Southwestern Quinoa

This was one of those times that I want to the fridge and said to myself, "what food do I have and what an I possibly make with it?" I ended up making this quinoa with a bunch of extra things. I had extra taco seasoning from my taco sweet potatoes, an extra can of beans, and an avocado that was about to turn if I didn't use it. So I made the rest of the quinoa I had mixed it with the taco seasoning. Chopped up the avocado, and a yellow mini capsicum I got at the Queens Street Markets, mixed those with the beans and then mixed that with quinoa and steamed spinach. Lastly I added so left over sour cream to give it some moisture and to add a cheesy flavor. Done! Southwest flavored quinoa. It was yummy hot and cold. Though, the avocados were the ingredient that stood out. Next time I might try making avocado creme with the sour cream and avocado instead of adding them separately, but this was a really nice dish for something thrown together with no forethought.

Roasted Veggie Caponata and Tzatziki with Homemade Chips

This last minute lunch idea was a stroke of classy brilliance. I took the last of my roasted veggies (eggplant, zucchini, capsicum, and red onion in this mix) mixed them with artichoke hearts and feta cheese. This made a really nice caponata, a type of roasted eggplant dish. This one was very light since it had no sauce, so I used it as a kinda spread. I used one of my rye flats to make homemade chips. I then constructed my own pieces, first a smear of tzatziki then a generous spoonful of the caponata (see below). It was such a satisfying lunch. I didn't feel overly full, and it was really fun to make and eat. Also I unintentionally created a great dish for having guests over for wine and cheese. In retrospect, if I wasn't eating it for lunch it would have gone incredibly well with a glass. Now I know what I'll make if I'm having people over for wine, or just as a really classy appetizer to make before an italian or Mediterranean dinner.

Loved this so much, there is nothing I would change about the recipe.

Damper

This is another fun authentic Aussie food experience that we had on our trip to Brisbane Forest Park. Damper is basically traditional Aussie bush bread. It's the kind of thing that bushman, ranchers, and anyone who was going out into the bush would take with them. It's self rising flour with water, cooked into bread. It tastes like dense thick flourly bread. It's basically a cross between bread and scones (so American biscuits but Aussie scones), and they eat it with jam and honey. I had two pieces with jam and was extremely full. So full that I saved the pasta I packed for lunch as a later afternoon snack. I can see why this is good for the bush: filling, easy, and keeps well for a long time. I might try making some of it later, it seems pretty easy and I've been wanting to try to make some Aussie food!

Red Pesto Artichoke Pasta

I needed to bring a lunch to our field trip to Brisbane Forest Park on Friday. Unfortunately, I have no sandwich materials. At the last minute the night before I decided to make a pasta dish that I could eat cold. So I made some of my vermicelli but used Mediterranean flavors this time around. I made cooked the noodles and as I was doing so chopped up some shallots. I love shallots, they're like mini sweet onions, and are a super classy to use. They are usually pretty pricy, but I bought a bag of 8 of them for 3 dollars at the Queens Street Markets the other day, and have been waiting early to use some. I actually only chopped up half of one for this dish. After I strained the noodles I mixed them with a handful of spinach to steam it. Then I added this to the mixture of shallots and artichokes. Next I added some capsicum tomato pesto as the sauce. I tossed these all together and finally added some feta, which I tossed in too. It was a perfect amount of food for a filling lunch. I stuck it in the fridge to eat cold the next day, but I bet it would be good hot as well. It was a really nice sophisticated meal. My one complaint was that the rice noodles are so tangled that it was hard to mix in all the other ingredients. I think I would fix this by breaking them apart before cooking next time. Otherwise a really nice and tasty lunch.

Pastaless Veggie Lasagna

Okay, this was a masterpiece. A masterpiece that I was eating for 4 days straight and I was sad to see go when I finished it. It tasted sinful, but was extraordinarily healthy. I give you the pastaless lasagna. Constructed from veggies, pasta sauce and ricotta, this lasagna tasted amazing and was really pretty too. I based it on a recipe off of this website: http://mymansbelly.com/2012/02/27/meatless-dinner-recipes-easy-vegetable-lasagna/, so credit where credit is due I did not think of the gorgeous spiral pattern on my own. But I think I pulled it off without a hitch :) It took awhile to make, but wasn't difficult. I poured tomato-basil sauce into the bottom of a roasting tin. Then, basically, I thinly sliced 4 veggies, eggplant, zucchini, red capsicum, and red onions. I then layered them around the pan using ricotta as the glue (see below). Plain ricotta is boring so I mixed in herb seasoning and garlic salt to give it some flavor. This was brilliant because it really spiced up the dish and made it flavorful. Something I noticed as I was layering was that the veggies would slide down as I added more and more layers so I had to prop them up and squish them together to get the max veggie coverage in. Also I started to run a bit low on ricotta so had to use less and less as I went on. I had way too many veggies left at the end so I ended up roasting them for later. I love roasted veggies and was able to use them later in the week so it worked out fine for me. After my lasagna was layered it looked like a flower (below)! I added the finishing touch, some drizzled olive oil with garlic salt, and then popped it into the oven at 190 degrees Celsius for 45 minutes. After that time I took the lasagna out and sprinkled it with shredded parmesan. Then popped it back in for another 10 minutes. After that it was ready to eat, though I let it cool before I took a slice. It was soooooooooooooooo good. I cannot emphasize enough how amazing this dish was. the sauce and ricotta mixed just so, the veggies were roasted just enough to get a nice smoky flavor but were still firm enough to hold the shape. Pieces were not very pretty, the cheese and sauce spluched out, but the taste made up for it!

Thoughts on this Dish:

• Thought #1:Amazing!
• Okay, now here are some things I learned. I sliced the eggplants first and then salted them and let them sit on trays covered in aluminum foil for an hour an a half. I did this because they have a lot of moisture in them so the salt drew this out and made it so that moisture wouldn't go into the dish.
• What I didn't realize is that zucchinis have that as well… so my dish was a bit more watery than what I was expecting. Next time I'll do the same thing with the zucchini 
• Also a bit less olive oil drizzle might help with the wateriness too
• This was a great thing to heat up and eat as leftovers, it kept really well in the fridge and tasted fresh out of the microwave. 
• This made enough for 4 very filling meals, bigger pan if I'm serving more people.
• This was such a guilt free dish, the most unhealthy thing in here is the ricotta, and per serving it's not bad at all :)

I cannot emphasis enough how much I loved this dish, so happy I came across the recipe on Pinterest and really pleased that I could pull it off so well. 

Kinda Breakfast Tostada

This was another on the whim lunch idea. I fried 2 eggs (didn't turn out great because it was too small of a pan, so they both broke), then I ate them on a toasted tortilla with bbq, spinach, and mozzarella cheese. It was a really yummy meal, the tortilla was nice and crispy and the flavors of the cheese, egg, and sauce mixed really well. I just ate it with a fork and knife, but I could have folded it into a breakfast burrito if I wanted. In an ideal word the eggs could have gooey yolks and that would have added a lot go flavor and texture, but the pan I used was too small for me to flip properly. Want to try other variations of this to see if I can prefect it. It's a 5 minute, protein filled lunch that kept me going for the rest of the day!

Aussie Chocolate Bars Take 2: Cherry Ripe and Flake

Second round of the chocolate bar taste test!!! More were on sale so I got another two to try. This time I got a Cherry Ripe and a Flake. I tried the Cherry Ripe first. It was a dark chocolate covered bar, the filling was cherry flavored coconut. It reminded me of a passover macron. Which I like… on passover when that's all I can eat. I enjoyed it but didn't love it. My Dad would probably like it a lot more, since he loves fruit and dark chocolate.

The second bar is a classic in both England and Australia. The Flake. This guy is basically really thin chocolate folded up into a bar. Pretty yummy if you're craving chocolate. But the best way to eat it is with something else. In ice cream for example :) Or by dipping it in coffee, yumm I want to try that now.

Ultimately round 1 was more successful, but I've been scoping out the candy and I have a good idea which two I'll get next time and I'm pretty sure they'll be amazing! 

Taco Quinoa Stuffed Sweet Potato Skins with Homemade Guac

I've been trying to get around to making these for the past couple of weeks. It took awhile because this was a time consuming recipe, it had so many parts to it. But it was wonderful. I took sweet potatoes and stuffed them with a vegetarian taco filling (mainly quinoa) then roasted them and topped them with homemade guacamole! I'm really proud of this dish because I was able to juggle a lot of components and it came out really really well!!!

The first thing that I did was start on the quinoa filling. I made some of the black quinoa that is cheaper here, but I boiled it in water seasoned with taco mix! One thing about this is that it took less time to cook and then got kinda dried out, so I added more water and seasoning and eventually got the texture I was looking for. While I was cooking the quinoa I was sautéing red capsicum for the final mix. Once both these were started. I popped my sweet potato in the microwave for about 5 minutes to soften it. I Found that this actually works better if you completely cook it in the microwave so more like 7 minutes is what I would do next time. Then I took the potato out, sliced it in half, and and scooped out the insides, hollowing them into bowls. 

When those were done I added a couple of handfuls of spinach to the quinoa to steam it. As that was happening I seasoned the skins of the potatoes with olive oil mixed with some of the left over taco seasoning. The skins were prepped. My last step of combining all of the filling ingredients. I mixed the seasoned quinoa and spinach with the cooked capsicum, and a small can of strained kidney beans, as well as 1/2 cup of salsa. Lastly I mixed it with a handful of mozzarella cheese. The filling was good enough to eat on it's own (see first pic below) but I didn't stop there. I then scooped the filling into the prepped sweet potatoes, and finally topped them with more mozzarella cheese (second pic below). I then baked them at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.  

While those were cooking I set about making some guacamole. I learned how to do this over the summer. The way I make guac is that I take one whole avocado, I take out all of the meat, then I add chopped up red onion and a little garlic salt. I smash it all together with a fork until it is fairly creamy (see below) (if you like it chunkier than stop smashing sooner). You can also add diced tomatoes or a bit of line/lemon juice. I tend to like it simpler so I don't add those. Also it's really easy to over add the lime/lemon juice and then not be able to taste the avocado. For those of you that think the juice is necessary to keep the guac from turning brown I have a pro tip for you! If you leave the seed in the guac it won't go brown, trust me it works for days after the guac is made :) Always keep the seed!

Finally the potatoes were done and I took them out of the oven. They looked crazy good with the melted cheese and the crispy and flavorful quinoa (see top pic below). They also smelled awesome! I ate one of the halves for dinner and also the extra filling, one is not enough for a meal, but two is way to much food, bit of a conundrum. Anyway I topped with the guac and some low fat sour cream and dug in (bottom pic below). It was a wonderful dinner, and I really like using quinoa as a replacement for taco meat! This is a great veggie dish that is really healthy, but tastes like junk food. Perfect when you're craving tacos.

Thoughts on this Dish:

• I really need to make sure the potatoes are fully cooked before they go in the oven, there were parts that were still a bit hard. Also I'd cook them an hour once they're in because I like crispy skins.
• The potato filling is great to eat later. You can use it as stuffing for something else. Or just eat plain. I ate it with some canned fruit and it was really really yummy, a super healthy dessert!
• I want to make this quinoa again and you it to make tacos/enchiladas! 
• make sure not to mix too much salsa in, or the filling is too watery!!
• I used 2/3 a bag of seasoning but I would just use the whole thing next time :)
• I don't like spicy so I used mild salsa and didn't put jalapeños in the guac, but if you love spicy you can easily make modifications to make it spicier. Buy the spicy taco seasoning, spicy salsa, and add the jalapeños and you're all set!

Even though this was a bit of a patchkie, it was well worth it! Super yummy, healthy, and flavorful vegetarian meal!

Bailey's Coffee Blondies

As a continuation of the St. Patty's day treats we made last week I present the Bailey's Coffee Blondies. Blondies are brownies but without the chocolate, which is better than you'd expect. For these ones we added instant coffee to make them coffee flavored, as well as moister. Like the cheesecakes we used an online recipe from another website, http://www.kitchentreaty.com. We made no changes to it so it's 100% this recipe linked below. The Bailey's for this one was in the frosting not the brownies, I think next time I would add it to both. Also The frosting was not as fluffy as I would have liked because we have no power baking tools here. I really want to have my sister make this frosting for me when I get home because she is the frosting queen! The one we made was a little sugary for my taste. Otherwise these were awesome! I loved eating them with coffee in the mornings for the week following. Here's the recipe that we used: http://www.kitchentreaty.com/baileys-coffee-blondies/. Pretty simple and turned out really well. These were really cakey brownies and I like them that way as long as they aren't too dry (which these weren't) so I loved them!

Bailey's Cheesecake with Tim Tam Crust

Last week was St. Patrick's Day, and one of my housemates found all of these wonderful irish alcohol inspired recipes online. We decided to choose two and have a house baking night. The first one was a Bailey's cheesecake, which is the first cheesecake that I have ever made. Turns out, not as hard as I expected!!! Credit where credit is due we basically followed a recipe from http://www.baked-in.com, but modified it a bit. The way we modified it was that we used Tim Tams for the crust. I haven't blogged about these amazing Aussie cookies yet because I'm waiting to do a huge Tim Tam post when I've tasted every flavor, so it's coming I promise!! All you need to know is that Time Tams are the Aussie version of an Oreo, If an Oreo was twice as big, rectangular in shape, had chocolate cream filling, AND was covered in chocolate. Basically, 1 million times better than an Oreo and seriously addicting. I had the great I idea to mash up some dark chocolate Tim Tams and mix them with butter to make Tim Tam Crust. It turned out really well, and added an Australian twist to the desert. The cheesecake was really great, it tasted strongly of Bailey's (though not alcohol) and was creamy and rich. Since we used an online recipe I'm going to link it here: http://www.baked-in.com/2012/09/18/baileys-cheesecake-cupcakes/. Note that we made 3 major changes. We used Tim Tams for the crust, we didn't use cupcake wrappers, and we mixed the cake uniformly (no non-baliey's layer for us).

Thoughts on this Dessert:

• We let it sit in the fridge for an hourish, but letting it sit overnight is better because then it is super consolidated and cold.
• We were working without an electronic blender so it took us a while to make the cheesecake batter, so at home this would be quicker. 
• We greased the pan with butter because we din't have baker's joy, and you could taste it (I was not a fan of the extra butter taste) so definitely would make sure we have baker's joy next time.
• I really want to make cheesecake again now that I know how, I'm thinking taro or match cheesecake are on the list for future endeavors, as is pumpkin :)

Loved these soooooo much they were really fun and delicious!!! Check out the next post for the other St. Patty's Day dessert we made :)

Feta Pesto Breakfast Quesadilla

This was an on the whim idea that turned out oh so good. I mixed a scrambled egg with pesto and cooked it up with some feta, then I spread red pepper hummus on a tortilla. Next I filled it with the eggs and microwaved it for a bit. Voila! Breakfast quesadilla. This was a nice snack, but I would need more than one egg to make it filling enough for a meal. Also it would be better grilled that way it wouldn't be soggy, but no Hello Kitty grill in Brissy, so I made due. The flavors were amazing though. The pesto and the feta made the eggs garlicky and salty, and the red pepper added just the right zest. Definitely want to try this in some shape or form again soon!

Matcha Frozen Yogurt Bites

Inspired by Pinterest, made unique by me! I was drinking some matcha milk tea yesterday and had a thought. I have this huge tube of fat-free vanilla yogurt that I've been eating with cereal for breakfast, and I thought that I could easily make matcha flavored yogurt. The idea evolved to making matcha frozen yogurt, and at the suggestion of my house mates making matcha frozen yogurt bites! I mixed a scoop and a half of matcha with 3-4 scoops of yogurt. Then I pooled it onto a plate covered in aluminum foil. It was a lot easier to keep them in the dot shape then I excepted (below)! After that I stuck them in the freezer for an hour. When I took them out it was easy to pop them off the foil and snack on them. They were awesome, cold, creamy, and healthy! They were perfect because the day that I made them it was in the 90's F. This means they were a great and refreshing snack, but it also meant that they melted outside of the freezer in about 7 minutes or so :( A great snack, but not one to put out and serve to people.

Can't wait to try this one with taro powder or milk tea powder back at home!!

Crunchy Sweet Chili Slaw

This was something I had wanted to make a couple of weeks ago, but it took me awhile to accumulate all of the ingredients! It's a healthy veggie slaw. I used a pre-packed cabbage mix with cabbage, carrots, celery, green onions, and corn. I then added some more veggies, finely sliced cucumber, capsicum, red onions, and some more celery to give it extra crunch. I then added cashews!!! These give it a nice nutty flavor as well as a bit of protein. Then I made the dressing. I used sweet chili sauce and some zesty coleslaw sauce in a 1:3 ratio. I stirred it up and added it to the salad. Then I combined them by shaking them up in a tupperware container. I chilled it for about 4 hours before eating. And there was enough for my dinners for the next three days! Loved this easy and healthy recipe, I think it's great to make for a bbq as a side, or just for a summer dish.

Thoughts on this Dish:

• This is an excellent crunchy dish. The texture is awesome, even after 3 days it was still crunchy!
• The dressing was perfect because the coleslaw mix made it creamy and the sweet chili sauced added an extra kick to it.
• I loved the way the cashews absorbed the dressing.
• I made about a 1/2 cup of dressing for this one, and then added a tablespoon more. I like my salads pretty soaked in dressing so this was perfect for me, and it didn't get soggy so it wasn't overkill. If you don't like a lot of dressing i'd leave off the extra tablespoon.

Loved this one so much, can't wait to bring it to my next potluck!

Apple Pie for Pi Day

Yesterday was Pi Day 3.14! However, in Australia they write the date as day, month ear, instead of moth, day, year, soooo Pi day doesn't make as much sense. That didn't stop us from celebrating though by getting some pie. And instead of savory pie we were craving sweet pie. They only had one fruit pie at Brumby's, an individual apple pie. So I got that. I have to say, my Mom's apple pie is much better. The filling was not very flavorful and tasted a bit alcoholic actually. What I did like about the pie was the crust. It was sugar cookie crust so it tasted like I was eating a apple filled cookie!!! That was pretty awesome, but it felt like some other dessert other than a pie. I wonder if I could make a pie with american fruit filling, but a cookie crust. That sounds like an amazing and worthy endeavor. 

Stuffed Tomatoes: Greek Quinoa

I made roasted tomatoes again! This time I tried all the things I thought would make it better and they did. Zucchini instead of cucumbers, a full 20 minutes in the oven, and making sure more of juice is out of the tomatoes. These little things combined with the quinoa and pesto made this another amazing meal! I cooked the tomatoes perfectly and even though I made taken more of the guts out, that didn't stop it from being wonderfully messy. Love these tomatoes!!!!!!

Rosellini Pizza at the Pizza Caffe

I once again ventured the to pizza caffe last week. This time I got a Rosellini Pizza which was semi-sundried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, and ricotta cheese. I liked it, but not as much as I liked the Visconti. The reason was that the ricotta was kinda flavorless (it could have used some garlic or something). But the artichokes were nice and salty. The pizza still was a great lunch and afternoon snack. I'm determined to try most of the veggie pizzas on their menu so I'll continue to go there through the semester.

Aussie Chocolate Bars Take 1: Fry's Delight Bar and Milky Way

So I decided to do a bit of a candy tasting the other day because candy bars were on sale at the grocery store. I bought a Fry's Turkish Delight and a Milky Way. I tasted the turkish delight first. It was rose flavored jelly covered in milk chocolate. This is different that a typical turkish delight which is covered in powder instead of chocolate. The jelly wasn't amazing, but it went really well with the chocolate. I like it, but I would have liked it more if it was dark chocolate :)

The second bar was the Milky Way. As you can see (top right) the wrapper is different than the US Milky Way, but the name is the same. Well, it is actually a different bar as well! There is chocolate nugget in the center, but no carmel. It's actually a lot like a fluffier version of a 3 Musketeer's Bar. I liked it (I love 3 Musketeer's). I expected (and was excited that) they have different chocolate bars here, but I wasn't expecting them to have different names for the same ones. I wonder if it's some kinda marketing thing. 

Anyway I'm hoping to try some more chocolate bars and other lollies (that's what they call candy here) throughout the semester!

Greek Style Quinoa

After the success of my greek style salad last week, I decided to make the same thing but with 3 changes. Change number one: I added quinoa! I love quinoa and I was happy to be able to add it to this salad to make it more filling and more protein filled. Change number 2: spinach. When making quinoa it's easy to steam spinach in the last step, so I did so and added it. Change number 3: I substituted zucchini for cucumbers. I did this because zucchini taste better with warm things that cucumbers do! Love, love, loved it! I also added pesto to the mix because quinoa always needs some type of liquidy thing added so it doesn't dry out. The pesto was perfect and made it smell amazing!!! Every time I make quinoa I rave about the experience. I love being able to have a go to dish that I can do millions of different ways and enjoy each time!

Cheddermite Roll

So a block from our house we have a bakery called Brumby's. They sell sweet pastries, fresh bread, and also a variety of pies and other savory pastries. Today a friend and I went there to grab lunch. I was planning to get some sort of vegetarian pie, but they unfortunately didn't have any. Shame on you Brumby's! However, they did have these intriguing cheddermite buns. Basically, a cinnamon roll, but with cheddar cheese and vegemite instead of cinnamon. I had previously tried vegemite on a cracker (I posted about it last week), and did not like it. However, I have since tried vegemite again, on toast with butter, and really liked it. I was craving salt, and vegemite is the king of salt, so I realized that vegemite is great, under certain circumstances.

Today, I found another circumstance. This roll was amazing. It literally tasted like a cheese-it! The vegemite made the cheddar really salty, but there wasn't enough of the stuff to over power the cheese. The bread of the bun was fresh and delicious. And they heated up the roll for me so the cheese was a little melting and crunchy on the top. Mmmmmhhhmmm, it was really great. Goes to show that first impressions are not always accurate. Anything that is part of a cinnamon roll meets cheese-it pastry is a winner in my book.

Salsa BBQ Scramble

I wanted a filling, yet easy dinner yesterday. So I just made scrambled eggs. But I made fancy ones!! I sautéed capsicum, red onion, zucchini, and spinach. Then I cracked 3 eggs in a bowl and mixed them with salsa and a dash of barbecue sauce. Then I poured them on the veggies and scrambled them. I also added a ton of gouda cheese. They were so yummy. I noticed that the eggs don't get as firm when they are mixed with the sauce and salsa, so I might cook them a bit more next time. But, they were still great. The gouda, bbq, and salsa went really well together. Definitely doing to try something along these lines again.

Stuffed Tomatoes: Greek Salad

I love roasted tomatoes, so I decided to try making stuffed tomatoes and then roasting them to make a tasty dinner. I decided to use the left over greek salad that I had made the other day as the stuffing. This salad had capsicum, artichoke hearts, red onion, cucumbers, sundried tomatoes, and feta. I took two small tomatoes and I cut off the tops and then hollowed them out (left below), I took a pan and layered it with aluminum foil. Then I stuffed in as much greek salad as I could (right below). Next I stuck them in the oven at 360 for about 18 minutes. This allowed the tomatoes to get sweet and the skin to get crispy and start to break. I then enjoyed my meal. And boy was it good!! I felt like I was at a fancy restaurant!! The veggies and cheese on the top got browned and melty and the tomatoes got very sweet. It was really messy to eat, but really enjoyable!!! I will definitely be making another stuffed tomato creation with my remaining two tomatoes.

 Thoughts on this Dish:

• This is such a wonderful and filling vegetarian meal. To make it more protein filled I'm thinking of trying beans, hummus, quinoa, or/and tofu as a base for a stuffing next time. 
• The cucumbers added a nice crunch but didn't cook very well, I'll use zucchini next time.
• I could do this with a bunch of different flavor profiles, so I have lots of options. Some potential options are bbq ranch, teriyaki pineapple, sweet pepper, goat cheese and shallot, spinach and cheese, balsamic, and pesto. These would be the main flavors with a combination of veggies and proteins that I listed above.
• I would probably cook these a full 20 minutes to ensure that the middle is hot, when it's time to chow down.
• I need to be careful next time to not ripe the side of the tomato when I'm taking out the gunk. 
• Another cool idea is to put an egg in the tomato with some spices and bake it!

This is my favorite recipe in a very long time. Filling, hot, and extremely healthy, as well as very versatile. I loved this dish!!!

Glass Noodles with Tofu and Ginger Sauce at Box n' Noodle

My housemates and I decided to have a bonding dinner last night. And since our kitchen is too small for 6 people to cook at the same time, we decided to grab some dinner at the St. Lucia village. Eventually, we decided to do Box n' Bowl, the place I got the taro milk tea at last week. The reason for this is that the make your own noodle bowl was an easy way everyone could get something that they liked. I chose glass noodles and got ginger sauce. I chose tofu as my protein of course! It was really good, but I had sooooooo many noodles (see below) that it was hard to taste the sauce. I commented to my friends that there wasn't much tofu in it and continued to enjoy my meal. About 20 minutes later, the waitress came out and gave me another bowl! She said that there were too many noodles in my first one and gave me another one on the house! It was really nice, and way to much food for me to eat so I took them both home (since I had a ton left over from my first bowl). 

I think she overheard my comment, but it was so nice of them to bring me another bowl, which they didn't really even have to do because I was enjoying it anyway. I will admit though that the second bowl (see above) definitely absorbed the sauce better and was tastier than the second. You can see the color difference if you compare the pictures. Anyway, it was a nice evening with a ton of food. I'm going to be eating these noodles for the next couple of days, now that I have so many haha :)

Greek Salad

So this is a really simple recipe and also very healthy and versatile. A traditional greek salad is made of veggies, dressing, and feta, but no lettuce. I made my version of it. My greek salad has cucumbers, capsicum, red onion, artichoke hears, sun-dried tomatoes, and feta cheese. Usually a greek salad has feta, cucumbers, olives, and fresh tomatoes, but I find tomatoes make the salad very watery, so I used sun-dried, and capsicum. And while I like olives in moderation, they overpower the salad, so I opted out of using them. I instead added artichoke hearts, which was really yummy. The artichokes and tomatoes were marinated so the marinade served as a dressing to help tie the salad together, and I didn't need to add extra dressing. This is a perfect salad to eat by itself, to add to a wrap, to plop on top of spinach (which makes it a greek salad like what you might get in the U.S.), to mix with quinoa, or to stuff in a pepper or tomato. I had some for lunch yesterday, and tonight I think I'm going to try and stuff a tomato with it and broil it. Look for another post to see how that turns out!

Flat White at Darwin's

So iced coffee is not the only coffee difference here. They don't have American style black coffee here, just expresso shots. So therefore, I've had to get familiar with the different Australian coffee terminology. They have something called a Long Black, which is similar to an americano, water added to expresso. I've usually hated americano's back home because they are watery and not strong, so I haven't gotten a long black here. However, I'm told that they are stronger than an americano, so I might have to try one eventually. What I have been getting here is something called a Flat White. A flat white is basically a latte without any foam. They have lattes here, but they have twice as much foam as American lattes so a flat white is actually closer to an american latte. I've actually really been enjoying getting these as my coffee on campus. And my favorite place to get them so far has been a cafe called Darwin's. The reason I like it is because it is clever. The cafe is named after the famous biologist, resides in the biological sciences library, and has a finch as it's mascot ( for those who don't know Darwin's Finches refers to the galapagos finches that he used to form his theory of natural selection). The science nerd in me is made very happy by this cafe and the coffee lover loves the coffee here. At first it was a bit hard to get used to the Australian way of doing coffee, but I like it.

Nachos with Homemade Chips

This was a wonderful Idea that was poorly executed. I noticed when I was making a quesadilla in the microwave the other day that the rye tortillas that I have here get really crunchy on the ends because they are so thin. This got me thinking that If I cut them into strips and then microwaved them they would make great, low cal chips. I tried this, and low and behold it worked amazingly!!! However, then I got ambitious. I decided to make nachos with these homemade chips. I layered chips, mild salsa, shredded mozzarella, and kidney beans (for some reason there are absolutely no black beans in Australia, so I'm just using kidneys for everything now). I then microwaved it again to melt the cheese and heat the beans and salsa. The flavors tasted really good together, but the texture suffered. The chips didn't hold their crunch under the soggy toppings so it turned into tortilla strip nachos. One of my housemates suggested that I just make the chips and dip them instead. It was good advice, I did that a couple of days later with the salsa and it was a much better way to eat my homemade chips.

Thoughts on these Chips:

• One of the things I love about these rye tortillas is that they are 69 cal each, so if I make chips from one tortilla it is an awesome way to do portion control for chips. Also they aren't fried so they are much healthier.
• This is better for me than having a bag of chips around because it's super hard to stop once you start eating chips!
• Also I love rye stuff, so rye tortillas are really tasty!

Love these chips and I'll be sad when I go back to the states and can no longer find this brand of tortilla.

Visconti Pizza at Pizza Caffe

UQ has a a pizza place on campus called Pizza Caffe. They were advertising at some of the orientation events and so I've had one of their menu's sitting on my desk for about a week. The first thing I noticed was that they had 24 different pizzas, and that 11 of them were vegetarian! This of course lead to me being eager to get started trying some of these veggie creations. The first day of class I was determined to try one of their pizzas. I decided on the Visconti, an eggplant, zucchini, capsicum za. It was about a 10 minute wait for the individual pizza, and I got it to go. Since our house is a block from campus, my housemates and I have just been coming back here for lunch everyday, and this started out the day I got this splendid pizza. It was nice to eat at home with company, and it was certainly nice to eat this amazing pizza. I loved all the veggies on it, especially the zucchini which was marinated. I would definitely get this again, but there are so many other pizzas I want to try on the menu first! Another thing to note about this place is that they do $10 pizzas from 1p-3p, so it's a lot of food for a good price.

Sangria at Sangria Bar in South Bank

On Saturday night we headed to South Bank to check out the bars. The South Bank is an area of parks, beaches, bars, restaurants, and museums. It's beautiful and really fun, and we take a ferry to get there from the university, which is so pretty at night. This time we ended up at Sangria Bar, a small tapas restaurant and bar that specializes in different kinds of sangria. This was the perfect way to spend a chill evening. There were six of us and we got two pitchers to split. It worked out wonderfully, there were 6 glasses per container so we each got two drinks, for 10 bucks. It was also nice because we each got to try two different types of sangria. The one on the left is blueberry passionfruit and is red wine based, and the one on the right is strawberry apple and it is white wine based. Both were delicious , but I liked the white wine one better. Most likely because I usually enjoy whites more than reds. But the blueberries in the other sangria were much yummier than the apples in the white wine sangria. Besides the good, drinks the vibe of the bar was perfect, it was busy but not too loud and we were able to chat and enjoy our evening. It also had a large outdoor area and we sat outside and enjoyed the night.  I really liked this place and would definitely come again, especially to start off a South Bank bar crawl.

Vermicelli Salad

When I was at the grocery store last week I found the specialty food section. This was great because I finally found in bulk non-flavored quinoa, but it was also bad because I found lots of other fun things to buy. For example, they had matcha powder, so inevitably I had to buy it. Which is exciting because I can drink it instead of coffee in the morning, but was also expensive. Another fun thing that I bought was vermicelli noodles. I love these guys. They are thin rice noodles that are found in lots of asian food dishes, but specifically vietnamese ones. Fortunately, these were pretty cheap. I decided that I would try them out by making noodle salad. I cooked the noodles in hot water and then let rinsed them with cold water. I then combined them with slivered carrots, capsicum (red pepper I'm using the Australian name now), cucumber, and raw spinach. I then mixed rice vinegar, mai poy sweet chili sauce and garlic salt together and used it as a marinade for the veggies and vermicelli. After I mixed it all together I let it sit in the fridge for have an hour and ate it chilled. I was really yummy and the noodles cold were perfection. However, next time I need to use less vinegar, it was way to acidic. I should probably use 2x as much mai poy than vinegar instead of the other way around which is what I did this time. I would also like to make soup with vermicelli in it as well, but I really like these noodles chilled so I'm going to try that again too. I enough noodles for about 4 dishes, so I have lots of options.

Chocolate Babka

MMMMMMHHHHH chocolate. I love chocolate. And I'm not the only one. This weekend we headed over to Max Brenner's Chocolate Bar in South Bank. This chocolate restaurant is an international chain but that didn't make it any less delicious. There were many yummy things on the menu, chocolate pizza, waffle sundaes, and popsicle dips. I was originally going to get a giant dark chocolate truffle, but changed by mind when I saw this baby. Chocolate Babka. At home we get chocolate babka from our local deli, it like a flaky crescent like cake, filled with dark chocolate. At home, you have to get them in the morning because the deli runs out of them by 10:30a :) An individual babka is a dream come true so I ordered it! And I was in for a super pleasant surprised when they served it to me warmed up and steaming hot, covered in melted chocolate, with a side for dipping. It was so gooey and chocolatey and so fun to eat. I wanted to eat all of it, and did eat most of it, but I filled up. Especially since I also got an Italian Thick Hot Dark Chocolate (below left). It was like the thickest hot chocolate ever. It was more like pure melted chocolate then hot chocolate, and super rich. I wanted to drink more, but was so full from the babka that I wasn't able to drink more than half.

I really loved this place though. It's a chocoholics paradise!