BACKGROUND

Thursday 4 October 2012

October already?!

I can't believe it's October already.. the year is flying by and in 10 weeks our little jellybean will be joining our family! We're so excited I can't even begin to tell you!! Another exciting thing to mention is that next month my mum will be flying in from Vancouver to stay with us for a couple of months and to be here when baby arrives and to help out.. I just can't wait to see her!

On another note, my hubby and I celebrated our 3rd wedding anniversary yesterday. So Happy Anniversary sweetie! Love you more and more each and every day :)







Easy Chicken Korma


This is a really easy mid-week dish to make for the family! I'm not normally a Korma fan but this isn't super sweet / coconuty (if that's a word), it's really quite nice.. Hope you like it!

1.kg Chicken breast or mini breast fillets
1 heaped teaspoon of finely grated fresh ginger
2-3 cloves of garlic, minced 
150g thick (plain) yogurt
1 dried red chilli (optional)
2 finely chopped onions 
1 tbsp ghee or veg. oil
1 tbsp ground coriander 
Pinch of ground black pepper 
1 tsp turmeric 
1 tsp garam masala 
75g creamed coconut 
water 
salt, to taste 
2 heaped tbsps ground almonds 
finely chopped Coriander Leaves, to garnish 
juice of  1/2 lemon (I haven't done this cause we never seem to have lemons in the house)

Instructions:

1. Cut the chicken breasts into bite sized chunks
2. Mix the chicken with the ginger, garlic and yogurt. Cover and marinade for as long as you can preferably overnight in the fridge.
3. Liquidise the chopped onion and red chillies, add a little water if you need to. blend until smooth.
4. Heat the ghee/oil in a pan.
5. Add the ground coriander, ground black pepper, turmeric and garam masala and stir fry for about 1-minute over a low heat.
6. Turn up the heat, add the onion and chilli paste and stir fry for 10-minutes.
7. Add the chicken and the marinade and continue to stir fry for another 10-minutes.
8. Add the creamed coconut and enough water to *just* cover the chicken and bring to the boil, stirring until the coconut is dissolved. Stir in the ground almonds. 
9. Reduce heat to low, cover the pan and simmer until the chicken is tender (30-40 minutes).
10. Remove from heat, add lemon juice and salt to taste. Mix well. Sprinkle coriander for garnish.
11. Boil up some basmati rice and some cauliflower if you like and it's all done!

(I found this recipe on Jamie's forum but have tweaked it slightly, I take no credit for coming up with it)

Enjoy!

Wednesday 12 September 2012

Free Fabulous Fonts!

I'm now planning on making a start on my Autumn & Halloween crafts for the home and I wanted some fancy fonts to use. As you know, the fonts that come with Microsoft are pretty lame, so with the help from the trusty internet, I found this fab blog with a ton of free fonts for any project such as scrapbooking, cardmaking, your own printables (see previous post), etc. You have to check them out.. I've included their blog button to the right of my page for easy access.. it's called kevinandamanda.com  http://www.kevinandamanda.com/fonts/


Kevin and Amanda's Free Fonts


I've installed their fonts and did a virus check and it's all clean, but still if your not sure I'd advise you not to download anything you aren't sure about. Please don't take my word as I don't want to be held responsible, lol. Their layout is super easy, just click on the font you like and it'll take you to download page where it downloads as a zip to your downloads folder (or wherever your downloads go) and then you just need to extract the zip files, install onto your computer and away you go!!


If you don't know how to install new fonts into Microsoft Word, this explains it all:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/access-help/install-a-new-font-on-your-computer-HA001094742.aspx


Kevin and Amanda's Free Fonts


Enjoy :)

Tuesday 11 September 2012

Free Autumn / Halloween Printables

After being on Pinterest for some time now I've been seeing a lot of Printables being pinned and had no idea what they were at first but after seeing what others are creating and how they are using them, I'm so into them now! In fact I'm in the process of creating my very own printable for Autumn. If it's any good I'll make a few more for Halloween and Christmas and even one for our little jellybean's arrival.

These FREE Printables or Subway Art (as some people call them) I have posted are the ones I have come across while getting ideas for my own and thought they are way too cute to not share.. The links are included to the original blog if you want to use any of these for your crafting needs. I will upload pics of what I create and for you to use if you like.. hope it turns out as well as these! Have fun :)


source The Diary of Daves Wife


 












source


Enjoy! 

Thursday 30 August 2012

Wellies

Living in England a girl needs a good pair of Wellies.. I was having a look today online at some of the well known labels and found a few that I just had to share with you (not in any particular order). I can't decide on which one of these is my favourite, but let me know which is your favourite.
Joules

Hunter Boots

Cath Kidston


Hunter Boots

Joules

Hunter Boots

Hunter Boot - thought it was funny seeing wellies with heels

Hunter Boot - thought it was funny seeing wellies with heels 

Cath Kidston



Snickerdoodles!!!

I learned how to make these delicious cookies in Junior High and came across this recipe today that made me make them right then and there! So here I am sharing it with you guys. Might bring back some memories for some of you or it might just be your first introduction. Either way you got to try them :)



115g / 1/2 cup of butter at room temp, diced
115g / 1/2 cup of caster (superfine) sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract/essence
2 eggs
50 ml / 1/4 cup milk
400g / 3 1/2 cups of plain (all purpose) flour
1 tsp Baking soda
50g / 1//2 cup of walnuts, finely chopped (I substituted this with baking chocolate)

For the coating:
5 tbsp caster (superfine) sugar
2 tbsp ground cinnamon

1. With an electric mixer, beat the butter until light and creamy. Add the sugar and vanilla extract and continue to beat until fluffy. Beat in the eggs, then the milk.
2. Sift the flour and baking soda over the butter mixture and stir to blend. Stir in the walnuts. Chill in fridge for 15 mins. Preheat oven to 190c or 375f. Lightly grease two baking sheets.
3. To make the coating mix the sugar and cinnamon in a shallow bowl or plate. Roll dough into walnut size balls between the palms of your hands, then roll in the sugar mixture. You may need to work in batches.
4. Place the balls spaced about 5cm/2 inches apart on the baking sheets and flatten with the back of a spoon slightly or fingers. Bake for about 10-12 mins or until golden brown. Using a spatula transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Makes approx 20 Snickerdoodles.

Enjoy!

Tuesday 28 August 2012

Our Veggie Box

Martin made us this veggie box this year. It's our first one and the first time growing veggies in the ground like this. Last year we did potatoes in the bag, tomatoes, bell peppers and sweet peppers in pots. The bell peppers didn't really make it but the others did and it was such a rewarding feeling so this year he started us out with cabbage, radish, lettuce, squash and courgette (zuchinni to North America). We had a really bad start to the summer here in England and the slugs ate our lettuce. Dang slugs! Then when the weather got a bit warmer and drier we planted a sweet potato plant, garlic (from last year actually, just replanted it for some reason it wasn't really growing but I think they are now) and winter onions. So let's hope we'll get something out of all this. It's definitely been a learning experience for us and perhaps we won't cram as much into the box and spread things out a bit better next year. But hey ho, I'm sure we'll get a few nice things out of this :)


The planter box my hubby made





Our squash plant

Cabbage at front, courgettes in the back (zucchini to the folks back home)

1 of 5 Tomato plants, next to it is our late summer potatoes

Sweet Potato & Raffa B

Our Summer Potatoes

Last year we decided to grow potatoes in a bag! Yep, that's right, in a bag.. mind you it wasn't any old  shopping bag, it was a grow bag type thing and we got some really yummy new potatoes from it so this year we decided to try again. And we weren't disappointed! We have also picked up some late or autumn potatoes to plant for Christmas, Charlottes there called. How cool would that be, digging up your own potatoes for Christmas dinner. Nice one! Here's pics of our potato crop this year.



The bags we used

Our crop. So delicious!

To find out how we did it, check out: How to grow potatoes in bags and Growing potatoes in bags or potato sacks

Our Summer Garden

I have to apologize for the quality of these pictures. I didn't take many on my digital camera, just been using my mobile phone.







I love growing sunflowers, too bad the slugs love them too



Sunflower twins

a lazy summers afternoon for Rafa B