Category: food and drink

Chicken and Leek Pie

A square pie

I HAVE to re-post this recipe after making it for the first time in the life of this blog – it turned out super well too! Well, not really a recipe, just a brief guide to the ingredients and method with you left to add flair depending on what you have on hand and what you score at the supermarket. I pretty much had to start from scratch when buying the ingredients this time around since I’d reasonably recently done fridge and pantry culls and cleanouts and we’ve been mostly making EVeryplate meals lately.

 

Ingredients used:

  • 500g chicken thigh, diced
  • A couple of rashers of bacon, diced
  • Half a thing each of white and swiss brown mushrooms chopped roughly
  • A leek, sliced thinly
  • Butter for frying up stuff
  • Some fresh thyme. picked and then chopped finely
  • Garlic (not pictured)
  • Half a jar of light cream
  • Tsp vegetable stock, cup boiling water
  • 3 sheets frozen puff pastry 
  • An egg and some milk for the egg wash on top of the pie

Method:

  1. Chop everything up and put into bowls on your bench ready to fry up
  2. Melt some butter in the frypan. Fry up leek and mushroom with some of the thyme. Transfer to bowl.
  3. Fry up the bacon.
  4. Melt more butter. Fry up garlic and the chicken with the rest of the thyme, in batches if you prefer.
  5. Return it all to the pan.
  6. Add stock powder and boiling water. Or stock if you’re fancy like that.
  7. Simmer down til there’s very little liquid. Add in cream and cook through. Add pepper to taste.
  8. Preheat oven to 180 degrees, get pastry out of freezer and place on bench to thaw.
  9. Use one piece of pastry as pie base, put in filling, then top with pastry and use third piece for decorations. Brush with egg and milk wash.
  10. Cook for at least 45min, until pastry is browned to your liking.

Remove from oven and let stand for 5 minutes, Then serve up. I do like to serve it with fresh green beans if they’re in season, but it’s great by itself too!

Sometimes we add a little seed mustard to it to change up the flavour a little. Or use chicken breast, or different mushrooms. Or some sour cream. But this is the base recipe that is universally loved!

As an aside, my “lemon” kitchen is coming along, with actual lemons, lemon tea towels and mitts and an apron and a mat even. I got these amazing vintage curtains (well my sister got them for me and even hemmed them to size) for $4 at The Makers Place in Teralba. I love how it’s all coming together! 

 

Logitech G Aurora Pop-Up

A hand hlding a green iced mini cupcake in front of flowers

oh my it’s been ages since I’ve done any events so this intimate customer-focused pop-up afternoon tea and gaming sesh with Logitech was a nice easing back into chatting with PRs, trialing products (I neglected to test out the mics so that’ll be on my list for another time!), remembering to take all the photos, instagramming on the fly, and having some fun!

I’d gotten on their mailing list after winning a mouse, keyboard and headset off a twitter contest where I confessed that I’d be using the gear for the Sims (hey there’s AWESOME light integrations for that game on the logitech and Razer gear I have) since that’s about all my PC can run (I mean it can run more, but I don’t have a video card, and my motherboard needs replacing and I can’t run too many things at once. It’s a push some days to stream Duolingo with my webcam on lol, never can do a game with cam on sorry!)

After a bit of an epic trackwork-impacted journey down – remind me again that catching the all stations bus is hell on earth and you’re better off waiting for the next express no matter how long away it is – it was lovely to be greeted with cupcakes and drinks, though a downed a couple of waters first after forgetting how steep the hill from Central to Crown street is. Last time did it in heels, so my glitter mary-janes were a blessing!

It was no accident that I matched in with the colours of the room quite well – I’ve been watching Emiloo on Twitch a quite a lot the past few weeks, and she did a coloured themed Sims challenge, so knew they were pushing the colours.

The Maybelline touch up also made me even PINKER *blush*

I got to play Stray and Fall Guys for the first time and pushed things off surfaces as the cat. Lost VERY quickly in Fall Guys but it was still fun. Sounds was brilliant of course through the headsets. Kinda cool the mix and match colours! And yeah, regrets not playing with the microphones, they are HUGE though! :/ Happy with my headset mic for now I think!

Bruce has possession of the headset I won, it’s great and lightweight and he wears it for work 🙂 Plus I’m not moving on from my Razer kitty ears just yet, but I do like the Logitech offerings I’ve tried. And my keyboard I won is AWESOME and the ones yesterday were the CUTEST! I’d need to get all the keycaps to constantly change them up, so it’s probably best my current setup in lights I can change rather than snapping on and off keys and overlays.

And there was SWAG to take home *yay!!* Bruce loves the hat and shirt and I’m painting my toes lilac today, and the mascara will replace all the ones I chucked out in my recent cleanout so yay! Timing! There’s also a non-alcohol beverage that I need to add to the list of things to review because I still have that backlog to blog about.

Yep, trying to re-become an influential blogger and social media type. It’d be better if the trains were running though. phonakins. e-girl and activist. I’m back!

 

EveryPlate Bulk Cook meals

I decided to give the “bulk cook” weekly meal options a try from EveryPlate by cooking them up for my sister and her kids. For them, there’s a few I’ve taken or minimised the dairy from for them – using almond milk, or just not using butter and cheese. There’s a different recipe each week (I’m sure there’s repeats), though the ones you’ll see are similar in some ways. Using tinned legumes, mince, one had chicken tenderloins which were quick to cut up. I’ve added veges  – zucchini in the first photo – when I’ve gotten something I can throw in at our Friday foodbank run.

Like all other EveryPlate meals, you get the recipe card, the fresh ingredients, herbs and spices, stock, and any grains like rice or cous cous. The price for the bulk cook meal is $25 as an optional add-on when you go through and select your recipes for the week. Some I didn’t get – like a tomato spaghetti that just didn’t inspire me as freezable, but yeah, the casseroles, stews, and potato pies have gone down well.

You then supply things like olive oil, salt and pepper, butter/milk (that I leave out for my sister so some of these are easily made vegetarian and vegan). They get you to use the water from the chickpeas and beans so there’s no rinsing and you can use that salty water as stock.

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There’s a mix of stovetop cooking – which my huge Misen pot is great for both frying and simmering the large amounts, oh and boiling potatoes. There’s roasting of vegetables too. And things like the cous cous to make up to serve I just send along dry and Jen can take care of that as she needs it, along with any toppings like almonds, or the cheese for melting over for the big kids.

T

I tinker a little – I find sometimes if you add all the stock powder things start to get a little too salty, so I’ll use less rather than more and add in later if I think it could do with it.

This pork mince/cottage pie I made at home, but took over to Jen’s that evening and we finished it off in the oven there, and I got to eat with them. I left a mini-pie for my partner in the noodle bowl to heat for himself :p

The recipes also give you other time-saving options, like not peeling the carrots of potatoes, I I prefer to.

As far as value for money, the way that prices have been going up at the shops for fresh veges and even tinned ones with transport costs, $25 for the supplied ingredients, recipe card, and inspiration and motivation to then get it cooked up works out well for me. Giving me a tangible way to help out and getting to cook too.

I also gave the $20 fruit add-on box a go. I couldn’t really justify it. After pricing the items I got in this one at $13 on woolies online. But you might like the convenience, there is a larger $25 option which might be better value too

I’m still getting the weekly boxes, and it’s still working well for me. I like that I can still put together a nice healthy meal even if I’ve had a big day and my brain is a little used up! The box I get has gone up in price, but given the semi hyper inflation at the moment it’s still great value for us. You can see my overview of them in this previous post.

I also regularly get free trial boxes to share – I currently have three, you just pay $10 shipping. If you want to try EveryPlate, let me know below or use my referral link for $60 off.

What have you been doing to keep fresh veges on that table with inflation and supply issues?

I made it! I Turned Forty!

OMG how did I make it through my 30s? It really wasn’t looking too optimistic there for awhile.

So, here’s a birthday photo dump, and some rambling and thought and whatever it may be.

Firstly, I got some AMAZING new cat ears handmade, hand felted, by Suzanne aka Satan Herself. She’s a wonderful Twitter friend who is trying to get herself out of the clutches of Centrelink by starting a felting art business, making all sorts of clothing and bits and pieces and SHOES and HATS and cat ears now. These are her prototype ears, and I LOVE them and will pimp them to death when she gets her shop set up!

a woman with purple hair, cat ears and glasses holding a glass of sparkling wine. She has a purple dress with chickens

I drank this lovely de-alcoholised Brown Brothers Prosecco I’d purchased from Sans Drinks for election night (but the order arrived a week after!). Lovely and light on the tongue, didn’t interfere with the Antabuse tablets either 🙂 Party!

Speaking of Antabuse, I stuck to my regular Friday morning routine, collecting OzHarvest fresh fruit and veg and assorted breads from the food bank to share with my sister – I’m glad I can eat gluten these days! There was also a bag of pies and sandwiches and the like. More importantly though, I’ve not had alcohol since Feb 2021, so I’m on a 17 month streak, with some good sober time over the last three and a half years. It feels good, and sobriety is working well for me. I get to be more useful and reliable and present and so on. It’s great. I have to say I’m looking forward to life and things again. Even without “real” red wine.

Bruce and I went to dinner at Mizumi (which I now know means “Lake”) here in Toronto. We ordered the usual takoyaki, and went for the Mizumi sashimi platter. OMG that was amazing! Fresh and tasty and noms. Only problem was that I prefer my sashimi after it’s warmed up a little, and this came as a ice basket as you’ll see in the photo. But AMAZING nonetheless.

How good is that?

(yes, I booked under Sienna, yes it’s because I phoned up and couldn’t be bothered correcting her when she said it back to me. Often get Sienna)

Another birthday present I got was the new phone I’ve been using for a month now. The Xiaomi 11 Lite 5GNE (that’s a lot of terms). Bruce ordered it for me at a super awesome price and I’ve been getting used to it, but here’s the first night mode photo I’ve taken because I’m slack and didn’t use the function til he nagged me the other night:

The beauty of Toronto Boulevarde by night…

So I had a lovely birthday, out in the real world. Plus, I also had a bit of a party on my Animal Crossing island!

My friend code for switch is SW-0541-2956-7407. Add me and come to my next shindig!

Saturday was my birthday party – lollies and cake and kids in the backyard 🙂 Such fun! Got a new Fitbit from my parents, the old one had a crack screen after 7 years, it was time. Spent the last of a few giftcards I had at woolies on lollies hehe

Still working our way through the cake – a $30 buy from Costco, with fluffy chocolate and rainbow icing!

Some of you internet sweethearts have spoiled me too with items from my wishlist and gift cards and birthday money through PayPal and buymeacoffee. Thank you so very much! I got the bread knife I needed and Diet Coke is always appreciated.

I have some onesies on the way from onesies downunder and a Shein order full of Care Bears stuff!!!

Thank you all for celebrating with me 💜

What we ate last week

Mueslie, pills and coffee

It’s time, my frens, for me to start posting a weekly foodage overview, including anything that doesn’t feel worthy of its own post, such as regular dinners, breakfasts, snacks I’ve tried, that sort of things. We start with my breakfast of choice at the moment – muesli (usually aldi Almond and apricot) with a banana and milk, a coffee – Fox Coffee Dusk blend with light milk, and assorted morning meds.

For our EveryPlate meals this week we had jacket potatoes with  creamy bacon sauce, tex-mex chicken with corn salsa, rissoles with  onion chutney, South American chicken, Vietnamese style beef bowl and garlicky chicken with sweet potato wedges. Next week we’ll try for more in-focus photos. I really liked all the dishes this week! I made the top chicken recipe of Monday night before heading to my first Japanese class, as so packed it to take with me but ended up just eating it before I left. Super fast though, so no issues cooking it at 4.30pm.

One large disappointment this week with the Everyplate box – the rissoles were meant to be pork but they left out one of the portions of pork mince, so I had to substitue with some beef mince we had in the freezer. They gave a generous credit for it, but it’s highly disappointing and it made me feel guilty for giving it such hype last week. If you wanna share in my disappointment, I was live on Twitch when I was unboxing it, and have archived that video over here on YouTube. So I apologise for anyone who having one of the serves of meat left our will throw even more than me, I hope you persist. It was all there this week…

On Saturday, after the mega long day going down to Sydney for the Ausgrid panel, I was relived that Bruce had ordered pizza and returned to brain-deadidly eat a slice of each and half a garlic bread. Thank you Dominoes. There was a third pizza but I didn’t have any of it. How good is cheap and nasty garlic bread though?

bacon pizza anchovy and cheese pizza slice garlic bread

Tea and biscuits at each of my hospital appointments to get me through! These Gumnut bikkies are still a novelty.

tea and biscuits tea and biscuits

And also from Thursday, $5.50 well spent on out of sate and short dated snacks at the food bank at the local church along with free bread. Oh and mayo. Unfortunately they only take cash so I had to walk back up with my fist full of coins later in the morning cos I don’t carry cash.

snacks from food bank

Any food highlights for you this week?