Blue Skies and Housework

 

Hello!

Apologies for the lack of “Ruby Tuesday” I just didn’t get over there today for a story – so have to take a rain check!! (so to speak)

Today was amazing. Warm, blue skies and no wind. I was in a t-shirt mostly.

Pip enjoyed a bit of outside time too – he was sick of being cooped up inside

Even the little cows out the back looked happy not to be rained on today! They stayed close to the fence all day!

I decided that the main living areas in the house needed a good cleaning. When you have this continual soggy weather, a wood fire and an old house… it just gets manky, no matter how much you try to keep the outside from being tracked in.  We had to put the outdoor shoes and boots inside because the rain was blowing in under the veranda to the back door. That meant storing some wood inside too – and it sheds.

So I got thoroughly domestic – Jeff was sleeping off a nightshift. Probably thought he woke up in the wrong house! 😀

I did get side tracked and sorted my garlic!

I have enough cloves I think to fill the area I have prepared – around 150 cloves. They need to go in tomorrow, so I am hoping the weather will continue giving me a break.

I picked some leek – these had self seeded. I made them into a soup with potato, bacon, garlic & chicken stock!

Also raided the herb garden to bake a loaf of garlic-herb bread to go with the soup tonight

I want to share an easy little recipe I found the other day.

I had planned on having ‘Beef Surprise”

Basically because I am getting down to the packets of meat that lost their labels when I had to chisel apart all the frozen lumps.

So I have to thaw out an anonymous lump of meat to see what it is before I can decide on how to cook it.

What I ended up thawing was some stewing steak. I knew I had a tin of coconut milk in the pantry & so had a taste for a curry of some sort. Most recipes I found had ingredient lists a foot long and just looked too fiddly. I wanted something basic or straight-forward.

This one was a gem and we loved the taste. Will definitely cook it again!

1kg stewing steak (2.2lb)

1 large onion chopped

2 cloves crushed garlic (I did a few as I like garlic)

2 tablespoons curry powder

2&1/2 cups beef stock

400ml can coconut milk

2 tablespoons brown sugar

Rice to serve

 

Preheat oven to 180C (350F)

Cut beef into cubes – I put into a bag with a bit of oil and seasoned with garlic salt. I then browned in pan in batches, putting each batch into the casserole dish as I went along

Reduce heat in pan, add oil, cook onion and garlic for a few minutes.

Add curry powder and mix in until onion coated.

Slowly add the beef stock, stirring as you go.

Add coconut milk and brown sugar and bring all to boil.

Add all to casserole dish and stir to combine.

Cover and cook in oven until tender.

I also thickened it a little with cornflour (corn starch) once it was cooked

It really didn’t take long to make up. And being only the two of us, it was dinner for two nights! Bonus!!

Well, I am going to take a leaf out of Pips book and get some sleep! (After getting some more beef surprise out of the freezer!

Have a wonderful day everyone!

Cheers