Here's the guest post I did for Kaysi over at Keeping it simple earlier in the month.



Never was there such a British dish as toad in the hole. Filling overseas visitors with fear and meat-eaters with joy this classic dish is guaranteed to impress. This recipe is super easy and best served with mashed potato and veggies such as broccoli, peas, carrots etc. Oh, and don't forget the gravy!!

This recipe is good for 4 hungry tummies.

Ok, so start off with some sausages in a large roasting tin. You won't need any extra oil or fat, the sausages have more than enough in. I tend to use 2 - 3 per person.

 Pop the roasting tin in the oven at 200C (390F) for 5 - 10 minutes until browned.


In the meantime make up your batter. This is the same as for yorkshire puddings and is guaranteed to rise. Even with a rubbishy oven like we used to have in our old house.

Measure out 300ml (10 fl oz) of milk and crack 5 eggs into it. Yes, 5!!


Add 260g (9oz) of plain flour.


Whizz it all up with a hand mixer for a few minutes until there are no lumps.


When you take the mixer out you should be left with many, many little bubbles all over the surface, that's when you know you've mixed it enough.

Bring out the tin with the browned sausages in and move the outer edge ones in a bit. Keep the oven door shut to keep the heat in. Pour in the batter to about halfway up the tin. It will be a bit fuller than mine because I split my batter into two.  Pop it back into the oven and don't be tempted to open the oven again until you think it's done. At least 15 minutes....no excuses!


In the meantime take a peek at your dinner guests amusing themselves quietly at the dining table.


After about 20 minutes your toad in the hole is ready for eating.
Enjoy!

I hope you give it a try and walk on the British side!

Samantha xx

At home with Mrs H

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Some people call them batter puddings, I call them yorkshire puddings. One thing's for sure, you simple CANNOT have a beef roast dinner without them, it's just not right.



Actually, thinking about it, that may just be another British thing. Anyway, let's get going.

First up turn your oven onto 200C (390F) and pop in a bun tin with some oil, lard or dripping in the outside 10 holes. Don't put anything into the middle two.

Next begin to mix your batter.


Measure out 300ml (10fl oz) of milk and crack 5 eggs into it. Yes, 5!!


Add 260g (9oz) of plain flour and a pinch of salt.


Whizz it all up with a hand mixer for a few minutes until there are no lumps.


When you take the mixer out you should be left with many, many little bubbles all over the surface, that's when you know you've mixed it enough.

Pull your bun tin out and pour enough batter in to come about halfway up each tin. Don't pour any mix into the middle two holes. There should be enough mix for about 20 puddings.


Return it to the oven for about 20 - 25 minutes and DON'T open the door for at least 15 of those.

Serve with your roast dinner for a happy family.

Fat Tuesday, Mardi gras, pancake day...call it what you will, it's this week.

Lent is a time of abstinence, of giving things up. Traditionally celebrated as the day before Lent begins, Shrove Tuesday is the last chance to indulge yourself, and to use up the foods that aren't allowed in Lent. I'm not sure who decides what is or not allowed during Lent.

Growing up I thought that Shrove Tuesday was the day when you remember the Jews preparing to go into exile but I can't find any reference to that so I may have made it up.

Anyway, we Brits celebrate Shrove Tuesday by making pancakes. Not the fluffy fat pancakes like Americans have for breakfast but proper thin pancakes.



So...here's my pancake recipe so that we can spread the Pancake day love across the pond.

Start by measuring 200ml of milk and 75ml of water into a large jug. Crack 2 eggs into it and a pinch of salt. Sift 110g of plain flour into the jug and mix well. I use a hand mixer because I'm lazy. Dusband uses a hand whisk cos he's...well, a man.


Once your mix is ready heat your frying pan to a really super hot temperature and then reduce that down to a medium heat. If you're using a tefal pan like we use you won't need any butter or oil but if not you'll need to make sure there's a thin coating to stop the pancakes sticking to the pan.

Using a ladle I dollop one spoonful into the pan and tilt it until the mix is evenly distributed in the pan.



Leave the pancake to cook until it starts to curl up at the edges and then you can try your flipping skills. (Dusband calls them his skillzor).


I can't flip so I use a spatula to turn them over. They cook super quickly on the back so careful you don't over cook.

You can either serve them immediately or layer them up on a plate in a warm oven to keep and eat together.


Serve with chunks of fresh lemon and caster sugar.



I always roll mine up and eat with a fork and a spoon but today I realised that a knife and fork would make more sense so why do I eat them with a spoon? Anyone?!

Pizza swirls....yum, yummedy yum yum.

If you're still carrying out a new year's resolution to eat healthier don't worry, these have got a ton of veg in and if you ignore the ton of cheese you can feel you've done quite well really. I do.

Ok, so here we go. First off go to Lauren's Latest and follow her pizza base recipe. Seriously this is the best recipe I've ever used and won't use anything else now.

While that's rising make up your pizza sauce. I tend to just use whatever I've got in the fridge/cupboard with a carton of tomatoes. They used to come in tins but now come in cartons. They certainly stack better!

If you aim to eat a rainbow you can't go far wrong nutritionally.

 I started off with 2 red onions, one small tin of sweetcorn, one green pepper {if I had more in the fridge I'd have used more}, a carton of tomatoes and a sprinkle of oregano. {Orrreeeeegaaarrrrno not oregganoe cos I'm a Brit!}. I also whacked a sprig of basil in too.

 I stuck it all in the blender and gave it a good old whizz. Next time we'll cook it all up THEN blend it to give it a deeper flavour.

 Lovely..! This delicious stuff will keep for 3 days in the fridge and a couple of months in the freezer. Saying that I can't be sure as it doesn't usually last that long!


Once your dough is done (mine usually takes about 90 minutes in the bread machine) roll it out into a long rectangle.

Spread some of your pizza sauce out leaving a gap around the edges. When you roll it up the sauce will all squidge out so don't over fill it.

In the past we've put all the pepper and sweetcorn on as toppings but found it's really hard to roll so we blend it all up together.


Sprinkle some grated cheddar on the sauce. Keep some to one side for sprinkling on after.


Roll the dough up lengthways, we tend to do this together to keep it in a reasonably sausage like shape. I'm sure there's a better way to describe that! We roll it to about there then flip the top over like so....


Once it's all rolled it's time to slice it into individual swirls. Get yourself some dental floss. The un-minty type is best but we only had minty and it didn't seem to do any harm lol.


Slide the floss underneath and cross it over and pull until it slices nice and neatly. I say nice and neatly but actually this will get a little messy!

 Lay your slices on a lightly greased baking sheet and sprinkle a bit of grated cheese on the top.

Bake in a pre heated oven on about 220 C (428F) for 10 - 15 minutes.

YUM!

 Serve with some garlic bread and a side salad. All those veggies will make up for the naughty cheese and dough!


Friday night pizza anyone?


Samantha xx


At home with Mrs H

Do you ever have the kind of day that starts with you wishing you had thermal undies? To your knees. No? Ah, you don't live in Wales.

In Denver yesterday they had snow!! SNOW! In October! I don't know if that's normal for them or not but ... snow! In the back of my mind I know that as soon as snow arrives I'll be bored of it within 48 hours. Or I run out of chocolate. But still...there's something so magical about snow. Especially when you get as much rain as we do, anything's magical!

December 2010

Anyway, so, let's talk about something more interesting than the weather.

I'm gonna throw this one out there....don't hate. Do you meal plan?

Up until I started reading blogs (as in multiple ...urm...271 subscriptions) Really need to go through and have a clear out I think. Off topic...anyway, since I started reading blogs I had no idea about meal planning. Or the few times I'd heard of it I thought it was some crazy OCD type behaviour that surely could come to no good!

Meal planning for 3 months was even crazier.....how do you store all the food?!

For those who like me haven't heard of meal planning before the concept is this. You plan your meals. Simples!


In September we went on holiday, you may remember the peaceful silence that blew through this blog. No? Ah well, it was a blissful few weeks. Anyway, I was the Catering Manager for the holiday. My mum and her fancy man and my 2 sisters and their men. And I was in charge of the food. Me, who couldn't really care less if I eat a meal or a bowl of cereal.

I thought I'd better do a list of meals and then buy from those and then the family type persons wouldn't starve. Actually as it happened the opposite happened and I fed people so much they rubbed their bellies with glee thought I'd done a good job.

I wrote a list of meals that everyone would like and for the funny ones added a variation. My little sister is gluten free so I tried to bear that in mind.

Then I planned them into the days, wrote a list of all the ingredients and bought it. We all put in £50 each couple and at the end of the week there was almost a fifth of it back and everyone went home with some food goodies :)

So, when we came home I was like...urm, it was so easy knowing what was for dinner and not having to decide and then start cooking etc. So we decided to try it for October and see if it made our lives easier.


Monday's we're free so we go to the supermarket, Tuesdays is church at 7pm and we work til 6pm so we eat after church. We get home from church around 9pm. Wednesdays is Kidz Club so we leave work at 4:30pm (we work at home lol) and get home around 7:45pm and then start cooking. Thursdays is youth group so we leave work/home at around 5pm and get back around 8:30pm and start to cook. Fridays is our evening off.

So, generally we don't get to start cooking until around 8pm - 9pm. It's not great but what can you do? But having a meal plan would make it easier to be prepared and know what we're cooking.  Sometimes we have our main meals at lunchtimes but we're dealing with such short days it's crazy.

Ok, so I downloaded a month's calendar type thingy from Carina Gardner. Click here to go download it. 


Don't click the pic and save it, it's a screenshot, go there and download it for free. It's absolutely gorgeous.

Anyway, so we wrote a list of meals we liked then arranged them on the days. Pizzas feature heavily mid week cos they're quick and easy. Longer dishes feature Friday - Monday because that's when we have time.

One mistake I made the first month was not to leave any 'free' days. I really fancies pancakes for dinner one day but I was all so planned that I couldn't justify changing a meal cos I'd already bought the bits!

Parsnip two legs wanted to call in and say hello!

Then I wrote a list of things I'd need to buy for the meals. Then we did one main shop for all of the ambient goods we'd need for the entire month and then every week we'd just pop and get the fruit & veg.

Obviously it made our life easier, there's no denying that. We always knew what was for dinner AND we had the anticipation of knowing what was coming. When you only just decide you're having sweet potato wedges that night there's no time to look forward to having them.

Now here's the best thing about it. Our grocery/toiletry & cleaning spend went from £46 a week to £32 a week. Um.....what?! That's a crazily small figure to spend a week on food. £32. And that includes cleaning and toiletries. The toiletries are always going to be a good price though cos I use Avon. It's the smart girl's choice.

Source via Roxanne on Pinterest

Sure it helps that we don't eat meat. Dus isn't a vegetarian but he's quite happy not eating meat most of the time. We can get all the nutrients and goodness from meat elsewhere in our diet. Thanks Emma for helping me find where to get my iron & calcium!

It's not that I deny Dus meat, but when you are trying to be thrifty you have a choice. Do I buy beef at price X or do I buy spinach at price X. Of course, if you love meat you'll probably find it harder to cut down your meat spend lol.

We never cut the cost on our fruit and veg though, a fair price for a fair day's work. Fair trade makes sense.

Don't forget that I'm a girl who used to be addicted to takeaways, burgers, fried chicken etc. But I stopped eating it and it was tough the first 6 months not to cave in but I'm so glad I did. It's truly addicting and now I don't even fancy it. Even if I'm desperate I'd far rather NOT go to McDonalds than go.

Anyway, so, me being a little odd, I keep a record of how much of our spend is on different things and now if you're still with me and not too freaked out I'll share it with you.

I encourage you to do it yourself for a month and see what your average weekly spend is, it helps us to ensure we're not spending lots of money on silly things that we 'fancy' instead of good nutritious food.

Average week in October

Fruit & Veg - £6.68
Dairy - £4.57
Ready Meals (fresh soup in a carton lol) £0.32
Tins & Jars - £1.13
Packets, condiments & oils - £0.47
Pasta & rice - £0
Cereals - £0.76
Bread - £1.09
Breakfast breads - £0.57
Baking - £0.92
Juice - £1.15
Chocolate & sweets - £3.91 (OOPS!!)
Soft drinks - £0.92
Alcohol - £1 (4 beers for £5 and 5 weeks in October)
Pizzas - £0.30
Ice cream & frozen puddings - £1.02
Frozen - £0
Crisps & snacks - £0.83
Consumables (kitchen roll, loo rolls etc) - £1.68
Cleaning - £0.83
Toiletries - £4.68

Average week in October Total: £32.01

Just food: 24.82

Yes, ok, there are just the two of us, but we consider ourselves to eat well. We don't use value brands where we don't like them but we don't get premium brands when the value brand is just as good.

If now you're shaking your head saying, well it's ok for them they don't eat much or they don't have the same likes as I do, that's ok. But I would definitely challenge you to keep track of what you spend every week for a month broken down like this and analyse what you're spending on what.

We've cut back on crisps, soft drinks, alcohol and chocolate to bring our weekly shop down and the meal planning only helps because instead of just buying 'food' and keeping a store cupboard full of food we don't actually need, we're buying meals and nothing goes to waste or sits going dusty.

(side note - we still have a store cupboard with lots of bits and pieces in - Just In Case).


Go on, I dares you, try it for yourself.

Lots of love,
Samantha xx

At home with Mrs H

p.s. in the interest in 'keeping it real' tonight's meal may or may not be chocolate & popcorn. :D