Friday, December 31, 2010

Making a bucket o'margerita....



Following my lovely sista Miss Shannon O'Shea's recipe, you too can make a bucket o'margarita for tonight's New Year's Eve festivities! Enjoy!

Thursday, December 30, 2010

Christmas gifts for those who love all things food!

Well, Christmas has been and gone in quite the whirlwind fashion for us.  There was lots of thoughts of our friends on the East Coast of the USA who were being belted by one hell of a blizzard while we were in a reasonable heat wave here.

We were incredibly lucky this year to have scored some beautiful items for Christmas from friends and family.  Naturally our gifts seemed to revolve around all things food and cocktail like, making perfect gifts for us!

Some highlights in our Christmas stockings were:

Our gorgeous tangerine Kitchen Aid artisan mixer!  At first I wanted aqua but was definitely swayed by this awesome colour (and the fact that we got it quite cheap too!)  I can't wait to whip up a storm in the kitchen!

Tangerine!!
It's super tangerine!


Mark received this very handy cook book for our Webber BBQ, a little smoke box and some Jack Daniels flavoured smoking pellets.  The cook book has some fantastic and very inspiring recipes and I'm sure that the Jack Daniels smoking pellets will get a work out for New Years Eve celebration, most likely for some ribs.

Webber cook book
Mark's most excellent BBQ cookbook.


Tupperware!  I can't tell you enough how excited I get over Tupperware.  My parents are always awesome at getting some of the bigger and more expensive pieces for us at Christmas time.  They are always the pieces that I say to myself "I'm going to buy that this year" but never get around to it.  This year we received the potato and onion keepers which stack nicely in our pantry.

Marimekko Christmas table runner
Our beautiful Marimekko table runner.


Our friend David went to great lengths to obtain this super cute Marimekko Christmas table runner!  I'm sure that this will become our holiday table runner for many, many years.

We also splurged on some gifts for ourselves (and our friends too!) including a gorgeous Laguiole cutlery set each for us and the Coopers.  I just love the bright colours and the knives cut through steaks like butter!  There is something so cheery about having colour in the kitchen, it makes for some very happy dinner parties.  It's soooooo pretty that it may have to feature in it's own blog post!

Was Santa kind to you in the foodie gifts?  I sure hope so!  Let me know what kitchen essentials came out of your santa stocking!

Saturday, December 4, 2010

Food Shopping...

Supermarket shopping morning
first thing on a Sunday morning at ALDI, notice no makeup!


Food shopping.  We all need to do it and sometimes it's fun and sometimes it's a real chore!  We shop all over the place for food ingredients.  Every week we get a box of organic fruit and veggies from Organic Angels.  It gets delivered straight to our house and we have been doing this for close to three years now!  I love having the box delivered as it's one less thing that I have to go out and do during the week and if we are a little slack in getting to the supermarket, I know that we have some tasty and healthy food to cook with.

We also do a lot of our 'staple' shopping at ALDI.  I so wasn't into this place but then my mum started to get weird delicious treats (such as cheap German beer and sauerkraut) and I thought I would give it ago.  We go every fortnight to stock up on tinned tomatoes, mineral water and all of that sort of stuff but they also have some delicious seasonal treats.  At the moment I'm loving their wild cranberry sauce on turkey sandwiches.  I also like some of their crazy packaging too, especially the breakfast cereal cheetah!

I really enjoy shopping locally for food.  I love my butchers that are a five minute walk from the house and pop in often after work to pick up a steak or some lamb.  The wonderful guys are always on for a chat and I love having a laugh with them and getting them to specially cut something for me.  I think it's important to support these little shops that have been there for ages and are experts in what they do!  We are lucky to live nearby a great butcher and baker, we constantly get great produce at a very reasonable price.

We do have a farmers market in the area as well but I always seem to be too busy in the morning to visit!  I do hear good things about it and love the fact that people are returning to buying directly from the growers.  In our case we also have lots of things growing away in our garden too, which you can't get much fresher!

So where do you shop?  Do you love it and enjoy the experience of selecting great produce or do you think that it's another chore for the weekend!  Let me know!

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