Fried Cauliflower Rice with Chicken

Different versions of cauliflower rice appear on blogs, in health-conscious recipe books and in lifestyle magazines.  Touted as having many nutritional benefits in comparison to white rice, and with a cauliflower in the crisper to use up, I thought I would give it a try. I made  a fried cauliflower "rice" with it and this is how it turned out:

Fried cauliflower rice...with chicken!

All you need to turn a creamy white cauliflower into an alternative "rice" is a food processor. I put florets of fresh cauliflower into my processor and blitzed it for a few seconds at a time until I had a rice-like texture. A great base for a fried "rice"!

A great alternative to rice!

I added this blitzed cauliflower to a large frypan where I had some chopped vegies & spring onion already stir-fried in a little olive oil. I put in some frozen green peas and leftover chicken from the night before too. Tossed together with a good glug of tamari sauce and cooked until the cauliflower was tender, but not soggy, it made for a delicious meal. 

So,  is it my new favourite way to eat cauliflower? No! That title shall forever be held by the creamy, cheesy and decidedly not-as-healthy cauliflower gratin that my Mum used to cook for us as girls. Would anyone mistake the cauliflower for rice? No! But it was a different way to enjoy cauliflower and was relatively quick to cook too because blitzing the cauliflower took me less time than it would to prepare the brown rice I usually use for fried rice. Nutritious and easy! 

I used this online recipe as a bit of a guide while I was cooking. These are plenty of other recipes out there for everything from a plain cauliflower rice that you can serve with curries to this version of fried rice with all the trimmings. 

The humble cauliflower waiting to be turned into cauliflower rice.

If you have a creamy, fresh cauliflower and want to try something new, you might enjoy this easy and delicious fried "rice" too.

What's your favourite way to cook cauliflower?

Meg

Embroidery Inspiration

I have loved stitching since I was a young girl. My Grandmother had an old chest of drawers filled to the brim with her beautiful handiwork. I loved to pull out one heavy drawer at a time and carefully look through all of her delicate linens.  Each piece embroidered with the tiniest of stitches, intricate and so beautiful. 

I remain fascinated with embroidery today. I love to look through the piles of old linens in op shops, antique stores and markets. When I hold a piece in my hands, I wonder how old it is and who made it. Occasionally, I will find a piece and bring it home with me, a treasure from yesteryear. Sometimes, I will wash and iron it carefully and use it in our home here to lay out on a table or to sit a vase of flowers or an ornament upon. Sometimes, I will cut out snippets of the embroidery, usually from stained or damaged pieces, and incorporate them somehow into a new project such as a little gift bag or pouch. This gives an unwanted piece new life.

My most precious piece is a set of napkins that my Great Grandmother stitched in what is now very old linen. I love the intricate, cut-out circles. I can't imagine how long it must have taken to do such neat and careful work with her needle and threads. I feel so very lucky to have pieces which connect me to her and which were worked in her hands so many years ago. Do you have a precious handmade treasure that has been passed down to you?

An intricate cut-out circle stitched by my Great Grandmother.

Precious napkins!

The back of my Great Grandmother's embroidered circle.

Although nowhere near as old, some of my favourite stitched pieces are those created by the very talented Melissa Wastney of tiny happy. I simply adore the little flowers, twigs, leaves, dots, dashes and marks that Melissa makes on fabric. I love the nature that she draws with her needle and threads.

 A beautiful project bag made by Melissa Wastney.

Very tiny and happy stitches. ❤ 

Very occasionally, I pick up my own needle and threads and create something with tiny little stitches. (This project bag was the last piece I made using embroidery.) Usually, I find inspiration and ideas from nature or drawings or in the library. On a recent trip to the library, I found several books which I have been reading and looking through again and again since I borrowed them. I'm not sure yet what I want to make but I'm sure I will settle on something soon. In each book there are some wonderful ideas. 

Inspiring embroidery books from the library.

What I loved most about the inspiring book, Rebecca Ringquist's Embroidery Workshop:  A Bend the Rules Primer is her whole approach to stitching. Colourful, layered, textured, different. I love that she's included a photo of the back  of one of her pieces in all its messy fineness in her book. One of her dropcloth samplers would be an ideal project for someone to learn a range of stitches while creating something beautiful from the practice. 

In Nancy Nicholson's book, Modern Folk Embroidery, I love the simple little pincushions that repurpose bottle tops with little pieces of felt and some stitches. Similar bottle top pincushions can be made using the tutorial over at the beautiful blog, Tea Rose Home OR this tutorial over at the Muse of the Morning website. Something useful and pretty from something that would otherwise be thrown away. The folk arty style of the projects in this book really appeal to me. The stitched bird on the front cover reminded me, as soon as I saw it, of the incredibly colourful birds that Julie created with felt, fabric and stitches over on her blog, JulieLou.

For something different, Japanese Paper Embroidery by Atsumi, Minako Chiba and Mari Kamio has me thinking of stitching onto paper and card. Beautiful little projects like greeting cards, notebook covers and little photo frames are included in this book. So many possibilities!

Time for a little stitching is a definite possibility this coming weekend. I hope your weekend holds lots of happy possibilities too.

Meg

Recycling Mobile Phones

So, a whizz-bang, you-beaut, brand new and very expensive mobile phone model was unveiled this week with much fanfare. It made the news here in Australia and I've no doubt there will be a lot of people queuing up to get one when it becomes available. After all, it's the latest must-have ... isn't it? 

All the brouhaha left me thinking though:  What happens to all the superseded, unwanted, left-by-the-wayside, broken & discarded mobile phones out there? As coincidence would have it, I had good reason to find out during the week because my hand-me-down and decidedly not trendy mobile phone broke and repair was not an option. 

According to this recent news editorial, Australians buy new mobile phones in their millions every year meaning there are more than a lot of discarded mobiles languishing somewhere. I can't even begin to fathom how many that would be worldwide! Given the plastics, metals and contaminants in all those phones, what is best to do with them?

When a mobile phone breaks and is beyond repair or when it's no longer useful (to anyone), it can be recycled. According to Planet Ark, up to 95% of the resources in a mobile phone can be recovered so it makes sense to recycle them. It's also really important that they don't end up in landfill because the harmful substances in them can leach into the environment. 

In Australia, unwanted mobile phones can be sent in to Mobile Muster (or they can be dropped off at designated collection points) or they can be donated to organisations such as those listed here. These are great alternatives to letting an unwanted phone languish in a drawer or sending it to landfill. We packaged up my broken phone and an ancient one too (yep, it had been hidden away in a drawer) and sent them off to be recycled. Less junk all round!

If you have a mobile phone collecting dust at your place, and you want to recycle it, all you need to do is print off a mailing label, attach it to a padded envelope or bag, pop your old mobile in and send it off. You can also pick up a reply paid satchel, like the ones we used, at participating Australia Post branches. No postage required!

As for my new mobile phone, I didn't go and pre-order that newfangled gadget and instead purchased a far less fashionable model within my limited budget. This was much to the consternation of the sales person who simply couldn't understand why I didn't want all the bells & whistles of more trendy models. I'm pretty sure he felt I was depriving myself of something. I knew this to be debt but I don't think he saw it that way!

Meg