Cinnamon Muffins

I bought coconut flour the other day.  I’ve read so many recipes on the interweb that use the stuff, and I can’t be left out.

It was very expensive. It has been in my pantry, minding its own business – until today.

I’ve been lurking around the edges of Erica’s blog for ages. Erica comes from Seattle –  LOTS of food bloggers seem to live there, or thereabouts…. must be something in the water?

Erica posted about cinnamon muffins http://comfybelly.com/2011/07/cinnamon-bun-muffins/#more-6226

Erica used almond flour, which I have run out of, but she suggested a variation using coconut flour…

http://comfybelly.co,/2011/06/vary-vanilla-cupcakes-using-coconut-flour/

I love the scent of cinnamon… and vanilla (I love that some of the poshest perfumes smell like vanilla on me, if they would make a perfume that smelled like coffee – I’d be a starter as coffee always smells better than it tastes… in my opinion 🙂 )

My kitchen now smells like all these things (and earlicheer daffodils)

Now I’m just waiting for the coffee to be ready… wish you were here…

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Diet Update

Well – I’m still doing it.

I haven’t weighed myself for weeks. I found it a bit depressing, when the tapemeasure moved two whole inches around my waist, but the scales didn’t show any change !!!!!!!!

I haven’t lost any more inches lately, but I have noticed (and other people have also noticed), that my face is thinner – Hello cheekbones :-), I have gentle muscles appearing in my arms and legs, I no longer look pregnant and – miracle of miracles – HIPBONES! Not that they are showing yet, but I can feel them. I had thought they were gone forever 🙂 oh, and collarbones are showing themseves too! All this without any formal exercise. Exercise makes me sweat – which is not ladylike – snrk!

More good news – my arthriticky pains have gone and my gut issues are no longer a problem – I’m thinking about throwing away my list of places that have loos for public use – though I’m a little bit afraid to do that 🙂

This diet is really easy to follow. I don’t feel the smallest bit hungry, which is such a change, because I used to be ALWAYS thinking about food.

I haven’t converted Rick yet – in fact he gets quite grumpy when I mention the word ‘diet’. So, I don’t. He eats junk food while he is at work, and buys muffins and cakes for himself at the weekend, which I can’t eat anyway due to the celiac disease thing. That’s fine with me. I’m not even tempted by that sort of thing because I get so sick if I eat anything with gluten in these days (the longer I am gluten free, the worse the reaction when I do get glutened)

If you’d like to learn more about it – check out www.marksdailyapple.com Mark has just turned 58 and by golly he looks good. Of course he works out – something I simply cannot imagine me ever doing – though I might be tempted to take my camera for a walk around the neighbourhood at some stage… 🙂

 

 

 

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Delicious!

My favourite cooking magazine was delicious. , I say was because I think I have beaten my magazine addiction!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’ve found so many great recipes on the internet – things my new friends are making and recommending, that I don’t need magazines anymore. Which is great – more space on my bookshelves (room for another addiction? snrk) , but not great, in that it’s difficult to put post-it-notes on my lap-top (though I’m sure I’ll figure it out… eventually)

In the meantime, there are still recipes from delicious. (an award winning Australian magazine) that I want to try. This one has been post-it marked for a while now. I find I get stuck with a few favourite recipes and they tend to go into a high rotate, but I’m getting a bit tired of chicken thighs wrapped in bacon – I know *spoiled*, so I thought I’d try this one.

This is a Nigella Lawson recipe that was published in delicious. in July 2004. I changed it a little – to suit what I had – and because I don’t much like turmeric, I used less than in Nigella’s recipe.

Chicken Tikka (Nigella makes a hot red onion relish to go with it, which would be good, but I didn’t have most of the ingredients)

Marinade

2 garlic cloves

5cm piece of fresh ginger – peeled

1 small red chilli – seeds removed

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp ground coriander

1/4 tsp turmeric

1/2 tsp garam masala

juice of 1 lemon

1/4 cup vegetable oil (I used light olive oil)

1 cup plain yoghurt.

Whizz the garlic, ginger and chilli together until finely chopped

Add the other ingredients and whizz to combine. Add some salt and pepper.

Pour over chicken pieces (I used chicken thighs – bone in/skin off), stir to coat in the marinade and leave in the fridge at least 4 hours (or overnight)

Bring the chook to room temperature.

Melt some butter in a pan, add chicken and cook over medium-low heat till done (you don’t want to cook it too high, because the yoghurt will burn). I baked mine in the oven, Nigella suggested using a frypan.

We had ours with salad leaves, avocado and some steamed rice, and we squeezed some extra lemon juice over the chicken.

This recipe is really, really good. It is gently spicy – not at all scary. Marinating the chicken in yoghurt makes the chicken very moist and tender.

I wish I’d made this years ago.

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It’s a sign!

We spent the weekend in my favourite city – Wellington.

You can’t beat Wellington on a good day… sadly – the weather was horrible. But we had a lovely time visiting with old friends who have a lovely old home in Wadestown. We were really impressed with ourselves, because we navigated ourselves there with no problems at all 🙂

In the afternoon I rugged up and took to the streets, while Rick watched the rugby (and was sound asleep when I got back to our room!)

I took the camera with me, because on a previous visit I found this…

My darling has his own sign! 🙂

He is not surprised.

Any excuse to insert a photo of him...

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Asian style beef – update

There are good things about trying new recipes.

One. There is one less post-it note to deal with…

so many recipes - so little time...

Two.  Uhm…

Last night’s dinner smelled really good as it was cooking… and it looked really good…

however, it was way too salty.

I should have known – 250ml of soy sauce is a LOT of soy sauce (and since it was a gluten free soy sauce it was blimmin expensive

too!

It was edible, but it had us both up in the night grabbing lots of drinks of water – and I had really strange dreams – of wedding dresses and babies dressed up as bumble bees !!!!!!!

I do NOT want to know what this dream means - thank you!

The recipe was an Ooops! BUT, I’ve now realised what I did wrong and I think I have fixed it. The basic flavour was nice, just the salt content was way too high – it should be ok now. If anyone risks it – please let me know how it goes 🙂

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Asian Style Slow-Cooked Beef

I wish you could smell my kitchen right now.

I put this on to cook first thing this morning, and now the aromas of star anise and ginger are all through the house.

It is another glorious day, but it started out cold – no frost this morning, but we must have come close. I’ve gotten two loads of laundry all-but dry on the line outside, and I’ve spent the afternoon painting Wet n Forget (a moss and mould remover) onto our deck. A few weeks ago our next-door-neighbour came to visit. She slipped on our deck – gouged a huge hole in her shin (seriously, I could see the bone!), and broke her shoulder in three places. She is 83 and one of the bravest and best women I know.

Fortunately she is healing really well and though she didn’t slip on a mossy bit, we thought we would clean the whole deck up as we don’t want another such accident. I had to do it at a time when the deck would dry before the cats walked on it. So, with Percy asleep in Rick’s chair and Yoshi still tucked under the blankets in our bed (having been silently, but comprehensively sick – on the bed – in the middle of the night(!) – thanks little mate ), I started painting the deck.

So it is really nice to come inside to be greeted by these delicious smells…

UPDATE: When I made this I made a mistake converting the recipe to be made in the slow-cooker… I know you have to use less liquid, so I reduced the amount of stock, but did NOT reduce the amount of soy sauce. I am an idiot – no WONDER it was so salty! I’ve updated the recipe – it should work now!….

2kg beef cut into biggish pieces – I used blade steak

3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar

45ml gluten free soy sauce (3 tbsp)

2 tbsp grated fresh ginger

4 star anise

4 cinnamon quills

1 tbsp freshly ground black pepper – or you could use Szechuan pepper

1 medium red chilli – split lengthways, I took the seeds out. If you like things a bit spicy you can leave them in.

Beef stock

Bung everything into the slow-cooker and stir it all up with an immaculately clean hand.

Cook it till you want it.

I will fish out the whole spices, thicken it, put some fresh home-grown coriander (cilantro) on top and serve it with some steamed rice and broccoli

The coriander and parsley are doing really well outside our back door

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Spring!

When we planted this magnolia it was the same height as me. 5’4″ . Now it’s HUGE. And confused.

It’s not spring yet….

My Great-Grandmother used to say, if you have roses and camelias in your garden, you will have flowers all year round

This camelia is in our front garden and is about 100 years old

 

Gran with her grand-children (my mum is on the right)

 

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