Smaggle

My Healthy Winter Breakfast post was pretty popular (popular enough for me to have received three emails from different readers outlining just how extraordinary it made their number twos) so I’m going to chronicle one meal a week that I cook, here on the blog. Although I can’t guarantee improved bowel function from all of them. Last night I made gluten-free rissoles and a pancetta pine nut salad with delicious ingredients that I bought at the markets.

Here’s how I did it.

Ingredients (serves 4)

Rissoles

1kg of lean beef mince
2 eggs
1 cup of gluten-free bread crumbs
Salt and pepper

Salad

Rocket leaves
1/2 cup roughly shredded parmesan cheese
70gms pine nuts
2 or 3 large slices of pancetta
Oil
Salt and pepper
Lemon juice

What To Do

Rissoles

1. Mix all rissole ingredients in a large bowl. I generally squish it all up with my hands instead of using a spoon. It mixes it really well and it’s more fun than using a spoon.

2. Divide into 8 equal parts and shape into rissoles.

3. Heat some cooking spray in a large frying pan. Cook rissoles on both sides until cooked through. Should be around ten minutes all up.

4. Remove from pan and leave to drain on paper towel.

Salad

1. Take a few good handfuls of rocket leaves and place a serving bowl.

2. Fry pine nuts in a small saucepan until brown. Do not walk away from the pan while you are doing this because they burn really quickly.

3. Top the rocket leaves with pine nuts, roughly grated parmesan and pancetta. Toss some oil, lemon juice and salt and pepper though the salad.

Done! It shouldn’t take longer than around twenty minutes to prepare this meal.

The salad is exceptional and a fantastic way to entice boys into eating lots of leafy greens!

If you have any questions or requests feel free to leave a comment or contact me on Facebook or Twitter.

love

Carly

Epic day of writing.

* Dress from Metalicus

* Tights from Witchery (very annoyed that my Veronica Frye boots have rubbed against the side of all my tights and made every pair shabby and fluffy. I’m punishing the Veronicas by wearing my brown boots. Bastards.)

* Shrug from a boutique on Smith Street

* Clear bangles from Equip

* Cream bangles from Dinosaur Designs. One of these, one of these and one of these worn in a stack.

* Ring Smaggle made

* Boots from Redpaths in Canberra

* Head scarf thrifted

* Earrings from the NMIT student fundrasing auction. These are the ones I bought drunk and tweeted about. Thankfully they are awesome.

* Sunglasses sent to me from Shades Daddy.

As a Melbourne lass I do enjoy a head to toe black ensemble but my rule is that it must be very, very black. Wishy washy black is a huge no no for me.

Love

Carly

xxx

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Go for a winter evening jog?

Wear leg warmers? Snazzy shorts over full length tights? Mittens? Ear muffs?

Be an English Rose?

Have a smooth clear complexion? Neat eyebrows? A sweep of pink blush? Wear a sweet ribbon tied in a bow at the top your head?

Put your handbag essentials in your coat pocket?

Phone, lipgloss, cards, cash and keys? Swing your arms with bagless abandon?

Have a television free evening?

Light some candles and crack open a bottle of red? Read a book or play a board game?

Have cooked apples for a warm winter dessert?

With cinnamon? A scoop of decadent yogurt?

Use treatments?

Moisturising facial? Exfoliating body? Hair conditioning?

Have a lazy dinner?

Tinned vegetable soup? With thick buttered toast? A side of oven cooked potato wedges?

Bring your lover a fresh coffee in bed in the morning?

Or make one for yourself and drink it in front of the heater? Reading a sneaky chapter of your book?

Have a delicious weekend!

Love

Smaggle

P.S If you have any questions on life, love, fashion, orginasation, blogging, anything please do let me know for my upcoming podcast with Sarah Von!

So have you all met Sarah Von from Yes and Yes? I’m assuming you have. She’s my blogging bestie. Obviously. We are both Virgos with Type A personalities and twin noses. I’ve drawn a helpful diagram above to demonstrate.

Well ladies she’s coming to Australia (!!!) next month and we are planning on taking advantage of being in the same country at the same time and making a podcast together! About organisation (or ‘organization’ as Sarah likes to spell it… we’ll have to fight that one out), productivity, planning and how to keep on top of your fabulous life.

So… do you guys have any questions you want to ask us, the team captains of Type A? They can be bloggy/organisation based or personal. Ask away!

Oh and Sarah’s readers have already started asking questions! Exciting!

Love

Smaggle

x

I’ll admit it. I’m a miracle food product whore. If Miranda Kerr attributes her child like hips and glowing skin to the consumption of gogi berries at 4 minute intervals for 24 hours a day then I’m online in a heart beat getting bulk bags shipped from China. For real.

I do experiment with my daily eating quite regularly and if some health nut celebrity suggest drinking cabbage juice or sprinkling powdered seaweed on my cereal I’ll give it a try but in my general day to day eating habits I try to avoid refined carbohydrates, sugar, wheat and dairy. I love food that tastes like food. Above all else I rarely, if ever eat packaged food.

Through out summer I would have an oat milk, raw egg and blueberry smoothie for breakfast but it’s so fracking cold at the moment that the thought of drinking a smoothie makes me want to set myself on fire.

Here’s what I’ve replaced it with

Oat Milk and Prune Porridge

Ingredients

1/3 cup of quick oats

3/4 cup of oat milk (the irony of using oat milk with oats only just hit me)

Five pitted prunes (I’m eating prunes because I recently read French Women Don’t Get Fat. It’s divine. The French Women Don’t Get Fat Cookbook is also awesome.

1 tsp white chia seeds (These are a ‘super food’ that aid digestion, promote weight loss and are basically little fun bags full of awesome things like calcium and fibre.)

1 tsp LSA (LSA is linseed, sun flower seed and almond meal. It cleanses and detoxes your liver as well as improves your ability to metabolise fat.)

Drizzle of honey (but only if you’re a baby and can’t hack unsweetened porridge)

Method

1. Place oats and milk in a small saucepan and place over medium heat. Stir until thick and creamy, about a minute.

2. Serve in a bowl with chopped prunes, chia seeds and LSA sprinkled on top.

3. Freshly brewed coffee optional.

Side note – This bowl of gold will keep you full for hours and that’s coming from a chronic snacker. Also it makes your number twos extraordinary.

Love

Smaggle

P.S Are you interested in food posts? Do let me know on Twitter or Facebook or in the comments. x

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The secret is… the possession or the lack of emotion memory, mutually exclusive to women and men respectively. I lost you there didn’t I? Let me start again.

I’m kind of jealous of other writers who have these mad husbands and hilarious children that provide brilliant fodder for their blogs. Like when Woog’s husband cooks dinner or Kerri Sackville realises that her daughter hates her. Personally, I have very little to work with. My man is pretty bloody perfect*. The worst article I’ve written about my relationship was this one and I incriminated myself far more than Mr Smaggle.

The Perfect Man has however, developed a rather new and Very Annoying Habit and I’m all over it like a fat kid on cake. When Mr Smaggle gets changed he takes off the clothes he is wearing and drapes them over the edge of the washing basket. Not IN the washing basket, DRAPED over the EDGE of the washing basket. The reason he does this, is because he hasn’t yet decided whether or not his clothes are dirty. This happens EVERY SINGLE TIME HE GETS CHANGED. I can’t ever put dirty washing IN the basket because it’s covered in his drapey clothes. I’m about to punch a wall.

The reason why I’ve become so irrational over this pretty harmless behaviour is because, as a woman, I have an emotion memory. Every day that I am annoyed by Mr Smaggle’s draping, it’s added to the Total Amount of Times That I’ve Been Annoyed by the Draping. Basically, it’s incremental. So after a few weeks of enduring the draping it leads to disproportionate nagging and then I want to hurt him. For draping his clothes over the dirty clothes basket. It’s mental.

Seasoned readers will know that I pride myself on my general perfection but I admit that I do have the odd bad habit. Odd being the operative word. My favourite one is when I replace the empty toilet paper roll with a full one, I put the empty roll on the window sill and leave it there. My excuse is that a) toilet going for ladies is a two-handed exercise thus I have to put the empty roll down and b) I have the attention span of a gold-fish and once I put the empty roll down my brain starts thinking about more important things like bricks and food.

This annoys Mr Smaggle but only when it’s right in front of his eyes. His brain goes – ‘Empty toilet roll on the window sill. That’s annoying. I’m going to walk away. I’m no longer annoyed.‘

And the next time this happens? Mr Smaggle’s Brain – ‘Empty toilet roll on the window sill. That’s annoying. I’m going to walk away. I am no longer annoyed.’

It’s brand new annoyance every time. There’s no snow ball effect. How do I know this? He only ever mentions it when he has come immediately out of the bathroom and I happen to be the first thing he sees. Otherwise the problem doesn’t exist.

I’ve witnessed countless arguments where women can effortlessly rattle off a list of Very Annoying Habits while men stand there wracking their brains trying to come up with even one feeble point of retaliation. Man Brain – ‘Damn it… I was annoyed this morning! Why was that again…?‘

It’s not that women are less tolerant or even less flawed than men. It’s because our emotion memory is so efficient. It’s why women can sit around talking about feelings for hours. It’s like our version of talking about sex. Also, men don’t care about most things. Mr Smaggle has let my toilet roll habit develop into art installations on several occasions because his emotion memory is totally crap. Whereas I will violently fling his jeans across the room at least twice a day because my emotion memory is reminding me that this Very Annoying Habit has pissed me off at least three times this week. Different strokes.

In conclusion, ladies please remember that men (no emotion memory) are like dogs and every time you chastise them they will have forgotten it thirty seconds later. So try not to be too harsh. And gentlemen, we ladies (photographic emotion memory) wouldn’t have to nag if you just got it right the first time. Towels = hung on racks. Dishes = in dishwasher. Clean dishwasher = empty it. Hope that helps.

And do feel free to have a little rant in the comments! Or comment on Facebook or Twitter.

Love Smaggle

* That jerk just gave me the last chocolate covered macadamia nut. Do you see what I’m dealing with here?