NOM NOM NOM GET IN MAH BELLEH

So a while back, I got these empanada makers (I like to call them 'impanema' makers, and hum accordingly) from Tupperware. It was this crazy ass special and I got two. And then I made like,

the most amazing pastie EVER.

Ingredients used:
Box of GF pastry from the frozen section of Bilo (possibly other leading supermarkets)
1 x tin of Sanitarium 'Savoury Lentils' (health food section)
1 x egg yolk, beaten (as recommended by The Perfect Pie Crust)
Handful of grated cheese

Instructions
Fan forced oven preheated to 180.
Lightly greased impanema with grapeseed oil (couldn't find gf flour)
Clack impanema maker together to make it 'talk'. Make it say something sausagey.
Cut pastry sheets in half.
Lay half over the impanema
One spoon full of savoury lentils in the middle.
Sprinkle with cheese
Shut the impanema, like a set of false teeth.
Peel away excess pastry, roll it into a ball and roll it out & make a loveheart to put on top when baking.
Use a pastry brush and paint the pastie with egg yolk.
If you have made decorations like the loveheart, stick it on now and paint with yolk.
Bung in the oven until it starts browning....

Take it out, dip it in tomato sauce and NOM NOM NOM.

Please excuse the quality of my photos, I got sand in my beloved Canon SLR 500 so I'm using my mother's camera - thanks mom!

I didn't think to use the excess pastry for decorations, but rolled it up and froze it to make more another time. It can be refrozen for up to 3 months.

Rhiannon just reminded me how silly it is to have two, so I'm giving away my spare in the following competition, so you too can make these beauties (as of now, they aren't available from Tupperware).

To win? Cook something new this week. Post a photo to the wall of Sausage Housewife Fanpage.

The dish that gets the most 'likes' by next Sunday night wins! Open to readers world wide....

Good luck!

Accidently Spending Street

There are a few things that I refuse to buy as presents for people, unless I reeeeeally know their taste well. These things include - art, crockery & bed linen. It's wayyy too personal and I have had too many of those things given to me and I feel totally obligated to keep them because of WHO bought them. It sucks.

Someone close to us bought us a Royal Dalton (not the expensive stuff) 6 person crockery set, and whilst I really appreciated it and it's served us so well for the last few years, I've never liked the colours and now that a few bowls are broken I'm feeling less guilty about wanting a new crockery set in case they come over and see us using something different.

This is what we were given.... it's a nice set but it's just not 'me'.

I've searched high and low for a set in stores that I would say is 'me' but sadly they are all too perfect, too matchy. I love the idea of antique, but I'm just not a floral or gold type person, either.

I have been hunting in the op shops and ebay (NOTHING on ebay) for so long and I've only had luck in finding some white bone china dinner plates with black deco borders. I gave up my hunt for second hand and bought some black and white side dishes for $1.89 each on clearance from Target. I also found some square little bowls reduced from $8 to $4. I think they look quite fetching together....

I am so obsessed with red and green, I simply cannot choose one over the other. The upside of this Libran trait of mine - total indecisiveness - is that I will not have to redecorate at Christmas time. I popped into Robin's Kitchen and found some red and white polka dot (my second favourite print EVER) bowls which I snapped up too, for $4 also.

We have also been searching for well over a year for the perfect mug. By chance, I found a set at Aldi with 'Daddy Rocks' and 'Yummy Mummy' written on them. Although my one is pink, and I'm so not a pink person, the mug is a dream to drink out of. SD LOVES his. I was going to tell everyone over at Sausage Mama about them, but figured as they were in Aldi they probably had limited stock. But they had them even cheaper at Robins Kitchen! $9 for a pair! So I bought another set - one is red, wahoo.

At first I was pissed that there is pink and blue, but I hoped that all together, the mix would work quite well along with my favoured leopard print mug and our black cat mug. They seem to. I'm happy. If you are looking for a gift for a parent I really recommend these.

Our cannisters are pretty sad on the other hand.

Coffee in a coffee jar? Original! Sugar in a tea cannister? Awesome. Tea in stainless, not bad. I am truly a style icon. (I'm unsure why Vogue Home haven't returned my calls.) These have served us well, and I kept getting outbid on ebay on sets like this...

And when I saw these at Target....I couldn't resist.... polka dots in green OR red!

Are you a tea or coffee person? Try as SD might (he is an awesome barista apparently) I just can't love coffee. I'm too sensitive and get an instant headache. I'm a tea girl through and through. Black, no sugar. Don't care what is is, I'll probably drink it.

My love for tea started back when I was 16. I was dating a drummer, one of 3 brothers who were into heavy metal, wearing their goatees long, black faded Metallica shirts, etc. The youngest, was a mad tea drinker. I loved that he was hardcore, a smoker, but loved his tea pots. I have been in the market for a cute tea pot for forever also (I get tired of using my plunger with loose leaf tea all of the time) and I was thrilled to find this little beauty for $15. I might start collecting them....

This is as matchy as I get. I'm going to have to back away from any more polka purchases now.

How cute is this??

I also bought this for shopping...

for $9 at Target. I am the worst offender for forgetting my green bags when shopping. I have them beside the front door and I look at them as I'm walking out and think 'there are shopping bags' and I don't think to stop and take them with me. Lame. So now this basket is where those bags will be stored, and I can't NOT think to take this. Surely! It looks super cute with unbagged fruit and vegies in it....

Before...

After!

Before

After!

I justified not being super tidy because I didn't have nice stuff. So now that I do have nice stuff, I gotsta keep it clean.

Let's see how that goes!

Oooh and check out my kitsch glass fruit bowl from a garage sale for $5

What's your favoured style of decor?

-SH.

Spinach & Ricotta Gluten Free Pasta Bake

This dish serves 4 - perfectly. I ate 3 bowls and SD had 1 :0p This recipe is from The Australian Womans Weekly Healthy Babies Recipe Book, available from most newsagents and supermarkets. Nothing baby like about this! But SB sure helped me devour it...

Ingredients
280 grams of gf pasta (if anyone knows where to find large gf shells, please let me know! I used penne)
500g trimmed spinach (I just used a huge handful of frozen spinach as the fresh stuff looked dodgy)
600g low fat ricotta cheese
2 tablespoons of fresh flat-leaf parsley (I used about half a teaspoon)
1 tablespoon of chopped fresh mint (didn't have any)
700g bottled tomato pasta sauce
125ml (half cup) of chicken stock
2 tablespoons of finely grated parmesan cheese (I just used grated tasty)

Cook pasta as per normal (I find gf pasta takes less time to cook....).
Let it cool.
Preheat oven to 180/160 if fan forced
Boil, steam or nuke spinach until wilted. Drain. Chop it finely, squeeze out excess liquid.
Combine spinach, ricotta and herbs in a bowl. Spoon it into the pasta if you can.
Combine sauce and stock into oiled shallow 2 litre overnproof dish. Place pasta shells in dish, sprinkle with parmensan.
Bake (covered) until pasta is tender (the book says for like an hour but that seemed crazy and I was hungry. We did it for 20 mins - the last 10 mins uncovered so the cheese would brown a bit)
Let stand for 10 mins.

So I only got half the amount of ricotta required, it seems I need direction on how to write a freakin shopping list. So I added in some free range, organic chicken and it was a hit. Will totally have this again. SD is super impressed. 3 nights in a row of cooking fandangle (for me) recipes. It's SUCH a nice feeling to have both of my boys really enjoy my meals...and make happy eating noises.

Is it lame that I'm annoyed all of my recipe books aren't the same size and shape, some are cut of of magazines or cards from the supermarket? I wish they all matched and looked pretty.

Peas.
SH.

More GF Cooking...

Did you know in supermarkets, the most expensive product is at eye level? The cheapest products are at the top and at the bottom of the sections. Cheeky huh? When it comes to gluten free shopping, it's damn expensive. I was so excited when San Remo began making gf pasta, that I wanted to support them so they would keep making it. Meanwhile, I was paying twice the price! I've now vetoed them in favour of smaller companies on the bottom shelves, we're talking pasta at home brand prices here folks. I dabble in vegetable, corn and rice pastas and cannot tell the difference between them. So anyway, this is the latest one I bought and LOVED.

I mentioned a while back that I was interested in trying TVP gluten free mince, and boy does it look like meat! The way you cook it is be pouring an equal amount of TVP and boiling water into a pot and covering with a tea towel for 5 minutes. Weird huh? But it WORKS.

As if this doesn't look like mince! What's even better about eating this instead of meat, is that you don't have to worry about making sure there isn't any pink leftover. There has to be less chance of getting food poisoning from this, right?

Added some 3 beans, some LSA and some cheese and voila - awesome.

At first I found it really obvious that it wasn't meat - it didn't have that.... heaviness. Initially I likened it to having a vanilla thickshake with pink colouring (knowing it's not strawberry, but still being suprised when it tastes like vanilla) but after my second bowl, I decided I actually really liked it in a meal. Some curry powder wouldn't have gone astray, I guess really, TVP is just a filler and you can make it taste how you want. How do you cook it?

At the time of cooking, SB was nibbling on some gluten free icrecream cones, so I popped some in the cones and we each ate one - delicious! (I've always eaten weird foods, toasted noodle and peanut butter sandwhiches, for example, and a psychic even told my sister that I ate weird food!).

In other exciting news, I COOKED GLUTEN FREE JELLY. Took me back to the days of making 'Airoplane Jellyyyyyyy' with my grandmother. It is DELICIOUS and suits people with allergies, check out the box, I TOTALLY recommend.

-SH.

Gluten Free Chicken Schnitzel Parmies!

(I say 'Parmies' because I have no idea how to spell the full word.) This works just as well with tofu.

Polenta for crumbing. Eggs. Chicken.

Dipped in eggs, rolled in polenta. Lightly brown in a pan.

Seeing as I have tomato sauce on EVERYTHING, I've decided to branch out and try new tomato sauces. I really am a rebel without a cause. Add sauce, avo and cheeeeese.

Bung in the oven at 180 for however long you can be assed. Checking often to check they ain't burnin'.

Add mash with spinach and onion (because you forgot to put the onion on the parmies). Add tomato sauce (the good stuff!) and then inhale.

SD ate EVERYTHING. Even though he bitches and moans when he sees I add spinach. Whatever Heather. Thrilled.

The leftover egg from the dipping, I added leftover chopped onion and a couple of extra eggs and chucked it in the frudge for easy scrambled eggs in the morn.

I give this meal an 8 out 10 for taste.

7 out of 10 for ease of cooking.

Peas n' Sausages,

SH.

NOM NOM NOM NOM

As a gluten free person, eating out can be a boring pain in the ass. If I have to eat another slice of 'orange and almond' I may have to gauge my own eyes out. It's soooo rare to find cafes with gluten free bread, let alone savoury gluten free snacks!

So, I have been brainstorming fillings since my last batch of gluten free savoury thingies. I found some free range organic chicken thighs reduced to clear and thought I would make potato top savouries.

I tried to photograph everything I was going to use, but I'm more of an impulsive 'ooh! I can put this in! Oh and this! And a pinch of that!'

Peas, carrots, corn, grated cheese, a tin of chick peas, roasted pumpkin, honey wholegrain mustard and curry powder. 

I chopped and then baked the chicken, probably would have been easier if I had baked then chopped...

Mashed potatoes, which I added spinach and brocolli to.

I could have googled how to cut the pastry but was way lazy and experimented instead. I found that two thin strips to make a 'cross' worked best. Some I was even able to close up like you would a cardboard box.

How do you cut your pastry? I would like to get a pie dish, would be healthier to eat less pastry and more filling I suppose.

Me in my vintage apron. I had no idea that I had a problem with shutting cupboard doors until I saw this. I may have to see someone about that. Or perhaps I should see someone about the anger which lies just under the surface of my sausagey disposition, which is totally directed at orange and almond slices. Such anger leads me to wield a BIG knife in preparation for a cafe massacre. Rahhh!! (Haha reminds me of people who say they don't have anger issues and then CRACK IT BIG TIME with road rage or at junk mail. I once did a psyke test and one of the questions was about my feelings towards junk mail, random, no?)

Sadly, SB woke up and I ASSUMED SD was watching the savouries, and SD ASSUMED I had a timer on, so they were a little crunchier than intended, but still ohhh sooo delicious. The mash complimented them perfectly and was a great way to slip in some extra iron and greenage. At least a couple of serves of the days vegies in this, which is something I try to think of when looking at the food intake for the day. Next time I'm going to try gluten free TVP mince.

I really enjoy making these and hope to one day be organised enough to make the pastry from scratch. There is enough to cover leftovers tomorrow and probably a snack as well so not bad. The pastry itself is $10 so all up, it's pretty expensive, I probably shouldn't be making this every week but I'll work on it and it will be nice to be able to rock up at a party with a dish that isn't my faithful gluten free Basco butter cake....

Do you have a dish you always take to parties? What's your favourite recipe?

On the Sausage Housewife FB page, we've decided to each try the same recipe and adapt it for our dietary requirements, and then post the photos. If you have a recipe you'd like to recommend, please email it to sausagemama@gmail.com.....I'm looking forward to expanding my very small repertoire!

I guess by morning I will find out if my chicken curry savouries were cooked properly! (Ahhh that was what was good about being a full vegetarian - not having to worry about food poisoning....)

Okeh bai,
SH.

Moth Juice

We have some uninvited house guests. Some little son of a BITCH/BASTARD moths who live in our pantry. I didn't discriminate against the first couple I saw, thinking they surely wouldn't do any harm. Little did I know they had eaten open a bag of bread crumbs and had several generations all living in the one packet. I think it's fair to assume they were INBREEDING. And I was singlehandedly supporting them and their incestuous choices by supplying them with breadcrumbs which I don't even eat!!

I went to town yesterday and cleaned the whole pantry out, I let the moths I could catch out the window, murdered the rest and drowned all of their babies. The larvae were carefully laid underneath the lips of plastic container lids, under the flaps of unopened cardboard food boxes and in the folds of plastic wrapping on unopened Salada packets (another gluten filled food! I think I just need to stop catering for people with other dietary requirements.

2 pesky bastard moths rocked up again today. I couldn't be assed calling the Residential Tenancies Association and letting them know these dimwits weren't on the lease and were NOT paying rent, so I sprayed them with ORANGE POWER. It's ON like DONKEY KONG, to quote the ever edumacated Stifler.


In other news, I'm on a juicing, cooking and smoothie-ing binge. As the three of us are all a little under the weather, I stocked up on some fruit and vegies and went to town juicing them all. When you realise what real FRESH juice looks like, it really puts you off buying bottles from the store, I tell you what! I even tipped out the remainder of my V8 juice as the stuff I had made looked infinitely better.

SB helped me cut up the oranges, apples, carrots (I kept the skin on because I know it's better for me, but would prefer it without for sure), watermelon, celery, capsicum and baby tomatoes.  Sadly, the juicer 'juiced' some orange skins so the juice is a little more rind-flavoured than I would like (SD and SB wouldn't touch it after a whiff) so my plans of flushing out our toxins with my concoctions failed miserably.

Sadly, the photo of the apple juice didn't take before the camera died. In it's natural state, it looks almost like a peppermint thickshake on top - all frothy, and light green - maybe like a diluted Powerade underneath - NOTHING like the brown juice you buy. I decided to use it to fill my tupperware icy pole containers (see previous posts) with that with a few drops of rind-juice, for SB to enjoy when teething or hot.

The small amount of leftover apple juice failed miserably at sweetening up the litre of juice I had so lovingly made!! But I will chug it down every day, regardless.

Unlike the failed tofu smoothie I attempted tonight. If I forced down another drop I probably would have vomited all over myself. I mixed vanilla jalna yoghurt, gf chocolate powder, soy milk (which I'm not used to, it's been a while since I had that, but I've been rejecting dairy lately) and raw tofu, some LSA and SD watched me aghast whilst I bragged about how awesome it was going to be. I skulled a glass in front of him in hopes that I could influence him to try some, but the attempts at dry heaving may have put him off, incidentally. Looking forward to finding a recipe for that, that's for sure!

I've been keeping my V8 bottles to store sugar, salt, rice and fresh juice in (avoiding using plastic where I can, apart from my Tupperware). Here is a photo of the latter...check out how tonights concoction has separated....


It's been a while since I was a hardcore juicer. Today was rich with experience! That's one way to look at it anyway.

Today's biggest lesson learnt:  Go slow, and taste as I go. (But maybe not with the tofu smoothie.)

-SH