Silent Sunday

Week 8: Water

I shot this awhile ago but never did anything with it.  Voila for 'water' :)

Gotta love the holidays

For providing me with time to finish 101 challenge projects.

I bought the photo album when we were leaving phuket but actually wanted to do a scrapbook scrapbook when I made this challenge.  The cool photo album won out and I just made sure I added some special touches to it.

And three guesses on where I saw this idea... lol.

Chicken Dippers and Avocado Dip

Chicken dippers are made in the normal flour, egg, bread crumb manner and then shallow fried. I zhuzh up my breadcrumbs a bit by adding parmesan, paprika, oregano and chives - makes them super yummy.

The avocado dip is a bit of a frankenstein.  I looked all around the internet at different recipes and took bits and pieces here and there.  I didn't follow one recipe exactly and my quantities weren't measured but it was YUM!

Mashed up one avocado, half a package of cream cheese, grated a small onion (with it's juice) into it, added garlic salt and normal pepper and lemon juice.  Mixed it all up and voila.

Sure is fun to play around with recipes. The more I look through the net and recipe books the more confident I feel to change things up.  I'm a bit of a 'rough as guts' cook - chucking things in here and there and not really measuring exactly right but it seems to work.... or at least it did this time!

"Today I have grown taller from walking with the trees."

Yes that's right...I completed this challenge a month ago.  Just haven't blogged about it. In fact, I decided to register to plant a tree for Leah on the suggestion of one of our lovely coffee group ladies and at the time of registration I thought 'woohoo, another thing to tick off my list'. Then after doing it, I promptly forgot that it would tick this off. Whoops.

Not to worry, here I am! Leah was lucky enough to receive a Matai tree to plant in the Children's Forest in Papakura. I didn't so much plant it as Damien did (more daddy kinda work) but it's the thought that counts.

Can't wait to come and visit it when Leah is older. We might make it a yearly thing to see how much her tree grows each year.  Such a cool idea! <3

Well looky here!

Two 101 challanges I'd completed but hadn't got around to blogging about.  Gotta love that!

I'm going to blog about the other in a seperate post because I love it.

This one...

...was very therapeutic. To be honest I didn't think I had that many bad memories but once I got started I seemed to get a fair amount out I think.

I must admit, I didn't bury so much as put them in the document shredder, but the purpose was served me thinks.

Silent Sunday

Week 7: Animal

Little Cheesecakes

My husband loves these.  My mum always used to make them after making Fish Pie (very similar to my CCC pie - just opt out canned chicken and cranberry with canned tuna and chives) with the left over puff pastry. Easy to make and uses basic ingredients that should always be in the pantry. Thought I would share the recipe with you all.

You'll need;
1 sheet of puff pastry (or adapt the recipe for as much pastry as you have)
Jam
125g butter
3/4 cup sugar
1t vanilla
1 egg
2 cups flour
1t baking power

Cinnamon
3t sugar

Grease muffin tins (however many you need).

Cut circles out of the pastry (big/small enough to fit in the muffin tins) and place in the tins.  Put 1/2 - 1 teaspoon of jam in the centre of the pastry circles.

Cream butter and sugar in a bowl, add vanilla and egg then mix until light and fluffy.  Add flour and baking powder, mix in well.

Make small balls of the dough, flatten them and place on top of the jam.  Ensure you press around the edges to create a seal.

Mix together cinnamon and 3t sugar and sprinkle on top.  Bake at 180 degree celcius for 10 minutes or until tops are golden brown.

Enjoy - Yum yum! 

xoxox