Tropical almost-Spider

You know how sometimes a thought leads to a thought leads to another thought and when you get to the end you can't quite explain how you ended up where you did?

You do? Good, because there is no way in the world I could explain to you how the recipe for this salad inspired me to try to make a Tropical Spider. To be fair the first leap of logic was Hannah's but the next was mine and the rest is now history ...

I started with a bottle of Passiona (ordered especially for the occasion) and one Coconut Mango Smooze (I got these free with one of my grocery orders a while back and, well, mango ice cream is expensive!)

Placed the full Smooze into a glass with enough drink to almost fill the cup.

Yeah, that's why I called it an almost-Spider - turns out you need actual ice cream to get the fun frothy stuff happening.

So, I waited a few minutes for the Smooze to defrost a little, mixed it all together and - despite the slightly curdled look - it tasted fantastic!

Not sure that it's one I'll try again - we don't usually have the likes of Passiona in the house and The Sparky doesn't like mango so it's hard to justify buying mango ice cream. Glad to finally get it out of my head though and I think there may be more spider attempts this summer ...

One Day

I have a bad habit.

Truth be told I have a lot of bad habits but the one I want to address today is the one where I keep 'starring' items in Reader - recipes, ideas, crafty activities - with the thought of 'I'll have to try that one day' but then never get around to actually trying it. Its become a problem and it's a problem that I'd like to fix so I'm going to make an effort to attempt at least one 'blog inspired' idea a week.

After reading Mama Pea's recipea for Tandoori Mmmm Sauce last week I decided that Saturday would be my first 'one day'.

Turns out I didn't actually have as many of the ingredients on hand as first anticipated so the end result was definitely an 'inspired by' product rather than an 'I followed the recipe and this is what I got' product.

I started by mixing roughly -

1 cup sour cream
1 tsp crushed garlic
1/2 tsp ground cumin (it was all I had left)
1 tsp ground corriander
1/2 tsp garam masala

don't be fooled by the spoon, no measuring actually took place

Once mixed I added a sprinkle of ground lake salt and dried chilli flakes to the top and chilled for about an hour before the first use.

note to self - this bowl is nice for presentation, not so great for mixing in!

I first tried this spread on our wraps for lunch with salad and oven baked four bean mix - it was fabulous!!!

The Sparky and I are both big fans of anything even remotely Indian inspired and this sauce had us both wanting to go back for more. In fact we did go back for more and finished it of at dinner time on top of our rice and veggie bakes. No left overs within less than 12 hours of making it - definitely a good sign!

The Aftermath

Thanks to our great city's love of all things sporty, yesterday was a public holiday in Melbourne. That's right, we get a day off in celebration of the race that stops the nation and I for one am not complaining!

The Sparky and I had a group of friends around for a bbq lunch and much fun was had (I hope).

The morning started early with chicken being marinated, cupcakes were made, eggs, potatoes and corn were cooked for inclusion in salads, hummus prepared, carrot and celery chopped, salads thrown together and meat barbequed. It was busy but well worth it - I was organisation itself which, for those who know me is quite something and much better than my usual 'I had planned to do such-and-such but ...'. Dips and dippers were brought by friends as well as a delicious chocolate tart (home made by my little bro).

Although none of us has a particular interest in horse racing we did stop for a few moments to watch the race - it was after all the reason we weren't at work. Photo finish!

Despite the abundance of food we were only left with just enough to cover our lunches today and possibly some salad to have with tonight's dinner (not sure how it will have held up). We do still have a lot of cupcakes thanks to the richness of the chocolate tart but I wanted some for work lunches anyway so that's fine just fine.

Once the last of our guests had left it was heading towards late so we did a quick spruce rather than a full clean up, in the middle of which I finally realised that despite my grand plans to photograph the food I hadn't taken a single photo (and there you have it, my usual 'but ...' was there after all).

I grabbed my phone and took a quick photo of the kitchen as we left it last night - not bad considering we had fed and entertained ten people.