Daisy Chains and Picnics

A delicious gravy recipe using the carcass and bones from a cooked chicken, if you have any skin left, throw that in the pot as well, adds to the flavour. Ingredients 1 chicken carcass and bones 1 large onion, peeled, roughly chopped 3 cloves garlic, peeled left whole and smashed 1 large carrot, unpeeled, roughly chopped 2 celery, unpeeled,  roughly chopped 1 sprig rosemary 1 sprig thyme 2 tbsp olive oil 2 tbsp flour 1 litre chicken stock 70 ml red wine Method 1.  Preheat oven to 180°C. 2.  Break up chicken carcass and add to a large oven proof baking dish, add any other bones and skin. 3.  Add onion, carrot, celery and garlic, drizzle with olive oil, toss to mix. Add herbs on top. Roast in oven for 45 minutes. 4.  Remove from oven and transfer contents to a large saucepan. On a low heat on the hob add the flour and mix quickly, breaking up the bones as you go along. 5.  Add chicken stock and wine, bring to the boil, then reduce to a simmer for 30 minutes o...

  This easy recipe is made using leftover custard and some mini pancakes I had in the freezer. Ingredients 255g mini pancakes 3 eggs 325g ready made custard Method 1.  Preheat oven to 150°C fan. Grease small oven proof baking dish. 2.  Spread one side of each pancake with a little butter and line, slightly overlapping in the dish.  3.  Whisk eggs and custard together. Pour over pancakes. Bake for 30-40 minutes or until set. Enjoy.

Chocolate bark is a great way to use up leftover pieces of chocolate, cover with a variety of toppings, such as nuts, dried fruits, sweets, cereal, seeds etc, there are so many choices, just use your imagination, use candy canes or dried cranberries for Christmas bark, how about an assortment of spooky candy for Halloween or mini easter eggs and sprinkles for Easter.   I used a mixture of sultanas, raisins, currants, unsalted peanuts, unsalted cashews and roasted peanuts. The dark chocolate I used was 69% dark bittersweet. Ingredients 1 cup milk chocolate 1 cup dark chocolate 1/2 cup fruit & nuts Method 1.  Line a baking sheet with greaseproof paper, set aside. 2.  In a separate microwave safe bowl or a bain marie, add milk chocolate to one and the dark in another, if using the microwave, heat for 30 second burst at a time, stirring with each 30 seconds, don't overheat the chocolate. Whisk until smooth and glossy. 3.  Pour half the fruit and nut mix into each bow...

We love haggis, yep, even Jodie, but unfortunately we don't get it here, so mum kindly posts out a couple of tins every so often. Today, I received another two tins 😋😋 Now I can attempt making a haggis lasagne 😋😊

  Remember when Jodie won me gift vouchers from Northgate for mother's day 2021, see post  here , well one of those gift vouchers was for Strandbags and I have finally used it.  They had an up to 30% sale on selected suitcases, so I decided to go check them out. These were the four colours that I narrowed it down to, I wanted the hand luggage size. I narrowed it down to these two colours and designs both by American Tourister The pink one was reduced from $219 - $149. And the mint one was reduced from $239 - $159. Now, I am a pink kinda girl, love any shade of pink but my other most favourite colour is Tiffany blue and guess what?, the mint suitcase is almost a dead ringer for Tiffany blue!, that certainly helped clinch the deal! So with the $100 voucher and the 30% off sale, I only paid $59 for a $239, a saving of $180. It even matches my stairway. Stunning! 💗

  The girls were playing with Hamish last night and taking pics using my phone! Our old man is turning 14 in September. 🐶👯

  As we have a wall at either side of our staircase it is quite narrow so getting a front view photo of the gallery wall is not possible, so I had to take the photos looking from the top and bottom of the stairs. I wanted add some colour and texture to the staircase wall, just to brighten the stairwell up a bit as we have a narrow quite dark stairwell. I spent some time looking for ideas, whether it was pictures, narrow shelving or hanging decorative items. I spotted this instant gallery wall in Spotlight on clearance from $100 to $40 and I loved the pictures in the frames, they came in white, black or natural, it was a choice between the white or black, since the vast majority my picture frames are white we chose to stick with that. There were nine pictures in a box, we bought two boxes to give us enough pictures to evenly space out on the wall, there are obviously duplicates but we can change them if and when we find pictures that will match the original ones. Scott calculated an...