Recommitting to Thrift

If you've been reading this blog for a while you'll know I've always been a massive fan of Thrift. Back in the day I was all about Frugal February and op shop buys, but recently we've become a little estranged. I still love op shops, but I also love outsourcing chores and personal grooming activities, and have developed a bit of a fondness for getting a taxi home after a night out. And sometimes getting a taxi there too. Even though I live six minutes from a train station with frequent services and limited dodgy characters.

My twenty two year old self would be sick at the very thought.

After reflecting on how much of our house we own vs how much interest we have forked over to the bank, I have decided to recommit to thrift. 

James and I have been eating sensible homemade meals instead of buying dinner five times a week.

In a dazzling display of adult responsibility, we often cook these on a weekend and keep them in the fridge for quick weeknight meals. I know.

Lately I've been spending a lot on entertainment, but now I am getting into community theatre.

This was Legally Blonde The Musical by Engadine Musical Society. Actually it was very good (and hello to my talented telekinetic friend if you are reading). I had seen it once before: James took me to see Lucy Durack and Rob Mills at Star City once. But those days are OVER.

So are the days of cafe brunches on weekends. Now I go to the Kim Le Bakery on the highway for Vietnamese rolls (banh mi for the cultured people) and mock-cream-based desserts.

They also sell those awesome Lipton sparkling iced teas in miniature cans, even the diet one which I can not find ANYWHERE else. (If anyone's seen it in a supermarket please let me know!)

I've been getting back into baking too. Here is a boring old chocolate cake I made for my mum's birthday, jazzed up with a Nutella buttercream icing. It was pretty hectic, if I do say so myself.

It's just 226 grams of butter (that's two sticks in the USA), 2 cups of icing sugar and 2/3 cup of Nutella. That would be enough for one layer cake, or two regular cakes. Or you could just do one regular cake then invite a friend over to eat the remaining icing from the bowl while you get your drink on. Either way.

Baking is super thrifty, because it's not only a really cheap hobby but also a great source of affordable snack foods.

That's a maple bacon cupcake. I thought it might be a sort of Emperor's New Clothes thing that only a dumb hipster would make or buy, but surprise it's actually super tasty. The wrappers were $2 for a pack of 24 at The Reject Shop.

What did everyone do for their long weekend? Take a little trip away, host a family lunch, maybe go to the movies? Good for you, Rockerfeller. James and I went for a drive down the coast. In a borrowed car with free fuel. 

We went over the Sea Cliff Bridge and stopped for lunch in Coledale. Terrible food but a pretty glorious day. I haaaaate the cold so it's lucky I live in a place where Winter days can look like this:

Annoyingly, I was pretty sick for most of the long weekend so apart from the tiny road trip I just stayed home and practised Thrift. I did my own nails instead of going to the salon and ironed practically all my clothes instead of sending them out.

I also let James drag me to Bay Vista where he had a giant sundae and I, having just eaten an ice cream at home in an attempt at thrift, chose a savoury crepe instead. 

Big mistake. Big. HUGE.

Last night's dinner was much better - a picnic of roast chicken rolls, cheese and crackers and red wine.

The wine might seem like a bit of an indulgence, but James made a thrifty casserole for our weeknight dinners and the recipe called for a splash of red wine. He had to open a new bottle, so we were just being sensible in finishing it off. Waste not want not.

I'm off to combine slivers of old soap bars into one big new bar now.

Gin and Tonic Cupcakes

My mum sent me this recipe for Gin and Tonic Cupcakes a while ago. I love cupcakes, but I don’t often eat them – the beautifully decorated ones you see at cupcake shops generally taste pretty bad, but mine are so much less attractive than the store-bought ones that it doesn't seem worth the effort to make them. But with four days off work, non-stop rain and a friend’s birthday lunch to go to, I had to give them a try.

How good is my pink sieve? Don't mind the board games in the back.

SECRET TIP: I normally use a pate knife to ice cupcakes. It’s just like a tiny palette knife and gives much better result than using a butter knife. 

But this time I wanted to make a bit more effort so for the first time in my life, I tried piping the icing on. I had a piping bag in a drawer, so I attached the fancy nozzle to it, then just held it over the cupcake and piped away. I found I got the best result by starting in the middle and spiraling out to the edges and then back toward the middle. I imagined it would be really hard but it’s actually super easy!! It was kind of hard on my hands, but the skill and coordination required is seriously minimal and each cupcake was iced in seconds.

The cupcakes were a big hit with the girls, and also with the table next to us in the pub. This was the second time I’ve had random pub-goers admire my baking so if I ever go pro I know how I’ll be drumming up business. I was so proud of my new mad skills that I made a batch of vanilla cupcakes on Easter Sunday and topped them with some of the leftover icing to take to dinner at my mum's house.  I won't share the recipe as it wasn't a very good one, but I was still pretty pleased with the result.

Cookie Recipe

Hello everyone! What have you been up to lately? I have been up to all sorts but tonight I'm going to relax and do some baking.  Here is the recipe I always use for choc chip cookies, now you can have a relaxing evening of baking too! (And a fabulous weekend of gobbling cookies.)

Choc-chip Mint Cookies (from the Family Circle "Gorgeous Biscuits" book)

Ingredients:

125g butter, cubed and softened

½ cup (125g) caster sugar

1 egg, lightly beaten

2 tsp peppermint essence (or vanilla)

1 ½ cups (185g) SR flour

1 tbsp cocoa powder

Pinch of salt

1 ¼ cups (220g) dark choc chips


Method:

Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius. (Also learn to type degrees symbol.)

Beat butter and sugar until creamy.

Add beaten egg gradually, beating well until combined.

Stir in peppermint essence.

Stir in sifted flour, cocoa and a pinch of salt.

Fold in choc bits.

Roll rounded teaspoons into balls and place well apart on trays; flatten slightly.

Bake for 15 minutes.

Gobble!



Makes 40, allegedly.

Cookie Thai-m

On Friday Meg came down to Melbs for a visit! Drinking the above cocktails was just one of the many fun things we did together.  The boys in my house reckoned we are exactly alike.  Can't say I minded at all.

Thanks Meg for a super fun weekend!


After the Great Ocean Road we went to Ross's place (hello if you're reading, thanks for being a stellar host!) for a drink or thirty.

Never have I ever seen such a lovely house!

That tandoori pizza was awesome.


On Sunday afternoon after Meg and I parted ways I went to the city with my housemates to die of heatstroke and eat a v late lunch.

I ordered eight kilos of tapas.  I liked it all but I didn't quite love it.


On Monday night we went to dinner at a Thai restaurant that is inexplicably called Cookie.  It was hella indie but really nice.

 

Those thingies on the left were tapioca dumplins, oh em gee they were good.  Next to them is a load of prawns.  I ate nearly all of them myself (thanks everyone!).

Some kind of beef, pad thai with chicken and prawns, some super delicious sweet potato thing.

 

Eggnet! This was really incredible, like an explosion of corriander and mint in my mouth.

 

When I did cooking in high school the kitchens always smelled of corriander because we inexplicably used it in EVERY dish.  Naturally I grew to hate it, but now I love it again.  It's probably my second favourite herb, the first being basil.

 

Anyway check out how they presented the bills:

 

Charming! I love a vintage Little Golden Book.

 

 

Remember how last week I said I might bake?

 

Well I totes did:

 

I like to bake just about anything that doesn't have fruit in it, and I love to eat same, but there is really nothing like fresh baked cookies.  I think I almost prefer baking these to eating them, and that is really saying something.  I wanted to make a microwave chocolate pudding too but we didn't have all the ingredients.  Alas.

Cookie Time! And Lebanese.

Does everyone else love fresh baked cookies as much as I do? Here are some I made last week:

 

They are from the Family Circle Gorgeous Biscuits cookbook circa a million years ago; they are supposed to be choc mint but I didn't use peppermint essence this time because some loser said he didn't want it.

I was really craving some Middle Eastern food so we went to this Lebanese restaurant in Brunswick East. Or somewhere.

I liked this bread:

 

Would you believe it was less blurry in real life?

The hummus was a let down.  It tasted like Chris's dips.

 

I think everyone else liked it but I was pretty disappointed, it was not on par with what you get at my fave places in Surry Hills, or my aunty's house.

 

If anyone knows a good Lebanese or similar restaurant in Melbourne that I will like please let me know!

100

Hello!  Welcome to my 100th Post Bonanza, featuring all the usual things.  Like bargains:

This Miss Shop glitter wallet was on sale for $10.50.  Dorothy Gale would approve.  The other thing is a headband, $2 from Colette.  I discovered it can be a necklace to so it's double as thrifty.

I fell in love with Cotton On Body's Revolutionary bras because they come in size 8s.  Then they stopped making them.  But the other day I discovered that they had them back in!  I grabbed three - plain black, navy lace and pink lace.  Then when I got to the counter the lady told me all bras were 40%!  Can't even tell you how happy I was.  They're normally $30 (still great value), but I only paid $18 each.  I would have bought more but the other colours didn't have any size 8s.

I also bought the matching undies to the navy bra because I love to match (the black one didn't have undies, and the pink ones were sold out).  I had a 20% off coupon for full-price merchandise so the undies were $8.

Target has lots of things on clearance and they are a further 30% off at the moment.  So I bought this wardrobe essential:

I'm sure it'll be a staple.  I've already worn it once!  It left fluff on my top but I didn't care.  It came down to about $22.

I bought another two Ulta3s.  Sizzling Red is very similar to Scarlet but not dodgy.  Purple Pumps is very bright but it was only a dollar.

Now for some baking.

It was James's birthday the other day, and he wanted a My Little Pony cake.  At first I decided to make a castle with ponies on it, but it didn't work out that well.

I used the instagram filter that disguised its hideousness the most, but it's still pretty woeful.  I didn't even bother finishing it.

Instead, I did cupcakes with a Rainbow Dash theme:

These were really easy to make.  I was pressed for time so I used a Betty Crocker chocolate fudge packet mix.  Hers are the best packet mixes, but I still didn't love it.  Nobody else seemed to mind though.  I made thick white buttercream icing (other kinds look better for decorating but they taste awful so it's pretty pointless) and coloured it with the blue colouring that comes in a bottle on its own.  NOT the one that comes in a box of four colours.

While the icing set I prepared the decorations: rainbow Sour Straps lollies chopped in half for the rainbows, and marshmallows chopped in half for the clouds.  When the icing was set I cut the cupcakes to make two little slots on each, then stuck the sour straps in.  I dabbed a little extra icing onto the marshmallows to stick them down.

To serve, I arranged the cupcakes on my Coles tiered cupcake stand and stuck James's Rainbow Dash figurine (sneakily stolen from his house when he wasn't looking) on the top.

Here is the same picture with a different filter, which disguises Rainbow Dash but makes the colours look 20% cooler.

Speaking of pictures where the colours look cooler, here is a giant box of Nerds that Emily gave me the other day.  What an awesome friend; thanks Em!

And now for some food that someone else cooked!

James and I had dinner at Seven Lantens in Sylvania.  It's a Japanese/Korean restaurant that was very lovely, but quite expensive.

That's the entrance - pretty groovy, huh?

Soft Shell Crab Roll, $18

Hu Yao prawns, $18

Beef Tataki, $18

Vegetarian Gyoza, $9

All the food tasted really great, but it was quite pricey, and you would need more than four plates to fill you up (you can order big main meals there too though).  I would definitely go back for a special date though.

We'd planned to get Bay Vista afterwards, but unfortunately there was a huge line.  But here are some pictures from another time, so let's just pretend, shall we?

Yum.  Here's something less yum:

My Mum kindly bought me this World Kitchen ready meal pasta thing to take to work.  It was really gross.  I didn't even finish it, which is really weird for me.  I'd never buy it again and I must insist that you don't.  I don't even understand how something as simple as pasta could be made to taste so terrible.  The chicken had a weird jellyish texture and the sauce was just rank.  Please don't eat this.

I spent ages searching Instagram for a filter that made it look not like dog vomit.  That's the best I could do.  It was worse in real life.

Last night I went out to Nada's Lebanese in Surry Hills though and it was the bomb.  We ordered a $27pp banquet thing, which included hummus, babaganoush, tabouli, seven different meat and vegetarian dishes that I don't remember, plus coffee and sweets.

This hummus was truly spectacular.

The falafels and ladyfingers were stand-outs too.

The one thing I didn't care for was the dolmades.  It wasn't the restaurant's fault; I just really don't like them.  But there was more than enough of everything else so I didn't go hungry. 

Anyway, they more than made up for it in other areas.  I went with Meg, Elise and Becky (hello girls!), and Nicky (hello Nicky!) met us later.  We were still at the restaurant so she joined us there while we finished up.  She arrived just before the sweets were served, and look:

They gave us five, even though we only paid for four!  They also served tea and coffee for all five of us and there was no extra charge for any of it.  On top of that there was no corkage charge either.

It was so delicious and the service was great and I will be back for sure.  Thank you Nada's Lebanese for a fantastic dining experience!

Here are some friands that were also quite good:

One of our clients at work brought in a big plate of them for us.  Isn't that so nice?

And speaking of nice, while my neighbours across the street went away to Canada I fed their cats again, and look what they (neighbours, not cats) brought back for me:

The Maple Tea is really lovely.  I haven't tried the Maple Syrup yet but I am excited for the next time I have pancakes.  I just love that beautiful glass bottle.

Well, that's all I have to say about my ordinary life for the moment.  Thanks for sitting through this a hundred times, you guys!  I'm not really sure why you do, but I appreciate it all the same.

If you really enjoy Expect Cowgirls, you can also Like the Official Facebook Page and, if you're sick of waiting forever to see pictures get uploaded you can follow me on Instagram (@shippitydoodah), or on Tumblr for all your Harry Potter Meme needs.  Technology, huh?

If you're really committed you can also leave a comment and tell me, which of these 100 posts have you liked the best?  Maybe a specific one or maybe just a category, like "the ones with food" (haha, that would be ALL of them).  Don't forget I have more Ulta3s for leavers of comments!