Drinking in Pregnancy?

Only the soft stuff I’m afraid, and an odd slurp or small mouthful of wine with dinner every so often! So someone offering to send me a bottle of a new bottlegreen green tea & elderflower sparkling pressé. According to the press release,

“bottlegreen has selected the finest handpicked elderflowers and combined them with infused green tea and lightly sparkling water to create the perfect summertime drink. Made with only natural ingredients with no added preservatives or sweeteners, bottlegreen green tea & elderflower sparkling pressé brings together two traditional summer flavours in an unusual but tasty combination that provides instant refreshment on lazy days in the sunshine or at alfresco parties.”

Well, since the sun came out last week, and I’m still looking for different flavours to enliven my ‘in-between meal’ drinks, I was happy to review a bottle. The OH was particularly interested as we normally buy the Lemongrass and Ginger cordial, and mix it with sparkling water, so this was a nice change. The tea flavours certainly drifted through and I’m guessing the unusual aftertaste was the elderflower. Although I’d never normally buy an Elderflower pressé, usually being a bit flowery for my tastes, the tea in this calmed down the flavours and they were much more subtle, almost being a more refreshing and lighter version of iced-tea.

I’ve always liked the shape and design of the bottlegreen bottles, but this has been contradicted by the fact that if it’s not a cordial that I add to, there just isn’t enough in it at 750ml. Especially as this is a drink for a warm summer’s day with friends: You’d need several. The OH alone drinks half the bottle in one large glass. Retailing from £2.30 a bottle, other bottlegreen pressés are currently retailing at around £2.20, but I can’t yet find this particular one on the supermarket shelves. It could end up costly, and I’d rather buy a cordial and add my own sparkling water, thus bringing the price down somewhat. Having said that, compare it with other similar drinks, it’s probably priced about right.

A refreshing and summery drink no doubt, but goes down too quickly: a victim of it’s own success!

March’s Fresh from the Oven Challenge – Hot Cross Buns

An apology: since the chickens arrived at the end of October, I’ve been a little obsessed with building them a palace! Then in November, we discovered we were expecting a baby, so this then took control of my life for a short while! Now, half way through my pregnancy, I am beginning to return to my ‘normal’ self (!) and am taking up blogging again! To get me started, I thought a return to the Fresh from the Oven challenges might be just the thing!

This month’s challenge, hosted by Helen from Fuss Free Flavours and was a little different. It asked us bake something yeasted, using flour where you know either where it was grown or where it was milled. I’m a little spoilt for choice in Essex, but opted for pure and simple plain flour from Marriage’s.  No more than 3 miles from where I live, it seemed the perfect choice to help begin the Easter campaign: Hot Cross Buns.

I used a basic Delia recipe which you can find in full here, but the yeasty bit didn’t do what it was meant to, and despite them proving well, the buns were a little on the solid side! (My OH compared them with the use of a Christmas Pudding as a cannonball in Marriott Edgar’s poem, ‘Old Sam’s Christmas Pudding’!) If, however, you have your own way of making your yeast starter, I suggest you use it and adapt as necessary!

You need flour, sugar, currants, mixed peel, mixed spice. butter, eggs, yeast and salt.

Measure out your ingredients as per Delia recipe.

Combine into ‘buns’ and leave to prove.

I opted to make flour and water crosses, although I’d roll them out as thin as you can or then end up rather chewy!

Bake and glaze with a sugar syrup mix when done!

Have a look at what everyone baked at the Fresh from the Oven website  – can’t wait to see how we all used our local flour!

Farmhouse Breakfast Week

What makes the perfect bacon sarnie?

You may, or may not, have known that this past week has been Farmhouse Breakfast Week. I read an article recently that said something along the lines of (bear in mind I can’t remember where I read it, or what the actual figures were) that in the 1950s, over half of us began our day with a cooked breakfast but today it’s dwindled to less than 5%. Now, I have just plucked those figures out of thin air, but am fairly certain they aren’t that far off. It’s probably done wonders for our cholesterol as a nation, but I’m sure we’ve made up for it in other ways, such as eating fast junk food.

Everyone has an answer to the above question of bacon sarnies: some prefer white bread, others brown, and others still have theirs toasted. We argue over brown or red sauce, if any, or a combination of the two. Butter, marg. or none at all? But surely the most important question is the bacon we use? The other peripherals are simply the detail.

I was recently sent some bacon from Denhay Farm, including their own label dry and Wiltshire cured, and their Spoilt Pig range. Reviews suggested that this tasted ‘like bacon used to taste’. Now, since I’m not, perhaps, old enough to know what that actually means, I can hazard a guess. So I began the task of creating my perfect bacon sarnie:

Sunblest white bread

Heinz tomato ketchup

Lurpak spreadable butter

Spoilt Pig smoked bacon

I enjoy the fact that the fat from the bacon melts into the butter and combines with the ketchup to dribble out as you take that first bite!

I spread the bread thickly with the butter, and one side with the ketchup. Grill the bacon until the rind is crispy, and place three piping hot rashers into the sandwich. Slice so you have two rectangles and devour with a cup of coffee whilst still hot and oozing! I couldn’t take a picture because by the time I had done, my sandwich wouldn’t have been piping hot, and that's the pleasure of it! If you’re using a good quality bacon, and by this I don’t mean a supermarket’s finest, I mean a butcher’s cut or Denhay farm, you’ll find it hardly takes any time at all to grill, mainly due to the lack of added water. Within minutes the bacon is cooked and a quick turn-up of the grill will ensure the fat is crispy and you’re ready to go. 

As for my cooked breakfast, well, I’m usually just a sausage and grilled tomatoes girl with white toast dipped in, but the OH likes the full works. So it was that this weekend, he managed a plate of bacon, sausages, beans, eggs, tomatoes, mushrooms and toast with orange juice and coffee. I never do black pudding, or hash browns, but this did hit the spot!

Cherry Plum Gin–a homemade Christmas

Left it too late to get to the shops? If you’re anything like me, you’ll have used the snow as an excuse to stay in, keep warm in front of the fire and eat comfort food. What you won’t have done is brave the elements to finish the Christmas shopping. What I did do, several months ago however, was use the last of the cherry plums from the garden and pop them in a jar with some gin and sugar to make Cherry Plum Gin. At the time, it seemed the day would never arrive where I could actually open it again to see if it had worked, but that time has come. It’s not as sweet as I’d thought it would be, but the little sourness is actually quite nice, and I could always add more sugar if needed.

Usually, the girls and myself agree not to ‘do’ presents, but go out somewhere together instead. This year it was all planned, but we really couldn’t be bothered by the time the date came, so instead, I decanted the gin and gave a small present to each: perfect!

And it really is Christmassy, especially the colour!

The Snow Day Bake-Off: Banana and Walnut Tea bread

 

I was recently invited to join Julia Parsons’ event, and since we’ve had many snow days, have regularly made this very easy and delicious tea-bread. It does taste best straight from the oven smeared with butter, but is equally as good a day later with a nice cup of tea. And it’s easy to make.

Ingredients:

3oz butter

6oz sugar

1lb bananas

2 eggs

7oz self raising flour

1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1/2 tsp salt

4oz walnuts

Method:

Combine the butter and sugar until soft and creamy.

Mash the bananas and add to the butter mixture.

Beat the eggs and add gradually, stirring thoroughly every time. It will curdle at this stage if your bananas were quite runny! Don’t worry.

Stir in the walnuts, then the flour, bicarb. and salt until just combined.

Tip into a well buttered loaf tin, lined with greaseproof paper.

Put into an oven at about 165 oC for about an hour. If if starts to brown too much on top, cover with foil. After an hour, turn the oven up to 180oC and leave in for another 15 minutes.

Turn out onto a wire cooling tray and see if you can resist until cooled!

Jamie’s 30 minute ‘ Sea bass & crispy pancetta, sweet potato mash, Asian greens, 1-minute berry ice cream, sparkling lemon ginger drink’ meal!

This was a task for which I was thoroughly prepared: I’d bought all the ingredients (taking a list as long as my arm!); I’d watched the TV programme for the recipe I was going to do so I could visualise everything I should be dong and when; I had the book open at the right page; I placed ALL my equipment, and I mean all, out ready to use; the pan of hot water and warm frying pan were on and ready to go.

What more could I do? Well, little things did come up but I’ll tell you about those as we go!

So, the timer was at the ready to begin! And so was I!

I worked quickly and methodically through the instructions but soon confused myself. Actually, it wasn’t me that caused the confusion, it was Jamie! His TV show told me to do the pudding of frozen berry yoghurty ice-cream first, whereas that certainly wasn’t the first step in the book, but the last. I decided I’d like to get that done and get it in the freezer to chill, so I slotted that in earlier in the instructions. It also meant I didn’t have to do it when everything else was hot and ready to be served.

The second thing I soon realised was that having to read the instructions as I went along really slowed me down: moving the cookbook from surface to surface as I chopped, added to a bowl, popped into a pan, etc.!

As I chopped, sliced, stabbed, opened, threw, yelled and grated, I was desperately trying to think of things I could do to save even more time so I’d definitely make the 30 minutes deadline: peeling the little stickers off the lemons and limes, for example! One thing I hadn’t considered was the mess, and when I say mess, think every surface covered with a mixture of unopened and unused ingredients, bits of chopped off sweet potato, chilli seeds, the ends of the asparagus, empty packets of fish and pancetta, opened jars and bottles with their lids strewn around (probably on another surface or, indeed, the floor), splashes of berry and yoghurt mixture across the floor…you get the idea! It’s a good job I’ve got a kitchen with quite a lot of surface area as it really did cover the place. One reason is you can’t use the same table spoon twice, for example. It’s been dipped in honey and is then used for fennel seeds. Now normally, we’d wash it in between, but there simply isn’t the time – and I admit it, I didn’t count the amount of spoons I would need before beginning so found myself woefully short, using up valuable time to retrieve some from the dishwasher and hope they were clean.

The timer was still ticking as I turned the fish over to ensure the flesh was just cooked and as I began to plate them on top of the mash, it sounded its final bell.

Beaten.

Fortunately I’d also set the stopwatch, which was still going strong, so I continued. We sat down to eat 33 minutes after beginning the cooking process. The flavours themselves, as usual with any Jamie recipe, worked beautifully. With the addition of sesame oil, soy, ginger, lime and chilli, the meal was definitely Asian themed and although quite strong, complemented the fish rather than overpowered it, but one less wouldn’t have been missed. The OH actually went so far as to say that it was one of the best meals I’ve ever cooked and I must admit, it was very tasty.

As I’d worked quite quickly, it was hard to actually relax into the meal, and when I looked across at the kitchen, even less so. Although the dinner was very tasty and didn’t take that long, I didn’t enjoy the experience of eating it. A real shame. It is, however, easy and if you didn’t push yourself, (say, went for 45 minutes) cleared up as you went along , knew the recipe and flavour combination so you didn’t have to read as you went and peeled the sticky fruit labels before beginning (!) it would be a far more pleasurable meal!

If you’d like a go, why not see if you can beat my time? I’d be interested in knowing what you’d do differently to try to save valuable minutes. Watch the recipe at jamieoliver.com before you begin and see what you think! Read about the experience of others at the Guardian’s TV & Radio blog – I only found this as I was writing this post!

(Apologies for the quality of some of the pictures – the camera had a little tantrum!)

Findus Fresher Taste

I recently picked up some vouchers for this new Findus range and thought, ‘Why not?’. I am, after all, human and don’t have time, or the inclination, to cook from scratch every night, even though it’s my downtime. So, last night, my relaxing was done in a hot bath and I opened one of the new products to see if it really was as good as a fresh meal.

The promotional text on the website assured me I’d want to ‘savour every mouthful’ of the Tender Chicken Breast with Vintage Cheddar and Bacon sauce – so did I? The chicken was moist, not dry after the recommended cooking time, and the sauce was tasty, but looked nothing like the think, oozing sauce on the picture: It was much, much runnier. The ‘buttery seasonal vegetables, which count as two of your five a day’ sort of made up for it as I rarely get my 5 a day, even on a good day!

The OH’s piece of ‘Flaky Cod Fillet’ was a remarkably small piece, and all I can say is that they must use side plates in the pictures on the website! His 1 of the 5 a day packet contained ‘a medley of crisp vegetables (which) completes this beautifully balanced dish’. There was a small piece of butter in with the vegetables to keep them moist and it did it’s trick, but unfortunately, this also meant the potato pieces were soft rather than crispy: you could always remove them from the pack for the last five minutes to crispen up in the oven, but that does of take the convenience aspect out of the equation.

Does it do ‘what it says on the tin’? Is it actually a fresher taste? My first question was exactly what I was supposed to be comparing the fresher taste with. If we’re talking about whether it tasted as if it was fresh produce rather than frozen, then yes, it most definitely did. The meat / fish was always cooked to perfection, never overcooked or dry, and the vegetables just past biting point. The only thing that gave it way was the slightly watery sauce. For taste alone, the flavours were strong and you could easily swap the vegetable packets over to put the greens with the fish and the potato and root vegetables with the meats, which I feel would work better. The addition of peppers to a white fish with a cream mornay sauce also seemed a bit of a strange combination, but maybe that’s just me?

As mentioned, I used vouchers to purchase my packets, but out of interest, wonder what you’d pay for this as a ‘ready-meal’ alternative? You get a small piece of meat or fish, a sauce, and a packet of vegetables that counts as one or two of your 5 a day. Very easy to prepare, either in the microwave or in the oven, you simply put two short cuts into the top of each ‘bag’, and they’re ready from anywhere between 7 (ish) and 25 minutes.

So have a think…my OH decided he’d pay up to £2.50, but then never does the shopping so doesn’t know the price of things! I’ll put the answer after the tags on this post to give you time…

£3.99 a pack. From a personal viewpoint I’d never pay this when you could make it from fresh ingredients for less, but it did take the phaff out of cooking one night from five, and tasted nearly as good!

(I have amended this blog after double-checking my facts and realising that the packs are on sale at £3.99, not £4.99 as I currently stated. I apologise for that: my memory obviously cannot be relied upon!)