Food & Drinks

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Orient Point Bakehouse

11 Comments Posted on October 5, 2015September 27, 2016 by Snoskred

I belong to a local restaurant feedback group on Facebook. People post photos and text of their experiences at local restaurants. I pay attention and store away nuggets of gold for future reference. Such nuggets involve names of places that get good feedback regularly and photos of food that look like something I want to try.

I’d read about Cronuts on lots of different food blogs with interest, so when someone posted about locally available cronuts at the Orient Point Bakehouse, I added that place to the very top of my list. Before we could organise a visit, they closed for a months holiday.. and I counted the days until they reopened. We headed down there *early time* on the very first Saturday they were open.

I ordered the Iced Salted Caramel ($5.50) – it was quite spectacular and perfectly balanced. That caramel on top was fluffy and very special. The Other Half chose the Iced Mocha (seen below, $5.50) – I tried it and it was packed full of chocolatey coffee flavour goodness.

While we were waiting for our food, I began to worry that the cronuts I saw on the counter – initially 6, now down to 2 – were the last ones available! I spoke to a staff member and it was as I feared, so I asked if they could be put aside for us.

I felt like the cronut might be too much sugar for my still yet to awaken stomach, so to eat I chose the bacon and egg roll with tomato relish. People. I’m not kidding. This is by far the best egg and bacon roll I have ever experienced in my lifetime and I have had quite a few. The bacon fat – which is normally something I remove as much as possible – was perfectly rendered – not chewy, not noticeable, just very tasty.

The tomato relish was the element that lifted this from normal to extraordinary. It was vinegary, tomato packed, flavourful, and zingy. This was quite large – that bun is about the size of a hot dog roll – and all for the teeny sum of $5.

Deeply satisfied and with cronuts in hand, we left. I was so full from breakfast that the cronuts waited until 3pm coffee time. And I thought the bacon and egg roll was good. There are no words for how amazing this was. Topped with whipped cream and a gorgeous blueberry jam, and dusted with CRISPY sugar, I am very glad this place is only open weekends. If it were open weekdays, I might be tempted to cruise down and pick one up on a regular basis.

There are two important things to know before you head off to this place –

1. They take cash only. I’m not sure how I knew this because it does not say anything on the website about that. It might have been reading reviews on the web. This is somewhat normal for our local area but I do find it to be a negative in this day and age, I will not lie about that.

I rarely carry cash myself and I was not sure there would be an ATM down there. We had to make a special trip into town to get enough cash before we headed down that way. While we got out of there for just over $30, some of the menu items are more expensive, so my advice is to bring more cash than you think you would need.

2. The place is quite small with limited seating so if it is packed you may have to wait a little for a table or get take away. They have some tables out the front as well if the weather is sunny.

They do have a sample menu available via their Facebook page with some pricing.

This was our first ever visit to Orient Point, which is a sleepy coastal village on the NSW South Coast. We will be back regularly. I’m thinking once a month will allow me to try many menu items before spring and summer are over and also not be too calorific for my present lifestyle. How will I choose something other than the bacon and egg roll? I’m not sure.. :)

I have heard these guys are moving to Culburra Beach sometime this year, so make sure to check the address on the website before you head over. :)

food, Orient Point, reviews

Snoskred Snacks #2

14 Comments Posted on September 25, 2015August 25, 2015 by Snoskred

Last month I told you about my Egg and Ham snack. In mid-August there came a time where I ran out of eggs. Bizarre a concept as that may be when one owns chickens, the fact remains that I had eaten too many eggs for most humans in just over a week. I was still craving them, and it was another week before the grocery shop. I decided it was time to lighten things up a little.

In the fridge, I had some strawberries. And thus, my new snack craze was born. Thin rice cakes topped with cream cheese and strawberries.

On this occasion the strawberries were super tart, so I added a sprinkling of sugar – the sugar meets the surface of the strawberries and turns into a sweet syrup.

There is cream cheese underneath, but if you didn’t like that, you could maybe give nutella a whirl. :)

So let us take a moment to talk about rice cakes. I like the ones from Aldi.

You get somewhere between 25-30 rice cakes in the pack. Sometimes you get a super almost too thin one – those ones I like to save for snacks with less topping or just put hommus on them and fold them in half to make a sandwich type thing.. :)

Me personally I get somewhere between 6-10 servings out of each packet. Sometimes when I am not so hungry I will just make 2 – that usually happens when I am having strawberries on them as a dessert.

Snoskred Snacks

Talk Like A Pirate Day

9 Comments Posted on September 19, 2015September 16, 2015 by Snoskred

I got this interesting email from Krispy Kreme this week – I’m subscribed to their list because I love me some Krispy Kreme. It seems that if you talk like a pirate you get one free donut, and if you dress like a pirate, you get a free dozen donuts. This might be a fun place to go and have coffee and a donut or few today if you have one nearby. You can register and read all the fine print here.

But if you want the fun of pirates without leaving your own home, below, I present to you The Pirate Movie. In full. On Youtube. If you have never seen this cheesy musical movie, make today the day.

You can also read my review of The Pirate Movie here.

food, movies

Snoskred Snacks #1

7 Comments Posted on September 4, 2015August 29, 2015 by Snoskred

My friends, it is now Spring here in Australia. This means it is time for Snoskred to break out the spring-y and summer-y snacks.

Over winter, for lunch I want something hot. I tend to get in a little food rut, eating one snack for two weeks at a time and then switching to another snack. This winter I rotated between bolognese sauce over potatoes, various kinds of soup with cheese and crackers, my little Red Curry friends, fresh mushroom soup, Vilis pasties with cheese and croissants with ham and cheese.

Dawn has been talking about finding new snacks over at it just Dawned on me… and I remembered some snacks I ate quite a lot last spring and summer. Then I thought maybe I should make a new – semi-regular – feature on my blog for spring – and maybe summer – where I share some of my favourites with you.

Lite N Easy taught me that bread and I are not especially great friends. I don’t mind the odd sandwich or grill from time to time but I had to find a non-bread option. I find crackers ok but generally dry *and* difficult to fit much onto. I also gave Cruskits another try but found them a bit too crunchy for me.

Someone at work suggested trying a rice cake and YAY I found my new snack friend. After a bit of experimentation, I prefer the thin rice cakes. Aldi makes one which I usually buy.

So if you saw the photo at the top, you might think that was just ham on top of a rice cake. The ham on top is my special secret signature move which I discovered as a surprise to myself. One day, I was making my rice cake snack and totally forgot to put the ham on.. but I still wanted the ham, so I put it over the top.

I discovered that doing this was a great way to keep the toppings on top of the rice cake rather than having parts escape. I have been layering a slice of something – ham – chicken – turkey – smoked salmon – over the top of my snacks ever since. Rice cakes are round, my sliced meatgoods are also round, it is a perfect fit.

Snoskred Snack – Egg & Ham

First up, make some hard boiled eggs. You can do this the day before if you like. If my girls are not laying enough eggs for me, I buy the Manning Valley free range eggs. You can watch the hens online here.

Peel the eggs, and slice them.

Spread cream cheese onto the rice cakes. This part is quite tricky as these rice cakes are very thin and you can crack or break them if you push down too hard. You can choose another kind of spread if you prefer – hommus would be my second choice.

Layer on your eggs. Add salt and pepper to taste – these will really bring out the flavour of the eggs. Above you see the Manning Valley eggs, here is what it looks like with the eggs from our girls –

Then lay your ham on top, and you have your snack all ready to go.

Dawn tried my snack and loved it. :)

Snoskred Snacks

The Bolognese Of Snoskred

22 Comments Posted on August 24, 2015August 23, 2015 by Snoskred

Otherwise known in our household as “red sauce pasta” or even “awesome sauce”. I’ve mentioned it in the Fake Lasagne post but I have never posted how I make it here on the blog..

Over the years, I’ve made this sauce many different ways, chopping up the various vegetables and so forth. My most recent version involves blending carrot and zucchini in the blender and this makes the sauce extra awesome in my opinion, plus, it is a lot simpler vegetable preparation wise. I’m making it in quite large batches so I can make 3x dinners and 3-4 lunches out of one very large pot of sauce.

I don’t have a strict recipe or amounts, but here is what I usually put in it when making the large batch – I’ve put notes in for how much I use when making a smaller batch.

2 teaspoons minced garlic, 1 chopped onion, 2 chopped leeks – many spices eg paprika, cinnamon, basil, parsley, oregano – sweat these together for 5-10 minutes in olive oil then remove from pan. Remove 1 leek if making a small batch (eg using 500g mince instead of 1 Kilo)

2 red capsicum (pepper) chopped – sweat this for 5-10 minutes in olive oil then remove from pan. (Use 1 if making a small batch)

1kg mince – you can choose what kind of mince you prefer. I like beef and chicken or just beef. I place this in the pan, break it up, then cover with red wine plus a dash of white wine, then put on the lid and allow it to simmer well for 15 minutes. If you have used chicken mince you will find it takes on the colour of the red wine via this method. (500g for small batch)

Add back in the capsicum, leek and onions. Stir well.

Add in 4-5 large carrots and 3 small zucchini – this I puree well in the blender, but if you prefer it chopped you can do it that way. I just peel the carrots and chop them and the zucchini into large chunks and add a little water to make blending easier but if you don’t mind the skins on the carrots, that is your option and you can skip the peeling step.. 2 carrots, 1 small zucchini for small batch.

You can also add other vegetables if you like – me personally I would add mushrooms and olives but the other half does not like them, so I tend to add those in when I am reheating a small serve of sauce for myself.

I find the puree adds extra awesomeness to the sauce. Stir well and allow all of the added ingredients to simmer together for 10 minutes.

Now add –

1 x jar of tomato paste
1 x jar of Basilico pasta sauce
1 x jar of Passata – not for small batch
1 x tin of chopped tomatoes (today I used another jar of passata as we were out) – not for small batch
1 x jar of red peppers pesto – not for small batch

Stir well, then leave the sauce to simmer on a smaller burner for an hour or more, stirring occasionally..

When the sauce is simmered together until it forms an awesome sauce, you can use it however you like.

I will usually prepare this in the morning, have a little sauce over boiled and mashed potato for lunch, and put the rest of the sauce into containers and into the fridge for later use. We would usually have red sauce pasta for dinner that evening. I would also make Fake Lasagne with this sauce, and Ricotta, Spinach and Bacon cannelloni, which will appear here as a recipe at a future time. :)

cooking, recipes, things to remember

SodaStream Saturday #2

5 Comments Posted on June 20, 2015June 19, 2015 by Snoskred

What fruit do you think that is, in my soda water?

It is definitely citrus, but what kind of citrus? Drumroll please..

It is an Imperial Mandarin. Imperials tend to have less seeds – in fact this particular one had no seeds at all. I’ve cut them up two different ways to put them into my soda water.

With a mandarin there is a little more pith than with an orange and most people are cool with eating the pith, so I did not bother to trim it all off like I would with an orange, though you certainly could do that if you wanted it to look more pretty.

One mandarin will provide you with 190% of your daily vitamin C, according to the Aussie Mandarins website. Mandarins are in season from April to October.

So the next time you are making a soda water or mineral water drink, and you happen to have a couple of mandarins lying around, why not combine the two to make a new kind of awesomeness? :)

SodaStream

SodaStream Saturday #1

15 Comments Posted on June 13, 2015June 13, 2015 by Snoskred

As mentioned in this post – Long Weekending – we recently bought a new Soda Stream from Harvey Norman.

This week, we’ll take a look at my new SodaStream.

The one we bought is this one. It comes with an 2 flavour bottles – Cola and Lemonade – plus a c02 canister which will make 40 litres of bubbly drink and 1 one litre water bottle. It is an incredibly good value deal.

In fact such good value that if you pick up a 60 litre gas bottle while you are there, you can go home and make 100 litres of soda water for just over $100. That works out to around $1 per litre.

Future gas bottles retail at $51.95 – you bring in the old one and swap it for a new one – and make approximately 60 litres of bubbly water. You will then be making your bubbly water for .86 cents a litre. No more lugging soda water home from the supermarket. YAY!

Here is a look at the gas probe that goes into the bottle and fizzes it up, and the place where you twist your bottle into. The machine is super simple to use, and every 60 bottles or so you’ll have to replace the gas canister, which is also very easy to do. You do get an instruction book as well.

The gas canister lives inside the back part of the unit. You just press that button and pull the top upwards.

And here you see it pulled apart.

You can use tap water, rain water, any kind of water – and you can even bubble up things like white wine or some forms of alcohol, though it does mean you’ll have to find a good way of washing the water bottle afterwards. We have a filter tap installed here which I use.

There is an option to hack it and use larger c02 canisters. We have not done that here yet so all I can say about that is you can search for SodaStream hack in your search engine and you’ll see multiple different options.

I don’t use syrups or cordial with my mineral water very often. I find them to be too sweet and I have grown to love that tangy bite of plain mineral water. When I feel like I am coming down with a cold, I might do half orange juice, half soda water over ice. This makes a fizzy awesomeness and the super coldness of the ice soothes my throat.

From time to time, I put fruit in just to make it a treat. The fruit takes on that tangy bite, and the mineral water takes on the flavour of the fruit. You can use any fruit and even some vegetables like carrots if you are so inclined.

I’ve written one post on the blog about cutting up an orange the fancy way and putting it into my mineral water. I’ve also posted about making sparkling ice tea here, just scroll down past the cinnamon muffins.

For the next few Saturdays, I am going to write a post about the different ways I use the soda water – or Mineral Water, if you’re posh – that I create with my SodaStream. After that, I’ll post one every now and then when I try something new.

Citrus is in season right now, and I’ve been citrus-ing it up just lately. Next week I’ll show you a fruit which people would not normally think of putting in their mineral water.

Happy Snoskred, Home, SodaStream

Something Arrived..

8 Comments Posted on June 2, 2015June 2, 2015 by Snoskred

Last week Sephyroth received a surprise package from me, which you can read about at his blog – I can haz Krudd Tea?.

Today a package arrived for me – this one I knew was on the way because my Dad had wanted specific Calvin Klein underwear from Macys. His present underwears were actually literally disintegrating. Originally Mum said get 6 pairs, and I said no, get 12 and put 6 away for later.

So we’d sent some money via paypal to Sephyroth and he did all the buying and shipping. They don’t sell this particular underwear in Australia and we’ve even been in contact with Calvin Klein Australia. Likely due to some kind of licensing arrangement, Macys will not ship it directly to Australia and you need a US credit card and address to order.

Thanks for sending the package Sephy! I will deeply enjoy these chippies and this chocolate! ;)

Also many thanks for the Costco Connection and the files on this thumb drive – this contains some photos which we lost in the server meltdown.

And I will respect these wishes. I will *not* mention the Genius of Sephy, that is a post for another day.

food, Happy Snoskred, Sephyroth

Around Here

6 Comments Posted on May 15, 2015April 10, 2016 by Snoskred

It has been an eventful couple of weeks here in Snoskredland. So what is happening around here? I’m going to do a quick rundown of a few things we’ve been up to..

Eating: Loads of vegies. The Other Half said to me that if I steamed Brussels Sprouts for him, along with some carrots and cauliflower, he would eat them. So we’ve been having a huge bowl of vegies alongside some of our meals these past two weeks. I’ve discovered that I love Brussels sprouts myself. We went through 1kg of them in the last two weeks. I also get to put in some of my faves, like broccoli and mushrooms which he will not eat..

Loving: Having our wall art back up again. It has been freaking me out a little, which is odd coming from someone who sits with a full size skeleton in her lounge room. But it has been so long since we’ve had these things on our walls that it is taking some getting used to. I’ll put some of our wall art pics through this post.

Hating: “It’s a Mitsi” – no, teevee ad people, saying one line over and over does not create a catch phrase. Plus, way to go on the research front. Apparently there were ecstasy tablets named Mitsi a few years ago.

Watching: The final season of Mad Men. Season 6 of The Good Wife. Veep – I LOVE Veep! The new season of Deadliest Catch. Australia’s Next Top Model – I am a huge fan of Brittany.

Preparing: 8kg of chicken, cut up, foodsaved, and frozen in the space of an hour on Monday afternoon. It was $5.99 a kg, which is over half the price we normally pay. I have 3 bags for chicken and bacon pasta, 8 bags of chicken pieces for stir fries or Honey and Mustard chicken, plus several bags of chicken steaks for pepper chicken or chicken and sweetcorn soup.

Snacking: on carrots, and many apples I have in the fridge. Dawn is right with what she said in this post – be prepared – I find that if I have snacks and other items already prepped, I’m much less likely to eat things I shouldn’t.

Planning: Menus on a fortnightly basis.

Mourning: the loss of photos and other data – A bad thing happened to our server box.. :( It is way too technical to explain how we have it set up but I will give you a quick and basic overview. The Other Half uses a RAID array which is essentially 5 hard drives set up to work together, storing all our movies, TV shows, and photos.

We do have a lot of DVDs and blu-rays, in particular a lot of tv shows. Rather than store them on the DVDs like many people do, we took to keeping them digitally because we have setups that allow us to watch them on our tv screens without having to handle the DVDs at all. Better for the DVDs, longterm, and better for us to binge watch.

It has been fantastic to have it as a virtual library where you can flick through and pick what you feel like at the time. The backup to the virtual library is, of course, the DVDs. Except the photos, which we usually back up to a DVD every so often.. and it had been a while. Since 2008. :(

So of course the universe would choose this moment to have not one, not two, but THREE of the hard drives fail. When they fail, they try to backup all the information to the other disks, and they managed to do that with the tv shows, the movies, but not the photos.

We’ve lost quite a lot of images, and The Other Half has been kicking himself for not having backups, etc. I don’t see the point in doing that – it is done, they are lost, we have to build a bridge and get over it. Most importantly, we need to make a new plan for storing photos going forward.

food, General Chit-chat, get organised, television shows, wall art

Harvest Box Snacks

14 Comments Posted on May 11, 2015June 1, 2015 by Snoskred

Sometimes these flybuys offers are pretty excellent. A few weeks ago they sent me an email offering me either $50 credit at Coles, or 10,000 flybuys points which also = $50 credit in return for spending $70 a week for 4 weeks. I prefer to use my flybuys credit in small chunks so I went for the points. You can redeem 2000 points for $10 off a shop and I like to save my points for weeks when the budget needs a little helping hand.

On a recent Saturday afternoon, I realised we had not spent our $70 for that week, so out into the rain we went, for an impromptu and somewhat rushed shopping trip. We only needed $36 worth of stuff, so a few items we would not normally buy ended up in the shopping basket.

I’d heard of Harvest Box before and I’d wanted to try their healthy snacks subscription box when I was working in the call centre but never got around to signing up, so when I saw these new packaged Harvest Box snack packs at Coles on special for $2 each, I thought I’d give them a try. It was a total impulse buy.

I am a sucker for cherries, so I grabbed these without a second thought and without reading the packaging.

I ate one of each item before I took the photo, which means there were 2 cherries. 7 hazelnuts and 20 yoghurt balls. This is not especially balanced in my opinion, and me personally when a product has Cherry in the title, I’d like to see a few more cherries in the mix. With that said, the yoghurt balls are very tasty and more-ish.

Strawberry Milkshake was a little better, with 4 strawberries and a mix of other berries. I didn’t count the other bits but it seemed like a much more reasonable mix with just 12 yoghurt balls.

The biggest concern I have with these is the little thing on the back of the packet that says “Made in Australia from local and imported ingredients” and nowhere could I find out more about the origin of the items I was eating. I searched the website and their Facebook page to no avail.

A lot of people may have forgotten the frozen berries and Hepatitis thing, but I have not. I would not buy these again – as tasty as they were – purely because of that tiny little writing on the back of the pack.

In fact, these were bought on a very rushed shopping trip and had I checked the label in the store, they would not have gone home with me at all. I usually check the label of any new product I buy. That discovery was very disappointing. :( I’m sure if I spend some time in the dried fruits aisle, I can find better options grown here which are more reasonably priced and if I can’t find what I am looking for, I would prefer to eat something fresh but grown in Australia.

I hope companies realise when they are not specific about what items are imported they might be losing sales. For example, my favourite salad dressing now has Made in Australia from local and imported ingredients on the label. I contacted them for more information – not wanting to have to find a replacement salad dressing – and was informed that the only imported ingredients were the extra virgin olive oil, which came from Spain, and the balsamic vinegar, which came from Italy. It would not have been very difficult to make that clear on the label.

As always, nobody paid me for my review of these items, I bought them myself with my own money, I am reporting to you my personal experience, and this is totally my own opinion which others might not agree with.

Australia, food, reviews, shopping