200

On Tuesday night I made two of my favourite things to cook:

Prawn pasta (recipe here)

And shortbread (recipe here)

I went out to our tiny local supermarket to get some ingredients but I had to buy some Thai rice flour instead of the one I normally buy. I was excited by the price ($1.50, bargain!) but I'm not convinced that the final product tastes quite as good. Though it still tasted good enough for me to eat 5 pieces before lunch the next day.

Yesterday I made another favourite of mine: Something Experimental. When I was in high school my friend Julia (hello if you're reading!) used to bring in these lovely pizza scroll thingies on special occasions, and last night I was thinking about them so I decided to have a go at recreating them. I don't know Julia's recipe so I just made it up but they turned out really well! 

I used:

Pampas puff pastry

Tomato paste

Grated mozarella

Black olives from a jar

Diced ham

I just put everything onto the pastry, then rolled it up and sliced it as you would pinwheel sandwiches or a swiss roll cake. This part was extremely messy and difficult! I almost gave up, but instead I put the slices on a tray and baked them at 180 until they looked crispy and delicious.

These would be a great make-ahead snack if anyone is planning to entertain over Easter.

And in other news this is my 200th post! Perhaps tonight I will eat 200 Easter eggs to celebrate this exciting milestone.  

Happy long weekend!

Faux Fuchsia

Remember the time I saw Delta Goodrem at Kit and Kaboodle?  Remember how I was ridiculously excited? Remember how I said I am never starstruck like that normally?

 

Turns out I lied, because yesterday I got a comment from my favourite blogger Faux Fuchsia (hello FF if you are reading! I hope you won't think I am a nutter now!) and I just about died. I texted Emily immediately, in caps lock and using more exclamation points than strictly necessary, even though it was after 1 am.

 

Actually it wasn't really immediately - I needed a moment to calm down before I could text. 

 

To witness Expect Cowgirls' biggest milestone yet, have a look at the comments section of my Beach Burrito Company post.

 

If you're interested you should really check out Faux Fuchsia's blog.  If you like Expect Cowgirls (or even if you don't) you will "luff" Faux Fuchsia, it is also of the photos-of-food-and-other-things-I-like variety except that she is about three times funnier than me and eighty times fancier, and gardens a lot, and rambles less. I've been meaning for ages to write about the blogs I read, and FF's is absolutely my favourite.

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!