End-of-pay-period Emergency Rations

You know what I've realised? It's nigh-on impossible to take a good picture of something with vegetable chunks in it. It so often turns out looking, well, less than wonderful.


As per usual, towards pay day meals start getting less impressive in my house. This offering last night might not be all that picturesque, but it was pretty tasty, and the leftovers are working out REALLY well.

Take:

olive oil
1 red onion still fairly usable, diced
the 3 last cloves of garlic in the bunch, finely chopped
3 nearly-past-it tomatoes, chopped chunkily (icky bits removed)
1 x 350g jar of arrabbiata sauce, only slightly past its best-before date
1 x 300g can of four-bean mix, salvaged from the back of the pantry, purchase date unknown
1 x sachet of tomato paste (or 2 tablespoons-worth)
a smattering of frozen peas and corn
the leftover half of a capsicum (which, unfortunately, I forgot to add), chopped

Saute the garlic and onion in the oil until nice and soft. Add everything else. Start cooking some pasta. Simmer the heck out of it all until your pasta is done. Dish it all up with some type of grated cheese. It'll be fine, just don't look at it!

NAIDOC Week Cake

For those who don't know, the first full week in July is NAIDOC week. At work we had a morning tea.

This is the cake:


I thought it wasn't a bad effort at all, given the significant lack of equipment! What you see here is a chocolate cake with a vanilla centre, with a vanilla icing centre yellow spot and the rest is chocolate icing.

Here's the cake cross-section:


Yep, it was black, yellow and red on the inside too! The black and red are chocolate (with food colouring to achieve the result). The yellow is plain vanilla (once again, with food colouring).

Definitely the most creative I've been with baking for a LONG time :)

Bacon and Leek Quiche

My mum and I LOVE this quiche. It may not look like much, but any time we make it we end up making pigs of ourselves and finishing the whole thing. I can't for the life of me remember where we first got the recipe from, but we haven't referred to it in years - partly because it's such a simple recipe, and partly because we've made it so many times. I made it for J last weekend and yep, none was left over.


Bacon and Leek Quiche

1 sheet of puff or shortcrust pastry
1 leek, finely sliced
150-200g bacon, finely diced
2 eggs
1 cup cream
grated cheddar cheese
any herbs you like, or maybe a little sweet chilli sauce

Grease a pie pan, press the pastry into it firmly and trim the excess. If you're using puff pastry I find it's better to blind-bake it for 10-15 minutes first. Fry the leek and bacon until leek is soft and bacon is just turning crispy. Mix the eggs with the cream in a jug along with any chopped herbs or sauce you like. Scatter the bacon mixture over the base of the pastry, then gently pour over the cream mixture. Spread a little grated cheese over the top, and bake at 180C for 20-30 minutes (depending on the depth of your quiche) until cooked.

Serve it up with some salad. I was lazy and went with a fairly pedestrian salad this night, with just lettuce, tomato, cucumber, capsicum and cheese, with a basic balsamic and olive oil dressing. But meh, it was only there to try and kid myself that it was a healthy meal. You know, what with all that bacon and cream and cheese.

Blueberry Yoghurt Cake

I like cakes. A lot. I like to bake them. I like to eat them. And I really like it when I manage to bake one that people enjoy.

This one is nice and easy, although it did give me a scare, I have to admit - when I peaked in the oven and saw this:


I thought "uh oh". But it all turned out OK.

Blueberry Yoghurt Cake

125g butter
1 cup caster sugar
3 eggs
1 cup plain flour
1 cup self-raising flour
3/4 cup vanilla yoghurt
1 cup frozen blueberries

Preheat oven to 180C (or 160C if it's fan-forced). Grease a 20cm round tin. Cream the butter and sugar. Add the eggs one at a time, and mix each in well before adding the next. Sift 1/2 cup of the plain flour and 1/2 cup of the self-raising flour over the butter mixture. Fold in. Fold in half the yoghurt. Fold in the remaining flour and then the remaining yoghurt.

Spoon the batter into the cake tin. Sprinkle a few blueberries around the top and press them into the cake batter. Bake for 50-60 minutes. Once the cake is cooked through remove it from the oven and leave it in the tin for about 10 minutes, then turn it onto a wire rack to cool completely. Sift some icing sugar over to serve.

I wouldn't mind this dished up with some ice cream and cream too...

CBF and Feeling Vego

Spinach, feta, capsicum, cheddar, sweet chilli sauce... I can't remember why I had all these things laying around, but they did come in handy.


I bought one of those nasty par-baked turkish bread rolls from my local Coles, then piled this stuff on top and baked it at 180C for about 20 minutes. Soooooo yummy. I could go another right now, actually.