Top 10 restaurants: Cape Town

Found this fantastic list on Emma Jane's blog this weekend, its filled with great vibey places that she has damed 'her top 10 restaurants/cafe's in Cape Town'.  I must give it to her, this list is wonderful - Ive heard great things about each restaurant, but have sadly only been to four of them.  This is sad, because i live in Cape Town.

So my mission is to go to each of these places and give you reviews or rather my thoughts on the place.  Somewhat like this post on Sostanza.

Emma Jane Nation

Look out for it and if you go to any of the restaurants mentioned, let me know about your experience.

How great is this list?

Sostanza

Last weekend, the man-friend and i were feeling a bit lazy, so we took a quick trip up the road to Sostanza in Lakeside.  Its a sweet little bakery, turned cafe, turned Internet hot spot - i mean what more could you need?

Its a fantastic place, great atmosphere, tasty coffee's & awesome baked goods.  I little bit of a recipe for disaster in terms of the size of my bum.  But I'll risk it.  Another great thing about Sostanza is the service, the people are friendly, helpful and prompt.  We didn't wait an hour or even half an hour for our food, which we seem to encounter at every restaurant we go to.  This was nothing like that!

I was pleasantly surprised by their Eggs Benedict, just the right amount of hollendaise, not too overpowering, poached eggs were smooth and with out any white runny stuff, always good right, and it was served on a Rosti - like the Eggs Benedict you can get at the biscuit mill.

Sean scoffed down a very manly breakfast with fried eggs, bacon, sausage, tomato, mushrooms and toast.  He was as happy as a clam when he finished up.  Commented that it was filling, which in his mind is great.

A great experience, its on my top 10 list. 

Its the perfect morning to pop by and have a nice relaxing breakfast.

x

Smores in my face

Please excuse the 12o'clock no make up face.  The excitement had to be documented.  I scoffed them down in about a second! It was like an episode of Fatties Gone Wild the way we polished these off.

To make these, go to the shop buy these three simple ingredients and then follow the pictures, to melt them, just shove them in the micro for 15seconds in the bowl and watch the magic happen.

It might be because i work with kids but these are seriously appealing! Am i wrong?

Mac&cheese house party

Simplest, easiest meal to make and look at our happy faces. Legit made this in 30minutes or less. 
Mac&cheese is still my favourite despite the fact that i look like an adult.  Deep down I'm still that little porker.

Date night: Picnic in the car

Last weekend i decided to plan a little secret date for the man-friend, so i packed a picnic basket and we headed off to Camps Bay.  If any of you live in Cape Town you will remember that it was a beautiful day for a picnic on Saturday.  Considering I have lived in Cape Town my entire life you would think i would know by now not to bank on the weather here.  Alas i thought Saturday would be different, but sadly it wasn't.

Once we got into Town the wind was howling, so just cast your mind to the bitch we encountered in Camps Bay.  We and by we i mean he, stayed positive and we missioned to Sea Point hoping it would be mildly better. The luck wasn't on our side.

The night though was a winner, a beautiful sunset experienced from inside the car, great food & quality time.  That's still a win for me.

Our picnic basket house self service chicken wraps, an assortment of fruit, salty cracks, brie, sweet chili sauce and fruit juice.

My advice, if you're wanting to have a legit picnic, check the weather forecast.

Lovely things: February

 

To be honest i completely blanked about doing this last month so i decided to do a little catch up!

Hope you enjoyed it.

x

Top 5: Blogs

In The Fashion Loop - Great source for local trends

Lucky Pony - All round blog. with everything you could ever want written in a fun & interesting way

Kiss, Blush & Tell - best local source for beauty products and other lovely nick knacks

Waiting/ Fatal-e - a fantastic source of fashion & food pictures

A Beautiful Mess - a lovely all round blog with plenty DIY posts


These are a few of my personal favourites. Hope you enjoy them as much as i do.

x

Valentines dinner

This year for Valentines, instead of doing the usual, we opted for a romantic night in.  We made a delish dinner, swapped gifts and watch some good old fashioned series. Always a winner.

I found what i though was an awesome recipe for our Valentines day dinner, but the man-friend had a different idea.  In the end we ended up tweaking the recipe a bit and came out with Steak with mushroom sauce, Balsamic infused mushrooms & cherry tomatoes and mustard mash.  And boy was this a filler and absolutely delish. 

We are both pretty proud of ourselves for putting together such a class dinner.  The man-friend is especially proud because he barely steps foot in the kitchen let alone make a meal, but i will admit, he did cook majority of the meal.  I'm proud of him!! But now that hes shown me hes actually an undercover Master Chef i will get him in the kitchen more often.

Will attach a recipe when i get the chance to type it up.

x

Behind the Blog: Le'Chelle Taylor

DIY: tea party

Find the tutorial here
I'll be making these if i ever have a tea party

x

100 posts

Lets all get excited about this.  I hit the 100 post mark recently which calls for a bit of celebration.  I am glad to have gotten this far and excited for the next hundred posts.

YAY !!
And thank you for the support
x

Blue Bird Pantry

Last week a friend and i decided that we needed to go for lunch to catch up and immediately the Blue Bird Pantry popped into my mind. I have been wanting to go since it opened up and now that I've gone, well ill be recommending this sweet place to every tom, dick & harry.

To start with the food & service was fanominal.  Really top notch. I had bacon, brie, onion marmalade & rocket on toasted croissant and boy was it good.  Dear god dear lord, i sound just like my mother.  But in all seriousness get yourself to this lovely place.

The decor is exactly how i want my house to be, mismatched quirky furniture, long wooden tables & best of all awesome kink knacks that are on sale. Like that super cool tin with the girl holding the kitten. I was so tempted to buy it and use it as a lunch box, it just reminds me of those old school lunch boxes, the ones your grandparents had.

I have only good things to say about this place.  If you cant get there during the day, don't despair, they also hold a weekly night market every Friday.  Its just behind the restaurant. Ive been and its lovely, a really neighbourhood feel, very homey.  When i went it kind of reminded me of walking into my grannies kitchen, smelling of real home cooked comfort food.  H ow can that not make you happy.

Go check it out, you can only love it.

x

Creamy Chicken Breasts

Preparation time: 10minutes                   Cooking time: 30minutes               Servers: 2/4

INGREDIENTS:

4 skinless chicken breasts

8 rashers of bacon

5 potatoes - washed

4 tablespoons of cream cheese - the recipe stated garlic & herb, but i used sweet chili cream cheese.

Cherry tomatoes - as many as you'd like

Garlic & herb spice - seasoning

Salt & pepper - seasoning

Olive oil - to drizzle

low-fat cooking spray 



METHOD:

Wash potatoes - keep skin on potatoes then cut them length wise and into thin segments. These are more like crisps as appose to wedges because they are thinner & come out a bit crunchy.
Place potatoes on a flat cooking tray or dish - season with garlic & herb as well as salt & pepper then drizzle olive oil over. Don't be too shy with the olive oil, it gives them a good taste.
Cut a little opening in each chicken breast - the breasts i bought were already sliced open a bit so i just put the cream cheese in there. I sort of smeared the cream cheese in the chicken breast.
Wrap each chicken breast in two rashers of bacon and place in the dish - garnish with salt & pepper and spritz with cooking spray.
Place the chicken breasts in the oven on the top shelf at 200 for 20minutes - add tomatoes and spritz with more cooking spray & cook for a further 10 minutes or until chicken is cooked through
Place the potatoes on the bottom/middle shelf and allow to cook simultaneously.
Pierce the film and microwave for 5 minutes - i just bought the Woolies creamed spinach, chucked it in the microwave and served. Add a little salt & pepper - u can say you made it.
Remove wedges & chicken and serve - garnish with thyme if you like that.

I added the wedges/crisps and spinach to the recipe.
I found this was a pretty straight forward recipe to follow and there were no issues.
While i waited for everything to cook i indulged in a bit of Glee.

It was date night with Sean so i decided to make something social & he loved it.  I would suggest feeding this to a very hungry man, its filling and delicious.  Throw in a nice bottle of white wine and you're in business.  We opted for red wine as that's his preference and it went down just as well.

Let me know what you think of the recipe.
If you make this, let me know how it turns out?

x

Cookies & cakes as art

Nice icing has taken cake decorating to a new level in my eyes. Ive never seen such detail in even the small things. You think I'm over exaggerating but once you see this you will understand exactly what I'm getting at.  These cakes, cupcakes & cookies are now classified as art. 

Nice icing

How awesome are these?

Go and check out the super cool cakes and prepare to be blown away. Charlies is awesome but this is better, if you can believe that.

Awesome spanner in the works

Yes its official, we can all agree that these two weeks have been quiet - from my side at least.  I hope in these cases that my blog roll has been keeping you good company and that you've been reading up on all the blog i so dearly love. 
The reason for my absence: (and this is the sad part) i actually cant say but i can say that it is, if i may say so myself, amaze.  All will soon be revealed my friends :)

But on to the more pressing things i have la boyfriends birthday coming up & its a big one - the sucker is turning 21 - officially an adult.  This might be great if i had any clue on what to buy him.  Help is definitely needed.  And of course as all bloggers do, i took the excuse to catch up on my missed blogs - and yes, I'm sort of sure this was for gift ideas for Sean. 

My mother always had a thing when it was mine or Christi's birthdays, she would give a small present to the child who's birthday it wasn't.  I know its a mouthful, but if you've managed to keep up, well done, if not read over it a few times, that always works for me.  Well my plan is to gift myself a small something for all my efforts surrounding his birthday.  Its genius, i know, feel free to adopt it.

Hopefully if you have a boy-birthday coming up this could help you out, get the juices flowing.

He has told me that he would like to redo he room, so i am taking on that challenge. As well as something small to go along with it.  These are all ideas, but the colour scheme is red, black & grey.  Am loving the grey wall.

The smaller gift ideas will be coming soon

x

mince, white sauce & baked potato

Preparation time: 10 minutes              Cooking time: 20 minutes.               Serves: 2

INGREDIENTS:

onion - half finely chopped
mince
mushrooms - chopped
baked potato's - 2
cream cheese
tomato pure - 2 tablespoons
sugar - 1 teaspoon
oil - for frying
ground salt & pepper - seasoning

white sauce:
butter - 2 tablespoons
flour - 1/4 cup, sifted
milk - 2 cups
cheese - 1 cup
ground salt & pepper - seasoning

METHOD:

On a plate place potato's in microwave for 10 minutes - cooking time may vary with size of potato's.
Lightly saute onions & mushrooms in the pot - with a a small amount of oil, saute onions and mushrooms. Stupidly I put the mushrooms in after the mince.
Add mince to mushrooms & onions - allow to cook, stirring occasionally so it doesn't stick to the pot.
Toss in two tablespoons of tomato pure - stir that in and then add the sugar to take away the acidic taste of the tomato pure.
Try have potato's going, and at the same time doing the mince and white sauce.

For white sauce:
Toss butter into a small pot - allow to melt
Sift in the flour - stir, thus creating a creamy paste
Remove from the heat and add milk slowly - stirring continuously
Return to heat & continue adding milk all the while stirring - you will notice that the sauce should start thickening quickly thus stirring continuously is key.
Throw in the cheese - stir into white sauce
Add salt, pepper - i like to add garlic & herb spice
Your white sauce should have a pouring consistency though not too runny. Sort of like how Ultra Mel custard looks.

Cut a cross in each potato - in the middle of each put a nice dollop of cream cheese.
Dish a fair amount of mince onto each potato
Toss on the white sauce & serve - with side salad as i have or veggies.
Scoff like a fatty - i did.

enjoy

x

First Christmas buys

I was doing my usual thrift store search, and in this particular search i found that most stores are stocking up on Christmas decorations and such.  My first thought was "Jees, its only the beginning of November", but then i realised that the clevers are the ones who buy their decorations and other Christmas goodies before the prices sky rocket. 

So in the desired to be part of the clevers group i snatch up these sweet little Santa Clause & Mrs Clause mugs.  Aren't they just too citch for words, but still really cute.  I can imagine the hubby & i sitting on Christmas day a few years from now, sipping from these mugs. It warms my heart.

Realising that i now have my own place, this means i need to get my own Christmas decorations, tree, lights & crackers, its all quite overwhelming.  Luckily while browsing i also found working Christmas lights for 2 rond, so i grabbed those too, in haste of getting my collection started.

 Have you done any Christmas shopping yet?

x

Dip & Dunk

As it draws closer to my birthday, i just had to share about this one birthday idea my mother has yet to stop suggesting. Fondue. What could be bad about dipping things in cheese and chocolate? Not together of course.

I still seem to smack this idea down every time it comes out of her mouth. Its become a running joke with my sister and i, we can always sense when the my mom is about to suggest fondue in a more interesting way than the last year. I'll give her that she always finds new and interesting ways to convince us to do it. Though we've never actually done it.

Maybe one day when I'm doing dinner parties and the wine is free flowing and not B-Y-O-B (Bring your own booze) i will trek to the shops and invest in a fondue set. I can see it going quite well in that sort of setting. Slightly drunk (in a good way), mature friends.

If that's where you are at at the moment, give it a try, tell me how it goes.

Happy dipping & dunking.

x