Bake day

Wow, it's been a while since I last posted...whoops!
Life is life, it goes on as usual. I went back to the homeland for two weeks and came home with around £30 worth of sausages and pies for local butchers. They are keeping my freezer full :)

Today has been a baking day.
I made a ridiculously easy fudge; 1 can of condensed milk, some milk  chocolate, mixed and microwaved for around 1 minute. Mic again, pour into a tin and let it set. Mine didn't set white like proper fudge, but it tastes good.

I made chocolate chip cookies, a old favourite made to my mother's recipe.

Then came the brownies. 3 ingredients. Nutella, 2 eggs and try flour. Mix them so together, pour into a greased/lines tray and bake at 180°c for 15 mins or so (it's not an exact science!)

And to finish the day, this beautiful Victoria sponge

This might be the best Victoria sponge I have ever made!

Enjoy your evening folks, I'm having venison burgers for tea, so I know I'll enjoy none!

FAT

I am not skinny. Never have been. Never will be. I like food too much (right now, in fact, I am eating cake). I refuse to deprive myself of something that makes me happy just to conform with the mainstream perception of beautiful.

I am a bit of a social media junkie. I regularly check Facebook throughout the day. And day in, day out I am face with images and articles about 'the newest way to lose weight fast' or 'get your beach ready body' or 'fit into that Little Black Dress'. I'm not saying people who want to lose weight shouldn't, I just don't like the way that people are being told 'you're not good enough, this is how you will be better'.

I myself do the 5:2 diet. Does this make me a hypocrite? I don't think so, no. I wanted to be healthier. Not skinnier. Not more beautiful. Healthy. So I decided to make a change. I did not base my desicion on how others perceive my body. This diet works for me as I don't have to give up all the foods I love. It just means that two days a week I massively cut down my calorie intake and usually eat A LOT of vegetables. And my body likes it, it clears itself out and makes me feel amlot healthier. But I don't bang on about it. I don't suggest that other people should be doing it. If someone was to ask, I would share my experience, I'm all for encouraging those who want to do something to change (but again, my point is that change should come from within us, not from others and how they view us).

Now, I'm lucky, my mum was always a fantastic role model when it came to body confidence. I was never made to feel fat and ugly and we never had scales in the house ( I still don't... I have no idea what I way and I have no intention of finding out any time soon). That's not to say I never had any body issues. Nothing serious, just the usual when you see yourself surrounded by thin, beautiful people and start to think that's how you should look too. But that passed.

The other day at work I heard myself say "I wish I was that skinny". But then I stopped and thought and retracted my statement. Because, truth be told, I've never been more body confident. I can honestly say I can stand naked in front of a mirror and be comfortable with what I see. There are bits of me that aren't perfect, but they don't bother me enough to change them. And I think that that is a feeling everyone should be entitled to, not just those the media say are beautiful. So maybe instead of promoting the latest weight loss craze, we should be promoting body confidence and encouraging self love.

To start, try this as a new life motto:

" I'm aware of my flaws and have accepted them. And anyone who doesn't can fuck off!"

- Sarah Millican

Apologies for the long, serious entry today...it's been on my mind a lot the last few days.

On a lighter note, look at this beauty:

It is a rich chocolate sponge with a gorgeous light fudge frosting.

Also, my friend Vera made a lemon meringue pie. And she gave me a slice. It was beautiful...really beautiful. And she promised to make a whole one just for me. I have never been more excited!

Road trips, fast food and home baking

Today was technically a day off, but I had to go up to Fort William to collect some things for work. So Idecided to make a trip of it; I took Verity and Leanne and we had a wander and went to McDonalds (yes, yes, I know, it's awful...but their fries and milkshakes are so good!). Nipped into W H Smiths and found a number of books I want (jotted down the names so I can download them on my Kindle). I also picked up a couple of new cook books. One was a one-pot meal recipe book. I'm a big fan of on-pot meals, less washing up! The other was 150 cupcakes and muffins. There is a recipe for salted caramel cupcakes. Need I say more?! I'm looking forward to trying it. Was going to do so today, but was short on time so just stuck toan old faithful recipe and made these beauties:

These are a basic rich chocolate sponge, with a Maleaser flavoured icing (make a standard butter cream, and add 2 sachets of Horlicks and around 4tbsp good cocoa powder) wih a Malteaser perched on top. I have quite a few Malteasers left over...I will have to find a way to get rid...hmmm, I'm sure I can think of something ;)

I hope you all have a lovely Bank Holiday weekend...I will be working :(

Curry!

On Wednesday, I decided to try a recipe from the BBC Good Food site for chicken tikka massala. It was really easy to make, and really good. One of the ingredients was tikka paste; you can buy it from the supermarket, but I really wanted to do the whole thing from scratch. So I made my own tikka paste. One of the easiest things ever...
put the following into a small food processor with a little water and blend until smooth:
4 garlic gloves, a lump of fresh ginger, 2 tsp cumin, 2 tsp corrianidor, 1sp garam massala, 1 tsp turmeric and seeds for 4-5 cardamon pods.
That's it, it's that easy. And makes a really tasty curry!

Now the recipe didn't say nything about marinading the chicken before cooking buy I opted to marinade it in garam massala, paprika, cumin, lemon juice and natural yogurt before cooking. It worked nicely with the sauce.

The serving suggestion was to serve with plain basmati rice, but I was in the mood for something with a bit more flavour. SoI decided o make my own pilau rice. If I'd known it was so simple I would have done it ages ago!

Easy Pilau rice:
melt around 1 oz of butter in a pan
add a up of rice and stir so it is all coated in the butter
add 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp turmeric, 1 bay leaf, 4 cardamon pods, 4 cloves, 1/2 tsp fennel seeds and 1 1/2 cups boiling water to the rice.
give it  quick stir and put  lid on it.
leave it on a low heat for around 15 mins. do not stir again.
may need a bit of fluffing with a fork before serving.

The whole thing was pretty easy (apart from when I was making the tikka paste and managed to get spices in my eye - that stung like a bitch!) and the end product was fantastic...served with naan bread, poppadoms and mango chutney!

A Sunday off

Today has been the first Sunday I've had off work since the end of January. It was so nice not having to get up at 4:45am just once!
Me and Anthony took the weekend off as it was his brothers wedding and he was the best man. He wore a kilt, and look gorgeous (who doesn't love a man in a kilt?!)

It was a lovely day and everyone looked fan. Good food too...fantastic slow roasted venison...drool!
Being the dazzling social creatures we are, we stationed ourselves near the buffet in the evening...a very good move!

So, having a Sunday off, I decided I was going to do a roast dinner. We had beef. I love roast beef so much. I slow roasted it with red wine, onions and garlic...fantastic flavour. Left it in the oven a bit long though and it was a little dry (good job there was plenty of proper gravy to going with it). We had mash and roasties (obviously), I'm not usually that good at roasties, but these were really good: crispy outside, fluffy inside. And I made Yorkshire puddings. What's a roast dimmer without Yorkshire puddings?! They were huge!

It's been lovely having a full weekend off work, but back to reality tomorrow. Ah well, four weeks until me and my man have a night in Glasgow, then three weeks after that I get to see my family.

Hope you have all had a good weekend!

Birthday cake and Chinese curry

Monday was Anthony's birthday, so obviously it was his choice for Birthday Tea. He chose lasagne. As always. He is a human Garfield. So I made a lasagne for him. From scratch. It was really good...haven't quite perfected my lasagne yet though!
With it being his birthday, I made a fuss. He wasn't expecting a fuss...he was happy to let his birthday slip past virtually unmarked. No chance! I blew up balloons, I wrapped presents and I put up banners. And what's a birthday without cake? I made a triple layer chocolate cake...then iced it. As Deadpool. He loved it. And I was pretty proud of myself.

So on to the curry. I've been looking for more chinese recipes and found a fantastic on for chicken curry. I love a chinese curry, but I'm not impressed with the majority of the Chinese restaurants here. So I was really glad when I found this recipe:

http://chinese.food.com/recipe/lily-kwoks-chinese-chicken-curry-330708

It's gorgeous. And pretty authentic. I served it with boiled rice and prawn crackers. But I did leave out the extra onions when cooking the chicken...never been a big fan of big chunks of onion in my food!

Well, I'm very full of curry now, so I'm going to relax with a cheeky Caorunn and tonic!

Death by Chocolate Cupcakes

My dad hates the word cupcakes. He says they're not cupcakes, they're buns. But I like 'cupcake', it sounds cute, dainty. However, mine are not dainty. They are big and chocolatey and beautiful.
I've got a cottage pie in the oven. We had mince and tatties for tea yesterday and I had left-overs. So I layered them and added some cheese for tonight's tea.
And since I've bad a day off and a few hours to myself, I made 'death by chocolare cupcakes'

Recipe (makes 20)
9oz self raising flour
6 tablespoons cocoa powder
6oz caster sugar
2 tablespoons black treacle
7 fl oz milk
7 fl oz sunflower oil
3 large eggs

Preheat oven to 160°c/gas mark 3
Throw everything in a bowl and mix it all together.
Divide between cupcake cases.
Bake for around 20mins.
Cool on wire rack.
To decorate, cover with a standard chocolate buttercream icing then dip in grated chocolate (I mixed white and milk chcolate, but the choice is yours!)

Enjoy!

Cookie!!!

Just a very quick post tonight to share my cookies. I haven't made chocolate chip cookies for a long time, so today I decided I would. I love this recipe, it was given to me by my mother when she wrote me a recipe book when I first left home :)

And now it's time to get started on Go Set A Watchman, Harper Lee's sequel to To Kill A Mockingbird (one of my all time favourite books)

Y'all have a good weekend!

A Good Food Day

Today has been a good day. In terms of food anyway; having to go into work in my day off wasn't so fantastic. But the food has been great.

Me and Liam went to The Oban Chocolate factory for hot chocolate and belgian waffles. This place is amazing. They make chocolate on site, you can watch them through a window. We had beautiful 'Ghana 40% cocoa' hot chocolate. It was beautiful. Rich and smooth and a nice balance of dark and sweet. I also had a Belgoan waffle topped with maple syrup, whipped cream and Mackies ice cream. Liam had one with banana and butterscotch. The syrup was sweet, the ice cream was smooth, and the waffles were a nice contrasting savoury.

We then headed to Tesco and got a fresh loaf of tiger bread, some ham and some Davidstow cheddar. We made amazing sandwiches. I love a good sandwich. It was thick and fresh and oh so tasty!

Tonught is my Anthony evening, and as usual I made tea for the two of us. Tonight saw sweet and sour stor fry. I chopped up a couple of chiclen  reasts and marinaded them in paprika, chilli powder, cayenne peper and Chinese five spice. I then stir fried it with a couple of peppers and a carrot before adding a sweet n sour sauce and mixing with noodles. Delicious. I like chinese food. I really want to get more into proper chinese cooking, so if any of you have any good recipes, let me know!

I'm off to eat some cake and enjoy the rest of my evening :)

Friday...fish, steak, Kendal mint cake

Nobody here knows what Kendal mint cake is. I love the stuff but can't find it anywhere...so I ordered some from Amazon. How do you describe Kendal mint cake to someone who has never had it? It's susugary, and minty, and solid, het kind if soft at the same time, and it is delicious.

Friday in a Wetherspoon kitchen consists of frying fish. A LOT of fish. And this morning saw a large group of lifeboat/rescue workers come in for breakfast...all 20 of them (so a slightly busy morning).

Cooked a few steaks, and they all looked amazing...so I decided I was having steak for tea. It was beautiful. I brushed it with oil with papkira and cayenne pepper before cooking, then topped it with garlic butter once it was done. And I had Charlotte potatoes (the best potatoes!). I love steak. And garlic. That sound when you put a steak into a hot grill pan....love it! Managed to cook this one perfectly too!

Going to treat myself to a cream cake whilst I watch New Girl before bed :) Then it's up to do it all again tomorrow before heading out for Leanne's birthday. It's a Disney themed night. I am going as Minnie Mouse.

Have a fab weekend folks, much love!

Cake

Yesterday I ate so much cake. Seriously, a lot of cake.
The lovely Leanne brought me some of her birthday cake. Proper birthday cake. I love birthday cake. The soft sponge, the special buttercream you only get in birthday cakes, the fondant icing...yum!
I also bought, in a moment of weakness, a large chocolate gateau from Tesco. I was hungry and grumpy when I went shopping...never a good combination! But it was so good.
Yesterday, after working from 5am till 4pm I came home, had tea and ensed up napping on the sofa until around half 7...whoops! I then proceeded to get up and make myself presentable and head along to the pub quiz with Leanne and Vee. We came 6th. Out of 6. I'd rather not talk about it. I maintain it was due to that fact that I am not very well and my illness hindered us.
So going home afterwards, I was peckish. Then I remembered the chocolate cake. Which I comenced eating with a spoon.
I didn't eat all of it though...I let Anthony finish it because there was too much even for me!
So to summarise, I like cake, cake is good, I ate a lot of cake. Cake. Good night.

Thursday = Curry Night...

...but no curry for me, as it is a fast day (part of my 5:2 diet, so much lower calorie intake than normal).

Today has been roasting again...and being stuck in a hot kitchen cooking curries all day was not ideal. However, I'm now home and much cooler and about to enjoy my new favourite green juice (no, I hadn't heard of it before either. And yes it sounds awful but is delicious!)

Here is is:

And it contains:

1 lemon, 2 oranges, 2 handfuls of spinach, 2 sticks of celery, 2 apples and a small chunk of fresh ginger.

All put through the juicer.

Have yourselves a lovely weekend, spare a thought for those of us trapped in kitchens!

Bolognese bake

 Proper teatimes are awesome. Teatime for me, is when you sit down with people you love, eat (hopefully) good food and (usually) have some decent conversation. This has been instilled into be since before I can remember. Meal times are happy times.

Tonight, it was just me and Anthony for tea. I made a bolognese bake. It was delicious. Meaty, tomato-y and covered with cheese.
I was lacking in inspiration for tonight's meal, so I went back to an old favourite. Bolognese was the first proper thing I learnt to cook. And it is a time perfected recipe (well, almost...it tastes different every time I make it, but the basics are the same).

Now in the past, I've had to trick people into eating vegetables, so adding loads of veg to my bolognese has become habit...but these days I don't have to hide it! So I usually roughly chop carrots, celery and peppers and add them to my sauce. And I normally cook enough pasta to feed an army...but with Anthony around, it doesn't go quite that far!

Well, I think it's time to take a post-teatime walk, and make room for dessert; merengues, strawberries and Mackies ice cream (ie, the BEST ice cream in the world!)

So, here's what I had for tea tonight:

Enjoy your evening you lovely people, thanks for making it this far!

My very first blog!!

Hello people of the interweb. Please bear with me...I'm new to this.

So, after posting numerous photos on Facebook of all the food I make, my sister suggested I start a food blog. I hadn't the faintest idea of where to start, or why folk would be interested in reading about my cookery, but I figured it out and decided to give it a go. Look at that, a whole paragraphy already!

Today is my day off. It's hot and humid and cloudy...feels like a thunderstom's coming. Hot weather always make me want fruit. And ice cream. And merengues. So thats what I bought when I went shopping. I feel that my shopping habits are growing up slighlty...less junk food, more fresh fruit and veg (however, I did buy cream cakes because they were reduced...whoops!)
I really wish there was a good green grocer's in Oban. Somewhere I could get fresh, local fruit. Somewhere that has lots of choice. Somewhere that has that amazing fresh fruit smell. But alas, Tesco it is.

I've been doing the 5:2 diet lately, and getting on with it quite nicely; it seems to be paying off slowly but surely. However, todaybis not a fast day. Today I can eat proper food. So I am cooking tea for me and the boyfriend. Planning a bolognese, with fresh fruit, ice cream and merengues for dessert.

Updates and photos to come this evening. Happy Wednesday folks!