Pinterest non-fails

Sometimes great things happen when Pinterest and I collide - aside from procrastination, daydreaming and 'oh look, another impressive skylight'

I decided to take my Pin dreams to make them into a reality, and what a productive time that it has been!
Until this point, the only things that I have tried are all food creations and an abundance of makeup looks, but today we are just sticking to food.

First up:



The Veggi fingers- I'd like to point out that mine looked basically nothing like this, the crisp - oh the unattinable crisp



The mashed potato stuffed bell peppers - These were pretty good, but my goodness so filling, it's surprising hoe much potato can fit into one little pepper. I also added two cloves of garlic all crushed up to the mash to kind of give it a little 'zing' I served with roasted carrots cut into little match sticks.


Pasta with fresh tomato sauce, courtesy of Martha Stewart.
 This dish and I were onto a loss at the start really, as I accidentally bought tinned plum tomatoes as opposed to fresh, so the fresh element of this dish falls out the window at about that point. However, I put it in the food processor with a lot of basil, 3 cloves of garlic and heated it over a stove, slowly adding cornflour to thicken it up a little. A few twists of pepper, and this and I were a match made in heaven.


Sweet and Sour chicken - At no point do I pretend that this is good for you, but my goodness, it tastes really good. The tangy vinegar, the sugar. It's a mountain of flavour- I skip out battering the chicken just because it's an extra fiddly and adds more grease and more time. This is one of those twice or three times a year dishes. Mostly I just like the sauce and would pour it over a vegetable stir fry to give it a kick.

So there you have it, Pinterest pins that really do work.
Keep in mind that I have had plenty of Pinterest fails too.
For more fun visit www.pinterestfail.com One of my favourite procrastination destinations (aside from Pinterest)

The easiest Teddy Bear chocolate cake recipe

I am no cake baker and I certainly don't pretend to be any good in the kitchen but I do know for one thing, that this chocolate cake tastes really good and there is just no way to mess up a recipe with two steps.
They are as follows:

1. Mix 200g of self raising flour, 50g of cocoa powder, 125g of butter, 250g of caster sugar, 2 eggs and 160ml of water together until the mixture has changed from a darker to a lighter shade of brown (add some vanilla essence if you're feeling 'adventurous')

2. Pour into a pre greased cake pan and place in a Moderate temperature oven

Conversion: Moderate = 180 degrees celcius = 350-375 Fahrenheit = Gas mark 4-5

It takes about 30 minutes to cook, but keep checking on it to ensure it doesn't burn, the mixture is quite 'wet' so I find that one moment it looks of a mousse texture, and the next it's got a burnt top

I made an unsuccessful teddy bear shape the first time around due to not greasing the pan (from Morrisons, £4) well enough, so I was not taking any chances this time.

If I can give you one magic tip it would be to wait until your cake is stone cold before icing. Stone cold doesn't mean a bit warm, or just warm on the bottom, it means cold as though it has been left alone so that every single crumb can cool. It's the most painful part of baking I find, but then I remind myself that there is no point taking all that effort and love to make something, to ruin it at the last hurdle. Happy baking! Happy Bear!

Making an egg-less Egg salad!

 This was such a creamy delight, I wasn't expecting it one bit, and how perfect for the shining sun!

Here is how my eggless Egg salad went down:
Take a generous palm full of cashews
3/4 cup of water
Half a squeezed lemon (or just a tablespoon of fresh lemon juice if you have it)
3/4 teaspoon of Tumeric
1 clove of garlic
and blend blend blend!

Get whizzy with it until it looks creamy and delicious, and pour over delicious raw veg. I used a chopped red pepper, it was seriously delicious, refreshing, light but filling and dare I say it again... so creamy!

Nuts are the wonder ingredient to get your sauces and soups creamy without the fat and calories of using milk, cream and yoghurt!

Enjoy in the sunshine!

My Pesto is the Besto

What do you get when you blend together:
1 handfuls of basil leaves (Stems removed)
A glug of olive oil
Palmful of pine nuts
1/2 mug of water
Clove of garlic

Blend until smooth and creamy!
Pour over warm pasta and enjoy!

I paired it with a flat mushroom topped with sun dried tomatoes and a slice of cheese and baked in the oven for five minutes!

I never thought I'd turn my back on the beautiful green jarred pesto  that I love so dearly but now I honestly have.

Raw Vegan Red Pepper Soup recipe

Is this just a fad?
Yes.
I'm trying a raw vegan diet for 7 days only. I love bacon, I love bread and I love nutella too much for this to be a lifestyle change. I'm told this could help clear up my skin, or if not it could at least make me feel better, more energy etc etc
A week may not be enough for it to kick in, or I may end up extending it if I really enjoy it, but I doubt it!
Here was my dinner tonight, it was really delicious and soo much easier than actual cooking - certainly a perk of going 'raw' the food gets to your plate within 5 minutes.
This is the red pepper soup recipe that is 100% from www.therawtarian.com
Head over to there for the full recipe, but this is how it went down for me...

I took a 1/3 cup of plain cashew nuts and soaked them in water for an hour so that my little smoothie blender would blend it up easier.

Then I took a red pepper and washed it, then I cut up 3/4 of it roughly, and 1/4 of it finely.

I threw the 3/4 roughly cut into the blender, along with all the drained cashew nuts and 1/2 mug water.

I added a pinch of dried mixed herbs just to give it a little kick (not in the original recipe)

I blended it up for about 2 minutes, until it's almost completely smooth, there shouldn't be any little grittiness of nuts

 I scattered the 1/4 of finely chopped peppers in the bowl of soup, this recipe makes enough for one person.

It tastes really good, I can't believe how creamy it is, all because of the nuts. Also, the red pepper makes it really naturally sweet too. But I do recommend adding the herbs for an extra something.

Then for dessert, it just so happened that the supermarket were selling 300g grams of raspberries for £1 because they went out of date today, so I snapped those up and ate the whole bowl! Raspberries are my favourite!

Extra Sweet and Super Sour chicken recipe

This recipe is a 'win' for taste
but a 'fail' for health

The recipe is as follows:

Chicken Breading:
3-5 chicken breast
salt and pepper
1 cup cornstarch
2 eggs, beaten
1/3 cup canola oil

Rinse chicken, trim off fat or extras and then cut into 1 inch cubes. season with salt and pepper. Dip chicken into cornstarch and coat all the way and then into eggs. Heat oil in large skillet. Cook chicken until browned. Place in baking dish. 3 chicken breasts can be in a 9x9 but 5 chicken breasts fits better in a 9x13.

Sauce:
3/4 cups sugar
4 Tablespoons ketchup

1/2 cup white distilled vinegar

1 Tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon garlic salt

Whisk until smooth. Then pour evenly over chicken. Turn chicken so the sauce gets on both sides and then put in the oven at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. turn chicken and then cook for 15 more minutes.

recipe courtesy of: http://madeitateitlovedit.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/sweet-and-sour-chicken.html

It's super straight foward and doesn't really require anything at all, I was excited to try it because I'd made sweet and sour chicken before that was just super bland, with a thin lifeless sauce- The picture sold it to me:

So I followed the recipe as best as I could, but my errors were this:
Thinking that beating one egg instead of two would be enough to coat the chicken - it's not and all the breadcrumb crusting falls off if you don't have enough egg

Not having a skillet so shoving all the chicken together in a little sauce pan- the chicken merges into a big chicken lump and the cornflour coating ends up mostly on the bottom of the pan

Halving the sugar in this recipe- I began to pour out the sugar measurement and suddenly realised that this would all be going into me- I freaked out a little bit so poured half back in the bag which then made for a rather thin sauce... which you see me try to resolve later... Next time I will use brown sugar and maybe get away with using half since it would make a thicker sauce.

I bought an onion for the recipe too to chop up and add in, and that worked a treat.

You can see how watery the sauce is, and the onions added in

 15 minutes before the end of cooking time i was frustrated that the sauce wasn't especially sticky so I decided to thicken it up with a bit more sugar, then flour... well I had a bit of a flour-tastrophe and accidentally poured in more sugar than i anticipated, so much more that the sauce got sticky... a bit too sticky! Thicker than wallpaper paste, so I boiled a kettle and added hot water slowly in an attempt to thin it out a little, the result looks nothing like the picture, but I've given up trying to make mine look like the picture anyway...

My goodness, it tasted fantastic, despite the thick sauce, despite the fact that the chicken isn't all crumbed. The recipe really does taste like the local chinese restaurant, it was pure indulgence and next to no nutritional value whatsoever.

When I make this again (and I will, it's in my top 3 favourite things to make) I willl...
Skip the coating in cornflour step, it's less healthy and a bit faffy for nothing
Use 1/4 cup less vinegar, the vinegar was amazing at adding the 'sour' but I think I overmeasured
Add more onions and red and green peppers to give it a bit more nutritional value
Add flour again if need be despite using brown sugar but be more careful to add it slowly

Pinterest Winterest - a recipe that WORKED

The hilarity of pinterestfail.com was supposed to put me off trying anything and everything that Pinterest promised to be delicious, easy or 'the best'
But I saw this recipe and did wonder if it would be too good to be true

This is the recipe itself:

• 1 large head cauliflower (the one I used was at least 7″ in diameter
• olive oil for drizzling
• Few dashes garam masala (optional)
• 3 medium to large sized peeled sweet potatoes, cut into 1″ pieces
• 1 sweet onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic
• 7 cups filtered water

First, preheat your oven to 400 °F and cut up your cauliflower into bite sized pieces. Sprinkle cauliflower lightly with garam masala. Place cauliflower onto ungreased cookie sheet and lightly drizzle with olive oil. Place in oven and let roast until golden brown on the tops and tender, but not mushy, about 20-30 minutes. There’s no need to flip ‘em. Just remove from oven and let cool while you cook the rest of the soup.
In large stockpot, bring sweet potato, onion, garlic and water to a boil. Salt (abt 3/4 tsp) and stir. Reduce heat and allow to remain at a constant simmer until sweet potatoes are tender. Add in cooked cauliflower and divide soup into 2 parts.
Let soup cool and then blend one part soup in blender until very smooth. Combine with second part soup and stir. Salt to taste and warm up over stovetop if needed.

From Manifestvegan.com



Here's a little side by side comparison, mine is on the left... or I wish it was! Mine is on the right hand side and distinctly less photogenic and kind of messy looking, and the cauliflower on top sank before I took the picture which doesn't help matters!
Nonetheless, it is a really really easy recipe. Has a sweet and mild taste. I added dried mixed herbs to give it a bit of a kick and next time I'd add another clove of garlic, you might want to add a little spice too if you want to! So although it may look like a Pinterest fail, it tasted like a Pinterest win!

The Hot Chocolate of Dreams

How to make the perfect hot chocolate!

1.Fill your chosen mug up with cold milk
2. Put 2 scoopfuls of the hot chocolate powder into a little saucepan
3. Pour a little of the cold milk into the saucepan and mix to make a paste while the pan is on a medium heat
4.Add the remaining milk to the saucepan
5.Mix until it is warmed through
6.Pour into a mug
7.Froth the hot chocolate with a milk frother or just top with whipped cream
8. Grate some chocolate to make real chocolate sprinkles or failing that just sprinkle some chocolate powder

The strangest dinner ever...

All I had in my cupboards here at university was the ingredients to make bolognase (no spaghetti) and since I was hungry enough I decided to just make it and deal with whatever fell out the pan onto my plate.
Then I cam up with the ingenious (or not so) idea to have toast with it!
Like toast bolognase or bolognase on toast!
It was all working out so well in my head and this is how it came out!

Maybe not so great after all, actually it was rather strange. I think I much prefer with spaghetti.

My dessert on the other hand was a delicious success!
I had a banana, chopped it up and mixed it with a Soya vanilla yoghurt.
It tasted like the kind of thing I would eat as a small child but it was sooo good!

I'm glad that you can see my place mat was a textbook, but clearly I should give up this university nonsense and go to culinary school instead or something!

Sunday Comfort food

Toad in the hole is up there with my huge 'comfort food' dinners, it's essentially just stodge and sausages- I was never allowed it at home because it's kind of a greasy meal and really not my mums type of meal.

But here's my sneaky recipe for a delicious toad in the hole, it would feed about 2/3 people, maybe 4 little portions if you added veg to the side too

- heat your onion to 22o degrees celcius/ gas mark 9

-put 1 1/2 mugs of plain flour, 3 beaten eggs and a little splosh from a 1/2 mug of milk.

- Do a little mix, when it's come together but looks a little dry, add the rest of the milk and keep mixing with a fork or a whisk until the mixture looks like single cream, if it's just not happening and is way too dry, add water a little at a time.

-Get a casserole dish and do a little swoosh of oil around it, and lay out about sis sausages and place it in the oven for about 5 minutes

-Take the dish out and pour the batter in, on top of the sausages and put it back in the oven.

-Leave it for 25 minutes and it should rise and go all fluffy and delicious!

-Mix up some gravy if you like, cook some veg and serve

 

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

 

Soups up!

So it's getting cold and you need something warm and delicious and comforting like a bowl of hearty ol' soup! Right?

Here's how the soup goes down:

1.Melt a cube of butter in a big saucepan, then add one chopped onion, one small chopped potato, 1 carrot chopped, 1/2 a red pepper chopped and 2 cloves of garlic chopped for two whole minutes while you stir it all around.

2.Then add a 400g tin of chopped tomatoes, a tablespoon of tomato puree, 2 and a half mugs of water, and a stock cube and let it all boil baby!

3.Once it's boiled, take it back down to simmering for ten minutes, then add a mug of uncooked pasta, and keep simmering for 5 or 6 more minutes.

4. serve up, eat up, enjoy!

Add crusty bread with butter for more deliciousness, my bread was just boring old bread unfortuantely

Got 15 minutes?

This is how to make some finger-licking (although you don't eat this with your fingers) spaghetti bolognase, this is how it goes down...

-Heat some oil (I prefer rape seed) in a large saucepan and fry 1 onion and 2 garlic cloves for a minute.

Add half a packet of mince meat (250g) or a vegetarian meat substitute and cook it up until it's not a gross pink colour anymore

Then mix in a tin of chopped tomatoes (400g) and 5 mushrooms sliced up- Stir it all up and bring it to the boil so it's bubbling then just keep it on a low heat for ten minutes

While that's heating, boil a pan of water for your pasta and once it's boiling drop the pasta in

Add some herbs if you want to the bolognase and skip out the salt, just add pepper.

Drain the pasta and put it on the plate, add the bolognase and serve!

This makes enough for about 2 people, or you can keep half and save it to eat for lunch the next day
Hooray for cheap student cooking!

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!