Day 205 Food, food, food!

This week is looking to be a whole lot quieter than last... which is a good thing.  A nice balance, time to hang out at home for a few days and enjoy the slower pace :) A lovely day filled with lots of cooking...

but first.. a camera update! I packed up my little baby and it's 2 lenses into it's little camera case this morning.. and sent it off with Lewy who took it to a camera repair shop after work (my husband is wonderful by the way :) ... as I expected the guy said the lenses were both 'not good'.. and we could send them off to try to be fixed, but the chances were unlikely that it would work.... Lewy came home to break the news. I was sad, but not surprised.. and decided that I would buy a small cheap camera to tide me over until we could figure out what to do.

Just as I was coming to terms with the thought of NOT having my camera with me in Bali... Lewy, the sneaky thing, pulled out this amaaazing lens that he bought for me!  Basically, before I had a 18-55mm lens and a 55-200mm lens but this new lens is 18-270mm, so it replaces both of them in the ONE lens! AND not only that but the extra 70mm means I can continue with my macro shots that I love so much and improve them!

My new lens - at 18mm...

Check this baby out! at 270mm..oh boy.. I'm in love! 

Took this picture quickly just to test it out.. I'm one happy girl! 

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So let's talk food! I took most of the pics with my phone today, so don't mind that the quality isn't that great. 

I got this recipe from my mum, and have made it a number of times now... it's a nice healthier option for a fruit cake, easy to make and my boys love it!

Mango Fruit Cake

You will need:
2 x 425g cans mango slice
1kg mixed dried fruit
4 eggs
3 cups of self-raising flour
3 teaspoons of bicarb soda
1 cup of water
1 teaspoon vanilla essence

1. Drain mango juice into large saucepan, then chop mangoes and add to pan, with dried fruit and water. Bring to the boil and then simmer, uncovered for 1 minute. Let it cool.

2. Stir in flour, bicarb soda and eggs.

3. Grease pan (I use my big roasting pan as there is a lot of mixture) and line with baking paper. Pour mixture into pan and cook for 1 hour or more until cooked.

The beauty of this is it freezes really well, so you can make the big batch and freeze it for later or to keep for when you have guests over. If you don't want to make so much, just halve the ingredients.

Enjoy!

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Three Bean Wraps with Sweet Potato fries


Tonight's dinner! This is so easy, and oh so tasty!

For the Bean Wraps you will need:
Wraps or Tortillas (if you are using wraps, just make sure they aren't too paper thin otherwise they will be fall apart when you wrap up the beans, otherwise you can just use 2 like I did!)
1 x 420g can Kidney beans
1 x 400g can Borlotti beans
1 x 400g can Cannellini beans
1 onion, diced
1 green capsicum, diced
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 x 415g can diced tomatoes
1 x 400g can tomato soup
2 teaspoons vegetable stock powder
1 teaspoon curry powder
some cheese to grate on top

1 sweet potato for your fries.

How to do it:

1. Drain and wash all beans together.

2. In frypan, with some oil, cook onion, capsicum and garlic for 2 minutes. Add all other ingrediants and bring to the boil. Lower heat and simmer for 5 minutes.

3. Place some of the bean mix in the middle of the wrap, wrap it and put on baking tray.

4. Grate cheese over the top. I also sprinkled some dried rosemary on the top, just cause I like rosemary :) (Notice cheeky Sam's hand helping himself to the cheese!)

5. Grill the wraps until cheese melts.. all done!

Now, I actually put my wraps in the oven, because I had prepared them earlier today and they had been sitting in the fridge, so I wanted to heat them all through.. and also because I had the oven on anyway to cook my sweet potato fries.

After I peeled and cut up the sweet potato, I lightly coated them in oil and sprinkled more of that lovely dried rosemary. Into the oven at 200 for around 40 or so minutes.

All done! Served with some baby spinach leaves... very filling and very yummy!

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I gave my boys some of the mango fruit cake to try and they went outside to eat it .... I popped my head around the corner and saw this, I think they were enjoying it :) 

Happy days! xxx