Battle of the Cookbooks - Pete Evans - Family Food

We only did three meals from this cookbook, so will probably return to it later on as well.  Dave spent the week in Queensland, at the annual Microsoft Conference, so it was just me and the girls. 

This is one of Pete Evans Paleo cookbooks. I used his base recipes, but did substitute some of his "Paleo" ingredients for their more carb infested equivalents.

So, here were some of the dishes we tried:


Beef and Broccoli Stir Fry
Score: 7

Comments - I substituted the kelp noodles for normal singapore noodles, and added some corn as well. I also left out the mushrooms as Jassy isn't a huge fan of cooked mushrroms.

Joy Burger
Score: 8.25

Comments- I used hamburger buns instead of huge portabello mushrooms. Always nice to have a great burger with everything on it. We did add the pineapple which wasn't in his recipe. The burger patty was delicious included some mustard, chilli, parsley, oregano and hamalayan sea salt, so very tasty. It was a job to fit it in our mouths though!

Pad Thai
Score: 6

Comments - we found it a little sweet, the recipe included kelp noodles which we once again substitutes for pad thai noodles instead. Would have liked it a little more saucier as well.















Overall Score for this cookbook: 7.08


We also had a BBQ on Sunday to catch up with friends. Amazingly these little babies were on special this week:

So I bought three punnets and made this Raspberry Ripple Semi-Freddo:

Highly recommend this recipe which was from Donna Hays "Seasons" cookbook - the summer section. I would probably give it a 10/10. Absolutely fabulous, and not very difficult to make!

I also tried one of Matt Preston's salads out of his "Cook Book" cookbook, it was a potato salad. Very tasty as well. The bacon is crisped up and maple syrup added to it to make it sticky. The corn kernels also give it a nice sweet flavour and texture.

See you next time!

Di :-)

Disneyland Layouts and the Apples don't fall too far from the tree!

Having been back from the USA for a while now, I was pretty eager to get some layouts completed to put into the girl's scrapbooks. I will do a photo book for the whole family (which sometimes takes 6-12 months to complete!).

First cab off the rank is Disneyland of course. Disneyland was good, but it wasn't our favourite theme park.

I think they need to replace some of their rides, and renovate others.

We went to Disneyland on our very first day there - a Saturday, and then followed it up with another visit on the Wednesday. We went on the Saturday as we couldn't check into our hotel until later in the day, and Disney was a 15 minute walk down the road. Worse case scenario, we figured if we were too tired we could sit at a cafe or something!

Saturday, as you can imagine, is busy at Disneyland - the waiting time in lines is anywhere from about 40 minutes to 90 minutes. One of the reasons it wasn't our favourite was because unlike the other theme parks there was often no shade over the lines, so you are waiting in the sun. Also, every ride we attempted on the Saturday broke down and had to be "reset" and "tested". So very frustrating! As a result we only did two of three rides we lined up for that day. They actually turned people away from the Haunted Mansion ride after we had waited in line for about an hour :-(

The Wednesday visit was a lot better, as school had returned in the US. Waiting times were only 5 to 15 minutes - and no wait in some cases, so we did Space, Splash Mountain and Indiana Jones a couple of times. By the time we had done two days at Disney we had managed to hit all the big rides:

• Space Mountain
• Splash Mountain
• Matterhorn Bob Sleds
• Thunder Mountain Railroad
• Indiana Jones Adventure
• Pirates of the Caribbean

Eliza did a couple of extra rides in lieu of not redoing some of the rides, so she also got to experience the Dumbo Ride (she loves Elephants), Autopia and the Finding Nemo Submarine adventure (which personally made me feel sick!)

Anyway - here are the layouts so far, I am still working on Eliza's double page layout.

Jasmin's Disney single title page:

Eliza's Disney single title page (as you can see the pictures are the same, slightly different designs):

Jasmin's Double Page Disney Layout. I made my own labels using MS Word, used a circle diecut and then made little Mickey faces in them. I also painted the Mickey faces using watercolours and cut them out to include on the layout.

I love doing the occasional bit of art when I have the time - lately it's been doing the occasional bit of watercolour. The apples don't fall far from the tree, I am always happy when the girls get their art gear out and create their own little masterpieces as well.

This week they were watching a lady on YouTube who is an excellent artist, she did a lesson on how to do yourself as an Adventure Time character. If you haven't seen Adventure Time, all the characters have long limbs, large heads and four fingers on each hand. The girls loved the video, so did themselves as Adventure Time characters.

This is Eliza's drawing of herself. I love how she has drawn a rockstar version of herself, complete with guitar!

This is Jasmin's drawing of herself. I love how she drew herself in one of her favourite things to wear - leggings with demin shorts over the top, and her Run Wild tank top. I also love the variation in colours for her hair and the shirt!

When the girls have assignments to do, they also normally pick something artistic to do, or add an artistic twist to the assignment. For the first half of the term Eliza worked on an assignment which involved documenting a holiday for the three Year 4 teachers. They were given a budget of $5,000 and had to outline how they spent the budget including travel, accommodation, entertainment and food. They also had to provide supporting materials. It was a mathematics assignment.

For the second half of this term, Eliza has to create a souvenir for the location they have traveled to, which would be suitable to bring back as a souvenir for the students. They have to create the souvenir and also show how much it would cost to produce the souvenir for their class. So Eliza has decided to do a place mat of one of the places she sent the teachers- Sea World. For her place mat she has drawn some sea animals which Dave has scanned into the computer, and we have shrunk so that she can colour and include them on her place mat.

Here are three of the five pictures she drew:

 I especially like the dolphin!

Well - that's it for today, I'll be back with another food post probably tomorrow!
Di :-)

Battle of the Cookbooks - Donna Hay - The New Classics

We are giving the international food a rest for a while. We still have some countries we haven't cooked as yet, but we will return to these at a later date.

I have a huge collection of cookbooks, which expands every year around Christmas and my birthday. I don't think you can ever have too many cookbooks! I don't just collect them, I do cook many of the recipes out of each of them. I thought it would be fun to put them all to good use, and cook recipes from each cookbook for a week, and get the family to rate the dishes. See which chef and which cookbooks come out on top.

Last week we started with Donna Hay's "the new classics".  We ranked each of the dishes out of 10, and then I averaged the scores for each dish. I will make a list of cook again dishes. I might have to remove Eliza's from the score though, as she eats part of the meal (the part that she likes) and rates it a 10 out of 10 LOL!

So here are the dishes for this week:

Chicken & Pork Larb
Score: 7.7
Comments:  Both the girls love Larb, so it always gets eaten, and there are normally no leftovers

Sticky Asian Ribs with Ginger Gai Larn and Rice
Score: 6.7
Comments: This was actually the first time I have ever cooked ribs. Mainly on account, that Dave told me he didn't think he would like them, because they would be too fatty. He actually loved them and so did I. Jasmin wasn't a fan though, otherwise the average would have been a lot higher. I will put this one on the list to make again as part of a BBQ or something like that.

Roasted Pumpkin and Garlic Soup with Leek and Cheese Mandelines.
Score: 6.3
Comments: The soup wasn't thick enough, so would reduce the fluid next time. The mandelines were quite delicious.

Slow Cooked Beef Ragu with Homemade Pasta
Score:  8.2
Comments: Definitely the winner for the week. Homemade pasta is always popular, and I'm getting a lot quicker at making it!

Sticky Honey and Lime Chicken with Brocollini and rice
Score: 6.3
Comments: Quite delicious.
















I also made homemade pizza's this week (I forgot to take a picture!). Made the pizza dough from scratch as well. I made the pizza suggested in the cookbook - salami, ricotta and basil pizza, as well as a prosciutto, anchovy and baby spinach pizza, as well as a ham and pineapple (with fresh pineapple of course) for Eliza.
Score: 7.7

So overall, a really good score of 7.15. 

Definitely adding the ribs and ragu to the cook again list.

See you next time.

Scrapbook Layouts

It has been a while since I did a post about anything. So I will do a post today on some recent scrapbook layouts I have created over the last month or so.

I have subscribed to an on-line kit club at Studio Calico - just for 6 months, to inject some new products into my massive collection of scrapbooking products. I think I just needed to look at something different to inspire me.

I thought the pastel colours in the paper really suited this picture of Eliza. You can't quite see it in the picture, but the tag has a 10 on it - so the title is actually "Eliza @ 10". I created a little shaker frame with some sequins in it to match the layout:

This layout really didn't need too much - I just created a Captain America shield with my circle cutter, and co-ordinated it with this gorgeous blue patterned paper from the October kit. Used a template to cut the star for the shield, and then added a couple of other little stars to tie it all together.

Jassie recently turned 13, so I wanted to do a layout on how thankful I am for this precious girl, who never causes us any trouble whatsoever, she really is a joy to have around. Perhaps I should touch some wood - I don't want to jinx anything!

The main features of this layout are the special gold paper and the gold frames. I used the gold paper to frame the layout, but also punched a heap of butterflies out of the centre of the page and then used both the gold and white sides of the butterflies on the layout. The gold poloraid frames were then used to frame the title, journaling and other supporting pictures.

This layout documents this year's Book Week dress up for school. I had some fun using some new gelato watercolours to create the bright yellow background.

This is how Eliza went dressed for Bookweek - as Katniss Everdeen. I cut the fern leaves by hand from one of the patterned papers I received in the September Kit, took ages, but the smaller fern leaves came with the embellishments that month.