Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Confessional - Trashy Tuesday

Ok, I have a confession. I am a reasonably smart person (I managed to get through university twice), I enjoy learning new things and talking to different people. I once managed a small law firm and these days i'm paid to impart my wisdom to children. I also LOVE LOVE LOVE trash television shows. Lately i've been reveling in the sickly sweet, tooth rotting goodness that is Trashy Tuesdays. It starts with "Packed to the Rafters", which on the scale of trashy tv, is very low. We move on to "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" a little later, 10/10 on the trash scale. Over the last few weeks, there has been a series of "Documentaries" (hahahahaha) by an English "journalist" exposing different kinds of love, from mail order brides, to polygamous families, to the world of geishas. Today I also watched the first episode of "Beauty and the Geek" online, as I missed it when it aired. It was absolutely hillarious, fairy floss in the form of a tv program. I prefer not to see the flaws in these programs, they are my time to simply turn off, not to think about how sad it is that people can be, or act, so stupidly and not try to be the best that they can be.







Ok, no more confessions for now. I'll keep the rest of my dirty little secrets to myself.....for now.

A big thank you to my 12 followers as well, I appreciate every single one of you!

Hope you've all had a truly wonderful trashy Tuesday!!!! :)

Mary xxx

Monday, October 25, 2010

A salad and a Floating Island

I've found myself incredibly busy over the past few weeks and I haven't found the time to come back here and update. I'm taking a few minutes out now, my little girls are both down for a nap at the same time (yay!) - By the way, it's only midday, the time on my blog posts is always wrong.

I am always inspired by other bloggers, be it with food and recipes, fashion, crafts or simply good advice about self esteem and positivity. Not too long ago, I was reading a post about salads over at the blog "Apples under my bed" (http://applesundermybed.blogspot.com/2010/09/epic-salads.html. I like to think that I eat well, and when I truly do eat well, I simply love how much energy I have and how alert I am. Heidi who hosts the blog, talked about how to make salad tasty, satisfying and keep them healthy. After reading this post, I was inspired to create my own epic salad, which was greatly enjoyed by Mr SweetPea, SweetPea AP (2) and SweetPea EA (almost 1).

Here is a picture of my delicious epic salad


If you would like to re-create this lovely salad, you will need to combine:

  • mixed lettuce leaves
  • drained tinned tuna (I like the one in oil - which I drain, but this is probably not the healthiest option)
  • red pepper
  • baby corn
  • soba noodles
  • poached egg

From memory (which is very poor these days), I dressed this with a little soy, a little hoi sin sauce, salt and pepper.

I think that the addition of the poached egg to the top was particularly genius of me, modest aren't I!

In other cooking news, I was trying to come up with something sweet late one afternoon to serve to friends who were coming by for coffee that night. I wanted to make something a little different and special. There was no good reason, I just felt like it. I went on over to the Tartelette blog, which never fails to inspire (www.mytartlette.com). I found a recipe for strawberry and vanilla floating islands. My Tartlette makes hers, in the recipe on her blog, with a strawberry coulis. I noticed that she said that the traditional way to make these was with a creme anglaise and at that moment there was no turning back. After trying to make creme anglaise twice and ending up with scrambled eggs both times, I was almost out of eggs. So, I had to make plain old custard, which is still nice, just not as glamerous as cousin creme anglaise. At some point in making this, I also came across a recipe for balsamic toffee strawberries at Raspberri cupcakes blog (http://http://raspberricupcakes.blogspot.com/2010/09/balsamic-toffee-strawberries.html).

Forgive my food styling (aka rustic style or homestyle). This is what I ended up with. Was very yummy, although could have been much better with that glamerous cousin creme anglaise.

I hope that everyone has a lovely Monday. I'm off to do the dreaded housework. I'm forever trying to be organised and "on top of the housework". Who knows, maybe oneday it will happen...hahahaha