This weeks activities..

This week I've been experimenting to some degree. Earlier on in the week, I made crab cakes. Basically crab and mashed potato that's been breadcrumbed and baked. They was okay, OH loved them. He's more into fish then I am. I'm not sure of fish for unknown reasons... Oddly.

After those was a success I went on to recreate scotch eggs. I love scotch eggs and to make them isn't quick, but it sure is fun! Basically boil your eggs to your desired taste, once cooked surround in sausage meat and then breadcrumb and bake. These were loved even by someone who doesn't normally like scotch eggs!

Lastly, bagels! Easy peasy, and bloody beautiful! I couldn't get the shape right as my dough dried a little on top when proofing, meaning it wasn't as workable, but I made do and managed. Next time I'm going to try some onion bagels and maybe some tomato ones!

When it comes to doing the egg, flour and breadcrumb coatings, the thicker the coating you want, the more times you repeat the steps. So you start with flour, this creates a barrier so the egg doesn't make everything sloppy! Then once you have coated in egg, return to the flour and keep repeating these two steps to build up the thickness of your coating. Once you have the desired coating, dip in egg once more and dip in breadcrumbs. This is always the final step! But this works really well for fried chicken too!


Both the crab cakes and scotch eggs cook in a 200 oC oven for 20-30 mins until golden brown.
So why not treat your family this weekend?

Also, regardless of where you have found this blog, whether it be through Instagram, Facebook or word of mouth, if there is a particular item you want me to cover, or have a good recipe you think il like, please please get in touch!


Till next time.
Ttfn 😘
Dee X

When time isn't on your side...

My biggest bug bare is when people say 'I don't have time to cook'. Without convenience food you would have to cook. The difference being that home cooking takes more often less time than convenience food. For example, tonight we had battered fish and rice. 30 mins max! I had portions of frozen cod in the freezer which I defrosted, coated in flour, battered then fried. The cooking time was 15-20 mins tops.

You see there's no big secret, except your freezer. Now you also have to be willing to put One weekend a month and you will be good to go!
2 days cooking?
What!?
But doing this frees up the rest of your time throughout that month.

If you make a basic stock, your choice of meat, basic veg and some seasoning, that can then be made into a casserole, pie, stew, the list goes on. It's about making the building blocks. Some good ziplock bags are great for items with a good deal of liquid, simply place laid down flat in the freezer to freeze, once frozen they can be lined up and won't take much room!

You will need a good  stock pot in order to make some dump it bags, doesn't need to be big, but decent.

I like to freeze a selection of veg into portions with herbs spices and honey. Once cooked, beautiful honey roasted veg!

Cooking doesn't have to be time consuming, you just to have a certain amount of dedication.
Once you have found that, I will guarantee you will be motivated to do more.

Since becoming a home cook, I can't taste convenience food the way I used too, it's now become a challenge to recreate all those convenience favourites! As mentioned before tonight was a chippy dinner! Now although I *still* love a good chip butty from t'old chippy, I wanted to see how easy battered cod would prove to be. I can't say I'm experienced in cooking fish, as in, i NEVER cook fish. But it worked a treat! I would advise using fresh fish as mine was bought frozen. Don't get me confused it was still really nice, but the little touches certainly help!

Again sorry for the lapse in posting, work is pretty much my life lately!

Till next time my lovelies!
Ttfn (ta ta for now)
Dee 😘 X

Sunday fun day!

Who doesn't love a good productive but relaxed Sunday? Today started off with a trip to the shops. To be honest it was fairly successful, I left my cash card at home and left with just a handful of coins worth £10.50. I set my self the challenge of getting as much useful items as possible. I didn't end up doing a big shop as I hoped instead got bits and bobs from where ever. My shopping clocked in at £8.17! For that I got 2 X 4Pints of milk, bag of frozen green beans, cooking oil, dozen eggs, potatoes and 6 onions! Bobby dazzler!

I got 3 large bell peppers from the local market also, chopped them up followed by the onions and managed to get 6 portions of each out of the 3 peppers and 6 onions. I cut and freeze them in portions to save having to use them within a small time frame.

Yesterday I bought a bottle of Volvic touch of fruit water, since changing my eating and drinking habits, water is all I want! Well not any more after today 😡. I was curious about the sugar content, so I loaded up the Sugar Smart app (if you don't have it, GET IT..NOW!) anyhoo the 'Volvic water' only contained 5.6 cubes of sugar!.. Seriously. -.-   They found a way to add sugar to water!! Well from now on its safe to say I'm keeping well away from bottled water and sticking to the tap!

Oooh I did however make DFC for tea, that's Dee's fried chicken! As per when it's made in my household it vanished...quickly!

I like to share my thoughts, luckily for you I'm gonna share with you my DFC recipe! Oooooh!

So to start off, as I cook just for two I used 1 fat chicken breast and cut it into strips. Grab a Jug and put roughly 500ml of blue milk, full fat, add a good slog of lemon juice, like enough to curdle the milk!

I apologise I'm terrible at measurements, I just work by eye! Don't start flapping about curdling milk, here, it's a great thing, trust me.. We're both still alive and well!

Get a decent sized good bag and fill it good and proper with some plain flour, add salt, pepper, 1 teaspoon of baking powder and a good lobbing of chicken seasoning. (£1.00 roughly at Asda it's also on the world foods isle ;) )

Now remember the curdled milk? You have actually just made Buttermilk! (Basically left overs once milk is made I think) so buttermilk and baking powder are a magical pairing. Due to the acidity of the lemon juice in the milk, it will react with the baking powder and make your batter layer easy and stay really light! Also buttermilk helps keep the chicken moist and tender and in no way shape or form do you taste like your eating what is basically curdled milk.

Then grab your chicken strips and dunk them in the buttermilk, make sure there covered good and proper, then transfer out into the flour and fully coat. Then just repeat this step and lay them out on a baking sheet.

Fry in a big pan with at least half full of oil and fry away! You're looking for the golden brown texture. ***TOP TIP*** when deep frying any type of meat or fish, slowly lower the meat into the oil and slowly pull its from one side of the pan to the other doing this until you get to just below your fingertips. This stops your meat from sinking to the bottom of the pan and sticking!

So there you have it! My productive day!

If there is any recipes any one wants to see me cover feel free to leave a comment with your ideas!

Much love!
Ttfn (ta ta for now)
Dee 😘 x

I'm still here!

Wow, it's been a week already since I last posted! I apologise I don't post more regularly. I've recently got back into work and I'm still in my first few months so I'm just diving head first into everything work related.

Yesterday was my day off and my god I made the most of it! Made a beautiful evening meal, I call it Tea as we're in Yorkshire. You may call it dinner or something else of the type. We had a chicken breast cooked in a small bit of oil and some butter. (Adding oil ensures the butter doesn't burn!) but yeah cooking the chicken in butter also gives it a roast chicken taste.
My partner last week, managed to grab some new potatoes reduced to 10p! (Plus some pitta breads at 5p which we made pizzas with) so we skinned them and boiled them and mashed them with a little bit of chive primula. (Cheese in a tube) bloody beautiful.

Before I go further let me tell you my history with Yorkshire pudding. For 3 straight years I struggled to make a good Yorkshire pud, one day after weeks of frustration, I found a recipe that just stuck in my head and best of all? Delivered the Yorkshire pudding I had strived for!!

So easy.  3 glasses equal size. 2 eggs in the first, milk to the egg level in glass 2, flour to the same level in glass 3. Bash it together with some salt and pepper and you're good to go!
I added a small bit of Caribbean Chicken seasoning to my batter and wow!
Although I failed when I threw together my Yorkshire pudding.
I separated the egg Yorks and binned the whites before realising I needed the whites! Doh!
So I just added an extra egg, totalling 1 egg 2 Yorks. It did enrich my pudding. So luckily it turned out well!
Doing my shopping this weekend, so I will snapshot all the good deals I find and share them! Lastly, I haven't forgot about the community I'm trying to build! I have been having some thoughts which I will share with you this weekend! It's pretty exciting news!

Till then my lovelies!
Ttfn (ta ta for now)
Dee X 😘

Pitta bread pizzas
Grab a pitta and slap some Tomato Purée (should be in your store cupboard!) on, few mixed herbs and some cheese and just bash it in the oven 180 degrees and roughly 5 mins or so, just until the cheese melts!

Don't forget to check my list of store cupboard staples for my guide on items you should Always have in! You can find the list Here

Freeze!

As a self confessed scrimper,  I can't help but go into some what of a rage when I'm out shopping. I just can't function in supermarkets with the amount of choices banded with the pound signs.

Today whilst out shopping I noticed the retailer selling 3 slices of beef for £1.50, I wouldn't say they was by any means chunky slices but average. In my head it's more logical to buy a beef roast, cook, prep and re-freeze.

Don't even get me started on milk, last week I noticed one of the retailers selling a 4 pint of milk for £1.35 as opposed to the 89p in the other big hitters. I calculated that if I bought my milk regularly from the dearer supermarket, I would spend £11 more a month!
Is it just me that finds that pretty hard to swallow?

That being said, another tip for you! ;) lucky devil!
Shit corner!
The place where good food goes to die. Soon as the yellow sticker gets slapped on, their fate is sealed. I will hunt down the reduced section (shit corner as I call it) in supermarkets as that's where you will find all the bargains. Almost everything you find can be frozen too.
Result: Reduction in waste and increase of coins. Smashing!

I rely on my freezer a lot, as I only do the shopping once or twice a month. I love freezing things too. As I only cook for two, a lot of the time I have leftovers. From meals to indgrediants.
Did you know for example, cheese can be frozen, so any left overs from being grated can be popped into an airtight container and bashed in the freezer. That cheese is then great for the home made pizzas! Yummy!

You may be surprised at how much you can actually freeze! Il post some links to give you an idea of what you can freeze below. See how many may actually surprise you 😊

Till next time..
Ttfn! (Ta ta for now)
Dee 😘 X


http://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/node/2869
http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/top-tips-freezing-food
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/nov/23/what-food-freezes-well-and-what-doesn-t-freeze-well

Let's get cracking!

Today has been one hell of a busy day! Pizza and pinwheel cookies made before I left for work then writing the blog soon as I got in!
Honestly pizza is so easy to make! We have pizza quite often with not only how easy it is, but to experiment with toppings! I've found the below pizza recipe does two medium sized pizzas. Double for even larger.

* 375g (13 oz) plain flour
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 1 tablespoon caster sugar
* 7g dried active baking yeast  (2 level teaspoons)
* 2 tablespoons olive oil 225ml warm water
1. Combine flour, salt, sugar, and yeast in a large bowl. Mix in oil and warm water. Spread out on a large pizza pan. Top as desired.
2. Bake at 190 C / Gas mark 5 for 20 to 25 minutes.

We had roast chicken pizza and garlic bread. Don't forget the tomato purée on the base!! It's not the same without!

Now before I get on to the cookies.. Baking is a science. Most bakers will tell you the same. Some days it works, some not so much.

Today was one of those days. The cookies didn't hold together as they should have, but they was in the fridge all day. I wouldn't recommend this if you want beautiful uniform biscuits.
However they taste beautiful they just became chocolate vanilla cookies rather than pinwheels per say!

Makes: 4 dozen biscuits
* 190g plain flour
* 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 110g butter, softened
* 100g caster sugar
* 1 egg yolk
* 3 tablespoons milk
* 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
* 170g plain chocolate chips, melted

Prep: 30min  ›  Cook: 5min  › Extra time: 1hr chilling  › Ready in: 1hr35min
1. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt.
2. Cream together the butter and the sugar, then beat in the egg yolk, milk and vanilla. Add the flour mixture. Mix to combine.
3. Divide dough into two parts. Leave one to the side (this is the vanilla part). Add the melted chocolate to the other half, and stir well till combined. (Melt in microwave or over simmering water in double boiler being very careful not to scorch or burn). Chill both halves of the dough for easier rolling.
4. Roll out the black and white sections separately, each between two sheets of greaseproof paper. Roll into rectangles 5mm thick. Place the layers on top of each other, with one sheet of greaseproof paper still at the bottom. Using the paper to help you, firmly roll together lengthways, as you would a swiss roll. Wrap in cling film and chill dough for up to one hour.
5. Preheat oven to 200 C / Gas 6.
6. Unwrap and slice chilled dough to about 3mm thick rounds. Place on an ungreased baking tray.
7. Bake for 5 to 7 minutes. Remove and cool on a wire rack.

As I mentioned in the previous post I will no doubt cover, timings and batch cooking over the coming days!

Peace, love and hugs!
Ttfn! (Ta ta for now)
Dee 😘

Let's get spicy!

Today i will cover my list of essential spices that should be in everyone's cupboard! I love spices personally, I feel the need to add spices to almost every dish. I don't have the largest collection but knowing how to use them is enough.

The first spice on my list is Garlic powder. I know, is it even a spice? Anyway I digress, I personally love garlic. I find it handy to have garlic powder in as even just a little sprinkle can add depth.
Turmeric, cumin and curry powder are great for any seasoning and also the bases of a banging curry!
Mixed herbs, chilli powder and rosemary are last. Simple but elegant spices that dance over any food their added too.
Don't forget the salt and pepper. I don't cook with salt, only season.
I've found Happy Shopper products has a spice and season range and all of the above items can be found for 75p each or 2 for £1.25.

So how do I use my spices?
Well let's take tonight for example, burgers are on the menu and you may be surprised at my additions! You can find the recipe below!

So that's it!
7 spices is all it takes, not bad huh?
Chances are, next I will cover being timely and how to get the most out of your kitchen without spending all day in there.

Keep tuned!
Ttfn (ta ta for now).
Dee 😘 X
Footnote:
Had a quick scour around the top 5 supermarkets, 500g of mince will set you back around the £2 mark.

Simple burger recipe
Serves 4
200g beef mince
2 egg yolks
Splash of soy sauce
Mixed herbs
Garlic powder
Salt
Pepper

Preheat oven to 200°C/400°F/ gas mark 6.
1. Mix all ingredients in a Bowl until well combined.
2. Divide mixture into four.
3. Taking one piece of the mix, roll into a ball and squash into a patty between your palms.
4. Repeat last step for remaining pieces.
5. Place on a tray and place in oven for 10-15 minutes.
6. Serve when juices run clear.