Monday 30 July 2012

Glitter nail polish - as an adult

So, I have this crazy obsession with nail polish. I must admit, my favourite brand is OPI and I currently have over 30 colours (which trust me, is very few).
Because the bottles are over $20 each here in Australia I try not to buy too many as I know what I can be like.
My friends and I have discovered this amazing website in the US where the bottles are about $7.00 each, so we order crazy amounts (my first order was 16 bottles) and then we pay split the postage per bottle. Unfortunately we end up waiting 2-3 months for the order to arrive, and inevitably there are some missing and then it's the annoying flurry of emails back and forth trying to figure out where the bottles are, or who is lying bout either sending or receiving.
Anyway, I fell in LOVE with the Muppets range, which pretty much consist or ridiculously bright colours and lots of glitter, so I ordered five bottles from the range.
One colour in particular was so amazing, it's called Gone Gonzo. I didn't take a photo of it on, but you can see it here. The colour is amazing, it's this really fine blue glitter with little silver glitter hexagons in it. Super bright and fun, just my cup of tea.
So I wore this colour for a little over a week. That's pretty much the life-span of all my nail polishes, even with the two layers of base coat, 3 layers of colour and two layers of top coat. However instead of chipping like the majority of my manicures would do by this stage, it hadn't done anything. AWESOME! I thought.
So tonight I decided it was time for a change, so I got out my nail polish remover and the cotton wool pads and off I went, however as much as I love the nail polish colour and concept, I was not very impressed with the removal of it.
Glitter nail polish as an adult is not fun to remove. Every single piece of glitter was glued to my nail and it took me 20 minutes just to do one hand. At which point I gave up and started peeling it off the other hand.
So from now on, I think I will be sticking to block colours, maybe with some sparkle and teeny bits of glitter. Which is such a shame as I really loved the glitter polish on...
Or, I could just forget the whole awful removal side of it, and wear it again in 6 months time :)
Have a good night, I'm off to paint my nails!

Thursday 26 July 2012

Chicken Macaroni Cheese

Ingredients:
2 cups dried macaroni
50g butter
1/4 cup plain flour
2 cups chicken stock
3/4 cup pure cream (thickened cream will do)
2 1/2 cups shredded BBQ chicken
1 cup frozen peas
1 cup grated cheese
1/3 cup breadcrumbs


Method:
Preheat oven to 180°C. Cook pasta.
Melt butter in a medium to large saucepan. Add butter and stir.
Gradually add combined sock and cream, bring to boil then reduce heat 
to medium.
Add chicken, peas, half the cheese.
Cook for 10 minutes. Season, add pasta and stir through.
Transfer to baking dish. Top with breadcrumbs and cheese.
Bake for 20-25 minutes.


Enjoy!

What to do with lamb shanks?

I recently acquired a slow cooker and it is fabulous. I especially like that I can throw a whole bunch of stuff in it in the morning, and when I get home dinner is cooked.
However, there are not a lot of mornings where I am up early enough to actually be prepared and make dinner, and so after the first use it sat in the cupboard for a month.
The other problem with it was that although I own two slow cooker recipe books, I don't have the majority of the ingredients they require sitting in my cupboard. While I love to cook, I don't keep a lot of char siu sauce, smoked paprika, peanut oil, red wine vinegar or garam masala lying around the house. I do have things that stay in the cupboard for a long time, but will eventually get used.

I also have groceries delivered to my house and decided a few weeks ago to try out lamb shanks. I've never cooked them before, and as such went looking for a recipe. Same problem as the slow cooker and I didn't want to go shopping.
So, this morning I decided to get all proactive and use them both in my own recipe, and as a result we are having lamb shanks for dinner! YAY!



Slow cooked lamb shanks

Ingredients:
4 lamb shanks
4 potatoes peeled and diced
3 carrots peeled and chopped
1 brown onion peeled and chopped
2 cups frozen peas and corn
1 leek chopped
1/4 cup tomato paste
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 cup cream
2 1/2 cups water
3-4 teaspoons of Gravox powder
1 teaspoon mixed herbs
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon hot English mustard
salt and pepper to season

Method:
This is the best part. Put the lamb, potatoes, carrot, onion, leek, peas and corn into the slow cooker.
Mix everything else together in a large bowl and then pour into the slow cooker making sure there aren't whole items outside of the liquid.
Pending on the time frame, put on high for 6-7 hours, or put in low for 8+ hours.
About an hour before you eat, turn the lid sideways (**if you have an OVAL slow cooker) and sit on top of the cooker, this will reduce the liquid in the bottom, but keep the food moist.

Enjoy!

Friday 20 July 2012

Apple and Mandarin Muffins

OK, so the reason I started this blog was because we have a whole bunch of mandarins and apples in the kitchen, and to use them up I wanted to make Apple and Mandarin Muffins... According to Google, there is no such recipe. So I decided to experiment and make my own recipe, which I am sharing here. So here goes!

Apple and Mandarin muffins: there were 18, Boyface stole one...

Ingredients:

2 cups wholemeal self-raising flour (you can use white if you like, we're trying to be healthy)
1/2 teaspoon bicarb soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
pinch of salt
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 cup rolled oats
2 apples peeled, cored and chopped
1/2 cup sultanas
3 mandarins peeled, seeded and chopped
1 egg, whisked
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/4 cup golden syrup
1 1/4 cups milk
Method:

Preheat oven to 200°C. Lightly grease 18 muffin holes.
Sift flour, brown sugar, bicarb soda, cinnamon and salt into a mixing bowl. **If you are using wholemeal flour and there is a pile of husks in the bottom of your sifter, add them to the bowl. Add oats, apple, sultanas and mandarin, and stir. Make a well in the center.
Mix egg, oil, golden syrup and milk together in a separate jug/bowl.
Add liquid to dry mixture and stir. Do not over mix, dough should be lumpy.
Add dough to muffin tray and bake for 20 minutes (or until brown).


Enjoy!