This month my foodie penpals parcel came from Tracey over at It’s not easy being greedy (how great is that blog name?!). Month after month I continue to be excited at what might be in my parcel, as although I give pretty much the same ‘requests’ every time, everybody has different ideas and come from different places so I always get something I haven’t tried yet – and often I get something I really want too! Anyway, on with the contents for this month. Up first, the more sweet items: hazelnut & raisin dark chocolate square. I’m usually a milk chocolate …
food
Meal Planning Monday – 22nd September
I’m enjoying being back into meal planning mode, and using up many of the items in my cupboard which I receive from my foodie penpals. Hubby even cooked one day last week – Wednesday! It mostly went to plan other than Friday & Saturday. We were out a little late on Friday and by the time we got home I couldn’t be bothered to cook so I just whipped up beans on toast for J (oops) and we had a cheeky takeaway once he had gone to bed (double oops). So on Saturday we had Friday’s meal as I’d already taken the …
Recipe – Pork, apple & sage pasties (#GreatBloggersBakeOff2014)
When I watched The Great British Bake Off this week, I did actually consider doing the technical challenge. Then it got to the weekend, I still hadn’t gotten around to baking, and I have felt exhausted. So I went with a good old pasty instead. I wasn’t organised at all so it all started going wrong straight away. First of all, I decided to attempt my own puff pastry, for the first time! Bad idea. I think it was the mixing that went wrong; I tried rolling it out – no, didn’t work. I couldn’t rescue it either so it went …
Recipe – Black forest cupcakes
One of my favourite cakes has to be black forest cake. Chocolaty, creamy, and fruity – is there a much better combination? Using actual cream for these makes a delightful change from using butter cream. And you can’t have a black forest cake without cream, can you? They are absolutely perfect for afternoon tea with friends. Ingredients (makes 12) 150 g butter 150 g caster sugar 120 g self raising flour 30 g cocoa powder 3 eggs 300 ml double cream, whipped 12 black cherries Method Preheat oven to gas 4/350F/180C. Place cupcake cases into a 12 hole muffin tin. Cream together …
Meal Planning Monday – 15th September
I am back after a couple of weeks away! Well, actually only one week but last week I just never got around to meal planning, and I actually struggled with all of our meals and we did have a takeaway one night… Which shows that meal planning really does work (mostly)! Meal plan w/c 15th September: Monday – Vegetable stir fry with sweet chilli sauce Tuesday – Spaghetti bolognese with garlic bread Wednesday – Reggae reggae chicken with rice & peas Thursday – Jacket potatoes Friday – Smoked mackerel with new potatoes Saturday – Gammon with homemade chunky chips Sunday …