easy

Smashed Beetspuds hodge-podge:

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Smashed Beetspuds, hodge-podge

Smashed potatoes with beets, bacon, garlic, onion & fennel seed

After visiting an entertaining seminar I biked home along with a late afternoon sun, but the temperature had dropped to 4°C and I was stone cold by the time I stepped into the house. Time to prep dinner quickly, hot with loads of carbs since everyone was dropping in hungry and on the run for sports night or other social activity.

In the fridge was a packet pre-cooked beets, bacon lardons and we needed a filling so big potatoes or ‘spuds’. A different take on a local Dutch dish “Bieten Stamppot”; Dutch stuff ( ingredients ) + American influence (smashed potatoes) + Chinese cooking (moi) = Smashed Beetspuds! 🙂

Beets are a unique source of phytonutrients called betalains. Betanin and vulgaxanthin are the two best-studied betalains from beets, and both have been shown to provide antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and detoxification support. 

I am actually the only one who loves beets in our house and just telling they are highly nutritious root vegetables doesn’t cut it. You have to be inventive to balance the earthy ‘beets’ flavour into a nutritional and colourful dish. A Wednesday night hodgepodge, everything nice with sugar and spice with just a drop of balsamic vinegar and pinch of fennel seeds.

Instead of a pureé, opted  to ‘smash’ it and just give it a quick mix so it retains structure instead of a red pinkish mash-up. Unfortunately,the photo’s are not supporting my claim, but give the recipe a try I love to hear your comments or even better share your results send me a photo of your plate.

[recipe]

AppleBerry Oatmeal bake recipe

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Over the weekend I received a request by @Erdbeervogel from Australia on my Pinterest pin for my home-made Apple Blackberry Slice recipe on “What’s for dinner – Home Creations” board. On the Creations bar, you can click on our social media Pinterest icon for a direct link or here.

Keeping my promise to bake and write down the recipe I checked my ingredients and only had frozen strawberries, raspberries left. However, I had a last punnet of fresh cranberries waiting to be used so I substituted these instead for the filling and changed the title to AppleBerry Oatmeal Bake. My photos are not complete while doing the layering I totally forgot to shoot, but the instructions are easy to follow. Apologies for that will upload and add the missing steps with my next bake :).

It seemed more befitting since this base can be filled with any fresh and frozen berries, single or mixed (very nice, especially in the summer), the final bakes always came out right.  So I am adding the recipe for my Cranberry-Orange fruit preserve here according to the featuring photo as shown, which I cooked off the cuff. After preparation, I initially thought it would be too tart but the family and guests were nicely surprised with the end result.

Apple varieties: I used Granny Smith, Braeburn, Cox Orange (autumn harvest), Dutch Golden Reinette (goudreinet), Fuji. But having tried once with a sweet apple berry filling, let’s say it didn’t ignite any spark to repeat again. Grate the apples as last otherwise sprinkle some lemon juice to prevent discolouration.

Serving suggestions: Warm AppleBerry Oatmeal Bake by itself is a treat, for a brunch or dessert you can serve together with vanilla ice-cream, or a dollop of Greek cream (fat) yoghurt to make it special. When cooled down and firmed up nicely, the taste is even better and a light custard sauce or half-whipped cream will go down easily with the crowd.

Note: I stumbled upon the original Slices recipes in Better Homes and Gardens magazine June 2005, a quick bread recipe easy to assemble with cupboard ingredients. Have substituted and experimented with various berries and even adaptation to the flour-oat mixture by adding quinoa and flaxseed recipe variation will follow soon.

[recipe]

Fav Android mobile photo apps

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My Apps (1) – Lets not kid ourselves our society has been transformed the moment mobiles entered our life-style and made slowly but surely changes especially games, mobile applications and widgets. The possibilities in here has avalanched the way we read and made influential changes how we spend our time according to latest researches. I will not dive into scientific areas or technical description far from it even, for me as end-user I am only interested in convenient and efficient.

Simply said, are apps & widgets easy to operate and handy. Do they deliver any time and anywhere access, supporting tasks and retrieve latest updates. As social media fan and enthusiastic user, who loves to find out best practices with nifty gadgets and/or apps. I retrieve and exchange answers also from user groups, twitter feeds with search #hashtag for advice on the why’s, dont’s, do’s or just what is fun.

Since there are so many and only frequent usage will reveal whether it serves it purpose or not and I have my favourite free Android mobile apps. This is the first post of a series featuring “My Apps” list in categories starting with visual apps.

Photography
  • Instagram – Iphone most talked and raved application, now acquired by Facebook because it was the first photo-sharing experience on mobile phones! I installed the android version right on my Samsung S3 because it’s connected with other social media applications. For Iphone & Android users have a look at post mentioning other apps for even more possibilities and effects by Mashable Tech 10 Photo apps that enhance Instagram Tumblr post Instagram Apps unofficial catalog of cool apps or Lifehacker Five better alternatives for Android No need to explain why it turned immensely popular, it was fun to play and connect with friends and groups but I wanted more photo Fx (effects).
  • PicsArt Android – Now we’re talking this is a complete photo editing tool and super easy to use, once you start playing around with its features your hooked! I’ve downloaded this app also on my Samsung Tablet P1000 and if you like Photoshop this comes quite near.
  • Streamzoo  Android – After Picsart this is my second best favourite because of its thriving community, members are prompt to tag their photo’s with hashtag as in Twitter, which makes it easier to follow and to find both people and interests. Since I’m a of Foursquare fan too I like the game reward element collecting points and badges. Photo’s I uploaded were instantly picked out and liked, sharing is also appreciating efforts of others so yes this app is a keeper.
  • Photo Grid Android – I’ve just recently added this and signed up for Beta-version testing, I like it as an addition to PicsArt making photo collages, single photo’s can be powerful but at times a collage can be as entertaining to want to see more.
  • Add watermark – Android I downloaded this after positive referral, easy to set-up and use. Sign your pictures with text or logo as protection for your digital and intellectual property, but also serve to advertise your company, website or other information at the same time.
  • Daily Mugshot Android – Is a fun app to take daily photo’s and upload instantly, some users have found an entertaining way to change their snaps by altering head wear, color lipsticks or just yourself as you. The only thing is I keep forgetting to take snapshots so I have one with big gaps but still fun when quickly flipped through to notice changes as an old film/cartoonbook.
There is so much more and available that actually having all these choices it just makes it harder and you may not like my choices, perhaps this post Top 20 Android Photography apps will enlighten you with more options of photo effects.

Android photo apps