Category: Blondie’s Recipes

LA to Vegas Road Trip via Route 66

Calico Ghost Town - LA to Vegas road trip

The second part of our four part American holiday – Part 1 being Los Angeles with Disneyland and Universal Studios, Part 3 being Las Vegas and Part 4 being New York City – is our much anticipated road trip, an icon of Americana, the drive from LA to Vegas via Route 66.

Although it’s a relatively short day trip of just four hours if you were to stay on Interstate 15, there are quite a few things to see along the way when you start researching it. For those who don’t know, four hours on the road in Australia doesn’t get you very far but thankfully they are such beautiful drives. So to help you nut out your perfect day trip, here’s how we ended up spending, what ended up being close to seven hours on the road.

There were a few main things that we wanted to check off the bucket list for this, as well as appease a 10 year (although he is such a great traveller), and they were…

  • Doing the road trip in a massive pickup truck – hubby’s bucket list item, mine was a convertible.
  • Drive on Route 66
  • See the desert and Joshua trees

Tick, tick and tick! But, as with anything, it wasn’t going to be as easy as that. Firstly, looking into hiring a ute for the trip took quite a while, not only actually finding one but putting our faith in the hire company to have our dream car there on the day (there are lots of complaints in regards to this one particular subject, lots!). When dealing with car hire companies you are going to come across loads of bad reviews, but after juggling the pros and cons I finally decided to put my trust in Dollar Rent A Car at LAX Airport … well, they were the only car hire company, near enough to Anaheim to have a pickup truck available to cross state lines on the date we wanted it so I had no choice but to book with them and take my chances.

Even though I had booked the pickup a couple of weeks in advance, I wasn’t going to believe I was going to get it till I was actually standing at the counter of Dollar Rent A Car with the keys in my hand. We didn’t care if it was a bomb of a ute or a latest model, just so long as it was a pickup truck. But, like a miracle from the Road Trip Gods they had one, and not just one but two, which worked out really well as the first one we got into had the oil light turn on as soon as we got in, so we just hopped into the other one.

Finding Feasts - LA to Veags Road TripOur gorgeous ute for the LA to Vegas road trip

We had our American pickup truck for the LA to Vegas road trip, a 2015 Chevy Silverado. We were so happy!

We hit the road about 9:30 Wednesday morning with the itinerary mapped out…

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Grilled Turmeric & Oregano Chicken w/ Green Goddess Dressing

Finding Feasts - Grilled Tumeric and Oregano Chicken with Green Goddess Dressing.1
Click image for recipe
Grilled Turmeric & Oregano Chicken w/ Green Goddess Dressing came about after deciding I needed to clean out the fridge. Since son and I are heading to Canberra tomorrow for several days I needed to get through the bag of delicious herbs I got from mum’s garden and also prep some food for hubby to have (he can make a couple of dishes, will survive on a big man salad but that’s it for kitchen ability).
Stunning zingy and earthy flavours with the ability to make numerous different dishes from these two elements means you could make this at the beginning of the week and then use the leftovers in another, completely different meal.
Tonight’s dinner will be a Chicken Gyros type meal with some flat bread and salads together with this chicken and dressing. Leftover chicken and dressing will be made into a big salad for hubby’s lunch… easy!
Happy discovering!  Blondie
Finding Feasts - Green Goddess Dressing

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Chocolate Dipped Marshmallow Easter Eggs

Chocolate Dipped Marshmallow Eggs
Click image for recipe – Chocolate Dipped Marshmallow Eggs

Chocolate Dipped Marshmallow Easter Eggs … Looking for bright and colourful ideas for Easter this year lead me to find these gorgeous little things at Kitchen Simplicity. These are incredibly simple to make – once you work out how to mould them, and they look so divine!

Cheri says to wet your hands so as to make the forming of the eggs easier. I went the latex glove route, just to be sure, wet them and then dove into the mixture….

OMG! It was like dealing with some hyper viscous, glue demon. I could not get it off my hands, there were strings of marshmallow flying around the kitchen and no sign of the Rice Bubbles even coming close to forming a ball.

About to give up and go the way of Cheri’s other idea of forming a slice rather than going through the work of making eggs; I decided to take off the gloves, get my greased spoon and use plastic wrap to control the unruly Rice Bubble mixture (inspired by Heston Blumenthal’s scotch egg recipe that I had watched the previous night – thankfully!) and it worked – beautifully!

I will definitely be doing these again next year, maybe with white chocolate and different food colourings for a more rainbow look.

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Mini Pecan Tartlets

Finding Feasts - Mini Pecan Tartlets 1
Click on the image for Mini Pecan Pie recipe

Pecan pies are like an old friend you haven’t seen for a while but have fond memories of the times you had together.

My first pecan pie memory is with my uncle. We had just traversed across to Kareela Hutte through an absolute blizzard from Antons at Thredbo ski resort, we couldn’t see the tips of our skis it was the worst snow conditions I had ever been in. We were frozen and sore from being on such an extreme incline for so long and just desperately trying not to get blown down the mountain. That pie was the best darn pie I had ever had… I don’t even remember what else I had for lunch that day, just that pie.

Although there are a thousand different recipes for Pecan Pie I have a couple of little differences in this recipe to a ‘standard’ one. Firstly the pastry is a cookie dough so you don’t need to blind bake the case but you still end up with a flaky, slightly crumbly texture, which we all love in a tart! Secondly, I use maple syrup instead of corn syrup – It may not be the healthiest dish but you may as well keep it as simple and clean as possible.

Reconnect with old friends… Blondie  :)

Finding Feasts - Mini Pecan Tartlets

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Honey King Prawns

Finding Feasts - Honey King Prawns

Chinese food is a weakness of mine. Hubby and I use to love ordering massive amounts of food from my favourite Chinese restaurant up the road and then spend the night gorging ourselves – Honey king prawns, Mongolian lamb, Peking duck, Beef in black bean sauce, mixed entrees and rice. It certainly wasn’t all eaten in one sitting but also enjoyed over the next couple of days. Chinese food, for me, has always meant that you would sit yourself down in front of a banquet of food and enjoy the slow procession of tasting each and every dish, just one of the reasons why I love Yum Cha so much. As ‘street’ as Yum Cha is, it still has a decadence that’s very appealing.

Yesterday though, I suddenly realised that I should try making some of these dishes myself. I chose Honey king Prawns and Mongolian Lamb to be my first dishes. Both turned out to be so much better than my favourite restaurant’s equivalents that I will forever now be making them myself. The Mongolian Lamb was outstanding but was all eaten so I don’t have a photo to put up yet, will blog about it shortly. The Honey King Prawns were perfect. Lightly battered and a simple honey sauce drizzled over the top.

Finding Feasts - Honey King Prawns

Chinese food is very quick, so quick in fact that you really can produce your own banquet of food without feeling exhausted at the end of it.

Happy Year Of The Monkey!

Blondie  :)

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Christmas Floral Head Wreaths w/ Berries

Christmas Floral Head Wreaths w/ Berries … A Christmas tradition that we no doubt all do is sit around the Christmas table, make a toast and then pop a Christmas cracker with our nearest and dearest.

I love these traditions and we have actually got some really great knick knacks as a gift from the crackers. The one most used is a set of mini screwdrivers (it’s amazing how many things need a really small screwdriver!) But I absolutely hate the flimsy paper crowns that we all feel obliged to wear in celebration of this yearly event.

Finding Feasts - Christmas Floral Head Wreath

So for all the people out there (females and males) who are completely over those awful things on our heads, that do nothing to enhance us in photos, and just act as blotting papers for our foreheads in our hot Aussie summers, I have decided to start a new tradition within our family Christmas and design floral head wreaths.

Finding Feasts - Christmas Floral Head Wreath

Although I have no time this year to make my preferred fresh leaf wreath (every minute from this point on is allocated, absolutely every minute) I insist on doing it. So I gathered four sprigs of plastic, snow covered branches and another four little cranberry springs from the $2 shop, a packet of floral wire (would have used floral tape also to neaten the final look but couldn’t find it in time) and this is it. My five 2015 Floral Berry Head Wreaths.

A very berry Christmas! Blondie

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