Capsicum, spinach, mushroom, and bacon fettucine

Posted on by bekswhoknits

Whilst my gorgeous, lovely boyfriend was putting together flatpack (and solving a slight measurement error), I was making a dinner that would (hopefully) take away some of the flatpack frustration.

Nice stodgy fettucine, dressed with a capsicum, spinach, mushroom, and bacon creamy sauce.

The capsicum, bacon, and mushroom went in the frying pan. That cooked and then some corn flour mixed with water, then some milk. And of course salt and pepper.

That thickened whilst the pasta boiled (and J flatpacked away).

It was some nice stooge to end the day – with a glass of wine. Wine is essential for flatpacking (i’m having way too much fun making verbs from flatpack, unlike flatpack which is anything but fun. But it’s all done! Huzzah!)

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the joys of homeownership – post flooding

Posted on by bekswhoknits

My house is a shambles.

There is flatpack everywhere.

More importantly part of my bed is blocking the thoroughfare from the kitchen to the fridge. Needless to say, that made dinner a very awkward exercise, having to straddle a piece of flatpack to get between the oven/sink and the fridge/the rest of the house.

And of course it ended in disaster.

I burnt the vegies, burnt myself on the casserole dish I was cooking the vegies in, dropped the lid of said ($80) casserole dish (thankfully it just smashed the handle and I didn’t cut myself), and the gravy didn’t thicken.

But the lamb was still delicious.

I put together a chest of drawers and an underfloor box, J put together the wardrobe and a spare cupboard.

And tonight we get to assemble the bed. And then that’s it.

I am really looking forward to not sleeping on a mattress on the floor.

The lady at Ikea who put the wardrobe order through put through 2 x cupboard doors when we only needed one, but thankfully they’re going to come and pick them up (and give me a refund).

And then (hopefully) my house will be back in a controlled state of dysfunction, not the uncontrolled.

I will be so glad once this has all been sorted and my house will be back to normal.

I am so grateful that I had insurance and RAC sorted it all out (I’m not one for product placement but credit where credit’s due).

They paid for the hotel (that we witnessed the incident leading to the dead body being found, but that’s not their fault), we got all the money back for the clothes, furniture, carpets, and peripherals that got damaged.

Now if only my strata would actually fix the plumbing problem.

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The flatpack was all between the kitchen and the fridge.

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Wine is essential when putting together flatpack.

 

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A completed chest of drawers/bedside table.

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The lamb roast.

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And the failed gravy. More corn flour next time perhaps. And less flatpack.

Hazy shade of grey (and burnt orange)

Posted on by bekswhoknits

My bathroom has finally been painted!! Huzzah!

My lovely boyfriend did the brunt of the work, whinged about it, and then when I came in to the bathroom to give him a hand, he promptly told me to get out because I was getting in his way.

The house is now finally all one colour. Well shades of the one colour. Except the pink.
Ok the house is finally painted all colours of my choosing.

The towel rack is new. J measured it to be exactly the length of two bath sheets. And he put in a new hand towel holder.

The towels are brand new as well (the sewerage leak damaged the brand new towels mum had bought me for my birthday – thank you insurance!)

So it’s all looking new and lovely.

The next thing will be the kitchen.

It’s nice having a place to call your own.

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Yarn shopping!

Posted on by bekswhoknits

Even though it was raining yesterday, I needed to buy some new yarn to start a couple of new knitting projects. So I decided to brave the rain and head to Spotlight.

I love Spotlight. It doesn’t have the feel of the little yarn store in Bassendean, but it’s so big you can find pretty much anything you want.

And of course there were a couple of impulse buys. I was tired of using a big sistema container (me tired of sistema, yes I know, world gone topsy-turvy) that was too small. So I bought a fold out kind of hamper ($10), which I thought was pretty trendy until I got it home and J remarked that it looked like something his Nan owns. But his Nan is all kinds of awesome so I don’t really mind too much.

I also bought a knitting needle case ($5). I bought a bamboo set of double pointed needles from eBay which has sizes from 4 – 8 (so a lot of needles) and I needed to have some organization to them. I love order and having everything in place.

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Continue reading Yarn shopping!

anything we need from the shops? – google docs to the rescue

Posted on by bekswhoknits

Being the technology lover that i am, i’m always looking for ways that technology will help improve and generally make my life easier.

I’m the main shopper for the household. It’s something that i’d like to be able to delegate without ending up with a cupboard full of pop tarts and steak.
But as i generally end up going to the shops straight after work, i always end up sms-ing the boy with something along the lines of “anything we need from the shops?” or “you wrote something on the fridge that we ran out of, what was that again?”.
All of which results in me going to the shops (which i hate), walking around the shops in a rage, and getting home and remembering what i needed to buy.

I knew that somewhere out there, someone else shares this problem.
And given that we both have iphones, there has to be an app for that.

Not that I could find, but I found a solution anyway.

Google Docs.

I created a shared document, which both of us can edit, and put a shortcut on each of our home screens.
Now when I’m shopping I can pull up the shopping list and not forget anything (or at least absolve blame).
And if I need to I can send J shopping and he (theoretically) can return with a balanced shopping trolley.

Items can be added as inspiration strikes, and live updating means that if i need to add something while J’s at the shops he can get it straight away.

It’s the best solution that i’ve found for sharing shopping lists between iphones, or indeed smartphones.

parcels of hammy goodness (oh and salad)

Posted on by bekswhoknits

The continuing adventures of my salad sistema container

My sistema container has had a lot of use since i bought it. It’s also half price at Coles at the moment, which i’m not too pleased about. But murphy’s law does dictate as soon as you buy something it will be on sale for cheaper.

Today i have a chopped salad. Which is really just a whole heap of fruit and vegies chopped up for picking at.
There’s mandarin, mushrooms, celery, tomato, snow peas, carrot, and lettuce.
All of which taste good with Australian mustard, which is what’s in the dressing container.

With some left over store bought potato salad (which has some tinned corn added because last night we added half a tin of corn to the stew and i didn’t know what else to do with half a tin of corn).
And some ham. Because ham is also good with mustard and wrapped in lettuce, to make a tiny parcels of hammy goodness.

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On a wintery evening

Posted on by bekswhoknits

A stew was in order.
It was a blustery day in perth.
The sort of day where you want to curl up with a good book, but had to be at work instead.

So at about 10 o clock i decided that a stew was in order. Something nice and hearty; a reason to have the oven on.

It wasn’t the greatest stew i’ve ever made. My head wasn’t quite in the game and i forgot to add flavour.
And when i did it was a bit too late.

Onion and chuck steak went in a fry pan to brown.
Then some flour went over that, as a thickening agent.
I imagine it like a roux sauce where your flour and butter stick together and then thicken milk, except for a casserole i use beer. And in this case Fosters.
My boy and I are two Australians who actually drink Fosters, but it is hard to find.

While that was bubbling away i chopped some potatoes, carrots, capsicum, and mushrooms.

They went in the bottom of my little casserole dish and then the meat on top.
That went in the oven for half an hour.
I checked on it at half an hour, the potatoes still weren’t cooked, and it was very bland.
So i added some salt and pepper, Worcestershire sauce, and HP barbeque sauce (seriously what was i thinking not adding any of this earlier??) and stirred that through the best i could.
Another half an hour and it was still looking a bit runny, so i put it back in the oven for another 10 minutes.

It still wasn’t really thick (i don’t know why i can’t get a nice thick stew – to the research-mobile!), but i was hungry.

It definitely hit the spot, but i’m going to have to practice some more to make it good.

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Posted on by bekswhoknits

Another night of Parks and Recs.
The tennis is on. I wanted to watch the Tomic game because he’s doing so well. But when we switched it over it was just finished.
Then women’s tennis came on (can’t stand the grunting).

So it’s Parks and Recs. Completely addicted. April Luddgate is my power animal.