Welcome to the stars, intrepid traveller.

My family's easy pizza recipe:

Ingredients: pizza base. You can make a real pizza base by mixing and kneading flour, water, salt into pizza dough. Or you can use Lebanese flat bread if you want a thin and crispy pizza base.

Tomato paste.

Basil leaves.

Bocconcini cheese. This cheese is kept fresh in the fridge in water, and comes in small plastic cylinder containers. It is small,round, white and delicious. You can eat it raw or cooked. Pregnant people can eat it safely. :-)

Parmesan cheese, grated (just a small amount, maybe a teaspoon per pizza)

Chopped mushrooms

Chopped capsicums.

Shredded cooked chicken - optional

Recipe:
Use a spoon or knife to spread tomato paste onto the pizza base.

Cut one small cup of bocconcini round white cheese into halves or quarters. Add bocconcini cheese, basil leaves, chicken, capsicum, and mushrooms to the pizza base evenly.

Place pizza onto a baking tray (preferably a round flat pizza tray) and put tray into your oven. Turn oven dial to 220 degrees Celsius. Bake for twenty minutes. Your pizza is ready when the bocconcini white cheese has melted, and the cheese goes from round to flat.

Enjoy your meal. :-)

Article on how to slow cook food on a stovetop: https://www.livestrong.com/article/453903-how-to-slow-cook-on-a-stovetop/

Article on alternatives to using slow cooker liners for cleaning slow cookers easily: https://www.stretcher.com/stories/09/09nov30a.cfm

Instructions from the Dollar Stretcher website on alternatives to using slow cooker liner bags for cleaning slow cookers easily:

Spray the inside of the slow cooker with cooking oil (vegetable oil or canola oil, or sunflower seed oil). If you don’t have cooking oil spray cans, dip your kitchen paper towel into cooking oil and wipe the inside of the slow cooker before using the slow cooker for cooking food.

After cooking food in a slow cooker, you can soak the slow cooker pot in hot water, baking soda powder and vinegar for two hours to overnight, then scrub the pot clean with warm water and dishwashing liquid. This is much more affordable and environmentally friendly than using plastic slow cooker liner bags for clean up.

Alternatively, after cooking you can add 1-2 cups of baking soda, half to one cup of vinegar and 2 cups of water to the slow cooker (the amounts vary depending on how big your slow cooker and how dirty it is). The exact amount of baking soda, water or vinegar doesn’t matter, but the water and vinegar mix needs to cover the food stains. Turn on your slow cooker for 1-2 hours (high setting) and the slow cooker will heat the water vinegar mixture. After that you can scrub the slow cooker pot with warm water and dishwashing liquid.

Stuffed capsicums recipe.

I actually made this and ate it last Saturday. It was easy to make and delicious! It was also fun eating stuffed vegetables for some reason. It just looks festive.

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Yields 6 servings.

Great as a main meal.

Optional: Serve with vegetables. To prepare vegetables, wash vegetables in cold water in a colander and dry them with paper towel. Chop vegetables with a knife.

You can use buttered asparagus, or your favourite vegetables such as carrots, potatoes, broccoli, tomatoes or mushrooms. You can roast or sautee the carrots, asparagus, potatoes (or sweet potatoes, yum), broccoli, capsicum, tomatoes in olive oil or butter.

I prefer mushrooms to be sautéed.

Ingredients:
6 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons dried rosemary leaves
6 salmon filets
3 tablespoons olive oil
Salt to taste
2 lemon slices

Method:
Marinate the salmon filets with olive oil, lemon juice, salt and dried rosemary leaves.

Refrigerate the salmon for 30 minutes.

Bake in a preheated oven for around twenty minutes.

Serve with lemon slices. Enjoy. ^^

Recipe is based on the one from e-book The Sauce Cookbook Dreams are Made of.

Makes about one cup sauce. Delicious with barbecued meat and vegetables.

Ingredients:
One third molasses
1 cup pomegranate juice, either freshly squeezed or store bought
One third honey. Reduce the amount of honey if it's manuka honey. Manuka honey has a strong flavour.
1 dash black pepper or cayenne pepper. I prefer black pepper.

Directions:
Stir ingredients in a pot on stovetop on high heat.Bring top boil ( this is when the sauce bubbles). Reduce stovetop temperature to low heat, simmer for 25 minutes.

Serve and enjoy!

Prep time: 30 minutes.

Total cooking time: 1 hour 15 minutes


Ingredients:

1 package of pastry for a 9 inch double crust pie / 2 sheets of pastry for a baking tray

1 egg, beaten. 5 cups of sliced peaches. 2 tablespoons of lemon juice or lime juice. 1/2 cup of all purpose/plain flour. 1/2 cup of brown sugar. 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon. 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg. 1/4 teaspoon salt. 2 tablespoons butter. 1 teaspoon vanilla essence (optional).

( Read more... ) Serve and enjoy! :) If the flavour is too tart, you can offset this by adding ice cream.

This recipe is from the Detoxinista's website. :) Feel free to add other vegetables, like corn or potatoes. :)
http://detoxinista.com/2012/11/classic-chicken-vegetable-soup/

If the link doesn't work, that could be due to my auto correcting cheeky spell check. :p

Preparation time: 15 minutes. Total time: 40 minutes.

Ingredients:

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Note: You can also cook noodles separately and serve with the soup. :)

Storage: Store chicken and vegetables separately from the broth to prevent solids from becoming mushy. Store solids and broth in shallow/ low, small and airtight containers (with lids) to speed up cooling and prevent the spread of bacteria.

Note to self (and anyone else interested in baking tips):

Honey is not needed for the crust/cake base It makes the crust/base a bit too sweet.

Spread mashed biscuits/butter mixture evenly and thickly across baking tray to form a crust/base that won't crumble while being baked. I put the base / crust in the freezer for 30 minutes prior to adding the cream cheese/flour/egg/sugar mixture to the baking tray. This is to prevent the cheese mixture from seeping into the base and crumbling it.

You need 250 to 300 grams of melted chocolate to create the marbling effect (chocolate swirling pattern). The chocolate needs to be thoroughly melted to swirl properly. Heat 4 small blocks of chocolate (28 grams) in the microwave for 90 seconds. WARNING:If you heat 4 grams of chocolate for 2 minutes, it gets burnt. Repeat this step until you have heated 250 grams of chocolate. I couldn't find cooking chocolate, but I strongly recommend using it for baking cakes / making desserts if you can find it. :)