Gnocchi with Bacon and Peas

I should have been born Italian. There are times that I devour Pasta on a daily basis and wish that I had a Nonna to teach me how to make it fresh. So instead I try all the different brands of Pasta I can to find what I like the best. And when it comes to packet Gnocchi, I can't go past Simply Wize.

This dish is based off of a recipe I saw on one of the many cooking shows I watch. I think. I dunno - I watch so many, the original recipe could be so incredibly different -_-

Gnocchi with Bacon and Peas

Ingredients

1 Packet of Pre Made Gnocchi (or whatever Pasta you want)
5 Rashes of Short Cut Bacon, diced
1/2 Cup Frozen (or fresh) Peas
100mL Pouring Cream
Grate Parmesan Cheese

Directions

1. Cook Pasta as per instructions on packet.
2. Meanwhile, fry off the Bacon in a medium sized fry pan.
3. Once the Bacon starts to crisp up, add the peas. Cook until the Peas are fully thawed and warm.
4. Add the cream and stir. Drain the Pasta once cooked and add the the frying pan. Mix until combined.
5. Serve with as much grated Parmesan as you like on top.

The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap!

So guys! I know it's been a while, but I got a new job! For those of you who know me well, you'll understand how amazing this is for me! For everyone else, I had become quite disenchanted with my previous job and the people who ran the place, so I had to get out. So yeah, a couple of crazy weeks of adapting and training, but I'm back :)

Anyway, I decided that I was going to take one more step out of my comfort zone and sign up for this year''s Food Blogger Cookie Swap. It was set up two years ago by Lindsay from Love and Olive Oil and Julie from The Little Kitchen. When you sign up, you donate a small amount that goes directly to Cookies for Kid's Cancer. In my mind, that's good enough, but on top of that, you get the names/addresses of three other bloggers who have signed up from your country and three others get yours and you send a dozen cookies to each of them! Sign up closed the other day and I'm (im)patiently waiting for my Cookie matches to check out who I'll be sending mine to...

Keep your eyes peeled, in about a month, the blogging world will be filled with everyones recipes and hopefully it might inspire some more of you to join in and help raise money for a good cause!

Melbourne Trip September 2013 Part 3

This is the last part of my 3 part series on Melbourne - Sunday :)

We had debated all weekend over what to do today. The plan had always been to go to the St. Kilda markets, then head back to the CBD, get our bags and go to the airport. However, as it happens with all good plans, it changed; we heard on the city loop tram that there's a market on at Docklands every sunday, so we decided to head there instead.

However, we walked out of the hotel on Sunday (after going to bed with it raining) to see bright blue skies. So we scrapped the new plan and went to St. Kilda. Lucky we did, since we were greeted with this view....

It was a gorgeous sunny day, so we were happy to wander and find Breakfast, in no rush. We stumbled across a small cafe called Rococo, which could do a variety of Gluten Free options, but first up was a coffee ;) 

For Breakfast, I went out of my comfort zone. I usually like to stick with just Pancakes or Bacon and Toast, since I'm not a huuuuge egg fan. Like seriously, it's scrambled or not at all. But I decided to take a chance on an omelet....

....and boy was I rewarded for my bravery; it was superb! It was light, fluffy and full of flavour. The bread was also pretty good - however, I suspect that was due to the amount of butter I applied to it - I haven't found a restaurant that does overly good bread, but I love that they do it anyway. The cafe staff were incredibly helpful and a special mention must go to our main waiter, who was very nice and had a wonderful Irish accent ;)

It was a fantastic day to be at the markets and we cherished the weather by taking our time to wander and enjoy the atmosphere. 

After a few hours there, we headed back to the CBD and the hotel, grabbed our bags and cookie dough from the hotel freezer and left for the airport. A quick question to Melbourne friends: What is this a statue of? It led to quite a few arguments in the taxi....

After a very uneventful check in and small wait, we got on the plane to head home after a crazy weekend away. The food and the flight home was no where near as good on the way there - we got a beverage, since everyone else got biscuits :( Lucky I was prepared and bought snacks!

Anyone else head to the expo and learnt anything new?

Melbourne Trip September 2013 Part 2

This is the continuance of Part 1 of our Melbourne trip, Day 2 - Saturday!

Saturday was a big whirlwind of busyness! The main portion was, of course, The Coeliac Society of Victoria and Tasmania's Gluten Free Expo for this year. It was held at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre and was well-attended by exhibitors and visitors alike.

So we started the day with a strong cup of coffee before heading to the Exhibition Centre. I've always enjoyed going there - it's right on the Yarra River and just has gorgeous surroundings.

We got really lucky - after last years expo, we filled in a survey to improve it and then about a week before this weeks expo (around the time the tickets went on sale), we got an email informing us that as a thank you for filling out the survey, we got a couple of complimentary tickets for this years! Epic Win :)

The crowds were pretty insane right from the moment the doors opened. The aisles were pretty packed with people and the crowds at each stall were crazy, but there's something about being there (regardless of the busyness) and knowing that they're all there for the same reason as you (plus a majority - if not all - are Australian Brands!). 

For me, the natural first place to go is to Naturally Gluten Free, who were stocking HOT JAM DONUTS!!! Zomg, so amazing - just like the "normal" ones from years ago haha however, nobody else shared this sentiment, so I left them to be boring and went and got my donut :D

We then made our way around and experienced some new products, but (in my honest opinion) more importantly caught up with some old friends. Like "Uncle Rick". He is Rick from Rick Grant's Seasoning Mixes. We adore his Wedges mix, and if it were easy to get it here in SA, we'd eat wedges a lot more! However, this time around, I got his cakes and dessert cookbook :)

Next up was Brookfarm. I have eaten their Muesli for a while - my local Foodland stocks it all the time. Then last year before winter, they released a Porrij (Porridge haha) and I devoured that all through winter. This year at the expo, they had all new trail mixes which were pretty damn good!

And last, but certainly not least, was Melinda's. 

We have had a long standing friendship with Melinda. I first met her 4 years ago at my first expo and she was lovely! Over the years, I've caught up with her numerous times when she's come here to promote new products. We've gotten so close, that if it's quiet, she'll wander the store with me while I do my shopping! Then last year, I actually won a competition through her company and won an iPad! 

Melinda's is also a 100% Australian Owned company. In fact, I'm fairly sure that is her Dad helping her  out above and below, as I've seen him at other events as well :)

A special mention must go out to Annabel from the Bikkie Dough Co. I briefly met her last year, but as we were driving back home, we couldn't find a safe way of getting her frozen Bikkie Dough back home. But having flown across this year, we contacted her again to get her thoughts. She said that as long as they were kept below fridge temperature, we would be able to re-freeze them. So we took Ice Packs and freezer bags across with us and got her to keep some aside for us to pick up at the end. We got incredibly lucky with Annabel as she is so lovely and was so helpful over the entire process of pre-ordering everything. Plus, we got super excited about her releasing biscuit mixes at the show as well!

We also got pretty lucky with our hotel - they put all of our frozen goods with the freezer bags in their kitchen's freezer until we were ready to head off to the airport! What good service!

After all the excitement of the expo, we left at around 2ish and headed back to the hotel to dump our bags and have a pick-me-up coffee. BTW: Holiday Inn on Flinders St's cafe do a wonderful coffee!

We then headed off down along the Yarra and headed back to the DFO to get a few things we didn't get yesterday. We then headed towards Albert Park to get to a wool shop Mum had heard about on Facebook called Wool Baar. 

That night for dinner, we had decided to wander down South Wharf and see if anything caught our eye that we could eat at, and if not, we'd head back to Il Primo Posto. 

However, upon wandering along South Wharf, we didn't actually find anything that mentioned anything about Gluten Free...so we just went back to Il Primo Posto. We even had the same waitress, who - to her credit - remembered us and our dietary requirements! But this time, I decided on what was my second choice the night before and what I wish I had actually got the night before - Spaghetti Bolognaise!! Side story, my sister is not a big fan of noodles, so it is very rare to have this at home, so I was very happy I chose to get it :) :)

After heading back to the hotel and grabbing a coffee, we unpacked everything we bought before roughly packing to get ahead for the following day. Here is all the food I bought;

So, what I got was:

• Yoghurt Bites and Choc Banana Bites from Food for Health
• Fruit Cereal, Florentines and Mince Pies from Kez's. 
• Tomato and BBQ Baked Beans, Sticky Date Pudding Mix and Lentil and Quinoa Mixes from Celebrate Health. 
• Rick Grant's Dessert Cookbook
• A couple of boxes of Corn Crunch from Simply Wize
• A couple of packets of Tasty Bite curries.
• A couple of Brownie Mixes from Melinda's Gluten Free 
• Trail Mixes from Brook farm
• Baguettes by Dr Schars.
• Biscuit Mixes and Frozen Biscuit Dough from the Bikkie Dough Co.
• Different flavour Wafers from Eskal

All of these make me so excited to try them all out :) 

Melbourne Trip September 2013 Part 1

Over the weekend of the 13th-15th of September, my Mum, Aunty Michelle, her friend Sue and myself headed over to Melbourne for the annual Gluten Free Expo for 2013. We spent Friday, Saturday and Sunday in Melbourne having a girls weekend by eating, shopping and a lot more eating! This first post is all based on what we did on the Friday :)

Travelling Tip #1: Be Smart when choosing your flight times.

Clearly, since I'm including this tip, we did NOT do this...when we booked, we decided to go with the first flight of the day out of Adelaide for 2 reasons. 1. It was one of the cheapest of the day (gee, I wonder why...) and 2. It arrived in Melbourne at 7:30, so that gave us more time to shop! But we didn't exactly factor in when we'd have to be at the airport by and consequently, what time we'd have to get up. We had to leave home at around 4:30am :S However, if you don't mind getting up at the crack of dawn to get a plane, then spend all day on your feet - go ahead and book whatever time you want....not my thing though! I started to look forward to my coffees desperately though...thinking back to all the times I've been at the airport in the mornings, I don't think I've ever been there when it's been dark...

A few days before we left, we rang Qantas to confirm our gluten free meals; they informed us we'd have one on the way there (breakfast) but on the way home, it'd be afternoon tea, so they wouldn't have anything. We were kind apprehensive about breakfast, but took a plunge and didn't eat at home before leaving - lucky too, since a GF breakfast on Qantas is actually pretty good.

Travelling Tip #2: If you get the choice, always go for a cold cereal meal over a hot one.

Whilst I don't exactly get the choice anymore, I found it was always safe to go with cereal - even airlines can't get that one wrong. They can, however, get hot meals wrong - think soggy eggs, tough sausages and you get the picture! And this time around, mine even came with a Cookie/Biscuit from Rowie's that I had never seen before!!

Travelling Tip #3: If you're only travelling with one suitcase and going to the CBD, go via the Skybus.

Obviously, this only applies for Melbourne; other capital cities may have one similar to this, but I don't know anything about them. We bought our tickets online a couple of days before, since it's cheaper that way. It cost us $17 to go into the CBD, but would've been cheaper if we had booked both ways. Plus, it only took about 25mins and we got a pretty specky view of the city as we came in towards Southern Cross Station.

From Southern Cross Station, we wandered down Spencer St. to our choice in hotel - The Holiday Inn, about 5mins away from the station. 

We chose the Holiday Inn for a couple of reasons; it was a short walk to and from Southern Cross Station (due to the sky bus)and it was only about a 5min walk to the Exhibition Centre. This narrowed it down to two and the final decision was based on the Holiday Inn having free wifi :P

We had such a quick check-in, mainly because we didn't mind about adjoining rooms, had time to freshen up and head out to shop! We hit up DFO first and got there as the shops were beginning to open. One of my favourite clothing buys over the weekend was from Ginger Tree there. Three of us happened to buy the same dress in different colours....

After doing some shopping, we stopped for "lunch". Lunch for most of us consisted of coffee and a Macadamia Toffee Cheesecake - my kind of lunch!! We actually found a cafe in the food court called Piccolo that did a wide range of GF goodies.

After finishing our shopping there, we decided to head to Harbourtown. In order to get there from the CBD, we hopped on the City Circle Free Tram. This comes roughly every 10-15mins and is Free for the entire loop of the city, which was really handy! 

Getting there, we slightly disappointed with what we found; it was pretty quiet (presumably because it was a Friday afternoon), but there were a lot of shops that were not even open. If I were to go again, it would probably be on a weekend. But I did find this:

We also had a very much needed coffee whilst at Harbourtown. We just went to Gloria Jeans - nothing fancy, but they had Byron Bay Cookies there! The triple choc is just to die for!

After declaring the Harbourtown was a bust, we headed back to the hotel to just chill. Once dusk hit, we took a wander up to Bourke St Mall, but nothing really caught our eye, so we went back down to South Wharf for a look and dinner. 

As my friends and family will know, I have a love-hate relationship with Melbourne. I don't see why people go crazy over it and I really dislike Fed Square (don't ask - there's no logic behind that one), but this time around, the shopping was actually good and I saw Fed square for the first time at night, which was a little specky...I guess somethings can change....

Walking along South Wharf, makes me very excited for the continuing development of Adelaide Oval. It's going to be wonderful to park on the outskirts of the CBD, have a nice diner somewhere in the city (personally I think Good Life is going to be a real hit for us), then wander on down to the Oval along the Torrens. 

Pretty sure this was one of the BEST gf meals I've had out...ever!! It was at Il Primo Posto along South Wharf. Everything about it was wonderful - the food, the staff, the service, the location! We got seated as soon as we got there and were ordering drinks and receiving them not long after. Our food choices were easy - we don't spaghetti here often, so I went for Pumpkin, Danish Fetta, Broccoli and Chilli Spaghetti. The others all got pasta related dishes as well. The meals came out incredibly fast - 10 mins top! Note: if you don't like Chilli, ask for it without - there is A LOT! Lucky for me, I loved it :) The Staff were so helpful and really really nice as well. Go check it out - the only thing is, that they don't take reservations after 6:30, but we didn't have any issues getting served on Friday and the same happened when we went back on Saturday (but that's a whole-nother story....)

A couple of my bargains - can't wait to try out some of those macaroons!!

Melbourne Gluten Free Expos of the Past

Over the last 7 years since my Mum was first diagnosed a coeliac, her (with or without someone else) has attended 6 Gluten Free Expos. 7 years ago they were set up and ran by Sue Shepherd at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre at South Warf. After about 5 years of running them (in early 2009), she sold off the rights and running of them to an outside company, but still did guest speaking roles at them.

Then in early 2012, that company decided to combine the Expo with the ever popular "Good Food and Wine Show". Whilst they obviously thought it would be a good idea, the exhibitors didn't agree due to the high prices and most of the people not going for the Gluten Free side of things, so they had trouble finding exhibitors to go.

So the Coeliac Society of Victoria and Tasmania decided to run their own. They held a one day Expo at Caulfield Racecourse in September 2012. Due to it being run by CSVT and being an unknown of how popular it would be, the exhibitors were slightly scant with how much products they took.

Then this year, due to the success of last year, the CSofVT decided to host it over 2 days in September at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre again.

I went in 2009 and flew in Friday morning, spent Friday in Melbourne shopping, Saturday at the Expo and flew back out on Saturday night.

I then went with Mum last year. We decided that so we could buy up big, we would drive over from Adelaide. So we left on Thursday afternoon, stopped in Horsham over night and arrived in Melbourne on Friday afternoon, after stopping in Bendigo in the morning. Went to the taping of the 7pm Project (Channel 10) in the evening on Friday, Expo on Saturday, then spent all day Sunday driving home.

I have so many wonderful memories from expos of the past and cannot wait to go this year and see all of the friends I've made and meet new ones!

Mum's Special Chocolate Mud Cake

Last week, we celebrated my Mum's "getting-closer-to-a-signific" Birthday. She often doesn't like a big fuss made - usually she gets unlucky and has to work on her birthday and this year was no different. So I decided to do something a little special for her...a Chocolate Mud Cake.

Since she was diagnosed a Coeliac 6 years ago, I'm 99% sure she hasn't had a Gluten Free Mud Cake. So it was an easy decision on what to make, the hard part was the "How".  Lucky for me, the answer was sitting in my pantry - in the form of White Wings Gluten Free Flour. I've wanted to play around with it and so I went on their website to check out their website to see what recipes they had on offer.

Luckily for me, they had a Chocolate Mud Cake on there! I adjusted it slightly to suit what we like as a family, and I must say it turned out well - despite Mum not wanting candles or us to sing "Happy Birthday" :(

Something I feel I should mention before we get onto the cake - I am a big fan of supporting your local produce (especially with living in Australia and having so much imported produce on the shelves), so from now on, if I do use an Australia produced product, I will say so, that way you Aussie's out there can do so as well!

The Australian brands I have used are; White Wings, Cadbury, Western Star and Bulla.

Mum's Special Gluten Free Chocolate Mud Cake

Yields about 12 average sized slices

Ingredients

Chocolate Cake

250g Unsalted Butter, melted

3/4 cup Cocoa

1 1/3 cup Castor Sugar

3 eggs

1 1/2 cups Almond Meal

1 1/2 cups White Wings Gluten Free Flour Mix

3/4 Cup Milk

Chocolate Fudge Icing

250gm Dark Chocolate, in pieces

1/2 cup Pouring Cream

70g unsalted Butter

Directions

1. Preheat your oven 180 degrees (Celsius) fan forced.

2. Place the Butter, Cocoa, Sugar, Eggs, Almond Meal, Flour and Milk into a large bowl and whisk to combine.

3, Pour into a lightly greased round cake tin lined with non-stick baking paper (I used a springform one). 

4. Bake for 1 Hour or until cooked when tested with a skewer.

5. Next, lick the bowl clean. This is a very important step - maybe one of the most important.

6. Allow the cake to cool in the tin completely.

7. To make the Icing, place the Chocolate, Cream and Butter in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water.

8. Stir until melted and smooth.

9. Spread evenly over the top and sides of the cake. FYI: if you spread over the sides, it helps keep the cake moist! 

Enjoy!!