Happy Birthday to Cardz 4 Guyz

The Cardz 4 Guyz blog is one year old this week, so to celebrate, our theme is Happy Birthday. Here is my DT card for the week.

I love the bicycle embellishment - it was sent to me in a RAK by a blogger I'd helped with a technical problem - and what little boy doesn't dream of getting a shiny new bike for his birthday?

Little Foxes

I'd like to start with the news that for the second month in a row, Unstampabelles Challenge have chosen me as their DT favourite - something I could never have imagined when I first started this blog, as to me card making then meant stamping 99% of the time. But then I was encouraged by Lynn to take a look at the regular challenges on CD Sundays, and I gradually got more confident with using my CDs, which lead me to branch out into all kinds of non-stamped paper crafts.

Anyway, back to CD Sundays, where this week the challenge is Animal Antics. I was pleased when I saw the theme, as it gives me a good reason to use my lovely Design House Studios CDs. This twisted pyramid decoupage and the matching backing papers are from "The Lookout" series on the CD "Meadow's Edge 2 - The Next Generation" (that sounds awfully like a film title to me!). I've just scruffled, if that's a word, the edges of the paper and inked it a little bit, and made a daisy using Spellbinders dies. OK, I know those aren't daisy leaves, but they look pretty!  A nice simple card to bring a touch of spring to a gloomy January day.

I must admit I have mixed feelings about foxes; they are such destructive creatures and one of the few animals that kills for pleasure rather than out of necessity, and yet they are handsome creatures and fox cubs are some of the cutest animals there are!

A Thank You card

This month the challenge at Unstampabelles is to make a Thank You card with a twist - the twist being what's outside your window.

Now what's outside MY window is quite famous - at least, it is in the world of garden bloggers, as it is the veg plot that my husband's popular blog, Mark's Veg Plot, is all about. And the first thing you can see from the window is always a watering can - strategically placed so that at the first sign of a wilting plant he can dash out through the patio door and administer first aid.

It's quite hard to think of a garden themed card without stamping, but thanks to a sheet of Kanban toppers that were lurking in my stash, a wooden watering can embellishment and a backing paper printed from the CD The Best of La Pashe 2014, I've come up with a card that pretty much sums up the view from my window.

Bombay Chicken with Red Split Lentils #RecipeClippings

Do you keep recipes clipped from magazines, labels, leaflets and newspapers? I've been doing it since my teens, and for many years I used to cut them all out individually and file them in those photo albums that used to be available, the ones with peel-back plastic pages. Eventually my pile of clippings reached unmanageable proportions and the books ceased to be available, so now they're all crammed into cardboard folders. But I have about a dozen photo albums filled with recipes, mostly from the late 1970s and early 1980s, and there are many recipes in them that I come back to time and time again.

One of them is called Bombay Chicken with Split Red Lentils. I can't remember which magazine it came from, but it looks as if it may have been Slimming Magazine as it gives the calorie count (only 320 calories) and fat units. It's very easy to make and produces a very hearty meal.

I served it with a selection of "English style" curry accompaniments - minted yoghurt, apples with raisins, bananas with peanuts, and tomatoes with red onions and cumin seeds.

And with some "Mock Pilau Rice"  made by frying a sliced onion, adding a little turmeric and stirring in leftover cooked rice and some frozen peas.

I'm joining in with the new challenge at Farmersgirl Kitchen   - #RecipeClippings

Soul sisters

When I was a little girl, I really wished I had a sister instead of a little brother, and envied all my friends who had sisters with whom they could swap makeup and share a copy of Jackie. But as I got older, I realised that some friends are just like sisters - the sort of friend who, when you are both old and infirm, is going to be the one who comes to visit you in the old folk's home with a bottle of illicit gin tucked up her knicker leg. Sisters in all but blood, everybody needs a soul sister!

That's why I love the message on this card. It's printed on acetate which I've stuck to white card and die cut. The sentiment, patterned papers, slide mount and all the embellishments are from one of the very first kits I ever bought from QVC - I can't remember exactly when it was, but in the folder where I keep it, there was also a mail order catalogue dated 1998. I don't part with things readily! Lime, orange and pink are rarely my first choice of colour scheme, which is probably why the papers have hung around for so long, but they do brighten up a dull January day.

I'm sharing this with
Ooh La La creations - Words to Inspire
Fan-tastic Tuesday - ATG with a splash of orange

Malay-ish fried noodles

Way back in the 1970s, when we were newly married, we lived in Brunei for a short time. I loved to find out about the local food and cooking, and bought a few recipe books published in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. This noodle dish is one that I have evolved by picking out my favourite aspects of recipes in lots of different books from around the region and putting them together into a dish of my own.

I've listed the ingredients I used this time, but it's really a different dish every time as you can ring the changes with whatever you have to hand - replace the chicken with prawns, leave out the mushrooms or replace them with Chinese dried ones, add mange tout peas, spring onions or green beans, use different nuts or omit them completely, sprinkle fresh coriander over it - use whatever you have to hand and you'll still get a delicious dish with lots of different textures and flavours.

My recipe was intended to serve two, but would easily have served three adults or two adults and two children, making it an incredibly cheap dish - and far tastier than anything you could get from your local takeaway!

ingredients

a handful of raw cashew nuts
2 eggs, beaten
1 tbs sunflower oil

½ packet medium egg noodles
150g beansprouts

1 skinless chicken breast
1 tbs light soy sauce
1 tbs oyster sauce
few dashes sesame oil

1 small onion, finely sliced
1 clove garlic, very finely sliced
150g mushrooms, wiped and quartered
1 tbs Shao Hsing wine or dry sherry
1 tbs light soy sauce
1 tbs peanut or sunflower oil

A wedge of iceberg lettuce, shredded
1 red chilli, deseeded and cut into long slices
deep fried onion flakes, or use a handful from a pack eg French's
4 wedges of fresh lime

Heat 1tbs sunflower oil in a small frying pan and toss in the cashews. Stir them quickly until golden, then remove with a slotted spoon and set aside on kitchen paper, keeping the oil hot in the pan. DO NOT NIBBLE ALL THE NUTS! (always a danger in this house). Tip the egg into the pan and cook quickly to make a mini-omelette, flipping it over to brown on both sides. Turn out onto a plate and leave to cool then cut into small shreds. Set omelette and nuts aside.

Thinly slice the chicken breast and mix with the oyster sauce, sesame oil and 1 tbs soy sauce. Leave for a few minutes while preparing the noodles.

Cook the noodles as directed on the pack, adding the beansprouts to the water for the last 30 seconds of cooking. Drain and keep warm.

Heat the peanut or sunflower oil in a wok and stir fry the onion and garlic for 1-2 minutes until starting to soften, then add the chicken and stir  fry until no raw pink areas show. Throw in the mushrooms and continue stir frying until the chicken is cooked and the mushrooms starting to soften. Add the wine or sherry and allow to boil until the steam clears, then add the soy sauce and mix in the noodles and beansprouts.

Remove from heat and cover the top with shredded lettuce, then sprinkle over the chilli, shredded omelette, onion flakes and cashew nuts. Garnish with the lime wedges, to be squeezed over as you eat.

Because this dish is so cheap to make, and can be varied according to what you have available, I am sharing it with Credit Crunch Munch at Fuss Free Flavours and Fab Food 4 All.

Vintage at Cardz 4 Guyz

The New Year has started at Cardz 4 Guyz,  and our first challenge of the year is Vintage. I always think Vintage is a good style for masculine cards, as the colours and aged metallic textures have  such a masculine feel about them. We'd love to see YOUR take on a vintage themed card for a male!

Do you find you get dozens of email newsletters from craft businesses that you have shopped with in the past? Yes, so do I, and although I don't want to unsubscribe from them, I generally delete them unread as they are all so tempting! However a few weeks ago I accidentally opened one from Crafty Individuals and saw a teaser for their latest collection of stamps - and I just couldn't stop myself from buying this super vintage transport tag collage stamp.

For this card I have stamped the entire image twice, cutting out the individual tags on the second image and making them into "proper" tags to layer over their counterparts on the original image. But I could also see the image working well as a stand alone one, or the tags themselves  used separately - I think this is a stamp you're going to spot on here many times in the future as I play with new ways of using it.

Santa brought me a "Photo Studio Box Light Lighting Cube Tent Kit" and I've been having a play with various ways of arranging the lighting for it, so I've added two photos of the card, identical apart from the arrangement of the lights. I'm not sure which I prefer - the first seems to capture the "feel" of the card better, while the second shows up the detail much more clearly. I think it will take a while before I've learned enough to get everything I want from a single photo!