Add some ripped up pieces of brie. Season with salt and pepper and repeat until you've just about filled your gorgeous little pie.

Whisk together the yoghurt and extra egg and drizzle over the top of your pie filling. Close up your pie with the remaining pastry, joining the lid to the edges and cutting a small slit in the middle of the lid to allow any steam to escape.

Gently pop your pie in the oven for 20-30 mins, until yummy and golden on top.

This is totally lovely for lunch or dinner with a little side salad, just as divine cold in a lunchbox or reheated for breakfast. I tested this on my recipe-guinea pigs at work and it went down and absolute treat.

 

"I wanted to be rare, I wanted to be noticed, I wanted to be exotic as a Cotton Club chorus girl, and I wanted to be obvious as the most flamboyant hooker on the street. I just wanted to be." - Etta James from her Autobiography Rage to Survive



sunny Sunday

Today Karl and I went on a nice long walk to meet a friend for coffee. It's actually the most perfect day outside - mid 20s and sunny, total delight. Young Karl gave up about half a kilometre from home on the way back so I got a good work out carrying the little meatloaf home.

I wore..
dress - Vera Moda via ASOS
vintage Paloma Picasso sunglasses - gift from Mumsy
watch - Swatch
studded sandal - ASOS


I love this dress for its colours, but I have no idea how or why they came up with the pattern. It's relatively loose in the top but so tight around the thighs, to the point that when walking in it, it actually twists around so I'm constantly tugging at it. Incredibly annoying.

I'm going to spend this lovely afternoon baking and relaxing while Karl snoozes and recovers from his little marathon. I hope you're enjoying your Sunday too

day of rest

Today I had a day of rest.

I spent a lovely evening out last night with friends seeing Beirut, and as standing in a crowd is possibly the most exhausting thing I can do (and if adding in a vibrating floor, also fairly painful) today was spent being exhausted.

I could have spent my day off being productive, It's very frustrating being too tired to do anything on a regular basis, especially when I can see so much stuff around me that should or could be done. However, I tried to fight that urge and be a little kind to my body given its efforts of yesterday.

I spent the day cuddling and tickling Karl and taking goofy photos of him napping on his back like a turtle.

I did make myself a delightful breakfast, which I enjoyed slumped on the couch like a great big slob.






I made cinnamon French toast with raisin challah (a kosher eggloaf, a little similar to brioche) and the biggest cup of milky (soy) coffee in the world in my beautiful blue/floral cup.

I'm too tired to cook (or clean up) now, so I'll have a big soaky bath and some toast before an early bed time with the hope of waking up with enough energy to get to work tomorrow.

It's hard to know when I should push myself and when I should stop myself. I hope in being kinder to myself I can start to work that out.

I'm going to be posting more about the impact of chronic illness on my life. It's important for me to write about it, but also important for my readers (those I know and those I don't) to know the actual reality of being ill.

sweet pins

I like nice bath stuff but I a. have minimal disposable income at present and b. don't fancy scrubbing something into my lovely skin that has a list of ingredients longer than Karl's tail. After a bit of experimentation with ratios, I think my homemade sugar scrub is pretty wonderful. It will make your skin, especially your pins, divinely smooth as it exfoliates while moisturising and leaves you smelling totally yummy.



Just a little disclaimer, I am in no way a beauty or skin expert. This works well for me, but if you have sensitive or tempremental skin please test it on a small patch of you before scrubbing yourself head to toe.

You will need..
A jar (or something to store your scrub in)
1 cup raw sugar (MUST be raw sugar)
100-120ml olive oil
capful (10-15 drops) of lavender oil - you can use another oil but lavender is win-win because it smells lovely and is soothing to the skin

I find it easier to add all ingredients in a medium size bowl then transfer to the container rather than trying to combine everything in the small jar. Start with the sugar, essential oil and 100ml of olive oil and combine. I've found the best mixing instrument is a single chopstick. Add more olive oil to reach your desired texture. I prefer a slightly drier scrub, but find out what works best for you. Worst case scenario you can top up the jar with some extra sugar if the scrub ends up too runny.

To use, apply to your moistned skin in the shower or bath, rubbing in circular motions towards your heart (so, hands to shoulders, toes to hips). Rinse thoroughly and gently towel dry. Voila, you will be scrumptiously smooth and smell like a fancy day spa. This scrub is also great to use as part of an at-home pedicure or manicure. For a pedicure, rub all over your foot, concertrating the scrub on rough bits of your feet using the heel of your hand. For a manicure, simply scrub your hands together as if you were washing them.

Enjoy!

breakfast bagel

At the end of the week I went for a return visit to Manchester Press with a pal for  a luxurious late breakfast. As with my first visit, Manchester Press did not disappoint.

One of the menu options at Manchester Press is a bagel with a soft boiled egg and either salmon or avocado. Salmon or avocado? Talk about Sophie's choice. Fortunately upon request you can have both, so of course that's what I did. Such a perfect breakfast, especially when topped with a squeeze of lemon juice and lots of yummy coffee on the side.

I was so excited I ate a lot of it before I remembered to take a photo, such a pro.

I'm not psychic or anything, but I do foresee many Manchester Press bagels making their way to my belly in the near future.

2012: the year of self of self preservation (or why I will have fewer fucks to give)

Given how little spare time I have outside of 4 full days of school each week (plus numerous hours of study outside of school), working and trying to manage a chronic illness, it is alarming to look back on 2011 and realise how little of it I spent looking after myself. I devoted a lot of my (very limited) energy last year worrying about, and looking after, other individuals in almost all arenas of my life (professional, personal and academic). As my next year of study will be just as challenging and all consuming (if not more so) as the last, I need to commit more time to taking care of me.

As such, 2012 will be the year of self preservation, or the year in which I give fewer fucks about problems that are in fact not problems for me, but for others. That may sound a little callous, but with my energy and time being such a precious resource as is, it seems a little negligent to be spending it on other people who may not regard my welfare as highly as I regard theirs, rather than using that time and energy to support and nuture myself.

Any spare time I do find going forward will be spent walking Karl, stretching, painting my nails, eating cake, spending time with friends who refresh and invigorate me rather than drain me, taking long baths or any other little act of self care that helps me preserve myself as best I can.

So here's to a year hard work, a year of learning, a year of (positive) challenges and a year of self care.

Christmas in Canberra

This Christmas was the first year my family haven't all been together. By 'my family' I do mean my immediate family, as we usually celebrate with just the four of us (plus the three dachshunds of course). Little brother is still in China, so we were down to three humans and three dachshunds. We still had a lovely time, but kept it fairly low key. Here is my Christmas in photos.

After our dinner at Bambusa on Christmas Eve we wandered around the corner from Mum and Dad's house to see a Guinness World Record holding light display. So tacky and so fun!


Our restrained tree.

Brodie and Karl having an argument while we exchanged gifts on Christmas morning.

Karl playing peek-a-boo with Brodie under the couch.

Amazingly creamy oysters.

Scrumptious prawns.

Roquette, wild asparagus, parmesan and macadmia salad.

Five-different-types-of-tomato and basil salad.

Crayfish tail marinated in lemon and corriander then barbequed. Words cannot describe the joy of eating this squirted with fresh lime juice, absolute bliss.

And of course it wouldn't be Christmas with champagne! Champagne for everyone!

While we reclined nursing food-comas we watched the cheeky monkeys wreak havoc.

And that in a nutshell was my Christmas.

twas the night before Christmas..

Twas the night before Christmas, and as my family are in no way religious (beyond our extreme devotion to food) and missing one core family member (my little brother is still in Beijing) we had a rather lowkey but still Christmas-y evening.

We visited our local cinema to see a taping of The Nutcracker performed by the New York City Ballet at the Lincoln Centre, a beautiful theatre I was fortunate enough to visit roughly this time last year to see Carmen. It was a little odd watching something I'm used to seeing live in the cinema, but it was a beautiful production and a very nice outing to get us feeling festive.

After our Christmas booster shot, we wandered across the road to Bambusa for tea. Both my parents had already been there and spoke very highly of it, so my expectations were relatively high.

The style of Bambusa's menu encourages sharing, so that's exactly what we did. To start with, we enjoyed the gow gee (vegetable dumplings) and peking style duck pancakes.

The dumplings were very pretty and equally as tasty. Having recently visited The Land of Dumplings I may be a little hard to please in this area, but they were certainly yummy. My only criticism would be they were served with forks, which struck me as odd, and as it turns out while I can wrangle chopsticks fairly competently if left with a fork I will complete bollocks up eating a dumpling.

Ducky pancakes! The pancakes were nice and thin, the duck nice and bbq-y and the vegetables fresh and crunchy. Pretty much all you can want from a ducky pancake, really.

After whetting our appetites with those little treats, we moved onto a teryaki lamb rack and fresh rock salt prawns with potato dumplings.

The lamb was ever-so tender,  just delightful. The sweet sake and soy glaze was lovely and sticky, but certainly not over the top as glazes can be. The accompany broccolini, lotus root and mushrooms also benefited from the glaze and this plate was emptied fairly promptly.

Looking at this (very bad) photo makes me want more of these prawns. The prawns themselves were very fresh with lovely sweet, tight flesh. The batter was very light and although obviously fried, they were in no way greasy and seasoned with great precision. Perfect. The cute little potato dumplings were quite fun too. I guess it was a very fancy/abstracted version of fish and chips.

While the dessert menu was very tempting I had to decline and had a reasonable coffee instead.

All in all I was impressed the Bambusa and will definitely visit again. In addition to the great food on offer, the service was of a surprisingly high standard as well and I take my hat off to the young staff there, they did a wonderful job.

santa claws

I'm a little late uploading our Christmas photo, but I think you'll agree it was worth the wait. Karl was a perfect little angel when we met Santa, I can easily see this becoming a Christmas tradition. He is mightily photogenic, if I do say so myself.

Karl is obviously the star of the show, however, I'm wearing..

black linen dress - ASOS
tights - Kmart
black felted ballet flats with white toe - ASOS
black and white resin bangles - CottonOn
wishbone pendant - Marcs by Marc Jacobs
watch - Swatch
matching bows - $2 shop