The Week In Review

Well it appears that whilst I have done much rambling this week, there has been little in the way of what we have been eating and OH is getting very upset that there is no pictures of his dinner efforts on Mon night...so here goes the week in review!

On Monday night OH cooked a mouth watering BBQ Chicken Pizza, after several attempts he is now the king of home made pizza dough, it comes out light and airy, slightly doughy in the middle yet crispy on the outisde and honestly there is nothing better then home made pizza with fresh capsicum and juicy pineapple, caramelised onions and mushrooms, juicy tomatoes and chicken all on a bed of bbq sauce...mmmmm is it wrong to be craving pizza at 8:30am?? We have even come to an agreement now, on my half I have serious willpower with the cheese, OH on the other hand will use a whole pkt of grated cheese on his side and whilst my head is screaming CALORIES and EVIL every other inch of me watches him take a bite of the cheesy goodness and just salivates. This photo is of my half...imagine that cheese multiplied by ohhh 10 and you have OH's side!



Wednesday night I wanted to try a recipe I had for Sweet and Sour Fish Parcels. You make a simple sweet and sour sauce on the stove top with tomato sauce, vinegar, sugar and cornflour, then you add in some capsicum, pineapple and carrot and let it all boil till the sauce is thick and the vegies are soft. Then you put your fish fillet (any white fish) on some baking paper which is on some foil, top it with sauce and vegies and wrap it all up in a neat lil parcel. Bung it in the oven for awhile and when you come back (this is the part I was excited about) you open this lil parcel and the smell of the sweet and sour just invades your senses and I don't know I think I just like the idea of opening the foil and seeing the transformation thats taken place, from a cold bit of raw fish covered in some sauce you get these gorgeous bits of tender fish infused with flavour. And I served it with a very generous serving (OH's eyes nearly fell out of his head...) of boiled cauliflower and brocolli all smushed together seasoned with a lil bit of salt and pepper...superb! It is only in the last 12 months I have started eating seafood and whilst I'm still a bit wary of some things, I am getting the hang of it and slowly incorporating more of it into my cooking and our meals.



Last night was another learning curve. I had a recipe for lamb and roast vegetable spaghetti which I was keen to try as it had only a little meat and lots of delicious sounding roast vegies in it. But the recipe said to add Allspice to the mince when it was cooking and I was hesitant as I have only ever used it in my Hot Cross Buns! I know I know, I have so much to learn....anyway, last night I thought I would give it a go, I diced a red onion, 2 zucchini, 1 capsicum and 2 sticks of celery, drizzled them with oil and salt and pepper and set them in the oven to roast for 15mins. Tick tock tick tock......then I added some halved cherry tomatoes and put them back in for another 15 mins....meanwhile I put some spaghetti on to cook and threw the mince in the fry pan with some sliced button mushies. Now came the moment of truth, the mince was cooked and apparently screaming for some spices, so I added a sprinkle of allspice and a tspn of crushed garlic and cooked it up for a bit longer. (May I also add now that I was slightly concerned that as this pasta had no 'sauce' as such it would be a bit dry / lacking in flavour) How wrong was I! I had a taste test of the mince mixture and it knocked my socks off, the flavours had infused together to create pure magic. And the roast vegies were just brilliant, so I learnt two things a) pasta does not necessarily need sauce and b) Allspice + lamb mince is freakin spectacular! The final result looked something like this and I am already hanging out for the leftovers tonight!



Plus there have been several cupcake appearances this week such as these Hawthorn (AFL) inspired ones - I think they could also be a good bumblebee if they had lil chocolate wings!


And these crushed Ferrero Rocher ones:


My home kitchen idea died a spectacular death this week too. I had decided on calling myself Miss Muffet's Kitchen because my parents always called me Muffet growing up. I had done some posters, I had done price lists, menus, had a lil folder with all my recipes and ideas in it. Then I rang the local council and they told me that even for cooking for charity like I am with the RSPCA cupcakes at the moment, I should have a seperate commercial kitchen in my home to my every day one....and that would be the case if I wanted to run the business from my home too. I was shattered to put it nicely. Went home and laid on the couch with a tub of ice cream and refused to do business with the universe anymore.But luckily OH lured me outside with Allens lollies and got me to kick a soccer ball for awhile to make me feel better. But anyway, I will figure something out I'm sure. That will teach me for not checking the regulations before I did all the work! Stupid thing is, if I lived in a different suburb under a different council, I wouldn't have any trouble at all. Stupid world.

Ok people, that's me updated!

Happy Friday!!

Em x

A Day Off Work....And Finally - The Cupcake Shop Saga!

My god....I woke up today at 6am when OH left for work....I subsequently called in sick (potential for head to explode if I went to work, plus had lots of work to do on my Ebay store and several batches of cupcakes to make and decorate). Feeling quite happy and suprisingly full of energy for that hour of the morning, I decided to get up and make the most of it because honestly I can not remember the last time I was even awake at that hour. Turned on the radio, had a bit of a dance around the house (my favourite way to start the day!) and a few spins on the new pole (novelty still there!) and headed out to make my first cupcake delivery. Then I came home and sat down to finally finally finally put the rest of my jewellery on Ebay. I have been making and selling jewellery for a few years now and I have an ebay store http://stores.ebay.com.au/thegothicplayground (Sorry for the blatant advertising!) where I sell most of it between car shows and markets. The only problem is it takes so long to put all of it on ebay, once it's done it's easy because you just keep re-listing the ads, but it's just that initial outlay of work that can be tedious, not to mention finding the time to do it....with my old laptop it was taking up to 4 hours just to put 7 ads up...not cool, low and behold with the new laptop though I had done 20 ads before lunch and was mighty impressed with it. I had even sold my old laptop, listed it as being broken and only good for parts and someone offered to buy it straight away for 5 times my asking price! Very very odd, but spose it would be good for pulling apart and....doing technical stuff with!? Anyway, baked and decorated 4 batches of cupcakes to be delivered tomorrow...consumed far too much frosting and felt ill so went for a lovely stroll with OH when he got home from work which helped but still have that icky consumed too much sugar feeling. Drinking heaps of water to combat it though! I think I am going to have to do something like make sure I have a mouth full of chewing gum next time I make them because frosting appears to be my weakness and it just makes me feel rubbish.

And now OH is making salt and pepper chicken with a parmigiana sauce and roast vegies for tea while I am sitting on the couch typing this up and I am dead tired, such a fantastic day off though, didn't get all my stock up, but more then half of it. Not keen on going to work tomorrow, but sometimes you just have to don't you. I am so over my job at the moment. A few weeks ago they handed out a bunch of redundancies and just the way they went about it, I have lost all respect and motivation for the place. And all the cupcakes I'm making at the moment is just making me realise I don't wanna work in an office, I wanna DO something like something creative or something worthwhile, just something that doesn't involve being stuck in an office all day doing mind numbing paper work. I am too young to have a mid life crisis, but I definetly feel like I'm in the middle of one, I have felt like a little old lady stuck in a rut at the ripe old age of 24, like I'm slowly dying and losing my brain cells and my enthusiasm and watching my life disappear before me. I know the wedding should be something to look forward to, but it's only one day, it's going to be a fantastic one but after it's done I'm still gonna be me and it's time to make some big changes because this is the only life I've got and I intend on living it.

Now, the cupcake shop saga.....

Roughly this time last year a specialty cupcake store opened up in Hobart, for the first few months they were selling out by 1pm every day and the line was always massive, there was a massive novelty factor because let's be honet we don't even have Krispy Kreme down here and we only just got Cold Rock! Anyway, the shop was doing brilliantly. But in January this year it went up for sale....and it's still for sale but the price has dropped considerably because they need to get out. To me, it sounds cheap and like a fantastic opportunity, but it does need some serious changes. At the moment the cupcakes are brought from a supplier and delivered each morning, then decorated and put up for sale. And from what I can gather the general opinion is that the cakes themselves are not brilliant and that they are over decorated. I would like to change it up abit, make the cupcakes myself, decorate them myself in a simpler but still fun and elegant style. I'd also like to bring in a wider range, I know it's a specialty cupcake store but eventually the novelty will wear off and I think you need to sell other things like brownies and slices and fudges to keep it going and expanding your services to do personalised orders. Anyway I showed the information given to me by the real estate firm to the accountant at work and he gave me a list of queries to go back with. I am not sure now though, I mean it sounds like a brilliant opportunity and something I would love, but it also sounds like it might be quite difficult to keep your head above water. Just have to wait and see what the real estate comes back with. I mean I'd love to work hard and I'd love to be independant and work for myself and do something that makes other people smile, but there is a big chance of failure too.

If nothing else though it has shown me that I do have passion buried deep down within me somewhere and it's most definetly been ignited. Part of me also thinks that maybe rather then dive head first into a busy shop I should start small and make up some posters to put up at the Fun Factory and Kidz Biz and the workplaces of my friends and family, advertising catering for events like kids parties, high teas, kitchen teas, morning teas and specialty orders and take it from there....I don't know, do you guys think there would be a market for that sort of thing?

In reality what I would love is a retail store / cafe where I can sell my jewellery and some rockabilly, vintage, burlesque style clothing and accessories and have an old fashioned milk bar style counter where I can serve old fashioned homemade sweet and savoury goods - just simple but delicious food. I am aware that I need to work hard and work towards it and that I still have alot to learn, I know it's not just going to magically appear before me tomorrow fully funded for the rest of it's life...but I think it's a challenge I'm willing to take on.

Ok enough rambling, time for some photos!!



Some cute lil vanilla buttermilk cupcakes I made for OH's lunches. Simple but sweet, plus I wanted an excuse to use my new star sprinkles...he really loves being my test bunny!

Oh my god...this was the finished product tonight, salt and pepper chicken, parmigiana sauce, lil potato hearts (so very cute..and tasty! He is a good man xx) and roast potato and carrots....nom nom nom soooooooooooo delicious.

Next on the list is these Vanilla Buttermilk Cupcakes with lindt chocolate. I had red icing left over from the St Kilda ones so I used that and topped it with a milk chocolate lindt ball....mmmm lindt....they nearly didn't make it to the cupcakes, if they had been white lindt balls they definetly wouldn't have survived!!

Also some ferrero rocher cupcakes. Vanilla Buttermilk Cupcakes with Chocolate Frosting and a Ferrero Rocher to top it off....so much temptation in today's baking session!

And finally my proudest moment of the day! St Kilda Cupcakes! I have been so worried about these, they were a special request from someone I work with and St Kilda is an AFL team with the colours red, white and black on their jumper. Soooo I decided to do the red, white and black stripes as per the jumper but was a bit worried about the colours blending and what not but I was very happy with the final results!

Sorry for such an epic blog and for rambling!

Tomorrow...Happy Friday and Curry Chicken Crepes! My god I should write about something other then food over the weekend too, maybe some pics of my shoe collection!!


Em x