This is Halloween

Happy Halloween everyone!

Virtual Girls Night In: Pink Food

Welcome to the round up of the Virtual Girls Night In.

Dorit from prettybaking in Israel made Reeses Nesquik Breast Cancer Awareness Cupcakes, drawing parallels between femininity and chocolate, sweet, dark and addictive.

Asha from Fork Spoon Knife gives us Pomegranate Yogurt Ice Cream, a low fat creamy treat that's packed with anti-oxidants

Arfi from HomeMadeS made Chocolate Buttons and Gluten-Free Vanilla Buttons, reliving some childhood memories.

Vicky from Sweets at Vicky's gives us Gluten Free Black & Pink Cookies, because everyone needs something to constantly pick at during a girls night in!

Yasmeen over at Health Nut made Pink Stuffed Buns, giving us something savoury, and hearty (which will help soak up all the booze I'm serving!).

Kanchan from Kitchen Gossip made Solkadi, a traditional Indian drink usually served with seafood.

Nat from MummaRats Nest made Pink Jelly Cakes, 3-in-1 Biscuits, and Pink Sleeping Teddy Biscuits proving there is no such thing as too much pink when you cook with an Almost-4-Year-Old little girl. (I hear you there Nat!)

Muneeba from An Edible Symphony gives us Girly Cupcakes, gorgeous delicate things with real strawberry puree in the mix

Cakelaw from Laws of the Kitchen made Rose Biscuits pretty, pink, delicate things perfect for Pink October

Of course, I wouldn't be much of a host if I didn't serve anything myself! We've got some Pink Strawberry Cupcakes and these awesomely dangerous Pink Grapefruit Cosmopolitan Smoothies, not the healthiest concoction but man, do they taste good. I wish you could all come around to my house for real to taste these babies, honest!

So that's it for this event. I hope you all had a bit of fun making your pink food, and I'm so pleased so many people came to my little event, and helped spread the word.
To end on a serious note, I hope you consider making a donation to the Cancer Council. The money goes towards research, and support programs for those diagnosed with cancer. See how your money helps.Thank you to all those who have already donated. If you don't feel you can afford to donate any money, then thank you regardless, for donating your time and cooking to make this event such a success, and helping raise awareness. Without your help, this would have just been me blogging on my own, and that would have been pretty sad. Make sure you check back here next October, and we'll make this an annual event!

Please consider making a donation

Flash Game Friday

Dicewars

It's an online RISK. You vs up to 7 computer players.

Kids Cooking Thursday: Honeycomb

Honeycomb
6 tbs white sugar
2 tbs golden syrup
2 tsp water
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Place sugar, golden syrup and water in a heavy saucepan and stir over a gentle heat until the sugar is dissolved
Bring to the boil and boil for seven minutes
Remove from the heat and quickly add the bicarbonate of soda
At this point the mixture will froth
Stir quickly and pour into a greased 28x18cm lamington tin
As the mixture starts to cool, mark into pieces

If you'd like to join in with Kids Cooking Thursday please leave a permalink to your own Kids Cooking Thursday post, as per the rules.

Dance magic dance...

I suppose this could be construed as the logical follow up from A is for Apple...

Chicken Caesar Pasta Salad

Okay, so I took the cheats way out by buying a Caesar salad kit to make this, but next time I swear I'll do it properly. I felt like it needed vegetables of some sort too, chicken with pasta and bacon and cheese flavoured powders plus salad dressing doesn't really do it for me as nutritionally balanced. But crunchy crumbed chicken forgives a multitude of cooking sins anyway.

Oh, before I forget, there's a new blog out there called Regretsy - who knew there were so many bad taste crafts out there for sale?


Tonight is the deadline for the Virtual Night In, so get those entries in!

Thinking Pink?

Remember tonight is the deadline for entries, and if you haven't already, please consider donating. If the donations get above the $50 target, I'll be giving this away to a random participant in the Virtual Girls Night In:

And it's all for a good cause!



Tonight is the deadline for the Virtual Night In, raising money and awareness for Breast Cancer Research. Time is almost up!

Dinner Fail

Sure it looks pretty tasty above, but let me tell you: if you don't have a fan forced oven, don't bother trying to cook a kangaroo roast. Or even a mini roast or two.

Kangaroo is a pretty touchy meat to cook, it's needs to be slightly on the rarer side or it goes tough, but too rare and it's not nice at all. Normally I stick to sausages, which cook like any other sausage, but I saw these mini roasts at 1/5th the usual price and couldn't resist. But my evil oven didn't cook hot enough, or something, and by the time I started carving it was, of course, too late. These weren't just rare in the middle, they were practically hopping out of the pan.

Good thing I cooked so many roast potatoes! And DP didn't mind that there was no meat, because I bribed him with dessert.

Honeycomb Mousse!

It's from a packet, but he didn't know that. Shhh!


Don't forget to think (and cook!) pink for the Virtual Night In, raising money and awareness for Breast Cancer Research. Time is almost up!

Menu Plan Monday

Monday Roast Kangaroo with Roast Potatoes, Carrots, Pumpkin, Onion & steamed green beans
Tuesday Chicken Caesar Pasta Salad
Wednesday Balsamic Portabello and Brie Ravioli
Thursday Pizza
Friday Lemon Pasta Bake
Saturday Sandwiches
Sunday Freezer Suprise

A lot of things we didn't get to this week. Like making ravioli or cooking with the kids. Master One fell off a table and bruised his head, which we had to run around getting checked out. That took up three of my days (he's fine though). And on Friday we found out we have to move out in a week's time, so we will be offline for a month while we wait for our house to be ready. I'm going to post the next two weeks KCT recipes, even though the kids didn't cook anything, so that you can try the recipes.

As usual, check out I'm an Organizing Junkie for literally hundreds of other menu plan blog posts, and please come back here for Kids Cooking Thursday.

Don't forget to think (and cook!) pink for the Virtual Night In, raising money and awareness for Breast Cancer Research. Time is almost up!

Happy World Zombie Day!

Don't forget to think (and cook!) pink for the Virtual Night In, raising money and awareness for Breast Cancer Research.

I used to believe that my eyes were brown because I ate too much chocolate. Thanks, Dad! - Christine

"My parents would say eat your vegetables, they're good for your motor. So...of course I believed I had a motor, so I'd take my Dad's keys and stick them in my bellybutton to start my motor instead of eating vegetables. I did this until one day my Dad said, if you stick keys in your bellybutton your rearend will fall off. That's when I started to eat my vegetables." - Sherry T.

Just one of the gems from I Used To Believe, the childhood beliefs site.

Don't forget to think (and cook!) pink for the Virtual Night In, raising money and awareness for Breast Cancer Research.

Flash Game Friday

Sheep Dash

Test your reflexes. It's not a timewaster, it's science!

There's still time to cook pink for the Virtual Night In, raising money and awareness for Breast Cancer Research.

Lemon Myrtle & Chilli Pork Stir Fry

Tonight's meal was a super cheap one. The big bag of stir fry vegetables had been marked down to 50 cents, and they were already chopped for me! And the pork was leftover from last night, as was the extra capsicum I put in. What made this simple stir fry special was the dry marinade powder I used, Outback Spirit Lemon Myrtle & Chilli. I only used a little, because we aren't too fond of spicy food in this house, but I've kept the rest, because I think it might be nice to coat some haloumi cubes in, before frying and serving with drinks.

Kids Cooking Thursday: Pink Cupcakes

Rose and Strawberry Cupcakes, and Fresh Strawberry Cupcakes

It's not a party without cake, and what better kind of cake for a 'Pink' party than Strawberry Cupcakes? Just a packet mix I'm afraid, but we jazzed them up a bit. Half the mixed batter had chopped turkish delight and the other half had pureed strawberries added. I was quite lucky the other day, I picked up a kilo of slightly overripe strawberries for just $3.18. I hulled them, and threw them in the food processor, and then blitzed the lot down to moosh.

This is what a kilo of strawberries looks like in my food processor

I measured it out into little ziplock lunch bags. Two bags of 1 cup each, and one bag with only 1/2 cup. Then 1/2 cup went into the cupcake batter, and the troublemakers "cleaned" the other 1/4 cup worth out of the bowl after I removed the blade. So now I have 2 punnets of whole frozen strawberries, plus 2 and 1/2 cups of frozen strawberry puree in my freezer.
And cakes. Not that they'll last long around here.

Miss Three mixing

Master Five taking a turn

If you'd like to join in with Kids Cooking Thursday please leave a permalink to your own Kids Cooking Thursday post, as per the rules.

Please consider making a donation

Don't forget to think (and cook!) pink for the Virtual Night In, raising money and awareness for Breast Cancer Research.

Traffic Light Pork Kebobs

I caught a lucky break today with mark downs and clearance items. I got enough pork for two meals for the price of half what one would normally cost, plus a heap of discounted 'packaged' things, that I wouldn't normally buy, like pre-chopped stir fry vegetables, and a tricolour pack of capsicums. We haven't had kebobs in what feels like forever, so Miss Three and I put these together. Red, Orange and Green Capsicum chunks, alternating with onion and diced pork, and then basted with sweet and sour sauce (discounted to 99 cents! Another bargain)

Master Five informed me they weren't really traffic lights though, because it had other colours because of the pork and onion. Next time he's getting sauteed capsicum strips dumped on his bed of rice. Although I'm sure then I'll get complaints about their shape!

Miss Three thought they were tasty. So did Master Five actually, as long as I didn't call them that "wrong" name.

Don't forget to think (and cook!) pink for the Virtual Night In, raising money and awareness for Breast Cancer Research.

Taste & Create: Mango Cakes

Today the kids helped me make Mango Cakes from Foodelicious, whom I was partnered with for this month's Taste & Create. The recipe is here - we followed it exactly only substituting orange essence for mango essence, because I could not for the life of me find mango essence anywhere. I should have known better than to buy a mango in Victoria in October, and I probably should have learnt from my last taste & create effort. Cupcake recipes containing real fruit don't work as cakes. I made 5 cupcakes, before running out of patty cases, so I put the rest of the batter into a large cake tin. Despite the massive amount of baking powder in this recipe, that didn't rise. The cupcakes did well though.

I really wish I'd been able to find mango essence, or at least a riper mango, because the flavour was not very pronounced at all. I found them kind of bland and gluggy, but the kids liked them. I think when summer hits full force here, and the fruit departments of the supermarket are heady with the aroma of mangos, then I'll revisit this recipe, and see if I can''t make it work. After all, they sound so heavenly on Foodelicous.

And while they were baking, we tried our hands at making chocolate! From scratch no less!

Looks great, but it never set. Even after a few hours in the freezer it had a consistency of sticky fudge, which deteriorated into sticky mess once warmed to room temp. I bundled some of it up into small squares of puff pastry, to bake up for Miss Three's birthday, and the rest is sitting in the freezer waiting for me to figure out what to do with it. A filling for bread rolls perhaps? I have no idea what went wrong though. Perhaps I should just stick to buying the stuff.

Mother's delicious homecooked Pluto.

My kids just got Here Come Science by They Might Be Giants. All three love watching the dvd together, and it keeps them from completely being at each other's throats. As an introduction to the song How Many Planets? Old John was telling a story about how when he was younger, they remembered the names of the planets by saying 'My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas'. But now Pluto is longer a planet, they say 'My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nothing' "and we can longer enjoy the taste of Mother's delicious homecooked Pluto." That makes my kids giggle. So when I heard that intro today while these pizzas were in the oven, I knew what I was calling them.

When I saw this recipe for Funky Lime Pizza on the Menu Plan Monday at Pass The Beans Please I just had to try it. I loved the bright fresh flavours. The eldest two children didn't like the lime or feta, and Master One refused to take more than a single bite, making me get out the emergency Heinz can of pasta. DP thought it would have been ok without the lettuce on it. (He meant the coriander). This is what I get for cooking something innovative and "fancy". Well pfft to them. I loved it, and wasn't particularly phased that I ate almost a whole pizza to myself either.

Homecooked Pluto
pizza dough (or use your own favourite recipe)
500g grated Mozzarella
1/2 onion, thinly sliced
1/2 large zucchini, thinly sliced
1/2 cup frozen corn kernals
1 1/2 tsp of minced garlic (about 2 cloves)
feta cheese, crumbled
fresh coriander leaves, coarsely chopped
juice of 1 lime

Preheat oven to 230C. Cover two baking trays with baking paper. Divide your dough in half, and roll each half out to the size of your tray. Miss Three helped me with the rolling.

Here she is "rolling" out the zucchini too!

Leave a margin about an inch wide around the dough then sprinkle the bases with about half the mozzarella. Then top with onion, then zucchini. Miss Three quite liked this too. Then sprinkle the remaining mozzarella on the top. Add your corn kernals, and some crumbled feta, and little dobs of minced garlic. Mine came from a jar. Because the last four bags of garlic I've bought have ended up shrivelled empty husks right when I want to use them. I don't think we eat as much garlic as we used to. I digress. Bake for 8 minutes, then swap the bottom tray to the top shelf, and vice versa, and bake for another 8 minutes. Until the cheese is melted to your desired colour. As soon as they come out of the oven, brush the pizza rims with a little olive oil, squeeze over your lime juice, and scatter the coriander over the top.

This is a bit of a 'foodie' meal, so perhaps one to use more for Date night than Kids demanding pizza night. Unless your kids are foodies, or at least very fond of sharp flavours like lime and feta.

This was an entry for the Pizza Party Mix Up hosted by Louise at Months of Edible Celebrations. Happy 2nd Blogversary!








Don't forget to think (and cook!) pink for the Virtual Night In, raising money and awareness for Breast Cancer Research.

Can we build it? Yes we can!

Because We Can As they say "We make great things, and we make things great" which they do, make the coolest furniture and fittings I've ever seen. Bob the Builder, you can step down now.

Don't forget to think (and cook!) pink for the Virtual Night In, raising money and awareness for Breast Cancer Research.

Menu Plan Monday

Monday Freezer Suprise
Tuesday Funky Lime Pizza
Wednesday Traffic Light Pork Kebobs
Thursday Lemon Myrtle & Chilli Pork Stir Fry
Friday Pasta Carbonara
Saturday Mac & Cheese, Pizza Muffins, & Carrot sticks
Sunday Sandwiches (after a big Fancy Dress Party afternoon tea)

Kids Cooking Thursday this week will be bringing you Pink Cupcakes (for the Virtual Night In), so be sure to come back for that!

As usual, check out I'm an Organizing Junkie for literally hundreds of other menu plan blog posts, and please come back here for Kids Cooking Thursday.

Don't forget to think (and cook!) pink for the Virtual Night In, raising money and awareness for Breast Cancer Research.

Veal & Mushroom Salad Wraps

Fry up some veal strips and some mushrooms slices, thicken it with a little gravy powder, and place it on some tortillas. Add some lettuce and a little mayo if you like, and dinner is on the table in under 30 minutes.

Don't forget to think (and cook!) pink for the Virtual Night In, raising money and awareness for Breast Cancer Research.

Pink Grapefruit Cosmoplitan Smoothie

Three parts frozen Cosmopolitan. I used the cocktail in a bucket type, but any frozen cosmo would do.
One part pink grapefruit ice cream. I made a beautiful pink grapefruit ice cream late last year, but unfortunately that was in my non-blogging period, and now I can't find the recipe. I know it was custard based, and I think I may have cannibalised so other sort of citrus ice cream recipe to make it.
Blitz in the blender until smooth. The photo does not do the pinkness of this drink justice.

And the taste? Well apart from moaning, I'd say it's fruity, sweet and tart and creamy and refreshing, and not for people with sensitive teeth - the vodka doesn't freeze until it's way below zero, so this ends up super cold. Pretty strong too.
On second thoughts, perhaps I should not have written this post while I was taste testing. Meh, What's a drunken post or two between friends.

This is the drink I'm serving up for the Virtual Girls Night In. I thought I'd post it up before round up so you could all try some too. If I find that pink grapefruit ice cream recipe, I promise I'll blog it up for you. It's very delicious.

Don't forget to think (and cook!) pink for the Virtual Night In, raising money and awareness for Breast Cancer Research.