Mid-Autumn heat wave and cakes.

There has certainly been a delay with blogging in the last few weeks and that is because I have found myself ridiculously busy working my 'real' job and setting out a plan for our return to Barcelona. I have to say with these beautiful and hot sunny days it is hard to imagine the winter is coming here in New Zealand, everything seems so alive! I walk out of my bedroom (garage) into the garden and all around me I am surrounded by bright bursts of colours throughout the garden. The flowers are going bonkers and the herb garden is bushy. It has been so dry but I always manage to water the garden with left over water from my nephews swimming pool (probably with 1/2 litre of his pee too, grosse I know).

Anyway - continuing on in our summer fashion we have been having many BBQ's and dinners with friends, enjoying the warm afternoon and drinking a beer or two.

Last weekend I made a classic Edmonds banana cake with Lemon & Coconut icing.

Expect this week a blog entry or two for the next BEAUTY UPDATE. I have lots of potions to make before I set off to Spain. Considering the water quality in Barcelona is so crap and full of pretty much everything I want to make sure I take some great oil mixtures and moisturisers to really protect my hair and skin.

Have a lovely week everyone!

End of year dinner

Last night was our end-of-year dinner for work... My partner and I both work for my parents and we are a part of a very small immigration firm for Australia & NZ. Because we are such a small company and naturally at this time of year everyone is ridiculously busy, I took upon myself to organise a dinner for us all at my parents home.

I was preparing the food for 3 days - Even though there was only 14 of us to feed we had many challenges involved like different peoples different diets and preferences.

Many of the dishes I created I have already shown before on this blog or were influenced greatly by Petite Kitchen.

The menu consisted of:

Starters - Flaxseed&sesame crackers, baked camembert with rhubarb sauce, baked ricotta and Feta&Lemon stuffed deep-fried olives.

Mains - Dukkah steak salad, smoked kawai&avocado salad, beetroot&lentil salad, grilled chicken drumsticks and soy&ginger lamb kebabs with a spicy peanut sauce.

Desert - Cocoa butter slice, balsamic strawberries with mint&chocolate and vanilla icrecream

Needless to say today I am absolutely exhausted and slowly preparing myself before we head up north tomorrow morning to my grandparents costal farm.

Here are some photos of the food below:

Blogged by: Megan

Awesome friends, hair cuts & 3-headed wolves!

Today I wanted to blog about my friend Will - I think he is awesome!

Will & I in Barcelona 2009

Last week I visited the offices of Gladeye to see my good friend Will so he could cut my hair. These are some super funky offices located in Parnell with games to entertain their employees like table tennis, Street Fighter II and heaps of other cool gadgets about the place. Needless to say I am super jealous of Wills working conditions - apparently they also have a masseuse visit the offices once a week so the employees can have a massage! This is my kind of place!

Anyway being the budget girl I am I very much disliked the idea of paying heaps of money for a hair cut and so heard some rumors Will was talented in this area and negotiated with him I would bake him anything he wanted if he could do the cut! I was a bit nervous when he first pulled out some orange handled office scissors to do the job but I have to say I am so happy with the haircut and it was so painless and easy!

Below are the only photos I have since the cut with my hair out - You can kind of see how it sits!

Go multi-talented friends! Thanks Will you are the bomb!

Will & I (with a super excited Tam in the background) at Sophies 21st 2008

Will also showed me the MOST amazing sculpture I have EVER seen.... A 3 HEADED WOLF!

Talk about WOLFE MAGIQUE! Check out the image below!

Blogged by: Megan

Christmas Dinner with Friends

As you may have seen from some previous posts, Sunday was our Christmas meal together - And we got our feed ON Wolfe style! After spending the last 3 Christmas's in Spain where it is winter time it was so refreshing to be back in NZ and be able to have a meal like this with some of my closest friends on such a beautiful sunny afternoon.

Below are a few pictures of the afternoon/evening - We were lucky enough to be at Kim & Tuckers new house which looks out onto beautiful native bush. We felt so lucky!

Starters I made - all recipes can be found on my friends blog - Details below!

The aftermath..

Chilling on the deck enjoying the afternoon heat.

Roast Lamb with Kim's incredible chili & mint sauce (blog post please! I want this recipe..)

Delicious roast veges with gravy made by Tucker!

My sweetheart!

Jaimee's AMAZING pavlova 

A game of Pictionary to end the evening :)

I personally made the starters which were inspired entirely from my friend Eleanor's blog:

http://www.petite-kitchen.com/

Be sure to check it out - SO many YUMMY creations! And healthy too!

And for your knowledge we took off our yellow crowns after some strange looks from the neighbors.. Tradition people come on!

This is not related but I just wanted to wish you ALL a Merry Xmas and show you how adorable my baby nephew is :)