Random Thought #1

Sorry I’ve been AWOL, I’ve been busy contemplating life and sorting through some of the dilemmas that remained from the disaster that was 2013. And I’m happy to report that on the important bits I’ve come out on the happier side of life. 

This leads me to a random thought inspired by a post I found on Facebook

 courtesy of The Dog Buddha 

 

 

  

Sometimes the things we see as imperfections or flaws in our character can actually be hidden blessings. 

 A negative is not a bad thing when we grow from it. 

 

Gluten Free Tuna Piadina

Earlier this week I found Jamie Oliver's "Save with Jamie" on sale in a local shop. I'd watched a few episodes of the TV series and the book was a must have. Tonight I attempted my favourite recipe from the episodes I watched, Jamie's Tuna Melt Piadina, but with a few variations. 

A Piadina is a toasted flat bread, and being gluten intolerant I thought I'd give it a crack with some gluten free self raising flour and I made a few adjustments to the filling according to my taste.

The Piadina is basically self raising flour and water. Next time I'd be inclined to add a little oil as the gluten free flour made it a little dry.  Once combined the flour mix is kneaded and rolled into a ball then flattened to fit the base of an 18cm non stick fry pan. It's cooked for several minutes on both sides until puffy and golden brown. Once cooked its sliced thru the middle to create 2 discs. 

This is the flat bread in the pan, sorry the photos a little blurred! 

For the filling I used tuna, cannellini beans, brown onion, cheddar, smooth feta, garlic chives and thyme. These were all mixed together in a bowl.

I put a light coating of organic Dijon mustard on one side of the flat bread before adding the tuna mix and putting the whole thing back in the pan until the cheese in the mix was melted. 

Served with a side salad of grape tomatoes and lettuce the only thing left to do was enjoy..... 

For Jamie Oliver's version of this you'll need to buy the cook book which is full of some amazingly simple but tasty recipes. 

Thanks for the inspiration Jamie. 

in my garden

I've been spending a lot of time in my little vegie/herb patch lately. It's kind of my respite from the world, when I'm out there it's just me and the greenery. 

A few weeks back I sowed some lettuce mix seeds into a take away container. 

Yesterday it was time to plant them out into pots and see which ones would survive.

It was also time to transfer the Mizuna that I had been growing soiless on my window sill into some soil. 

With a bit of love soon I'll have lots more tasty treats for my salad bowl.

Gardens are a lot like people and relationships, with a bit of love and some nuture they flourish. It's not a new thought or concept but it's good to be reminded.....

basil

I love the smell of fresh basil and it's even better when it's home grown. This is a bunch I picked earlier

I threw it in the Thermomix with a handful of organic cashews, garlic, Himalayan salt and some locally produced olive oil and voila.....

Chunky Basil and Cashew pesto. This little dish of yumminess was the perfect condiment for my dinner

Crispy skinned Tasmanian salmon fillet with native lemon pepper seasoning, cucumber, home grown lettuce and chard, and a cherry tomato sauce that I made the other day. And of course a couple of dollops of my fresh pesto......It was delish

beach cleanse

After a stressful couple of days this afternoon was beach time again, except this time I wore my bathers and had a dunk in the ocean. 

I'd forgotten how soul cleansing it is. With waves crashing around me it was a good time to release and let go some of the stuff I'd been holding on to. 

And I felt so much better after it.... 

I'll be doing this more often as one of this years goals is to release and be free :)

veggie patch

I have a little vegie garden, actually it's more of a veranda/container garden. Here's some of what I'm growing.

Micro Greens, Lettuce, Wheat Grass and Aristotle Basil

Celery, Basil, Perennial Coriander and Mizuna.

I also have lots of other things growing that I'll share with you soon. My little garden is grown organically and I love the idea of growing as much as I can so I know what's going into my food. At the moment it's mainly herbs and salad greens.

The picture of the micro greens (above) was taken a couple of weeks ago. I've been harvesting them and here's what they look like on the table.

Basil, Rocket, Purple Cabbage and Kale.

It was so worth the effort as they are super tasty! Yes I'll be growing more of these......

blah day!

Today was a slightly stressful day..... 

Tonight I was going thru my iPhone photos and found this hipsta photo that I thought I'd share with you.

Even on a stressful day there's always something like this to see. And if the skies are grey outside hopefully there's a picture like this on your phone to remind you of the sunshine :)

pinterest finds

I'm a bit addicted to Pinterest at the moment! There's so much good stuff to be found on there. This is one of my favourite finds from the last week.

life's a beach!

Today was kind of a work day, but yesterday my sister and I took out four legged fur babies for a run on the beach. Windy weather meant we only had to share the beach with some kite surfers and they were mostly up in the air so our girls had plenty of room to run..... 

a juice a day

At the end of last year I bought myself a cold press juicer. It's fairly basic, it won't make sausages like some others do but it does the job. My challenge for myself for this year is a juice a day. This mornings concoction was orange, mango and freshly harvested wheat grass from my verandah garden.

I must admit that I missed day 1 of my challenge. A few too many Bellinis for New Years didn't really set the pace for juicing before work... But I did have a home made fruit smoothie so that sort of counts! 

where there's magic

Someone recently said to me that they'd been told that somewhere between 15 and 21 magic leaves our lives and they wondered why this happens. My immediate thought was that the magic never leaves us what changes is our ability to recognise it.

But what is the magic that we have in childhood. For me it's a childhood sense of wonderment; the ability to see that which most adults are blind to, like the amazing colours around trees and people. The dreams of flying, the imaginary friend and the ability to conjure up all kinds of things, and an incredible sense of knowing. Somewhere in our teen years life gets complicated, hormones take over and the world clouds our perception. By the time adulthood arrives life is so busy that it's gone.

I remember as a child seeing colours around people and then there was the animal that wasn't physically there that sometimes settled on my bed at night.

Somewhere along the way I lost my magic, but I found it again in my 30's when I began to understand the universe a little better and slowly began to realise the power that I could have over my own life. But looking back on the middle years the magic was always there I just didn't see it.

So what is magic for me now? It's seeing the unseen, sometimes knowing what is to happen or be said before it actually is and the ability to sometimes manifest a thought into something, and most of all its good old fashioned intuition.

Magic is all around us we only need to open our hearts and minds to it, embrace it and let it happen in our lives....