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Not really a lake

Photos

Pittwater Sailing

22 September 2011 · 20 comments

In July there was a long weekend, and hubby and I got to go away with his friends from work and their partners. We rented a catamaran on which we ate, drank, slept, played games and sailed a bit too. While we were out there was quite a bit of rain, so the charter company gave us a couple of free days on the boat, so we’re going out again this weekend!

Here’s some photos from last time…

Recipes

Strawberry ricotta tarts

24 June 2011 · 5 comments

I baked these yesterday and they were great!

The recipe is adapted from recipes on Proud Italian Cook and Masterchef Australia.

Ingredients

  • 2 sheets shortcrust pastry
  • 1 cup ricotta cheese
  • 1/3 cup cream cheese
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 1 tbs vanilla extract
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 punnet strawberries
  • 1-2 tsp berry jam

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 180ºC
  2. Cut pastry into rounds and place in a shallow patty pan tray
  3. Mix ricotta, cream cheese and sugar with electric beaters; add eggs one at a time and beat until smooth. Stir in vanilla.
  4. Put about 1/2 tbs of mixture into each pastry case and top with sliced strawberries.
  5. Bake in the centre of the oven for 20 mins, or until edges puff and skewer comes out clean.
  6. Melt jam on stove or in microwave (about 15 sec) and glaze warm tarts.
  7. Serve at room temperature or refrigerated.

Makes 24

Above are the standard ingredients, but I used low fat/sugar versions: reduced fat shortcrust pastry, low fat ricotta and cream cheese and Equal Baking instead of sugar. I didn’t make my own pastry, but you can of course use your favourite pastry recipe if you want to.

The mixture can make about 30 tarts, but if cut right 2 sheets of pastry makes exactly 24 tarts. The mixture can be kept in the fridge in a sealed container for a day or two if you want to make it in advance, or if you don’t want to cook it all at once.

Hope you enjoy these as much as I do!

Blogging

kristarella.com Network in Progress

16 June 2011 · 8 comments

I’ve finished the move of kristarella.com to a new server (well, that happened a while ago, but I’ve made more progress since then)!

The improvements to WordPress (WP) over the last couple of years have been great! The integration of WordPressMU with the main WP stream into WP networks was a good move for any one interested in multiple WordPress sites, and custom post types and taxonomies are pretty sweet. So now I have all of those things working over my network, and more. The network is still in progress, some designs and functions are not finished yet, but you’re still welcome to check them out.

I need to create a master nav menu to link the sites together and add more content to all of them, but I’m glad that they’re all up and running now.

I’m using Thesis child themes on all of them, which I’m finding very convenient for customising each separately while all using the latest version of Thesis.

I have high hopes of updating these all more regularly— wish me luck! And feel free to take this opportunity to ask me about my sites, Thesis or whatever you fancy.

Christianity

Jesus Lives!

24 April 2011 · 11 comments

Happy Easter everyone!

I didn’t have my heart set on going to church on Good Friday morning, but I’m so glad that I did. It was quite moving to hear the whole of Jesus’ execution story read. I’ve heard it in pieces many times before and have probably read it in its entirety before as well, but some things really stood out this time, for the first time in my mind.

We often talk about Judas’ betrayal, we even refer to people who betray others as ‘Judas’, and it’s easy to hate him. However, rarely talk about what he did after that: he said, “I have sinned, for I have betrayed innocent blood.”, and he threw the money into the temple and hanged himself. How can you hate a man who turned away from his wrong actions so completely?

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Life and ramblings

Post image for Hello World!

Hello World!

27 January 2011 · 15 comments

No, this is not my first WordPress post with the default title, but I’ve been mostly away from the internet for so long, that I feel like I need to say HI!

Where was I?

Towards the end of last year I was overwhelmed by work, and then I was sick for some time. I don’t really want to get into the details, except to say: I’m not 100% well again, but I am so much better and I think I’m getting better all the time. Also, I’m so sorry to anyone who was affected by my illness, whether it was delayed jobs or delayed replies to email, or anything else.

There are a few jobs and emails that I still need to catch up on, but I hope to be completely up to date soon. If you think you should have been contacted by me and haven’t been, please feel free to email me.

What have I been doing?

Well, for some time the answer was not a whole darn lot! A lot of stressing, panicking, lying on the couch watching TV or sleeping. It wasn’t all bad though; have a look at some of the good times in pictures…
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