What's in my Boot?

On my way to gym yesterday I noticed the start of 'council collection' week! YAH!

In Sydney, twice a month the council collects your unusually large rubbish from outside your house, that in other countries you would be forced to take to the tip yourself.

The advantage of this, of course, is that twice a month you might be able to find the best bargain ever on your street! :D

Yesterday, I came across an awesome old-man style brown leather rocking chair! How could i resist? I couldn't! But of course Ryan wouldn't have anything to do with this except buy me a gypsy suit to go along with my new habits!  

However, just having opened a new Ranger Guide unit in Northbridge, where we like to sit around and eat cake (along with other important things), we need to furnish our new hall! So, I reversed the car, got Mother Possum (aka Kate, the other Ranger Guide leader) on the phone (as I needed some convincing), got agreement that this was a.legal and b.indeed a good idea and then proceeded to pick up the one seater leather chair with my super-human strength (funny how this appears when you're potentially faced with the embarrassment of being caught) and stuffed it into the back of our x-trail hatchback! There was also a small TV, with remote and manual that I took too!

Anyway, being new at this blogging, sadly I did not take a photo of the boot, but I did manage to convince Ryan to help me take it to the guide hall instead of having the car parked down the road from the pile of rubbish with the rescued sofa stuffed in the back. Below is a great shot of the chair blending into the surrounds of the Ranger hall.

In fact this is not the first treasure we have found for Rangers (now it all comes out), about a month ago, I also found a fridge, in very good condition, sitting quietly on the side of the road. Poor thing looked so lonely I had to take it. In that instance, I actually had to call a Guide parent who kindly drove out after work, to help pick up the fridge and move it to the guide hall. It works great!

ps - we contributed too, that's our old Brabantia bin ;)

Sydney Dust Storm 23 Sept

Many Sydney-siders woke up on 23 September wondering if the apocalypse had arrived.  Ruby red light streamed through the windows and everything beyond 5m seemed to have disappeared into the ether!

Here are some pics I took on the way to gym at 6.30am.  It was amazing!  Unfortunately for us, it was also the week directly proceeding our twice a year car wash!  

Quick Tangy Tasty Tuna Pasta

category

I have created two recipe categories - 1.  Recipes that make you thin (or keep you thin).  and 2.  Recipes that are just Yummy!

Recipes that make you thin are a collection of recipes I created while following weight watchers last year.  This is one from that collection:

serves

This is 2 portions that will leave your tummy very full.  If you want to full it out a bit more, add extra zucchini, onion and capsicum.

time

15 minutes or less, depending on time taken to cook pasta

ingredients

1 red capsicum, roughly chopped

1 onion, roughly chopped

1 TBS capers, roughly chopped

2 Heaped TBS tomato paste

1 clove garlic, chopped or minced 

1 thumb ginger, chopped  (1 thumb means the size roughly of your thumb)

1 BIG can of tuna, in spring water

100g -150g pasta (uncooked)

Olive oil 

Salt and pepper to taste.

5 olives chopped (optional, not good for diets)

directions

1. cook pasta in hot salty boiling water, as per directions on packet.

meanwhile...

2. Spray frying pan with olive oil spray and fry onions, capsicum, garlic and ginger.  Add a few TBS water when the frying pan gets too dry and the ingredients start to stick.   

3.  Once veggies are slightly soft and brown, add tuna (with spring water, tomato paste, capers and salt and pepper.  Stir well to break up tuna and when it is hot, turn off the stove and remove from heat.  Optionally add in your chopped olives.

4.  Add cooked and drained pasta into the sauce dish.  Stir in and serve.

other options

If you like your pasta really saucy, they add 1/3 jar of your favourite tomato based pasta sauce instead of the tomato paste.

Welcome and why...

Welcome! This is a blog of my experiences and I am giving it to anyone willing to take the time to read them. I hope this is fun, exciting and not a waste of time (yours and mine:)

About Me
To help describe me, here is my life's philosophies:

#1 You only get one life, so live it. Don't be boring, try things out and never live to regret anything you do. EASY!
#2 Eat good food. Quality vs quantity or eat quantity of quality. Don't eat meat from tins! Yes, that included chili con-carne and Spaghetti & meat balls. (long story).
#3 Be a nice person.
#4 People are surprisingly similar and want similar things....(more about this later)

Be bold
With the above in mind, I am uprooting my boring, stable, repetitive life! I'm leaving my corporate IT job and follow my passion of cooking. A recently completed season of Australian Masterchef 2009 inspired me to enrolled (and soon start) my first 3 months at Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Sydney! My employer has kindly agreed to a 3 day working weeks, allowing me 3 days work, 3 days cooking school and 1 day rest, every week from 6 Oct to Christmas.

My new exciting life plan action is:
#1 Expand my vast (at least i think it is) cooking knowledge and learn to cook professionally! Learn to appreciate food even more than i do now! (and eat lots of yummies in the process) YAH, and YAH!!!
#2 Create a cooking school YAH YAH YAH!
#3 Leave predicable stable job behind to do something that is inspiring and fun. Something to make me excited to get out of bed each morning. YAH YAH YAH!!!!
#4 Keep loving, adoring husband loving and adoring
#5 Keep fit

My love for cooking, hubbie and my kitchen often results in Hubbie sitting and chatting in the kitchen while I prepare dinner. Our dinner parties more often than not end up inside the kitchen, it's a fun room, filled with possibilities, things brewing in jars and pots and bottles. Anyways, my point is that you should not be afraid of the kitchen, spend some more time in there, it's only a matter of getting in some practice in chopping, slicing and dicing and soon you will be a kitchen masterchef too.

why

My mother religiously keeps a daily dairy, cunningly it's in dutch and neither i or my sisters speak Dutch, so no lock was needed to keep us nosey kids out.   Often I think how wonderful it must be to be able to look back and see what great things have happened in your past.   That,  together with friends and family often asking for simple tasty recipes, I have decided to document my journey into the food world and hope that we all get to share something special along the way.

Lets get started
So moving on as swiftly as I started, today I am going to start with 2 recipes. One is a quick, healthy and tasty Tuna pasta. And the second, a decadent, divine triple chocolate brownie that is always a hit!

bye for now...