I promised one day that I would...

...share my burger recipe with you, well here it is...
It originally came home from school with Emily when she was in cookery club a few years ago...but it wasn't written down, it was from her memory! So over the interim period it has developed into the recipe that we use today...which was still not written down until today!!


For Emily's Yummy Burgers you will need:

Pasta Pronto...

...I tried out a new pasta sauce tonight, when I say new, I mean new to me in the 'making it' sense...it's actually a very, very old sauce! Pasta Puttanesca, or as it translates...no, on second thoughts I'll let you read about it...have a look here... Of course, I am not saying all the information is correct and verified, but I do know the basics are! 
I had a look at numerous versions of the recipe, and believe me there are numerous!! Most chefs worth their salt have a version, all of which contain the same basic ingredients, tomatoes, onion, garlic, olive oil, capers, anchovies, chilli and olives..and the traditional way is to serve with spaghetti...in the end I chose to try a combination of this recipe on the Guardian website, by Angela Hartnett and Nigella's version...why? I thought they looked pretty straightforward, and sounded tasty...So what did I do?....this..

A bit of light reading...?

I love the start of each new month, it means new editions of the magazines I buy or subscribe to...which means a whole load of new recipes and crafty ideas to try out...Look at the lovely April Issues...lots of Easter/Spring goodies to make and bake...

Emily's Quilt...Chapter 1...

Now that the pillow mat is finished I have a sewing gap in my life...although as I mentioned before I need a new cover for my sewing machine...but Emily (the 10  year old female smallish person) has a different idea! After visiting her cousins last weekend and seeing this...I was asked if I can make one for her...now I am going to start slowly (remember I am still wearing those L-plates on my sewing machine!) and have cheated by buying got a couple of charm packs from Moda, the lovely fresh colours from Kate Spain in her 'Good Fortune' series of fabrics...Emily 'helped' me lay them all out the other day to design her quilt...the results are below...

What to do with leftover chicken...?

So I got home yesterday and looked in the fridge, knowing that tonight was leftover chicken night...My usual speedy solution is 'Cheats Chicken Pie Filling' which consists of sauteing a chopped onion, adding some garlic, some chopped bacon and cooking for a few minutes...add some chopped mushrooms and the chopped cooked leftover chicken, to this add a tin of condensed soup, your choice of flavour (mushroom, celery and chicken are all good ones to add), add a little milk to thin and cook until the chicken is heated through...either serve with a pastry top or as we do more often than not, with rice of mashed potato...But not last night!!!

Making The Pillow Mat...

...a new sewing project...a little while ago I posted to say that this project jumped out at me from issue 18 of Making Magazine...and that my smallish male person quite fancied the look of it...and because I had made the smallish female person two cushions...why couldn't I make it for him? Good question, apart from the obvious reason...I'm only just learning to sew!!! But after reading the instructions about fifty times...I decided it seemed pretty okish for me to tackle...

Chunky Pork Chilli...

Inspired by one of our favourite recipes, Chilli for a Crowd from the taste.com.au website. I had about 650g pork leg fillets to use in the freezer, and as I am trying to clear the freezer out a bit, thought I would have a go at 'tweaking' the basic recipe for last night's dinner....

Mondays...with a bit of baking thrown in for good luck...

Mondays in our house tend to take a similar path each week...School run (always), supermarket (most Mondays), washing (does it ever end!), tidying (again...does it ever end??!!), catch up with emails, blog etc (if I have time)..dinner prep (definitely), a bit of baking (maybe), some sewing (if I'm lucky!)...school run (essential), dinner (goes without saying), cubs and guides (most Mondays), bedtime routines, grown-up time...and then we hit Tuesday...for the next 5 weeks or so, I am gong to be working Tuesdays and Wednesdays, so blogging will have to come either side...


But right now, let's concentrate on today...

Melting Moments...Lunch Box Bakes #3

Part of the busy weekend was spent baking...as usual! The cookies that were baked earlier were devoured on Brighton Beach as an afternoon snack, so something was needed to fill the gap in the lunch boxes!! Enter new cook book number one! 500 Cookies...

There was only one thing I could do...bake some cookies!!

Busy Weekends...

Hey there, it's Monday already, where did the weekend go? When I started this blog a month or so ago, I intended it to be all about makes and bakes...but as time goes on I think I would like to adapt its purpose, and let it become more of a narrative of my life with my family and friends all included...So with that in mind, let's begin the new chapter...


Wow! What a weekend we've had...