Paleo raspberry breakfast bars

Greetings! Today is the last day of the year and boy, it's a SCORCHER. We've had a bit of a heat wave and temps have been consistently over 40°C+ the last few days. Mostly, we've stayed in with the AC on and it's even been too hot to cook. Dinner has been simple cold salads with whatever I could rummage out of the fridge. Breakfast has been slim pickings too.

I guess The Boy got tired of not having anything yummy for breakfast because he asked for the paleo breakfast bar I like to make for us occasionally. This time he wanted raspberries but really, you can do it with any fruit. We've done it with blueberries too.

It was 42°C outside but for The Boy, I put the AC on and then turned on the oven to make these for him. :-)

Cocktail sauce ... with doTerra lemon essential oil

It's been a while since I've done a foodie post, my apologies. For those of you who follow me on Instagram, you'll know life has been rather hectic and fraught of late since we had The Boy's father in the hospital for a few times. Fortunately, he is well now and we are home.

And the best part? I've started cooking again.

Okay, this is not much cooking but The Boy really likes a cheese platter with cold meats for a late lunch. It has been our go-to on a hot afternoon (and it's been really hot here!!).

The platter usually consists of a few slices of cheese, some cured meat, either prosciutto or salami, some rock melon and most recently, the addition of freshly cooked and chilled prawns. With the prawns comes a need for a good cocktail sauce and The Boy has not liked the store bought ones, so I've started making my own.

Paleo Brussels sprouts and cauliflower gratin ... in the Thermomix

I was looking for a side dish to accompany a lamb roast a few nights ago and came across a Brussels sprouts gratin recipe in a new cookbook I had recently acquired.

It looked intriguing enough I wanted to give it a shot but decided that since we're being good these days I would convert it into a paleo recipe. Off I went onto the interwebz to scour for a paleo gratin recipe. I found one using cauliflower and converted it into this recipe.

Here's what I ended up doing: (note: This recipe uses the Thermomix but I have also included instructions for those of you who don't use a Thermomix in your cooking).

Paleo Italian pumpkin and sausage breakfast casserole

The Boy and I have been working on getting healthier. We're going away soon and while away, I'm certain we will be eating a lot of naughty foods so we're being good before the fact. :-)

In an effort to be healthier, we did a big Spring clean of our pantry (so many expired things lurking in the back corners!) and have decided to cut out wheat (going gluten free) and carbs.

We're going gluten free because I've been feeling rather unwell in the morning after a dinner which contains wheat, like pasta of some sort. Cutting out carbs is just a good idea all round.

In our hunt for healthier food recipes, we're dipping our toes into some Paleo recipes and many gluten free ones. In a happy coincidence, Paleo is also gluten free. :-)

Asparagus and tomato salad

The weather has been completely bonkers lately. It's late Fall / Autumn here and is the weather cooperating? No. Mind you, the weather has been close to perfect. Warm, sunny days, cool, clear nights, but still ... not the normal weather for this time of the year.

So ... salads. We are still having a few of those now and then because the weather isn't quite what we'd call "soup weather" yet. But it's getting there. :-) This morning was a little chilly when we woke up.

This is a particularly easy to make salad and also great for taking to friends when out visiting and you want to bring a dish. You can easily assemble the salad at home, put the dressing ready to go in a jar and it transports well. It also keeps well.

I've really enjoyed this particular salad. It's fresh but satisfying. Sometimes, I like to jush it up with some marinated feta if I want to get all fancy. It adds to the flavor.

Chicken congee ... or as we call it, chicken "chook"

If you don't follow me on Instagram or the Daz in the Kitchen page, (what are you waiting for? Go follow me!!) you probably don't know I post a lot of pictures of the food I eat, whether it be eating out or eating in. I even post pictures of food I don't cook, thanks to my mummy cooking some meals for us when she is home.

Mum is a fantastic cook but her specialty is Asian, namely Malaysian and Chinese food. I don't cook Asian food because I've been spoiled by mum's cooking and any time I want good home cooked Asian food, I go visit mum.

Recently, I posted a picture of chicken congee or rice porridge which mum threw together for us for dinner. She had bought some BBQ chicken from Coles and I wanted mum to make me dinner. :-)

Steak and garlic butter rice salad ... perfect with leftovers

Yes, yes, can you believe it? Blog posts weekly for a few weeks!! You know what that means? It means I've been home and I have been cooking!! Nothing super fancy or super complicated, just some simple everyday meals that we enjoy and are tasty, tasty.

We cooked a huge cattleman's cut steak for dinner recently and it was HUGE. We shared one between The Boy and I and still only managed to finish half of it. I saved the leftovers for a steak salad and this is one of my go to recipes for a tasty steak salad. I like adding the garlic rice because it makes it super tasty. Garlic and butter .... mmmm .....

Here's what I did:

Sous vide steak with chimmichurri sauce and healthy crispy fries

Hello there! As you can see, I am making an effort to post recipes more frequently. Not the easiest to do as I am not at home very often these days and I only get to cook occasionally on the weekends and I am not trying new recipes as regularly either.

This one is a regular in our home. The Boy seems to enjoy it a great deal.

We discovered this fantastic butcher called Springbok Deli along our travels and have been picking up some steaks from them whenever we are able to get to them. We usually pick up about 4 steaks and get them vacuum packed and frozen when we get home.

Vacuum packing and freezing is fantastic because (1) the steaks last a long time and (2) a vacuum packed steak is perfect for the sous vide. Just defrost and into the sous vide.

Review of the Philips XL Air Fryer

So, I've been using my air fryer a lot lately and of course, have been raving about it. Nifty little gadget that thing.

I have been hemming and hawing about an air fryer for well over a year now, maybe more.

The first time I saw it was in a video, someone I was watching was raving about making chips in the air fryer with little to no oil and that appealed to me a great deal.

The reason I had been hesitant was because I did not know what else I would cook in the air fryer other than chips. Turns out it's quite a lot of stuff.

On a side note, I'm progressively putting my air fryer recipes on the blog. The first one was for crispy chips. They turned out great.

Back to the air fryer ... then more recently, we visited a friend and she had an air fryer. She's had hers for many, many years and loves it. I asked what she cooked in it and she said chips, dim sims, spring rolls, chicken schnitzel and sausages.

Grilled garlic and chili baby octopus and prawn salad with chimmichurri dressing ... in the air fryer

So, I'm in a bloggity mood right now and we're home for a long weekend, which means a bit more cooking coming out of me. I'm giving the air fryer a good work out. Tonight I decided to combine some leftover chimmichurri sauce with some grilled baby octopus and prawns in a salad.

This is one of those super easy meals I like to throw together when we want something light and tasty. The seafood adds protein and makes the salad substantial which gives us a proper meal.

Here's what I had going on:

Healthy, crispy air fryer French Fries with very little oil ... can be done in the oven too

So here's the thing. We love fries. We particularly love fries with steak, or rather The Boy does and I love sweet potato fries. Just love fries, but deep frying is not always the healthiest thing to do with food, is it? All that oil. Although, I've been told by my cheffy friends that if you lift the food out of the oil immediately, drain the oil well and not let it sit in the oil, it's actually not too bad for you. Point taken, but I think where I can, I'll go for the less oil option, just to be a tad bit healthier. Lord knows, I'm not the healthiest when it comes to my eating habits!

We've been experimenting with our fries a lot lately because we have not been wanting to buy frozen fries from the grocery store, again healthier, less additives!

Recently, we also bought an air fryer and I've been loving it. I had hesitated over it for a very, very long time, hemming and hawing about it, not sure if I'd use it enough. Turns out, I use it lots. It's excellent for not only fries and spring rolls, but all sorts of cooking too, but more on that later.

Here's what I did with my air fryer to make probably the best fries I've ever made. Bear in mind, this can be done in the oven too but that might take a little bit longer.

Easy chimmichurri sauce

Seems like these days, I write a blog post for the foodie stuff more often when someone asks me for a recipe since being home and cooking has been so sporadic.

This time it's for my chimmichurri sauce.

Great stuff chimmichurri sauce, it's so versatile. We use it on seafood and last night, we had it on steak. Tonight, I'm going to put what's left in a salad as dressing with some grilled garlic and chili baby squid. If you'd like the recipe for the baby squid, let me know.

Here's that I do:

Slow cooked Italian beef pot roast ... on a bed of mashed potatoes in the Thermomix

Well dang! I thought I had posted the recipe for this dish since it's an old favorite but I hadn't. Of course, I only found out because a friend asked for the recipe and I said I had it post. My bad!

Last night was my early birthday dinner with a few friends from the neighbourhood. I had a gorgeous birthday cake made by a friend of mine who is also a professional pastry chef and cake maker. I'll write a post of the cakes she's done for us soon but if you need an excellent cake maker, you can find her here. Say Deanna sent you.

But I digress ... I wanted something slow cooked for the dinner since I had a guest who was 80 and well, tough food is not his friend.

I went through my repertoire of slow cooked meals and decided on this dish. I can't remember where I found the original recipe but I've been cooking it for ages.

Spicy pork and apple salad

Greetings my foodie friends! I have another recipe for you today.

We've been home this last week and The Boy has been down with bronchitis. Each day he thinks he's going to be better and we'd head back into the city for him to go back to work. Each day he's still not better. 8 days and counting.

We've also been taking things day by day and meals have been planned on a day by day basis. I recently got an air fryer (more on it later!) and have been cooking up a storm with it. Best roast chicken ever!

Tonight, I was totally without inspiration. None! Nada! Zip! Nothing on Pinterest interested me (pun intended!), nothing on the Googlesphere and then I started randomly flipping through recipe books. I picked a salad one cos The Boy suggested a salad might be good since we'd been mostly doing veggies for the past week.

After a few cookbooks, I started on The Australian Women's Weekly Salad cookbook. (I'm sorry, I tried but could not find a link to it!). I found this salad which I thought sounded tasty and I'd try.

Cous cous salad with grilled chicken tenderloins

It's been forever since I've written a foodie blog post and I'm sorry for that. We haven't been home much and hence, there hasn't been much cooking. When we have been home, The Boy has asked for some old favorites and there hasn't been a lot of experimenting.

This hear is the first new thing I've done in a while. It's Summer right now and the weather has been particularly cruel to us. We've had horrible 40°C plus temps and when it hasn't been stinking hot, it's been pelting down rain.

With this heat, The Boy has been asking for salads. Actually, I tell a lie, there's another salad I've made which I haven't posted about. I'll do it another day.

This little salad is one I threw together with some inspiration from a cookbook. I was browsing for a recipe and found one for a cous cous salad. I didn't make that particular salad, but I went with the cous cous idea.