Happy National Cheesecake Day!!
Well, technically it's not a recognised day in New Zealand (it is in the US) but I'm willing to make it happen...you with me?? And to make it happen, I'm going to need everyone to make no bake chocolate cheesecakes!
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Something I have noticed over the last few months is just how many things it is possible to make at home that I had never even thought you could!
My new philosophy is, if you can buy it at the supermarket you can probably make it, and if you can't make it, you probably shouldn't be eating it! Speaking strictly about packaged things though - there is no WAY I'm going to be growing wheat to make flour. Not in this lifetime anyway!
So far I've made some pretty exciting stuff that I would normally have just bought. A lot of things are definitely more convenient to just buy, although I try not to, but the best recipes I have found are those that are super easy and that I use all the time.
Case in point, homemade vanilla extract!...
Remember when I made this magical salted caramel sauce? Well it just got even more magical.
SALTED CARAMEL CUPCAKES!!!
It's 2 of my all time favourite things coming together. Like Taylor Swift & Calvin Harris. Except vanilla cupcakes & salted caramel sauce.
And then they got married and had beautiful salted caramel cupcake babies!!...
Our house is cold. Someone...ahem...forgot to get the gas bottle filled so it's kinda like Antarctica right now. Lucky for me (and you) we have a Tropical Fruit Smoothie to see us through. It's like the sun is shining out of my glass! Which is nice. Because it's most DEFINITELY not shining out my window.
I have a rule - as much as possible I try to only buy fruit & vegetables that are grown in New Zealand. This means that if it's the middle of winter, I'm generally not eating zucchini and peppers. I think it's a little silly that just because I want a zucchini in July it needs to be shipped halfway round the world. I do however have a few exceptions to this rule and this smoothie is FULL of them!...
If you haven't been here before, this is the re-cap of our trip to Vietnam in April - we started in Hanoi, went to Halong Bay and after an overnight train journey we ended up in Hue! Also, it's worth noting that there are a ton of photos in this post - I couldn't choose!! Just in case you don't feel like looking at pictures!
In the train stations along the way the locals set up shops that are covered with sheets until the train comes in, then it's all go. I was a little intimidated by the cooked chickens hanging above some of the counter though...we gave those a miss!...
I am so finely attuned to anything to do with salted caramel that I can spot it a mile away. Last week we had a girls night at the movies. There were 10 of us girls, we drank wine and came out of the cinema giggling like little school girls. $5 says you can guess what movie we saw.
Just call me Mrs Channing Tatum 😉
Anyway, I always get a choc top ice-cream when I go to the movies. They're my fav. This time I thought I'd be good as I had a little bottle of bubbles so didn't need both, but as I walked past the ice-cream freezer, wine in hand I couldn't help it. I snuck a quick glance into the freezer and yep. Salted caramel choc top!! Needless to say, I had wine & ice-cream for dinner. Always making good food choices....
I know it's winter, and I'm supposed to be getting into slow cooker recipes and hot desserts and things that make you warm and cosy but I can't. I just don't like winter! All I want to do is make is ice-cream and smoothies and salads that I can take to the currently non-existent barbeques. Oh well, only 5 more months til summer! And here's a delicious sesame noodle dish that you can take to barbeques when summer does roll around.
Or for now, sit on the couch and eat in front of the heater with your blanket while dreaming about summer.
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Well, we are officially into winter now! Here is a little bit of what we got up to in June.
It got cold...we had a few really heavy frosts. I even had icicles on my car window! So pretty.
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Naturally sweetened homemade Bounty Bar bites. Delicious coconut coated in chocolate - they taste just like a Bounty Bar but without the guilt!
I have an issue with the placement of chocolate bars at the supermarket. You carefully avoid the whole aisle dedicated to chocolate & lollies and then, feeling preeetty good about yourself head for the checkout only to be subtly assaulted by the mini versions. And then you buy them and eatallthechocolate. And this is me, a grown woman, by myself. No kids with me. How do you Mama's out there do it? And then there's the matter of your kids!
I'm actually pretty controlled - it's the ice-cream that gets me (also by the check-out, thanks Pak'n'Save). But if I do surrender to the "eat me" calls of the chocolate bars it's ALWAYS a Bounty Bar. Always....
I am a firm believer that everybody needs a solid chocolate chocolate chip cookie recipe in their collection. If you don't have one you can use mine, because this one is worth hanging on to. And ok, on a technicality this isn't a chocolate chip recipe, but chocolate chunks are so much better right?
I can't remember where I found this recipe, but it came after trying so many different recipes and being not quite satisfied every time. I mean, they were all ok. But then this one happened, and it was everything I had been looking for. I've made a few minor adjustments since - less sugar, more vanilla and most definitely more chocolate, and I can assure you, when it comes to a go-to chocolate chunk cookie recipe, this is the one you should use....
If you're new around here you may not know that at the beginning of the year, I committed to replacing something I would usually buy from the store with a homemade alternative. My big idea was to replace one thing a week for an entire year and that this would be a gradual way to eliminate processed food and to force me to be a little more creative in the kitchen. At first I thought it would be easy, then I realised that even just one thing a week was actually quite a lot for someone who bought several things ready made! But I had made a commitment and suddenly we are halfway through the year and I've stuck to it! It has been challenging but definitely one of the best things I've done, and even though my trolley at the supermarket is looking more boring every week it is exciting knowing that I don't need to buy packets and jars of things - I can just make them myself!
So in celebration of the fact that I am halfway through this challenge (which also means that it is only 6 MONTHS TIL CHRISTMAS!) and because we are at the beach with no internet this weekend so I had to write this post in advance, I thought I would do a round-up of 10 of my favourite made from scratch items. 10 things that I know I won't be going back to buying ready made!
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Guys. These muffins are EPIC. Amazing. Out of control. Tangy. Sweet. PINK & YELLOW!!! The end, here is the recipe.
Just kidding! But seriously, you need to make these muffins....
As much as I love making homemade bread, there is a bit of a catch. The fact that there are no nasty preservatives in it is a huge bonus and is one of the main reasons I love making it, but it also means that it goes stale pretty quickly.
A loaf made in the bread maker really only lasts a couple of days and even though Josh (who can eat about 8 pieces of toast in one sitting) does a pretty good job trying to finish it, there is usually still some left that goes stale. While we can feed it to our pigs or chickens (and they loooove it) it still seems like a bit of a waste so I figured, why not make homemade breadcrumbs! Because, you know I'm a bit obsessed with making things from scratch!
Also, on a totally unrelated note, can you tell I was wearing my favourite pink sweatshirt when I took this picture? Haha whoops!...
Why is it that even when I have a huge meal and I am so full that I couldn't possibly eat another bite that I still feel like dessert? Anyone else with me? I think it's a girl thing. And we're not just talking after dinner either - after lunch dessert cravings are REAL!! So my life-long goal (as of right now) is to find dessert that is at least a little bit good for you. Sounds hard when all I want is this chocolate self-saucing pudding but if we can crack a few good recipes for healthy options I won't tell if you splurge once in a while....
Last weekend I cleaned my car....OK, Josh did. He washed the outside, I vacuumed the inside and we polished the interior. It looked like new, and it was kind of a big deal because I had been driving around in a dirty car for months. But then something terrible happened. If you follow me on Instagram you will have seen that this happened on Monday morning. I was NOT impressed. Not only did my car suddenly become dirtier than it was before we washed it, when I stepped out of the car my clean black pants got covered in mud #whydoibother. Country life huh?
Anyway, that has absolutely nothing at all to do with this post buuuut I know how much you love hearing my silly stories. Sharing is caring!
Let's get into the real reason you're here. Homemade tortilla chips with easy salsa AND guacamole! (Bonus points if you make the tortillas too!) And the best part is, the whole lot can all be thrown together in about 15 minutes. Unexpected company, hungry kids after school, work lunch snacks for one day the week, all sorted.
The chips are salty, crispy and strong enough to hold copious amounts of the salsa & guacamole that you need to have with them. Seriously, look at the colours! And all from our winter garden. Yep I'm bragging about it!...
May was a pretty quiet month around here - Josh worked a lot during the weekends and was duck shooting when he wasn't working, so I spent a bit of time in the kitchen & garden like a good little wifey!
We picked our pumpkins - 6 in total which was not too bad. We let the plants get a little carried away though - next year we will trim them back so that they are putting more effort into producing actual pumpkins, less into producing leaves. Story of my life - my tomatoes took over the polytunnel in summer!
I was the official duck shooting photographer, but there is a 33% chance that I actually shot a duck myself! There were 3 of us aiming and firing and the duck fell right out of the sky...it could have been me! We now have 9kgs of duck breast meat in the freezer waiting to be turned into sausages and salami (by the butcher, not me!)
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Some people love winter. They love being able to rug up, wear scarves, hats & boots and snuggle up in front of the fire. I am not one of those people. I can't stand the dreary days of winter. I think it's because our winter is so mild that it's not really winter. It's really just 4 months of cold, rainy, windy and just plain gross weather. We don't even get snow! We are exactly 7 days into winter and I'm already hanging out for spring.
But you know what helps counteract the grey miserable-ness? Bright yellow lemon curd!
We have a magical lemon tree - seriously. I have never once gone out to grab a lemon and not found one. In over 2 years! It's amazing. And currently it is chocka with bright yellow lemons. So with those and the eggs from our chickens, what else is there to do but make lemon curd? Sure you can just buy a jar at the supermarket, but for more than $4 a jar I'd much sooner make it at home, especially when it's this easy!...
As you know we took a trip in April and spent 10 days in Vietnam. Here is part 2 of the trip - the beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Site of Halong Bay.
We took a bus from Hanoi up to Halong Bay in northeastern Vietnam. I had seen pictures of the bay before we got there so I had pretty high expectations and I was not disappointed!
We arrived at the dock and boarded our boat which was essentially a hotel on the water. We were supposed to be staying the night on the boat but were told as we boarded that couldn't stay as they were worried about the weather closing in. We were so gutted! A couple of hours later though our guide got a phone call to say that we could, so all was good! We're still not exactly sure if it was a weather thing as it didn't look too bad from where we were sitting, but we got to stay which was fantastic!...
Do you ever have those mornings when you wake up and just want to eat cookies? Please say it's not just me...
Well what if I told you that you could have something for breakfast that isn't a cookie but tastes just like one?
And what if I then told you that said cookie-like breakfast is so full of good ingredients that you can eat it guilt free?
Guess what? Problem solved - peanut butter & banana granola! It's breakfast cereal. It tastes like a cookie. You're eating it with milk. Milk and cookies for breakfast, but healthy.
I rest my case....
I was about to tell you all about how much I love cows...especially this one.
Except that I'm not allowed to call them cows anymore.
I officially got the stern "you've been here long enough now to know that they're called cattle, not cows" from Josh the other day when we were driving and I innocently asked what kind of "cows" that herd of cattle were...whoops.
I mean, they are cows but there are so many different names for the different stages of the different genders of cattle that it's hard to keep up. And technically "cow" only relates to one particular age and gender. One day I'll explain...when I have my head around it!
But seriously, how can you not love them? Look at this guy! Apparently cows cattle are also super photogenic....
It's duck shooting season! I don't know about anywhere else in the world but in New Zealand for the month of May it is open season on ducks. But wait, before you think we are just a bunch of gun-toting maniacs, let me explain. Ducks can actually be a bit of a pest here - they eat the grass and can do a lot of damage to crops. So the farmers out here are more than happy for a few ducks to be taken care of during May. Secondly, we do eat the duck. I haven't tried cooking duck on it's own..yet. But we take the breasts to our local butcher and he makes duck sausages and salami for us which is beautiful, so it is certainly a worthwhile exercise. Plus, the enjoyment Josh and his friends get out of it is totally worth it!
So I went out with the boys this morning - a 5.30am start on a SUNDAY! Must be crazy. But I got to get dressed up in my camouflage gear which is kind of cool. Am I, or am I not the most excited (and most tired looking) duck shooter ever? Haha....
Is it possible to be homesick for a place that is not your home? If so, I am majorly Vietnam-sick.
Asia had never really been somewhere Josh & I were that keen on visiting, but when a friend of mine told us she was getting married in Bali we decided to make the most of the trip and go someplace else too. After a bit of research we decided that Vietnam was the place for us...and we couldn't have been more right. Vietnam stole our hearts from the minute we stepped out of the airport in Hanoi.
I'm going to drag this out over a few weeks and only cover 1 city per post because it just would not do justice to our trip or to the incredible country of Vietnam to rush through. So if you're looking for a recipe or farm post, I'm sorry - please come back later in the week!...
Have you ever read the ingredients list on a muesli bar box? I just did. And I did NOT like what I saw. The list of ingredients is so long and there are are even things that I've never heard of! As for them being a "healthy" snack...well. There is just about more sugar in each bar than anything else.
And don't get me started about how much you pay for those little bars!
These bars have 7 ingredients total. And I bet you know what they all are!...
HOMEMADE BAGELS!!!! I'm kind of excited, can you tell?
I'm not sure everyone feels quite as strongly about bagels as I do, so if you don't - bear with me. If you do, you are in for a TREAT!
I'm not even kidding guys - these are a-maz-ing!...
