When was the last time you tried something for the first time?
Welcome to Hey Bernice!
Where you could find yourself cooking a raw food slice one moment, upcycling furniture the next, or re-styling your living room.
Then tomorrow it’s painting…
Focus on creating more moments in your life for exploring…new recipes, colour palettes, artistic pursuits, indoor plants.
Bernice’s (well, mum’s really) famous prawn pate
One of my family’s traditions is my Mum’s famous prawn pate. Everyone goes into a feeding frenzy when she serves this up – it would be considered a crime in our household for Christmas and New Year to pass by without a fix.
This recipe could also be handy to use-up any left over prawns after your celebrations.
An Australian Christmas menu…
We recently hosted 17 adults and 9 babies for a Christmas lunch, the perfect way to road-test a new house (especially the kitchen!). The secret to it running smoothly… good preparation (and a kitchen with plenty of bench space and a big oven!). Here’s the menu …
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Banana Bran Muffins – both healthy and tasty…
Don’t you just love a good muffin (especially warm, straight from the oven)?
Have you noticed that the definition of a muffin has changed somewhat? Firstly, most of the muffins you can buy in a café are HUGE! A meal for 2 people. Secondly they are no longer healthy. They’re cake mixture in disguise within a muffin paper – not to mention the white chocolate chunks added, or the cream cheese icing!
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Chocolate brownie for the Paleo, gluten free and dairy free of this world (who love to indulge!)
This brownie is amazing. If you don’t tell people, kids and adults, it’s paleo (Gluten Free, Dairy free and refined sugar free) they would NEVER know, and will be asking for seconds.
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Babies, Persian love cakes, rosewater and macaroons…
Although I was up to my neck in dirty nappies and baby vomit (I had a week alone with the two kids whilst my husband traveled interstate for work), I couldn’t let the day come and go without making a bit of a fuss of Heidi.
So we had a small family afternoon tea, and Heidi and I did some baking… (I must add that Heidi wears her Liberty print apron every time she cooks… most of the time naked underneath!)
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Robin Red Breast (seed pod) Mobile
I was at mum’s the other day, and on the book shelf were these little, coloured birds placed in an ornamental tree – on closer inspection I realised that these little birds were made from seed pods! Bernice then took over, and began demanding answers – who made those birds? Where did the seed pods come from? How did you know how to make them? What tree/vine are the seed pods from?
…I was really impressed!
I don’t mean to sound surprised by mum’s artistic talents… but she always says she doesn’t know where mine come from (and insists it is from her mother!), and continues to say that she isn’t creative at all – I don’t agree with her, mum shows her creativity in different ways to me, but I don’t bother to argue the point.
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Salad dressing heaven… basil lime vinaigrette
I made this salad dressing on the weekend to serve on the garden salad with lunch. Our guests loved it and asked for the recipe … so here it is.
I must credit the ‘finding’ of this recipe to my parents (I’m not sure which one it was, so will give them both the credit). Mum always seems to have this in the fridge ready for anything that needs ‘dressing’. It is actually part of recipe (Warm salad of seared scallops, crispy potato cake and basil lime vinaigrette), they loved the dressing so much, they just make the dressing on its own now.
It will keep in the fridge for about a week to ten days, and is best removed from the fridge for a little while before serving.
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San choy bow (chicken or pork)
My husband and I often cook up san choy bow – it’s a really simple recipe and a healthy meal. We try and make it even healthier by adding a few extra vegetables to the recipe. This is a great meal for those kids that don’t like vegies ’cause it all gets mixed in with the meat, and disguised with sauces (as long as you’re mega secretive, and don’t let them spy all the vegies on the chopping board before you cook it!) Here’s our version below…
Keep readingKorean beef burgers… simply amazing!
A few months ago I was trying to explain to my sister how good these burgers are, at the time I didn’t get the kind of focus and acknowledgement I was after. Months down the track she finally got to try them at Mum and Dad’s (Saturday night just gone) and kindly told me on…
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A birch tree bunting for the new baby
This birch tree trunk has accompanied us on two house moves…destined to be put to good use ‘one-day’…
That day has now finally arrived. And my husband is thrilled. It was clogging up his garage, apparently.
I have used it as the centre-piece to our new daughter’s nursery (due to arrive in 8 days time).
Keep readingUpcycled liberty print apron for my little helper….
An Apron….. that was the obvious use for Gran’s liberty prints.
I didn’t have a pattern, so I took to Pinterest to gather some inspiration on styles, shapes, tying options…
You can view my ‘Kids’ Pinterest board here.
Binny gets creative
Hey Bernice! 