Meal plan time!

Best laid plans to update this blog regularly and then my laptop broke down and needed to be repaired. It wasn't budgeted for (nor was the cost of getting the husbands license renewed) so I was without a computer and had to wait for a few weeks before getting it repaired. But it was fixed this week and I'm back to posting my meal plans again.

I did stick mostly to my meal plan for the last few weeks but writing it out by hand sucked. Typing out my meal plan and shopping list is so much easier and neater. Plus, it's all organised by category and only takes me a few minutes to complete.

• Sandwiches - Ham and tomato toasty for the husband and tuna salad for me. (We have a lunch date and the days we eat lunch out I like to plan a light meal)
• Chickpea burgers 
• Rice paper rolls
• Oven baked fish and salad
• Pork chops, baked potato and steamed veg
• Rissoles, mash and veg
• Curried sausages and brown rice

The pork chops and fish are already in the freezer. Chickpea burgers show up pretty often on my meal plans but to be honest, they're usually the first thing dropped off the meal plan if we decide to eat out or have a lazy dinner because the bread rolls will go in the husbands lunch and the salad will easily get used up in other meals. Plus a can of chickpeas lasts forever in the pantry.

And the curried sausages is purely a craving. I was talking to mum on the phone the other day while she was cooking it. Instant craving! I've made curry recently in the last few weeks in the form of katsu chicken curry and chicken singapore noodles but I really feel like mums recipe for curried sausages. Plus it's cheap and super easy to make. (Although mum would never have served it over brown rice or veggies other than onions and carrots in the sauce)

Happy 2014! And a meal plan

It's the start of a new year! This year is an exciting one for my husband and I, in a few weeks we'll be starting our first IVF cycle. It's an exciting but also a scary time as well. IVF is expensive, so I'm going to be keeping up with the meal plans and closely watching our grocery budget.

Here's our meals for the next week!

• Toasted sandwiches (We met for sushi at lunch today so a light meal is perfect!)
• Slow cooker corned beef, boiled potatoes and steamed beans
• Leftover corned beef and salad
• Roast Pork, roast potatoes and carrots, steamed beans
• Pork and gravy rolls with veggie sticks
• Chickpea burgers
• Spicy chicken pitas

It's a bit of an odd mix, I'm trying to empty out the freezer which is why there's a roast and the corned beef. We're also meant to have a heatwave this weekend so the corned beef might be eaten on bread rolls instead of with boiled potatoes and steamed beans. 

Hubby will be having sandwiches for lunch, either ham or the leftover meat from the roast. I'm still on holidays so I'm home all day and will probably stick with scrambled eggs or leftovers for lunch. For breakfast there's cereal or English muffins. 

I will have to drop into the supermarket towards the end of the week and pick up bread rolls, pita bread and some more salad. 

Meal planning

I've made meal plans for a few years now. But every now and then I get side tracked, either I get stuck in a rut and I'm just making the same few dishes over and over again. Or I have the best intentions and buy all the ingredients for the meals I've planned.....then wind up eating out or dinners that consist mostly of toast. Scrambled eggs on toast, baked beans and toast or peanut butter toast.

I need to get back into the habit of cooking from the meal plan, so I'm posting it here for a bit of accountability. So here it goes, seven dinners for the week. Not necessarily in the order I'll cook them, I usually swap nights around here and then to fit in with our schedule for the week.

• Meatball Risotto with a side salad - loosely based off this recipe, except I make my own meatballs instead of using Italian sausage. http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/27634/tomato+and+meatball+risotto
• Left over Risotto - I'm not a huge fan of leftovers but this makes a big dish and it tastes even better the next day
• Pork chops, mashed potatoes and steamed beans, broccoli and carrots
• Oven baked fish and homemade chips with a salad
• Chickpea burgers - based off this recipe, except I cut the eggs down to just one egg white and use hardly any breadcrumbs http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/23438/chickpea+and+vegie+burgers
• Roast chicken with roasted veggies and steamed beans
• Rice paper rolls using the leftover roast chicken 

It's a bit of a mix, a few meat and three veg type meals (boring but simple) one vegetarian meal and no side dishes of toast!

Thankful Thursday #1

My poor neglected blog. Life got busy, crazy busy. My husband and I both had minor, but time consuming, health problems. Work was busy and this blog was just one of many things I let slip. 

But now I'm trying to get into a routine of posting here more regularly. I've always been a list maker and I've seen the Thankful Thursday lists floating around on blogs and knew I just had to join in. So here it goes!

Blog Lovin

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Cake pics and dinner at Gambaro's

My blog has sadly been neglected the last few months. I'd like to say it's because I've been busy, but in all honesty, I haven't been that busy at all. I've been baking but nothing too exciting. Just a few treats (bribes?) for my parents and their employees in exchange for work on my car. I did make a pretty cute cake for my husband as a Valentines Day treat, but I intended to take photos step by step and completely forgot about it.

Chocolate cake with a cute
 little pink heart hidden inside

But now we're in March and this weekend saw the birthday of my gorgeous, sweet sister in law. Our family did it's usual thing and went out to dinner, this time to Gambaro's in Brisbane. It's a bit of a favourite restaurant, every one seems to enjoy the menu.

Balloon bouquet for the birthday girl,
 inside one was a gift card!

Well, all except me, sadly I'm the only one in the family who isn't a seafood lover. I just wish there were a few more non-seafood options! I know it's a seafood restaurant  but there's only so much seafood I can handle. Two courses of it is too much for me, but the only non seafood choice for main is a steak. And well, I can get a steak at the pub, if you know what I mean.  A steak just doesn't seem fancy when every one else is ordering lovely, well thought out meals. I'm hoping their menu changes before we go back there again. Their old menu, which is the one on their website, had a delicious lamb dish. I know they had a smaller menu while they were renovating and now that the renovations have finished I'm crossing my fingers they go back to the larger menu. And bring back the cocktail menu too! Oh! And bring back the crepes on the dessert menu too!

After dinner we went back to my brother and sister in laws house. We are always too full after dinner to have cake, but I planned for that. I made a cake for her, and with the extra batter had whipped up a few cupcakes for mum and dad to take home. I wanted her and my brother to have enough cake to take to work or share with friends. I think her sister and two nephews were visiting today so I'm hoping she got to play the favourite auntie and spoil the nephews with lots of birthday cake!

Chocolate cake with a cherry tree with one sweet little owl.

The cake itself was chocolate and it was covered in a dark chocolate ganache. The filling was caramel, made the old fashioned way of boiling a can of condensed milk and then when cool mixing in some whipped cream. (Oh boy did I baby sit that can of condensed milk, I think I topped up the stock pot every 15mins, I was not going to have that can explode and cover my kitchen with hot sticky caramel!)

The decorations are all fondant, my local spotlight was out of white fondant so I bought a different brand from Woolworths. Which I really regret. It was super soft, sticky and a pain to work with. It sweated so much! The decorations you see are the second attempt. I had the cake all ready on Friday night, but when I woke up Saturday morning they had melted. I nearly cried! But this tree looks so much nicer than the first one so it was worth it. The owl looks nicer too, the first one looked a bit plumper and more like a cat, whereas this one is definitely owl shaped. 

Closer look at Mrs Owl

But the minute I put a lid on the cake carrier it would start to sweat again. I'm sad to say that when I gave the cake to my sister in law it had started to get a bit sticky again. The luster dust that I'd used on the flowers was no longer sparkly and it looked just a bit wet. Ugh. Not using that brand of fondant ever again. 

Luckily everyone said they couldn't tell that the fondant was sticky, but I could. Oh well, lesson learnt!

Next up is my birthday, but because it's just a few days before Easter we're going to celebrate in April instead. Just to space it all out a bit. I'll still make a cake for my husband and I to have on my birthday, but I'll make a larger one for when I family come to visit too. Plus there's Easter baking as well! I still don't know what I'll do for Easter, maybe some cake pops and a cheesecake.

Macarons

The last few weeks haven't been that great. We've had a lot of sad news, some from Tony's family, some from my family and a few other things haven't turned out the way we've hoped they would. All in all it's been pretty rough.

I was moping and had just popped in to our local Woolies supermarket to pick up the necessities after a bad week (chocolate, chips, popcorn and diet coke) when I wandered down the baking aisle and saw this.

Passionfruit macarons in a box mix? I very rarely buy box mixes, I can't even remember the last time I bought one. I don't even know why I was looking in the packet mix section! Baking is a sure way to cheer myself up. I love baking, it's relaxing and then at the end of it there's a yummy treat to eat.

But here's where I fail at a foodie, I have to admit I've never even tried a macaron before. I'm more of a cupcake girl. I love cake in all it's forms (except trifle, to do that to cake is a disgrace) and truth be told, I really prefer home made cake to other sweets or cakes you can buy at a bakery or cafe.

I also live on the Gold Coast and in my suburb bakeries and cake shops are disappointing so I avoid them at all costs. I have seen macarons for sale in the cold case section at Woolworths, but just couldn't bring myself to buy them. 

So when I saw the box mix I just snapped it up. My husband was a bit shocked that I bought a box mix, he was even sceptical about them. Adriano Zumbo is famous for macarons and complicated desserts, so I wasn't sure I could even get them to turn out and look anything like a macaron. I have spent many hours watching cooking videos on youtube so had picked up a few tips and pointers. I'd also seen a quite a few disasters.

But one Wednesday night after even more sad news I cracked open the box and gave them a try. I'd read that the mix doesn't whip up too well in stand mixers as it's only a small amount, but I had no issues using my kitchen aid. I did a few steps that aren't mentioned on the box. I left them sit on the bench for about 30mins before baking (I got distracted and forgot about them after I'd finished piping, whoops!) and then let them cool completely before trying to take them off the baking paper.

They turned out pretty well and were absolutely delicious! So much so that this week I bought the salted caramel flavour to try! Yum!