Author: Bunny Eats Design

LBTL Challenge: Day 2

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Day 2 Menu 1 soft boiled egg on 2 slices of toast Satay Vegetables on rice with broccoli, cauliflower, carrot, garlic and ginger Chicken soup (Chinese style) with a bowl of rice Day 2 of the Live Below The Line challenge was much easier than yesterday. I’m going to blame yesterday’s fogginess on a lingering hangover. I felt a combination of sick, hungry or stoned all day. After a bowls of chicken congee, a nap, 2 more bowls of chicken congee and great night’s sleep I fixed myself and I got up early this morning for breakfast and to cook my lunch. I cooked 3 cups of rice last night and was surprised that it made 5 generous portions. With 5 cups of rice for the week, I’m going to have more than enough rice to eat. Good thing I love rice! This is the meal I made for lunch today and the amounts can easily be multiplied for more mouths. I haven’t worked out exactly how much this costs but it’s less than $1 …

Tofu Tuesday: Upholstered Chair

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A few years ago, I roped my friend A and my sister and her boyfriend into doing an upholstery class with me. This the chair I re-upolstered, sanded and stained. I have yet to sew the buttons  on and the fabric panel on the back requires attaching but it looks legit from the front so I don’t think about it. Tofu judges my handiwork.

TEDxAuckland

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I’m a huge fan of TED Talks. TED is an acronym for Technology, Education and Design. As much as I love hearing designers or foodies talk about their passions, you can only go so far if you approach life with a certain brand of knowledge. That’s where TED excels. The speakers come from many varied backgrounds and industries. The talks are eye opening and inspirational and I sincerely wish that a once a week TED TV slot existed instead of all the crap they play on TV. If you haven’t heard of TED Talks, please take a look. I believe there is something for everyone. I’m looking forward to TEDxAuckland in a couple of weeks at Aotea Centre, Auckland. The tickets are a very reasonable $80 each for a full day of events. Compared to the $3,000 to 6,000US ticket price that some TED events fetch, this is a bargain. Of course, talks can be found online for free. Yes. Free. More information including speaker line-up and ticket purchase can be found: www.tedxauckland.com For those that …

LBTL Challenge: Day 1

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Day 1 Menu 2 slices of toast with peanut butter 1 fried egg sandwich 3 bowls of Chicken congee (rice porridge) I had a big dinner last night and even had seconds before bed because I thought I should. I wasn’t hungry when I woke up still full so bumped breakfast to be eaten at morning tea. Feeling good, but tired. No coffee or tea. Just lots of hot water. The hardest thing today was was lunchtime. I made the mistake of going into the kitchen to top up my water. Someone was having a big plate of lasagna that had been cut up into six pieces. One or two pieces would be enough but he was eating all six pieces for lunch. Hard not to comment on the portions size when you’re feeling hungry, but I really don’t want to be that asshole. I usually hate when people comment on my giant lunches! Tomorrow, I’m avoiding the kitchen at lunchtime. Food Waste I watched Tristram Stuart’s talk The Global Food Waste Scandal last night. …

Buddha Bunny Brainwaves #3

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I’ve been thinking a lot about beautiful souls a lot lately. A beautiful soul is a person who shines from within and gives colourful depth to everyone they meet. You know the kind. You hear about their deeds through other people and it makes you go “Awwwww…”. I bet I could sort everyone I’ve ever met into 3 categories: Love, Don’t Love, OK. The ones that I love, even if I’ve only spent a fleeting moment with them are what I consider to be beautiful souls. I wish all the beautiful souls I’ve met, know how beautiful they are. Read other Buddha Bunny Brainwaves here.

Blessings Disguised As Rice

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When I was *yea high*, my Daddy and my Uncle Hon owned one of the only Chinese takeaways in our little city. Some afternoons, my Uncle Charlie* would collect me from school and together, we would walk 15 minutes to the shop. * Uncle Charlie was not an uncle by blood but because in my culture, we call all our parents friends uncle and aunty out of respect. When I arrived at the shop, I would carry a stool up to the rice cooker for height, climb on top, fill a small bowl with the fresh batch of rice, drizzle soy sauce on top and tuck in. I loved rice then and I love it now. I’m going to be OK next week for poverty challenge. Keeping to a budget of just $2.25 a day, I’ve allocated 5 cups of rice among other things to get me by. I can’t help but think that I’m lucky that I choose to eat rice. Many are not so lucky and I think as foodies, we forget to …

All-In-One Seafood Stew

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I was recently given the opportunity to test drive a recipe from a new cook book. Adie McClelland’s first Black Dog Cottage Cookbook was published in 2009 and her second book, sensibly titled The Second Black Dog Cottage Cookbook was released in August. She’s a well travelled foodie and it shows through her recipes. Her style of cooking is much like mine – unfussy and easy but with a Mediterranean angle. I think she would forgive me my casual cooking style. The Second Black Dog Cottage Cook Book has just been released throughout New Zealand. For more information please visit Phantom House Books http://www.phantomhouse.com or their Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/BlackDogCottageCookbook. I wanted to make the All-In-One Seafood Stew because it’s what I would order if I were dining out. This recipe requires 10 tomatoes, which for a long time were unbelievably expensive and probably not very good. They’re starting to come down in price now so it was time to tackle this stew. After a quick scan of the recipe, I identified just one unknown ingredient: passata. Passata …

The ice cream cone

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He cowered in the corridor doorway. Away from the other children who were finishing their lunches. Some of us had already finished and were returning our lunchboxes to our schoolbags. When we spotted him, we stopped in our tracks. Sheepishly eating the last of an ice cream cone, he realised his mistake. “Where did you get that ice cream from!?” we all demanded. Ice cream for lunch is a prize in every child’s eyes. The poor boy, embarrassed that he had been discovered, admitted: “I didn’t have an ice cream. I just had a cone for lunch”. The kids are hungry Schools in New Zealand are ranked in socio-economic order from 1 to 10 so that funding can be allocated. 10 is the highest,  1 is the lowest and each decile contains a tenth of the schools in NZ. From ages 5 to 9, I attended a decile 3 primary (elementary) school and poverty was all around. Many children only dreamed of lunch. My sister and I were lucky and – though scrawny – always well fed. There …

OOOOBY 11

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This week our CSA box included: Vegetable 1/2 a Squash 21 Dwarf Carrots 4 Celery Sticks 1 Fancy Lettuce 4 Spring Onion 1 Avocado Fruit 7 Gold Kiwifruit 7 Fuji Apples 6 Navel Oranges Add Ons Wild Wheat Ciabatta Apple Juice 2L The most interesting thing in the box: Nothing was particularly exotic this week, but the nubbly carrots are pretty delightful. Menu 11 There might be some erratic eating this week so I’ve kept my menu plan pretty open in case I spontaneously need to binge on something. Trucker’s meal: Steak, fried eggs, chips and salad with beetroot, lettuce*, spring onion* and carrot* Avocado and cream cheese on ciabatta toast Pan Fried Halloumi with Squash* Spring Salad with carrot*, orange* and spring onion* Minestrone with celery*, carrots*, onion, beans and orzo, served with ciabatta* toast French toast with brown sugar stewed apples* * CSA from this week or previous week CSA Link Party I regularly join a CSA box link party. A link party is a weekly or monthly round up of relevant blog links in …

Tofu Tuesday: New Glasses

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I got new glasses a few weeks ago. I splurged a little, I don’t regret it one bit. These new specs have bigger lenses and thinner arms meaning that I can see heaps more than before. They’re also very comfortable. I donned my old glasses to snap this photo and was struck by how uncomfortable my previous pair were. Tofu also approves.    

Monday Bunday: The Bunny Museum

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I like collecting well designed rabbity things and we have at least 1 rabbit in every room of the house. But I prefer quality over quantity. If I ever decide to go quantity, I’m sure something like The Bunny Museum would explode into our house. I hope someone intervenes before this ever happens me. Husband and wife owners of The Bunny Museum pictured in the centre of the photo below.   See more photos and read more about this husband and wife duo at http://www.vice.com

Humpty Dumpty and the King (of Salads)

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We don’t eat salads over winter, but now that it is spring, it’s supposedly time for lighter eating. That bikini body isn’t going to appear from nowhere. Just kidding. This is not that kind of blog. I invested in a one piece last year and I don’t think I’ll be getting a bikini any time soon. Caesar salad is a gutsy dish that should not be reserved for summer. It’s odd that while I love Caesar salad, I’ve never tried to make it before. The anchovy mayo is inspired by this rich anchovy mayo from The Fridge, Kingsland. Caesar salad is one of those salads that shouldn’t really be classed as a salad in case it gets confused for rabbit food or something else particularly healthy. It tastes amazing because of all the kick ass ingredients like parmesan, Worcestershire sauce, bacon, olives and anchovies. Parmesan and anchovies When it comes to pungent foods like anchovies and parmesan, buy the best quality version you can afford. I always thought I hated parmesan, but I’ve recently realised it’s cheap parmesan …

Two Year Giveaway

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It’s been 2 years since I started this blog and in that time I’ve made a number of wonderful friends through this blog both in New Zealand and overseas. There’s nothing like shared interests to cement a friendship and I thank everyone who has commented on this blog in the past 2 years. This blog has given me the excuse to be more adventurous and try new things. I love sharing a little slice of my New Zealand kitchen with the world. Sometime in the coming month, this blog will hit 100,000 visits and I’m celebrating with a new logo and giveaway. Some of you may remember my last giveaways when this blog reached 1,000 hits in October 2010 and then 10,000 hits in April 2011. One lucky winner will receive three of my favourite New Zealand products and three sets of my designs. In true NZ style, the producers all came to the party and have generously donated the following: Al Brown has donated a 1 litre cask of his Extra Virgin Olive Oil from The …

OOOOBY Box 10 and our “Old Girl”

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We bought our Frigidaire when we first moved from an inner city apartment to the ‘burbs. I got her off Trademe for a song, second, maybe even third or fourth hand and we immediately had her resealed by a pro. This fridge-freezer has moved house with us four times and we reckon she could be from the 1970s, making her older than me. Our old girl had a freak out over the weekend. I wish I had before and after photos to show you, as the stalactites were amazing. We shifted her a few inches to the right and I don’t know if that had anything to do with it, but the top third of the freezer turned into an ice cube with icicles as thick as my wrist. Ice expands and within hours it got so bad that we couldn’t close the freezer door. The Koala came to the rescue, carefully using a hammer as an ice pick and excavated the ice from the top shelf and around the seals. I’m now trying to use up everything in …

Blogspiration (Bunny’s guide to blogging)

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About four years ago, a boy I went to primary (elementary) school with, contacted me online. As a designer, a foodie and a better photographer than I could hope to be, we have a few things in common. We’re a breed of people who have to continuously “make stuff” (and eat stuff). We were classmates over 20 years ago and while we have never met as adults, it’s due to his encouragement that I started this blog. I can’t blame it squarely on this encounter, but it wasn’t until that moment I realised that I too, could have a blog. I’ve always kept diaries or written my thoughts online in forums and lengthy emails (just ask my friends). This blog has helped me focus that energy. Blog about something you are passionate about. Otherwise it’s just work. A blog should inspire, inform or entertain. I sincerely hope that this blog does all three. I love the open dialogue with readers and bloggers all over the world. It’s like meeting kindred spirits when you get to …

Live Below The Line Recipe: Satay Fried Noodles

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In two weeks I will be eating my way through the Live Below The Line Challenge. This challenge will see me allocating $2.25 a day for food and drink. Considering I spent $15.50 on my lunch the other day, it makes me nervous to imagine spending just $11.25 over 5 days. The current Live Below The Line recipe collection has only 4 recipes. I think it needs some filling out. Maybe they will want to add my recipes to the list one day. I am determined to have variety, so a pot of dahl for 5 days doesn’t appeal to me. I’ve been looking up cheap recipes and asking friends and family for their suggestions. I’ve been price checking weighing, measuring and working out what foods get me the most bang for my buck. My local Chinese supermarket has been incredible for bargains. A bag of 8 dried egg noodle bundles came in at just 99 cents. Score! Yesterday I tested one of my recipes based on the stuff I’m gathering for the challenge. These …

OOOOBY Box 9

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OOOOBY now offer an organic only box, so this week we’re giving it a test drive. The original box that we usually get is 100% local but not 100% organic. This week our CSA box included: Vegetable Half a Crown Pumpkin 1 Broccoli 1 bunch of Silverbeet 4 Carrots 1 Avocado 1 Fancy Lettuce Fruit 8 Gold Kiwifruit 7 Fuji Apples 4 Navel Oranges 1 Lime Add Ons Apple Juice 2L Wild Wheat Ciabatta The most interesting thing in the box: Colourful carrots. Menu 9 Pumpkin* soup with bacon bits and garlic parmesan croutons (made with ciabatta*) Cheeseburgers with lime* guacamole*, egg, fancy lettuce* and onion served with oven baked fries Salad with yellow and purple carrot*, fancy lettuce, boiled egg, olives, ham, chick peas Parmesan bagels with avocado* and cream cheese Buttery Golden Pan-Fried Flounder with sauteed silverbeet* and mashed potatoes Steak stir fry with broccoli*, onion, garlic and carrots*. Served on noodles Mini quiche with egg, broccoli*, silverbeet* and ham Roast chicken with pumpkin*, potatoes, onion and garlic. Served with rainbow carrot* salad. …