Lets cook! ~ Tuna Pasta and other fun things!

It's cooking time again!

Yay

This one takes about 25 minutes all in all and costs about £1.70 in total with all the ingredients, it will serve up 2 healthy sized portions!

You need:

1 mug of pasta

2 mugs of frozen peas

185g can of tuna (the little, flat cans)

200g pot of creme fraiche

a little sprinkling of cheese

Chuck the pasta and the peas into a pot of boiling water, once they're cooked drain them and return them to the pan.

Drain the oil from the tuna can and add it to the pan, along with the creme fraiche, maybe some pepper if you'd like, or lemon juice.

Mix it all together, gently so that the tuna doens't turn into mulch

Serve up, sprinkle with cheese, eat and make appropriate sounding yummy noises

 

Dumpling Delight!

Dumplings are a huge indulgent food that my nan makes, I love love love them, being away from home and all I decided to recreate that comfort food and it was a surprising success and super duper easy
The recipe itself is called a lamb cobbler, but essentially it's a case of making a spaghetti bolognase sauce, if you don't know where to start with that my recipe here will help you out
http://alexiaesque.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/got-15-minutes.html

Then, take a mug of self raising flower and half a mug of water and add the water slowly to the flour until its a kind of gloopy but wet texture, but dry enough to hold it's own shape.

Spread the bolognase type mixture into a baking dish and pull off lumps of dough and roll into balls, this recipe makes about 6 dumplings in total. Lightly coat the dumplings with egg, or much less waste use milk so that they go a pretty golden colour, and put them in the oven at 200 degrees celicus for 25 mins- 30 mins
and then you get lovely fluffy dumplings!

I'm pretty certain this is the simplest way to make dumplings, if you want to get fancy you can add herbs and spice and all things nice!

Waga-Yumma

My sister and I went to Wagamamas for dinner and it was scrum-diddly-umptious
I only ever went once before and I had the Ramen which I thought was as good as it got, but oh no no no no...
I introduce to you the:

Cha han

stir-fried rice with chicken and prawns or fried tofu, egg, mangetout, mushrooms, sweetcorn and spring onions. Served with a side portion of miso soup and pickles

 

It was serisuoly good, I swapped out the prawns for double chicken portions and it tasted uh-mazing, even those weird yellow looking things tasted like spare ribs somehow? Even though it looks like it would taste citrusy. Then the rice was kind of like egg fried rice but way less greasy than your average chinese takeaway, the miso soup was pretty good too, the pickles were a little spicy for me...

My sister usually has the chicken katsu but wanted to go for something healthier, and healthier she got!

 

Teriyaki chicken donbur

grilled juicy chicken glazed with orange teriyaki sauce, sticky white rice, with thinly sliced carrots, pea shoots, spring onions and sesame seeds and a side of spicy kimchee

 

We ate with really cute wooden cutlery, much better than plastic cutlery and feels more 'authentic'

So we give our Wagamama night in 5 Waga-thumbs up!

What's THE JUICE?

To help make getting up out of bed, I like to have a breakfast I can look foward to, to make the transition from asleep to awake a little easier.
I'd consider myself to still not be a 'morning person' but people  often ask
"How do you have so much energy in the mornings!?..I thought you said you weren't a morning person!"
I never really thought about the answer, until I realised it probably has a little something to do with my breakfast. I call it my 'Super Sweet Detox' because it is all three of those things!

So here's how it goes...

Take yourself a melon (Galia or Honeydew)
A handful of Blueberries
3 Applies

Chop it all up! The size of the pieces depends on how good your blender is- mine is an old rickety thing so I have to cut pretty much everything up into bite sized pieces

Throw everything in the juicer as you chop it up, it doesn't matter what order you juice it as it all gets mixed together anyway! Of course, Blueberries can go in as they are

You should have enough there for about two days- store it in the fridge in the meantime!

Voila! The end result (alright, alright I know it looks a little incy wincy bit like someone vomited, but thats the texture of the apples- If you buy apple juice and it looks like that, then it's the 'real deal' and fresh from the apple) If you want the colour to be a little more vibrant, throw in some more blueberries!

Why you should try this...
It is filling despite it being a liquid form- if you really can't handle having nothing to chew on in the morning then have a banana too!
It simply tastes good
You can sip it on your journey to work (less rushing around in the morning)
It is thoroughly good for you (unlike most cereals which have a lot of junk in them even when marketed as 'healthy')
It gives you more energy and the energy is released slo-o-o-w-l-y so that you can power on for longer
Blueberries are a superfood- they hold magical powers (well kind of) here's what research tells us:
-Blueberries can improve memory
-Blueberries can postpone the onset of cognitive problems frequently associated with aging
-Blueberries can reuce damage to muscles following overly taxing exercise
-Blueberries can protect the nervous system from stress
-Blueberries can protect the retina from sunlight damage and oxygen damage

Top tips...
If the thought of getting up in the morning to prepare this fills you with horror, prepare it the night before and store it in a jug in the fridge
Take the seeds out of the melon to half clean up time (those pesky seeds get everywhere)
When an apple is blended, it all tastes the same so you may aswell go for the cheapest

Happy juicing!