Thai Chilli Basil Mince

I love cooking.  I find it theraputic and I usually only choose things to cook each day that I really feel like cooking.  I love looking at cooking books, websites and blogs to get recipe ideas (my fav food blogs are Oh She Glows, The New Healthy and The Food Pornographer).  Tonight however, I had a request from LA.  This doesn't often happen, he usually waits for me to dish up whatever I have decided to make.  Possibly because he has got used to me saying, "Um, I don't really feel like cooking that tonight..."
LA's favourite of all my dishes, Thai Chilli Basil Mince was his request tonight.  And I decided to oblige!  Here is my tried and true recipe.

Thai Chilli Basil Mince

• 3 red and 2 green chillis, sliced (adjust to taste)
• 4 cloves garlic, chopped
• 4 spring onions, sliced
• 1 brown onion, sliced
• 500g mince
• 4 Tbsp Fish Sauce
• 3Tbsp Oyster Sauce
• 1/4 cup Chicken Stock
• 1 tsp Palm Sugar
• 1 cup fresh Basil, shredded
• Steamed rice, cucumber and tomato to serve.

Chop all the vegetables

Fry brown onions in a little oil until slightly browned

Add mince and fry until browned

Add chillis, garlic, fish and oyster sauce, palm sugar and stock.  Bring to boil.  Add spring onions and cook on medium heat for 4 mins.

Remove from heat and stir through shredded basil. 

Serve over steamed jasmine rice...

with a side of cooling cucumber and tomato slices.

My new secret ingredient in Thai cooking is the use of Palm Sugar - little cubes that you grate into dishes to add a thick sweetness in the sauce.  This was an ingredient I often left out of Thai recipes, substituting for brown sugar usually.  I always wondered why my sauces never obtained the thick sweetness that I loved in Thai stirfry dishes when we ate out.  The day I tried Palm Sugar was the day I solved this issue.  Being a cheap and fairly easily to find ingredient, I highly recommend you try this out of you haven't already. 

I hope you enjoy this recipe, if you try it please comment and let me know what you think! 

Thanks food friends!

Christie.

Melbourne Tattoo Expo and Chef Lagenda

Yesterday we attended the first Melbourne Tattoo and Body Art Expo at the Exhibition Centre. LA is thinking about getting a Japanese style tattoo, and so we wanted to go and see what Melbourne has to offer for that style of tattoo all under one roof. 

Adam Kitamoto's work - amazing!

We knew about Ten-Ten Tattoo in Camberwell and were hoping to see Adam Kitamoto at work. We were at luck, as he was working on an Akuza style half sleeve for a girl and we were able to see that his work is amazing.  Luke is seriously considering going with Adam for his tattoo now.

Later we stopped in at Chef Lagenda, a local Malaysian favorite right near our house in Kensington/Flemington. I ordered the Curry Laksa, a staple for us.

Curry Laksa from Chef Lagenda.  Inside the coconutty broth was chicken, prawns, tofu, eggplant, beansprouts and egg + rice noodles. 

It was fantastic as usual! I highly recommend Chef Lagenda for Laksa, at $9.90 you just can't get better value or a more delicious meal. It was filled with soft chicken, bouncy prawns and delicious fried tofu. My favourite part though is the fried eggplant on top - so good!
LA wanted to try something new so he went for the Seafood Tom Yum noodles soup. 

Seafood Tom Yum Noodle Soup

He absolutely raved about this and said he will be getting it again!
Overall a delicious, cheap and authentic Malaysian experience and oh so close to home!
We are lucky....
Christie.

I made it!

I am pleased to report I had my first successful trip biking to work on my new Trek Allant WSD today!  YAY!  It was fantastic, hard, a long way, hard, energising, mainly uphill and hard.  Oh, and hard.  I mean, great.  You know how it is with exercise... In truth the 10+kms route I have to take to work was beautiful and it was so nice to be outside in the fresh air and good weather.  But I did break out WAY more of a sweat than I remembered and when I was battling up the hills I was thinking it was all a little too hard.  Especially when a runner passed me... (unfortunately I'm not joking).  The high I was on all day more than made up for it though!  I'm looking forward to many more bike days starting with next Monday.

Tonight I adapted a recipe for dinner from Angela at Oh She Glows - one of my all time favourite daily blog reads.  And boy did it go down well!   Angela's makes a really healthy recipe for a decadant, creamy pasta here.  I added a few things to make it a little less... well a little less vegan!  The addition of tasty cheese made the creamy sauce delish.  It is still a MUCH healthier way to make a cream sauce.  Easy too... and LA declared "Its my new favourite, is there any left?"

Creamy Tomato Basil pasta, adapted from Oh She Glows

• Cook pasta of your choice
• Steam broccoli florets and frozen peas
• Blend 1/2 cup raw cashews, 2 tomatoes, 1 Tbs tomato paste, 1/4 cup water
• Saute 2-3 minced garlic cloves in a little oil, add sliced mushrooms
• Add blended mix to garlic, stir over low heat.  Add tasty cheese and melt.  Add chopped prosciutto
• Remove from heat, add chopped basil and salt/pepper.
• Mix sauce through pasta.  Top with a little parmesan and serve!

With a glass of red, of course!
Happy Thursday people!
Christie.

It's here!

So I just have to touch base with a pic of my new beauty before I hit bed... no basket as of yet, and that is a must for the commute to work but I will hunt for one locally this weekend.  Sorry about the homestyle image but at least you can see that I actually own her!

Christie.

Bike Time!

I'm so excited!  So, today LA picked up my new bike for me - one that I ordered and payed for over 4 weeks ago!  I haven't even seen it yet, but it will be waiting for me when I get home from work... I can't wait!  Until I can take my own pics, here is one for you to look at... its a Trek Allant WSD 2012:

The Trek Allant WSD 2011 - isn't she pretty?

I'm really looking forward to riding it to my workplace in Thornbury.  From my home in Kensington, Melbourne, it is about 11kms each way.  I take the Capitol City Trail nearly the whole way - we are so fortunate for our bike paths here in Melbourne. 

I bought the bike from Cecil Walker in Fitzroy - they seemed to offer the best price around, $599.  They took longer than they said to get the bike in, but I guess that was out of their hands, as they pointed out.  It was apparently up to the Trek rep.  Anyway, I'm happy with my new toy.  Or at least I hope to be once I see it when I get home tonight!

Have a lovely night petals!

Christie.

Picking a protein and packing in protein!

Morning!  I woke this morning feeling not so shabby (for a Monday) and managed to get up at 6.45am for a half and hour run.  It turned out to be 4.3kms, according to the Cardio Trainer app that I use on my phone (HTC Desire).  A bit less than usual for the time, but I did trial a new route around Kensington.  I have been trying to find running routes with less hills as they are somewhat unavoidable in our local area but I did ok today.  Its so nice to run on the flat sometimes!!
Back to breakfast of a nice dark purple smoothie to get the day started!

Frozen blueberries and a frozen banana, 1 scoop of Sunwarrior Chocolate Protein Powder and Coconut Milk/Water to get it moving.

See the cute Aladin travel cups I got from Costco?  So handy to jump into the car with, which is exactly what I did today!  They were a pack of 3 for about $20 I think.  If you haven't tried Sunwarrior protein powders, you should definately take a look.  All the flavours are raw, vegan and derived from Brown Rice - super natural.  I got mine delivered with no delivery fee from Sunwarrior Australia.

I'm writing this post on my lunchbreak from work - I get an hour at the Kindergarten I work at.  I promise to tell you all about my job and how amazing the children are one day soon - that is completely another post!  Have a fantastic day everyone!

Christie.

Let's Start with Breakfast...

Morning all! 
After a big night on Friday at our house watching New Zealand play Tonga in the first game of the Rugby World Cup 2011 http://www.rugbyworldcup.com/  me and LA had a rather quiet recovery day yesterday.  This morning we got up to make ourselves a nice breakfast and settle in to watch more Rugby, this time Australia vs Italy.  Gutted that we aren't back home in NZ for the festivities, but I am going back to Christchurch in two weeks time, so I hope to catch some of the hype then.  Anyway, back to breakfast!

Scrambled eggs with green chili, tomato, basil and feta and Baked Beans on Multigrain.

LA asked for eggs and beans and I was going to make my homemade beans but the cupboard was bare of Kidney beans unfortunately.  So readymade it was.  I scrambled the chopped chili and toms in a pan, then added the eggs to scramble them.  Feta was crumbled over the top.  Delish! 

Other stuff to do today:

-Checkout the Nike Training Club app on Itunes.  http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nike-training-club/id301521403?mt=8

I'm hoping to get it to work on my PC as I have an Android phone and the app only supports Apple devices currently.  It is an awesome home workout app, or so my friend B has told me!  She keeps updating her workouts on Facebook and I'm jealous!

-Possibly go to Ikea to replace some dinner plates and a broken lamp from Friday night!

-Costco?

-Washing

-More Rugby!

Have a fantastic Sunny Sunday! 

Hi Hello and Welcome!

Here I am!  The time has finally come for me to launch my own blog, after a very long time following others and refining exactly what makes a 'good blog' in my own mind.  I guess I have decided that my own life may actually be interesting enough to others to make them want to read! 
So, these are the things I hope to post on my blog, A Brilliant Blue:

• My persuits in a healthy life - workouts, new health product reviews and new healthy recipes.
• Food that may not fit under the classification of healthy! -New recipies that are worth sharing, restaurant reviews in Melbourne, market finds!
• Photos of Melbourne life - cafes, expos, markets, nature - basically wherever life takes us.
• Snippets of the gold I see everyday as a Kindergarten teacher in Thornbury, Melbourne.
• Travel, when this occurs -mainly back to Christchurch, New Zealand at present to see my Mum.  After the recent earthquakes in my birth city I have found the need to keep up to date on the goings on there. 

I am excited to see how my blog will develop and the other things that I find myself wanting to add!  Happy reading!