Merry Christmas too you all hope everyone have a wonderful day...

Love from all of us here in the Bruce house hold :)

Vegetable Curry

Oh this has to be one of my most fave and simple meals.

Vegetable Curry

Here i have frying in the pan is

1,Purple onion

8,Mushroom

1,Egg plant

And 2 zucchini

 I fry them for about 3 min on high heat then add 1 to 2 table spoons of curry depends on how hot you want it. 

Cook for another minute then

 Add 600 mils cooking cream (thickened cream) and a few cherry tomato's cooked for a further 5 minutes on a high heat

Then serve it next to some rice i have added some egg noodles into my rice while cooking doesn't look so boring for the kids.

And for all the men who like meat in there meal like my man i added some diced rump in his but i love it just with the veg.

There you have it a meal in under 20min cooking and prep time.

Will serve 4 with rice.

I got this recipe from my boss it is on the menu in the RESTAURANT

i work at although i have made a couple alteration with the serving as it is served with vegetable patties.

Pork on The Spit

A few weeks back i posted about our Christmas party at home we where goinng to have.

 Well this is one of the thing i was really excited about because we where having a Pork on The Spit and seeing some of my  family and friends aswell of course lol.

You see ever since i can remember my farther (now passed away) did catering mainly for people we new on his time off from being a police officer just because he loved to cook a Spit

So after all these years of watching my dad do this i decided this was gonna be the year we would give it a go

I used my dads 20 yr + spit.

 The pig all wired up and cooking

 Marinade i put on every 30 min

I stuffed the pig belly full of lemon thyme garlic and onions and sowed it up and slow cooked it on the spit for 6 hrs i made up a dressing of thyme and oil and used a lemon branch to brush the pig with during the cooking process and adding heaps of salt.

And i tell you what i reckon dad would of been proud of us cause it was so yummy

Oh and one of my GUESTs made these and the kids loved them..

I was so worked up over my pig i forgot to take a photo of all the other goodies i did oopps.

One hot summer day

Justin drinking out of  the garden sprinkler on one of out not so many hot summer days. 

 loving the water

 cheeky boy

This little guy just love the water.

Tomato's

We visited my grandparents

while we where away and my gran loves growing her own produce

Well what caught my eye was this her rather large tomato plant it was nearly over the roof and full of tomato's there not ready yet but they will be when i go back for a visit in the next week or 2 yum.

This is what i found all over this bush big bunch of tomato's

My grandfather gave me a few tips to get my tomato's to grow like this well next time i will be trying it out.

My gran has be growing her produce for years and she showed me jars of her own seed from last years produce all all types of stuff she has grown.

 I have never took notice of her garden before lol now that I'm growing my own stuff it was hard not to notice to bad my phone went flat i would of taken some more pics to share.

So i was a bit disappoint cause my plant is not even as half as big and with no tomato's well i thought i had none but then when i got home i found these.

There are 4 little tomato's growing yay i gave them a bit of a dust Yesterday so those naughty caterpillars wont eat them...

SANTA PHOTO

While we where in Sydney over the weekend we went to Liverpool westfeilds where we go every year for Christmas photos.

So here is 2010 Christmas photo

oh and

 one with my nieces (my sister children)

Glad i didn't have to get in this year lol

While we where there we had a little early Christmas present swapping so much fun.....

 just before the swap not a great picture.

 excited he got a remote control spider.

 Not sure is what Justin is thinking lol.

Oh a barbie.

Thalia with her barbie and bag...

hmmm didn't care to have a photo take lol

Packed lunch

Bayley's packed lunch and snacks  for his day @ daycare

He loves Frankfurt's more then a sandwich.

Grapes and Bananas

Cheese Biscuits and Dip

How cool is the little tub of dips for kids you can buy at the supermarket these days creamy corn.

Yogurt that i freeze so by the time hes ready to eat it its just defrosted and still cool.

And of course a packet of chips his treat he now only eats at daycare.

And he picks all this out for himself.

Caterpillar

While weeding i came across this

I thought what its that ? 

I touched it and it moved a little hmmm.

A couple months back Jordan brought some hairy caterpillars home from school and released them in my garden much to my disgust i tried to plucked them out but i must of missed one.

So i plucked it out and stuck it in the jar hopefully it

 

 will change into a butterfly fingers crossed

So you will have to come back and see it change into a

BUTTERFLY

Raspberry

Oh how I cant wait too eat you lol i bags eating this baby when its ready...
Well i  did bags it but Bayley beat me too it NOT HAPPY :(

Lizzards

HMMMM I'm not a fan of these but my boys are crazy about catching them so when Jordan went out bush for the day with his pop he thought it was a good idea to bring these little critters home.

So they had a little play gently and I released them back in the wild thank god the boys where home when i took them away..

Jordan's one

  

Bayley's one

...

 

 ...

 Bayley

Jordan

Bayleys Christmas Party

Bayley daycare Christmas party was such a great night.
 Each parent had to bring a plate
of food and i was allocated a salad.

so.....

I made one of my fav's GREEK salad.. yummy

In it i have all the ingredients below i just put in how much i want of each ingredient:

lettuce-iceberg chopped up

capsicum

tomato

cucumber

white onion

Greek feta

kalamata olives

Then i sprinkle oregano on the top with salt and pepper

I dress it with 1 lemon juiced,olive oil and some oregano i shake it up in a jar then poor it over the top evenly and that's it there you have it a

GREEK SALAD mmm.

Close up

My little man doing his performance...

Blowing his flute...

 

RELISH

Here is the relish i made back HERE all wrapped up and now under the tree for some special poeple for christmas.

Hope they like it.... 

Fish and Chips

A few weeks ago we where brought in some fresh Yellow belly fish that my father in law caught on his farm out of the darling river.

I filleted it all up and silly me gave it all away sharing is caring right lol

That same night we order fish and chips from our local

take-away shop $60 later

WHAT WAS I THINKING.....

So this time i filleted it up and made Beer Battered Yellow Belly for lunch and then again for dinner my boys just love fish and they ate it all up.. yum yum yum

No more Take-away for us when we have the fresh produce..

This beats take-away anytime

It's starting to look a lot like Christmas

Our Christmas tree is up and underneath is all my early Christmas shopping wrapped up and waiting for the BIG day.

I just have a few more to get witch i will do while we do our quick trip to Sydney in a couple of weeks.

OH and

The boys have written there letters to

Santa

and are very excited about a reply. 

hope everyone is having fun with there Christmas decorations

Our Garden

A little while ago the boys and i decided to do some gardening.

we headed down the street to our local hardware and supermarket and bought a few different kind of herbs and a few other plants.

Here is our coriander we grew from seed.

Shallots from seed.

Tomato plant which has grown really fast.

The boys had to have purple Capsicum.

 Raspberry plant we will have a few to pick in a couple of weeks.

Italian parsley from seed.

Basil from seed.

 Thyme from seed.

Australian parsley from seed.

and chives from seed.

we also have some strawberry plants growing and a chili plant

We are very proud of our garden and already use our herbs in my cooking.

So fresh.