Week 65 Challenge - Sausages

What to do with the humble sausage? That was the challenge last week.
I thought I would go a little bit retro on this one, and so had a look through an old Alison Holst book. I found a recipe that reminded me of something we did in Intermediate School Cooking, and though it would be worth a go - A sausage and apple plait.

I had bought some nice looking pork sausages, and combined the meat out of these with diced apple, sauteed onion, cooked diced potato, egg and herbs. This was laid along 2 joined flaky pastry sheets, and the pastry plaited over the top of the sausage mixture. A quick brush with some beaten egg, and it was into the oven to bake.

As the plait had potato in it, we only needed some green veges to go with it. It was very tasty, and Daryl gave it a 4.5/5, and the kids were more than happy to eat it.
It was a great way to stretch 500g of sausages, and I will definitely use this recipe again.

Puppy preschool

Hooray! I had a call from the vet today, and they must have got enough people for the puppy preschool classes as they will be starting next week!!!

For 1 hour from 6:30pm, we will go to the vet along the road, and Chica will get to socialise with other puppies, and we will get to learn some basic training etc.

I am really looking forward to this - a great chance to get her off the property in a safe environment, and get her used to other dogs.

Roll on next Wednesday!

On another note, Daryl tells me that after the 30th of June, he will not be so busy at work - will we actually get to eat dinner with him again?

Sunshine helps...

After wishing this morning that we had never even got a puppy, I am feeling a little more positive this afternoon.

The sunshine definitely helps, and I hope (probably in vain) that we get a lot more of it.

Chica and I have just spent some time out on the deck with tiny squares of luncheon sausage- with the aim of teaching her to sit. The lesson began with Chica rushing madly around me as she smells the luncheon sausage, and me thinking what a silly idea this was. Once she had calmed down a bit, I saw glimmers of her beginning to grasp the idea of "I do something and then I get the treat".

We will work on this more, and hopefully have some success!

More rain..

Turns out it is quite hard to keep a little puppy occupied when it continues to rain.

When we take her for a walk onto the lawn so she can do her business, she often gets to the end of the deck and sits down. At this point she looks at us with her head to one side as if to say "you have got to be kidding me… have you seen the size of the puddles down there!"

She has spent most of the morning in her cage inside, surely there will be a break in the rain soon so we can have a quick wander around? It would be much easier if I was allowed to take her for a walk along the road - hopefully the next 5 weeks are not continuously wet!!

Rant over.

Chica

Well, there have been a lot of posts on here lately about food, but there is (apparently) more to life than just food!

On Saturday, we acquired a new family member in the form of a 7 1/2 week old puppy who we have named Chica. Chica is the spanish word for girl, and sounds remarkably like the word cheeky… which is an apt description for her!

She is a border collie springer spaniel cross, and so is full of energy. Her first night home, we were expecting her to cry a lot, and were lulled into a false sense of security when this did not happen. Sunday night was a different story altogether. She howled and whimpered and carried on till after midnight, and then finally went to sleep, only to start up again at 5am!!! So, come Monday morning, we were all feeling a little tired. Last night, she was perfect, sleeping through without a problem.

She is so cute, that we will forgive her for the bad nights… as long as there are more good nights than bad!

We have just had confirmed by the vet today that she has to stay away from dogs that we do not know, and places where unvaccinated dogs may be/have been until she is fully vaccinated (13 weeks). This is a little disappointing, as we were looking forward to taking her to soccer practices with us, but she will just have to wait, as the risk is that she could catch Parvo Virus if we take her out before she has had all her vaccinations. She can come with us, but will have to stay in the car, or we would have to hold her the whole time. I can picture that getting a little tedious. Oh well, it is only another 5 1/2 weeks.

And what does Missie think of her? Not much.

She has met her, briefly. She looked at Chica for a few seconds, arched her back, hissed, and took off. This has become known as a "Missy fit". We have seen a few of these now.

Missie is spending most of her time on the top bunk in Braden's room at present. I think she figures that this is as far away as she can get (horizontally and vertically) from this silly little animal that we have dared to let onto the property! I hope she comes around soon, as I rather miss my lap warmer when I am in the office working, and my furry friend that keeps me company when I go outside to hang washing, or stand in the kitchen cooking. Come on Missie, smarten up and show the silly puppy who is in charge!

Week 58 Challenge - Pork and Apple

This is a little out of order, as this challenge was a few weeks ago now, but I thought I would post about it anyway.

It was my week to post the ingredients, and I decided that the classic combination of pork and apple would give people plenty of options. For me, this was a great reason to cook the piece of pork belly that I had in the freezer.

The pork belly was simmered for a couple of hours in stock and apple juice with vegetables, and chilled overnight. The next day it was roasted quickly in a hot oven for about 30 minutes. As it was roasting there was an enormous POP! Some of the fat under the skin had exploded, sending bits of nicely rendered pork fat all over the oven door. We decided to remove it from the oven at this point and try to get the skin to crackle a bit by pitting it into a hot frying pan. Apparently this was not a very clever move, as some more of the fat exploded, meaning that we now had to clean the side panel of the fridge, and spots on the floor!

We served this pork with a cauliflower

puree, apple compote, cabbage, apple and fennel slaw, and a jus made from the poaching liquid.

It was all very tasty, and although we looked at the small servings of pork and thought it would not be enough, it was in fact so rich that there was plenty.

Lauren's 9th birthday

Lauren has now turned 9 - her final single digit birthday. I think we must be getting old if our youngest is 9 already!

Lauren chose to go to West Wave for a swim with her friends, followed by dinner at La Porchetta. She and her friends had a lot of fun, although they were a little disappointed to find the Hydroslide was closed.

Well, I have told a few of you about Lauren's pizza birthday cake, and so here is the promised photo (complete with pizza box), along with one of Lauren and her friends at La Porchetta.