Blue cheese salad dressing and Nespresso Machines

My daughter is celebrating her birthday in South Korea today and we miss her so. In celebration, complete with birthday flowers, we had a birthday lunch at home in Cape Town and skype talked to her. Such is life. I made a blue cheese salad dressing for the first time and will for sure play with the dressing to accompany all sorts of dishes in future. I did not feel like searching and reading recipes and just started mixing ingredients to taste.

I mixed olive oil, cream and a tangy mayonaise ( use own quantities to taste)

Add fresh herbs of choice

Half a cup of blue cheese melted for about half a minute in the micro wave-I left mine a bit lumpy as it is nice to have a piece of cheese here and there in the dressing. There was more than half a cup but the other half landed in my mouth.

Mix until smooth(ish).

Add more cheese if you want a thick dressing or add a bit of water/milk if a runny dressing is called for.

Crunch was what I was after and I layered salad leaves and baby savoy cabage which are the most beautiful and perfectly formed little things.

Next add anything you like with a lot of chrunch like cucumber, pine apple and dried onion flakes( which I am obsessed about) and lastly generous scoops of the blue cheese dressing. I did not add bacon bits this time but will certainly do that next time. We had the salad with chicken and pumkin fritters. Trust me, it is nice!

Now, for my random photo of the day:

This is specially for chef Mimi who recently blogged “In My Kitchen” (which I thought was a great idea) on her blog www.chefmimi.com about things in her kitchen she cannot live without. She mentioned that her Nespresso machine is one of those things and I said to her that I take my obsession with good coffee to another level by taking my Nespresso with me on travels in its own travel case. Her reply quote unquote:

” Holy s&$$))))))! I need to see that!”. Well, here it is then and it saved me from depression many a time, when I just could not and would not face the tepid blueish hotel coffee that seems to go around.

It is about the same size as a small vanity case. I will rather leave the vanity case behind……

Enjoy Mimi! (wanted to say: Eat your heart out! hehehe).

Ps. I was not paid for this standing ovation to Nespresso.

Pineapple salad (I think)

My sister recently blogged on http://nowathome.wordpress.com/2013/08/31/gluten-free-wraps/
about tapioca flour and coconut milk pancakes which she gushed about (and to which dinner I was not invited I might add. Humfff!).

Today was one of those days at the office which felt like fighting in the trenches with my bare hands and I needed to just not think when I got home. To me, not having to think means cooking (escape) and I used my sister’s recipe for pancakes/wraps.

It has an elastic consistency and the whiff of coconut milk in smell and taste and I love it. I will definitely try sweet fillings with it as well but tonight I followed her lead and also made curry mince for the filling( did not want to think at all, see.Thank you Aletta!). I had a bottle of peach chutney in the cupboard, bought at a farm stall and I opened that for the pancake occasion.

At least I had the wherewithal to make a pineapple condiment/ salad which came out really fine I must say.

Ingredients:

pineapple diced

coriander leaves roughly chopped

chilli flakes

feta cheese!

Mix together and drizzle with dressing of your choice. I used a basil vinaigrette and a bit of olive oil.

I will do this again and again. The sweet pineapple with the saltiness of the feta and the bite of the chilli flakes really worked and will go with more than just curry mince. (note to self for when I can think again).

One other thing(between the millions I think of when I do think) I want to do from now on is add a pretty pic (pretty to me) of any random thing every time I post because my aura needs beautiful things. The below photo was taken by my husband outside Philadelphia(very tiny town outside of Cape Town and not the US namesake) of the blooming canola fields. It seems I have a bit of a yellow theme going on with this post ( good, at least I don’t need to think about it).

Okay, aura feels better now.

Moving and a bit of furniture revamp

We recently moved home and one always views your furniture a bit differently when it sits there on a parking lot/pavement ready to be hauled into a big truck. Tired looking is just not the word….

A week before the big move I got a bee in my bonnet about sanding and revamping the look of my server/sideboard which I intended doing a long time ago but obviously never got around to.  I am all into the French look but I have no French furniture and with no intention of replacing big items, I shall make do with what I have.

I wish I had the know-how and time capacity to attempt big jobs myself but alas….. , even the small ones I want to do gets lost in time. I still wish I could do carpentry, of any sort, but this time I relied on a good reference and got a guy with magical carpentry skills to do the sanding on short notice and before the schlep of moving 11 floors up into a building with a heavenly view. He kindly sent me two pics of the work in progress.

Well, he did it and he did it right and now I want to have everything in sight sanded. Maybe a sanding machine doohdah thingy for my looming birthday, who knows? (Group eye-roll I know!)

I am very chuffed with the result.

Magical.