My life in pictures #10

1. There's a little diner in Moss Vale that I love to stop at when visiting my grandparents. They've got great burgers, but they also have a damn good pecan pie! It was a huge slice too.

2. I've been giving my KitchenAid a bit of a workout recently, baking lots. It really does make great cakes, and makes baking so much easier.

3. My friend got a job at Guerlain recently and is learning how to do makeup. I got to be the one she practiced on, yay! It was fun and she did a fantastic job.

4. On the way to finding some snow, we stopped at Adaminaby to have a look at the big trout.

5. The boy bought me a giant cupcake tin, and here is what I made. Delish.

6. Puppies. I love them.

7. Finally got to go skiing for the first time this season! Was such a fantastic day, blue skies until around 2pm, lots of great snow, and it was so warm! Brilliant. Can't wait to go again.

8. I've got a lot of free time at the moment, so what do I do? Make a trio of pancakes. Plain with maple syrup and bacon, choc chip with cherry coulis, and raspberry with mango, lemon and sugar. So good.

My Life in Pictures #9

As you can see, basically the last 2 weeks revolved around food. It was really nice spending a lot of time catching up with friends, and it especially made up for the cold weather! The next few weeks will be a little quieter, spent inside job hunting. Hopefully I'll manage to fit in a day to the snow to do a bit of skiing though. The last few weeks I found a photo app that lets me upload portrait photos to instagram, which is a huge help as my new Sony Xperia phone has a really short lens compared to the iphone.

The photo a day project I was involved in this month is coming to again, and I'm really considering going for another month. Some days it's tough to come up with something, but most of the time I'm super proud of my photos, and end up taking a photo of something I would have photographed anyway. I'm also less afraid of taking photos in public now, no fear of taking photos of pretty flowers in peoples front yards, or of a particularly good looking meal.

1. Having tea at Adore tea with friends. The cup said "One may forgive a murder - but a blunder in tea making, never". Also the tea was creme brule flavour, delicious!

2. After my job interview a few weeks ago, I decided to treat myself to some froyo. It was excellent. Chocolate, red velvet and raspberry tart ice cream, with cookie dough, cheesecake, mango, lychee and blueberry bursts, coulis, coconut and milo.

3. Trying out Lime Crime Mint to Be. I'm surprised how much I love this green shade, I think it's going to be amazing for summer.

4. While walking the dog I came across some daffodils! It's quite early to see daffodils about, but I'm not complaining, they're my favourite!

5. While my mum was gardening last weekend she found a frog hiding underneath a pot plant! Crazy!

6. For my birthday I made a pumpkin pie, and oh my it was delicious! You can also see the flowers the boy got me in the background... daffodils and roses.

7. I took this picture of Sadie while walking the dogs, for the #fmsphotoaday challenge. The prompt was sunflare. 

8. My friend and I went out to dinner to the restaurant where the boy works. needless to say I got the plate with the love heart on it :) It was a baileys creme brule with caramelised fig ice cream and berry coulis. So delicious!

You can follow my instagram here, otherwise my username is @Klerr.

Food Friday: New favourite toy and changing eating habits.

Fitness and healthy eating isn't something I've shared before on the blog. It's not something I've really been sharing in any part of my life. Especially healthy eating. While in England I had the worst diet. Chips and crips, pizza and beer made up the majority of my diet, and I think my health suffered for it. One of the ladies at work had bought one of those 'mix and go' blenders, where you put the fruit and veg in the cup and blend it, so you can drink out of it too. I thought it was a fantastic idea, and something I should think about getting when I get home. I'll let you in on a secret here: I've never eaten fruit. I just could never stand it. I wouldn't even touch berry yoghurts or muffins. This had to change if I wanted to get healthy.

When I got home I pulled out mum and dad's old juicer, and started making juices in the mornings. I wasn't a fan of all the wastage, and you had to use a lot of vegetables to make a small amount of juice. I started looking for a good 'mix and go' blender, but wasn't happy with what I could find, and then along came the Bellini Gourmet Wizard, which comes with 7 cups, 2 blades and a juicer attachment. Perfect!

So since then I've been trying out loads of different combinations of smoothies. I bought bags of frozen berries, cut up and froze a pineapple, and kept my fridge stocked with lots of veggies. I've been getting a lot of inspiration from Sandra from The Black Pearl Blog, including how to make nut milks (almond milk with dates and vanilla... amazing!!). I've been drinking them for breakfast, and although I usually need something else with my breakfast to fill me up, I've been adding a lot more fruit and veg to my diet that I would usually have. I'd love to share a few of my recipes with you in the future, so stay tuned.

Here's one of my favourite smoothies at the moment. Made with baby spinach, apple, blueberries and cucumber with cranberry juice. This was the first smoothie I made with avocado and I was super pleased. I usually add flaxseed when I'm making a smoothie in the morning to try and keep me fuller for longer - flaxseed has fibre and protein. For someone who usually has a sweet iced coffee and vegemite on toast for breakfast, this is pretty yummy. I guess it's all the sugar in the cranberry juice, which I hope to soon replace with coconut water, or even just water (coconut water is a little expensive).

 

The Gourmet Wizard, although small, is pretty good at blending everything up to a smooth drink. I only have problems when I'm using frozen mango I get a few chunks of mango because they're not cut up small enough. It's also not great with ice, so I'll have to play around with that a bit - maybe use smaller cubes, because I love a good cocktail slushy! I have had a few problems with the blender wearing away in a few places, the base of the blades, and the notches at the top of the cup (you can see them just underneath the blue ring of the cup below). So far it still functions well though. I usually only blend for around 10-20 seconds at a time as I'm worried about burning out the motor (which I've read is a common problem in blenders this size).