Merry Christmas everyone

It's Christmas morning here in the Sleeping in Sydney household. Hubby is just about to get out of bed, and then the present giving will commence, yay!

Had a lovely Christmas Eve. Went to the gym in the morning, had a session with my personal trainer. She's a lovely lady who has become my friend as well as my trainer. She is a positive influence in my life, and I genuinely care about her. She gave me a singlet top for Christmas from the Lorna Jane shop, it says "Positive Energy" across the front. Very nice indeed.

Later that day, hubby and I were wrapping presents, and we were talking about the present my trainer had given me. Conversation went kinda like the following:

Me: I love the singlet top *trainer's name* gave me.

H: Yeah, it's good

Me: So glad she didn't get me the pants, most of them have Lorna Jane written in big capital letters across the arse. I definitely don't want or need some chick's name written across my arse.

H: Could be worse, you could have porn star written across your arse, I've seen that around too.

Me: True

hehe

Anyways, we finished up the evening watching "It's a Wonderful Life", our traditional Christmas movie that we watch. Such a lovely movie.

Hope you all have a fantastic Christmas.

Carnival of the Recipes

The latest Carnival of the Recipes is up! Lots of recipes to take a look at, now I'm hungry!

Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree

Husband and I put up the Christmas tree today, the house feels more Christmas-y now.

I had a vague recollection of putting up the tree by myself in years past, but I couldn't remember why.

It became a little clearer when putting the Christmas lights on and it had to be redone as it wasn't distributed evenly across the tree. It became clearer still when were putting on the tinsel together and husband was rearranging some that I had just put on because "it wasn't quite at the right angle compared to the other tinsel". Which prompted me to say "You're about ten minutes away from me sending myself a gmail reminder for my calendar for next year, for why I should put the decorations on by myself". lol

Actually it was fun doing it together, and we felt even more Christmas-y due to putting on a Bing Crosby carols CD.

Here is the finished result for the tree:

Chicken Fajitas

Been a long while since I've posted a contribution to the Carnival of the Recipes, thought I'd put forward an entry this week.

Last night for dinner I made us chicken fajitas, yummy and healthy. I served it with my home made guacamole.

One of the first steps in making the guacamole is too remove the stones from the avocados. An easy way to do this is to get a sharp knife (make sure it is sharp, I can't stress the importance of sharp here), thwack it into the stone then twist and remove. If knife is not sharp there is a possibility that it will skip off the top of the stone and into the finger of the hand holding the avocado. I speak from experience from a few years ago. It was a blunt serrated knife, and I still have a nice scar on my right forefinger.

Anyways, here's the recipe for my fajitas, dead easy. I've also included the recipe for my guacamole, and hints on how to roast capsicum.

Chicken Fajitas

Serves 2

Ingredients

500g (17.6 oz) chicken thigh fillets
1 tsp paprika
30ml olive oil
4x wholegrain tortillas

Method

Combine paprika and olive oil. Add chicken and mix it through, so it gets a good coating of the paprika and oil.

Cook over a medium heat on a chargrill pan for ten minutes. While that is cooking heat up the tortillas in the oven, making sure the tortillas are wrapped in foil. Temp for oven 180 deg C, heat for ten minutes.

Serving

Serve up the chicken and tortillas with the following:

Roasted capsicum, deskinned (instructions below)
Guacamole (recipe below)
Rocket (arugula)

People can then put as much they want of the chicken, capsicum, guacamole, and rocket into the tortilla, fold up and eat. Trick is not to put a huge amount in or you'll have trouble folding it up to eat.

Roasted capsicum

Get one red capsicum. Cut each side of the capsicum off so that you have four pieces that are relatively flat. Put under grill (temp about 180 deg C) skin side up until skin is blackened. Remove from oven, put in heat proof plastic bag, seal it, and leave for ten minutes. Remove from bag, then remove skin from capsicum. Chop into strips to serve with fajitas.

Guacamole

Ingredients

half a lemon (juice)
2 large avocados
1 small onion
1-2 tsp chilli powder
1 tomato
pepper (to taste)

Method

Slice open the avocados, remove stone and scoop out the flesh into a bowl. Mash up the avocados.
Add a grated onion.
Add a chopped up (diced) tomato.
Mix remaining ingredients through.

Refrigerate if not serving straight away. This makes a fair amount of guacamole, I usually make this for parties etc. With the fajitas you'll have some left over, great for using on sandwiches.

Enjoy! Any questions, feel free to ask.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas ...

Beth put up a Christmas Q & A and invited others to join in. So, I thought why not, I'm a sucker for a meme.

Rules are pretty simple:

Just copy and paste into a new post..Change all the answers so that they apply to you.

I think I can handle that :)

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? Wrapping paper

2. Real tree or Artificial? Artificial, we got sick of sweeping up pine needles

3. When do you put up the tree? No set time, but beginning-ish of December usually, not that we have yet this year. We plan to any time now though.

4. When do you take the tree down? Ah, I think it made it to some time in February this year.

5. Do you like eggnog? Made it once, found it very strongly alcoholic, no one else had any, so I didn't make it again lol. Eggnog isn't something you see in Aus really, not part of the tradition.

6. Favorite gift received as a child? I still remember waking up one Christmas at some insanely early time of the day to find a bike in my room, I was very excited.

7. Hardest person to buy for? My personal trainer, what do you buy a personal trainer, who has also become a good friend? (although not such a good friend that I know what to buy them for Christmas!)

8. Easiest person to buy for? Husband, except when he decides to buy himself an early Christmas present that just happens to be the same as I had bought for him already!

9. Do you have a nativity scene? Nope, not me, not religious at all

10. Mail or email Christmas cards? Last year we didn't get around to it, but we have been known to mail out Christmas cards

11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? I'm still not exactly sure what it is. It was something you hang on a wall which had knobs on it, but the knobs were too big to put key rings on, and too close together to hang coats on ...

12. Favorite Christmas Movie? It's a Wonderful Life


13. When do you start shopping for Christmas? Picked up a couple of presents a few months ago, when Borders had a sale on, majority of presents I haven't got yet though, must get to the shops!

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? Nope, I either like them too much, or wouldn't give them away.

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? Ham

16. Lights on the tree? Yep, for sure, preferably flashing lights

17. Favorite Christmas song? Little Drummer Boy

18. Travel at Christmas or stay home? We had plans to go up to the Gold Coast for Christmas, but they didn't work out, so home for us.

19. Can you name all of Santa's reindeer's? Nope, Rudolf, Prancer, Dancer, Vixen ...

20. Angel on the tree top or star? We've tried for a star, but it keeps wanting to fall off

21. Open presents on Christmas Eve or morning? Christmas morning. Husband and I open one present at 12.01am to be exact if we can stay up that late, the rest when we wake up hopefully mid morning.

22. Most annoying thing about this time of the year? Crowds in the shops.

23. Favorite ornament theme or color? I have to have a theme or colour? We've got all sorts of different ornaments/colours, so they get chucked randomly on the tree. And yes, we do spell colour the English way. ;)

24. Favorite for Christmas dinner? Being Summer for Christmas, I grew up having a cold Christmas lunch, rather than hot. So ham, chicken, eggs, pasta salad, potato salad, coleslaw, green salad, bread rolls, then fruit salad for dessert. Mum always makes trifle for dessert as well, but I prefer the fruit salad.

25. What do you want for Christmas this year? Same as I've wanted every Christmas since I was little, a horse! As I have lived and continue to live in suburbia, this is not likely to happen :)

26. Who is most likely to respond to this? Gosh, out of my hundreds of readers *cough*, it's so hard to choose

27. Who is least likely to respond to this? People who don't read this blog :)

Hooray for Summer!

While it may be a tad chilly in Beth's neck of the woods, here it is the first day of Summer. Yay!

I'm sitting in my study, it's 9.17pm, and the temperature is 30 deg C in the room (86 deg F). Nice and warm. To be fair, it's not that temperature outside at the moment, the study gets the afternoon sun and being upstairs as well it is good at retaining the heat.

I've just been outside to look for the smiley moon, but alas it is nowhere to be seen, must be behind a tree or something. I got excited for a split second when I first went out, as two bright lights caught my eye, but it turned out to be a plane going overhead. Not quite the same ... lol. I'll try again later and see if I can get a photo.