Category Archives: Food

May 20 2013
6 Comments
Food, Marketing, Startups, Top 5, Writing

Top 5: Tim Tam Slam, start a business checklist, Melbourne sunrise, food blog, Australian Writers’ Centre

Came across some delicious, pretty, funny and useful stuff this last week. The world is pretty awesome!

1) Tim Tam Slam
How did I not know about this? Maybe because I don’t habitually enjoy biscuits, but had to make an exception for this. You basically bite off little bits from diagonal corners, use the Tim Tam as a straw until you can taste your hot drink, then EAT! I’m going to have to try this again because I was laughing too hard from excitement the first time. Thanks Kimmy for introducing me to this wonder in Melbourne last week!

Image from Baking for the Office blog

2) Starting a Business  - The Great Big Checklist of Everything
Came across this fantastic post on docstoc.com. It lists off everything you need to know about starting a business, including:

  • Ideation and Protecting Ideas
  • Forming your Entity
  • Identity and Branding
  • Financing and Business Planning
  • Operations
  • Financial Planning and Accounting
  • Business Mentors
  • Building a Team
  • Human Resources
  • Sales
  • Marketing and PR
  • Insurance
  • Legal
  • Service / Retail / Online

The ins and outs will change for each country, but the pointers are a great place to start. Read the post here.

3) Sunrise in St Kilda, Melbourne
I was in Melbourne last week for work and enjoyed a jog in St Kilda during sunrise. Say no more!

4) We Call Him Yes! Chef! – food blog
I love this blog – it’s written well and has wicked photos! Although I haven’t yet made any of the recipes, I’ve taken many ideas from this blog and I have certainly got some of the meals on my ‘to try’ list. YUM.

Photo from the They Call Him Yes! Chef!

Photo from the They Call Him Yes! Chef! blog

5) Australian Writers’ Centre 
I’m 3 weeks into a 5-week Screenwriting Stage 1 course, and loving it! I’ve been a fan of good script for a while, but I didn’t realise that this course would give so much insight into effective storytelling. In turn, it’s a course that I’d recommend to anyone who needs to tell stories (or is in marketing/advertising/PR).

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May 04 2013
2 Comments
Food, Innovation, Music, Top 5

Top 5: Gifs, slow food, startup ideas, recorder intro and Daft Punk

In an attempt to express more gratitude and awareness of all the good things in life, I’m embarking on a little project. Once a week I’ll post my ‘Top 5′ of the week – things that made me think, smile, marvel, laugh, appreciate or reflect. I hope you’ll enjoy them, too.

This week’s Top 5 are:

1) The Great Gif

Great Gatsby gif
After Titanic came out I had Leo posters covering my walls for several years. He is divine, and I’m looking forward to seeing him in action again in The Great Gatsby. Put Leo in a gif, and a Great Gatsby gif at that, and I’m yours. Thank you to @kingnivin for spotting and sharing this – check out Nivin’s post here. He writes about how gifs could be the next big thing in movie promotion. I agree.
Gif from The Great Gatsby promo Tumblr.

2) Hungry Mondays deliciousness
Hungry Mondays is delicious, slow cooked food that I buy pretty much every week. A group of chefs slow cook two different dishes every week and sell them for $9 a portion (if you pick up from a few handy locations). One of last week’s dishes was my favourite so far: 16 hour pork and beef chili con carne with a house baked corn bread. It doesn’t hurt that whoever runs the Facebook page has an impeccable way with words, e.g.: “House baked corn bread comes fresh out of the oven, gets cooled and sliced. It comes as a side with El Capo’s chilli con carne, the sweetness of the bread compliments the chilli of the chilli, which is mild to medium, depending on how soulful you are.” They’ve captured my heart with both food and words.

A Hungry Mondays dish

A Hungry Mondays dish – image from the HMs Facebook page

3) What are the best ways to think of ideas for a startup? 

I enjoyed this answer by @startuprob on Quora. He lists some absolute gold ways in which you can generate ideas, such as:

  • Look through your bank statement to see where your money is going. (Could you be doing any of those tasks better? Cheaper?)
  • Ask yourself, “What type of business would you want to run if there was absolutely no chance of failure?”
  • Look through the customer service sections of websites and find out what people are complaining about.

Thank you, Rob! Read his full answer on on Quora.

4) 20th Century Fox intro on the recorder

It’s a couple of years old and completely ridiculous but brings back memories of failing miserably on the recorder (didn’t we all have a crack at primary school?) and it certainly scored LOLs. Thanks Jayde and Nick for the heads up!

5) Daft Punk’s new track, Get Lucky

The French boys are back and I’m loving this funky 70s vibe track. Get on it!

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Mar 30 2013
3 Comments
Food

Recipe: Raw Chocolate & Nut Easter Cups

Raw Chocolate & Nut Cup
I came across this raw food blog last week. ‘This Rawsome Vegan Life’ is a blog by Em, a 19-year old student in Vancouver. She shares leads of amazing recipes along with awesome photos and lovely words. One recipe that caught my attention was her Giant Peanut Butter Cups. Sounds and looks amazing, right? Well, today I decided to give them a try, but I put an Easter spin on them with allspice, and made them a bit smaller. Here’s the recipe I went with, based on Em’s:

Raw Chocolate & Nut Easter Cups (makes about 10)
Crust
1 cup nuts (I used a combo of hazelnuts, walnuts and almonds)
6 soaked dates
2 tablespoons raw cacao
splash of agave
Chocolate Layer
1 avocado 
8 soaked dates
2 tablespoons raw cacao
2 tablespoons coconut oil
2 tablespoons almond butter
4 tablespoons agave
pinch of salt
1 tablespoon cinnamon and allspice
Nut Butter Layer
3 tablespoons natural peanut butter
3 2 tablespoons almond butter
pinch of salt
Crosses
desiccated coconut

Chocolate layer mixture

For the crust, process all the ingredients together until it’s crumbly but firm to press together. Press into the sides and bottom of small or medium sized cupcake molds and place in the fridge.

For the chocolate layer, blend all the ingredients together until smooth and thick. Spoon a tablespoon or so into the cupcake molds, making sure you have about a third of the mixture remaining.

For the nut butter layer, mix the nut butters and the salt until smooth. Add a spoonful on top of the first chocolate layer in each cupcake mold, then top with the remaining chocolate mixture.Smooth over, then top each one with a cross made from desiccated coconut. This would work best with a template – I just practically poured it on top!

Set them in the fridge and then NOM NOM NOM!
Setting in the fridge
Ready to eat!
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Jul 09 2012
2 Comments
Apps, Food

Snapguide: How to Make Paprika, Truffle Oil and Parmesan Popcorn

Have you heard of Snapguide? It’s a very cool site and app that allows users to create guides about anything they love. Topics include Arts & Crafts, Automotive, Beauty, Food, Music, Photography and Technology. I made my first guide over the weekend: How to Make Paprika, Truffle Oil and Parmesan Popcorn.

The app is free and allows you to upload photos and/or videos as your instructions. Check it out, there are some great guides on there from people all over the world, and if you are looking for a particular guide, the search functionality is very good.

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Jun 09 2012
2 Comments
Food

Recipe: Alfajores de maicena from Argentina

Alfajores de maicena are Argentinian cookies that literally crumble in your mouth. They’re delicious and easy to make! Here’s my favourite recipe for them.

Ingredients
150g butter
3/4 cup sugar
2 egg yolks
1/2 egg white
smidgen vanilla extract
swig of rum or other alcohol like brandy
3/4 cup regular flour
1 level teaspoon baking soda
1 and 3/4 cups cornflour
1 jar dulce de leche (from a specialty shop, or you can make your own)
shredded coconut for rolling

Tools you’ll need
Large bowl
Fork
Sieve
Rolling pin
Rolling surface
Small, round cookie cutter
Fridge
Baking paper
Oven tray
Glad wrap
Cooling rack
Spreading knife
Plate


Steps
1) In the bowl, mix the butter, egg yolks, egg white and sugar with the fork until fluffy
2) Add the rum and vanilla essence and stir in
3) Use the sieve to add gradual amounts of the baking soda, flour and cornflour, mixing in well with the fork
4) The mixture may be quite crumbly at this stage, so get your hands dirty and press it all together, kneading well
5) Once it’s all in a big lump, wrap tightly in glad wrap and place in the fridge for at least two hours. I left mine overnight
6) After two hours (or the next day), take the lump out of the fridge and let it warm to room temperature for a few minutes before cutting into three sections
7) Preheat oven on 160 degrees
8) For each dough section: Sprinkle flour on rolling surface and roll out the dough to about 1cm thick
9) Cut out circles with the cookie cutter and place each on the baking paper on the baking tray
10) Bake for about 10 minutes, keeping a close eyes on the biscuits – they must not turn golden!
11) Take biscuits out of the oven and cool on a rack
12) Once cooled, spread a layer of dulce de leche onto the base of one biscuit, then sandwich to another one so thedulce oozes out the sides
13) Even the dulce out with a knife, then roll in the shredded coconut

Enjoy!

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Jul 14 2010
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Food, Travel

Escargots, confit de canard et macarons (Snails, duck and macarons)

Due to frogs being out of season while I was in Paris I had to try some other traditional cuisine before departing. And it doesn’t get much better than this:

  • Escargots (snails) which were prepared with a butter/garlic/parsley sauce
  • Confit de canard avec pommes persillées (duck with parsley new potatoes)
  • Macarons (a sweet biscuit that comes in all sorts of flavours, including anise, berry, chocolate, vanilla, caramel…etc)

All of these delights were delightful, even the snails which were actually so good that I had them another time.

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Copyright

All images appearing on this blog (solange.posterous.com) may not be reproduced, copied or manipulated without the written permission of Solange Francois. © 2010

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Jul 04 2010
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Food, Travel, Travel Photos

Salade au Chèvre Chaud (Hot Goat’s Cheese Salad)

C‘était délicieux!

That’s what I said to my waitress when she cleared away my bowl of what had been Hot Goat’s Cheese Salade. How can you go wrong with a bowl of salad leaves mixed with walnuts, tomato, bacon, roast potatoes, fried egg and three generous portions of grilled goat’s cheese on top on toasted bread? 

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