Chicken and Vegetable Pie

This morning I felt like eating something savoury and warm. A sausage roll sprang to mind... not really that good for me but solid and predictable comfort food.

There are a few places around the office to buy such goodies, and I decided to try Posh Nosh as I remember them as having a selection of pies and sausage rolls. (The last time I felt like a sausage roll I tried a shop that only had sausage rolls or $6 quiches! Not enough choice at snack price...)

Posh Nosh had a few different items to choose from, including cornish pasties, a beef steak pie, chicken and vegetable pies, german sausage rolls and spinach and feta filo triangles.

I asked if there were any particularly recommended and was told that they were all good. That did not particularly help me to make my mind up so I eventually opted for the chicken and vegetable pie (it had vegetables).

The pie was excellent. The pastry was soft with a bit of crisp on the outside, and not soggy at all. The vegetables on offer were corn, onion, celery and carrot, and to be honest I did not much notice how much chicken was in the pie as I was enjoying eating it!

When I got back to the office to eat my pie I realised that it had been wrapped in paper before being put into the paper bag, and I was also given a fork as well as a napkin. One of my colleagues told me it was very civilised! I was doubly impressed with the pie and presentation.

Light as an Angel

I thought this recipe for Angel Food Cakes courtesy of Martha Stewart Weddings would make a lovely afternoon tea treat! The cakes are so sweet and they would be very light.

The only issue is what to do with twelve egg yolks... now that is a lot of custard or curd!

Image here

Home mixed muesli

I am a creature of habit. My breakfasts during the week will be either weetbix/vita brits or natural muesli. Generally I buy generic brands from the supermarket, but inspired by this article on the ABC's Landline I purchased Brookfarm macadamia muesli.

I do like the muesli, and the macadamias are a nice touch! The downside of the muesli is the sugar content. I have found with a few of the more interesting mueslis that you can really taste the added sugar and I would rather be able to add my own (and I do not) than have someone else add it for me. I also had a few bits and pieces lying around in my pantry so I thought that I would give mixing my own muesli a go.

I started with All Bran, then rolled oats, Large Sultanas and I think currants as well. There are pepitas and sunflower seeds, dried apricots and dried peaches and walnuts. All of the ingredients except the All Bran and walnuts are Product of Australia.

I added everything in layers and then mixed it all up once I was finished! It is very tasty, although next time I will substitute the walnuts with something else, maybe macadmias or pistachios.

Garden of Fragrant Delights

I rather neglected our garden this last summer. We went from an abundance of tomatoes, capsicum and chilli in Summer 2008 to a sad sight of wonky tomato plants and flowering basil this summer.

Renewal is required for Autumn. The weekend just gone we decided to get the garden back into shape. After losing much of the top layers of dirt in the storm in March (it was replaced by the back neighbour's yellow sand!), we knew that replenishing would not go astray. A trip to buy some chook poo last Sunday and it has been dug into the garden. What a wonderful aroma!

I have not quite figured out what we will be planting, but definitely on my list are leeks and spring onions and spinach and more silver beet.

Wonton Mein

One of my favourite lunch dishes, wonton noodles soup! This bowl was purchased at Yen Do at the Woodside Plaza. They have a small selection of Asian dishes cooked to order. This is the one that I sample the most frequently.

Baking beads

The first time that I blind baked pastry, I used some brown rice that was hanging around in my pantry and well past its best before date. I kept that rice to be used again for baking, and it was. The down side of the rice was that I kept spilling it into my pastry when I removed the baking paper and having to pick out the small grains.

It all came to a head one day when I made pastry and managed to drop quite a few grains into the hot pastry. Instead of picking it out I thought I would be smart and tip out the rice.

Of course gravity defeated me and I ended up with pieces of pastry on my stove top! Luckily my filling held the cooked tart shell together however I was most unhappy and in a fit of pique I threw the rice away, vowing to buy some ceramic baking beads.

This was all very well and good, however the next time I made pastry I still had not bought beads and so I resorted to using the remaing soup mix that was in the pantry. You can see the result above. Unfortunately there was not enough leftover soup mix and it does not do much at all to weigh down the pastry!

So I see that my options are to buy some ceramic weights, or to invest in another packet of soup mix. The ones below are $22.95 a packet, so I may just buy half a kilo of brown rice...

Pie weights by Wheel & Barrow

Mass to cup conversions - baking

I have a set of scales, however they are analogue and I have no faith in their accuracy. So, for recipes that may rely on accurate measurements here is a list of common baking ingredients and their conversions to cups!