Category: General ramblings

It is time…. (and a jam-tastrophe)

Yup, I am going to put my gingerbread air freshener in my car. This may be the extent of our decorations this year!

And now onto the jam-tastrophe. Using my SuperJam book I was very confident- I followed all the steps so no idea what happened. I have made jam before (plum and cinnamon- yum). The idea of the superjam is to use concenrated grape juice instead of regular sugar. Sounds simple, right? Well in the book it said to reduce the 3 litres to 1/4 in about 30 mins.

Grape juice in pan above.

Grape juice after 30 minutes below.

Yeah, not really reduced to 1/4 yet.

This took about an hour and a half. My gas bill!!!

The fruit was looking good- I used cranberries and blueberries (frozen ones).

Then you had to add the reduced grape juice to the fruit and boil it all up.

It boiled like crazy. I added pectin (to help it set)- I followed the recipe to the letter. I skimmed the foam off the top and checked that it got to the right temperature on the sugar thermometer.

But it will not set- it is very runny, more like a sauce than a jam. Hmm. Next time I am going back to regular sugar I am afraid- I am going to try mango and apple next so wish me luck! And any idea what went wrong? (I am blaming the grape juice myself)

It seems like a waste of all the fruit to throw it away, so I might call it “coulis“- will that work? (But of course give them real jam too once I make it hopefully!).

🙂

 

 

Fun weekend

Hey peeps!

I hope everyone is having a lovely weekend, and all the US folks had a lovely Thanksgiving.

I came home on Friday to another veg box:

I think that is Kale? Any suggestions will be gratefully received! And some leeks too- I saw a nice recipe for goats cheese and leek tart, but as I don’t like pastry I will have to change it a bit! I love the curly peppers too.

Last night we went into London to see “Million Dollar Quartet” for Andy’s Christmas work do. It was brilliant! I had no idea what it was about, except it was something to do with Elvis. Well it was basically a live rock show- these people who acted as Elvis, Jonny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis (is that his name?) and someone else (Karl Perkins??) played live music the entire time- the guy on the piano was crazy and it was so lively- it made you want to be around in Memphis or whereever in the 50’s. We didn’t eat until after the show (went to a nice Italian where the veggie option was a butternut goats cheese salad- literally a pile of rocket, dressing, butternut cubes and goats cheese- plus a lovely lemon tart to share with Andy mmmm) and we got the last tube train by the skin of our teeth! We got home at 1.30am (so late for me!) and I surprised myself by sleeping until 11. I never lie in, most weekends I am awake by 8am, even if I had a super late night, so I was shocked when I saw the time. But it was a great evening and at least we could take it easy today.

I cooked some pancakes for a later breakfast while enjoying my new cookie monster PJ’s- how cool are they??????

Then we headed over to Hatfield House for the Christmas market- it was so packed there! It was lovely to wander around and see all the stalls- so many pretty decorations and gift ideas. I bought myself something:

Some tangerine marmalade and some vanilla curd. They also had banoffee curd which I was tempted by, but it was not with real bananas, and I don’t normally like banana flavour. They had Christmas preserve (lemon and ginger) which I was also tempted by. And a fab Christmas teapot (red and white stripes in various widths with reindeer and star shapes on it)- I was so tempted! I got my Dad his present too- might take a photo tomorrow in the light. Now I only have to get something for my brother (and do all the home-made gifts).

We wandered out of the market bit to look at the house.

It was a very wintery day.

Very busy too- so many cars parked up!

Trying to keep my hair out of my face- it was very windy out there! The grounds are lovely, I often forget how close by it is.

Once we got home I went for a quick run (4 miles) in the wind- managed it in 39 mins so I am keeping the fast pace up for a little further too. I have been challenged on Nike+ to run 60 miles before Christmas, but as I only have 3 weeks for this I am not sure I will make it. But it will give me a little extra incentive to get out there.

I was meant to be going on a Christmas cupcake decorating course tomorrow but it has been postponed until next weekend now, so I did a little baking this afternoon (will post tomorrow I think) and have been doing a spot of tidying and things too.

We are taking it super easy this evening with a film at home- no battling on busy tube trains for us tonight!

So- any nice leek or kale recipes? Is that kale? 🙂

Have you seen (or even heard) of Million Dollar Quartet? And which west end show do you love the most?

Expanding my hummus-orizons

That makes sense, right?

I never used to like hummus much at all- too garlicky and lumpy. But I had eaten a few nice (ready made) hummus sandwiches, and after reading about how smooth Sabre hummus is, I tried it and loved it.

This weekend I popped to Waitrose and noticed a little stack of hummus pots on offer.

Slow roasted tomato, roasted red pepper and lemon and coriander. I deliberated for ages over buying these, how silly! Mainly because I don’t like coriander.

Anyway, they are so tasty! I had the red pepper hummus for lunch one day with a food doctor pitta and a red pepper for dipping.

I had the most delicious dinner- some rocket, roasted sweet potato/carrot/butternut (so loving this right now) topped with some goats cheese, and a toasted wholewheat tortilla to dip in the roasted tomato hummus. Amazing. My best dinner for ages and ages and ages! All I do with the tortilla( you know the flour wrap things) is put it on a baking tray, heat it in the oven for 5-10 mins (the longer the crispier) and then slice with a pizza wheel.

I had the lemon and coriander hummus for lunch and actually liked it! I surprised myself. Nice and lemony, not too much coriander.

Following on from my excitement that I might like other types of hummus, I bought some red pepper hummus from Sainsbury’s too. I had it with some quinoa beetroot and squash risotto, goats cheese,more roasted orange veg and some pumpkin falafels. These were not as good as they sound, tasted like normal falafels for me. But the hummus was another success!

Finally, I don’t think I have put a picture of some tea on here for a while. What is going on??? I have been really tired this week- my run was hard work on Monday, we got worked like crazy at aerobics on Tuesday and I was soo soo tired! Last night I had a short run which turned out to be pretty speedy- 3.5 miles in 35 mins, and I had to wait at road crossings for a while. Any sub 10 min miles for me is good 🙂 So today I am having a cup of tea (Teapigs chocolate tea) and a Christmas almond bar thing to give me some energy for body pump later. I hope I don’t chop my head off with the bar.

So what is your favourite type of hummus?

And anything you tried recently to expand your horizons?

WIAW- aerobics edition

Hey all

I am so glad it is finally Wednesday! All week I have been feeling like it is the next day (today I really thought it was Thursday). Hmm. On the way to the weekend now. Thanks to Jenn as always for organising the midweek party!

I chose Tuesday (last Tuesday) as that day I remembered to take photos of everything.

Breakfast:

Apple and Eldeflower yoghurt with chopped apple and rude health muesli.

Snack;

Shocking photo! Nakd cocoa orange bar anyway!

Lunch;

Warm salad (heated up at work)- roasted carrots, butternut and sweet potato with tomato, chilli, wholewheat giant cous cous and quinoa, plus a pear.

Pre aerobics snack;

Raisins, hazelnuts and milk chocolate chips from Graze. Mmmm.

Dinner:

Baked sweet potato with almond butter, plus some roasted veggies (pepper, courgette, onion, aubergine). Almond butter on a baked sweet potato is the best thing right now! Loving it!

Dessert:

Vegan pumpkin spice cake. Yum again 🙂

I realised I never include my drinks in WIAW- they are always the same though! Water with breakfast, water at work, one cup of rooibos or mint tea at work, real tea with dinner, plus more water, mint or rooibos or chamomile tea in the evening and water at bedtime!

What is your favourite flavour combination right now? Almond butter and sweet potato for me right now 🙂

More budgeting

Hi peeps. Glad you all found the tips useful from yesterday- it is something I always think about (but still need to get better at myself too).

It is that time of the week again (or maybe fortnight? I have not been that great at keeping track!) to see how the Blogger Budget challenge is going. Thanks to Laura for organising this.

big budget buttonbig

So far I have been doing OK with it. I have been saving money each month towards car, holiday and general things, and have been checking my on-line account more frequently. I have been organised with Christmas presents and have bought most of them now. I was planning on making gifts too, so I have planned out which weekend I will spend making jam, spiced nuts, stollen, and decorating Christmas cakes.

I have also been resisting the call of Clinique (and deleting the emails with offers without reading them!)- I have avoided going into Boots and am working my way through all the millions of samples.

After my success of making my own almond milk I have not repeated this, but I will as it was super easy. Maybe in a week or two!

One thing I was thinking about was using things like reward cards to get the best out of your spending. I really love the Boots Advantage card, (you get points when you spend money and then each point is worth a penny to spend back), and we also do things like use Tesco’s vouchers to get cinema tickets and things. One thing we use a lot is Quidco . The website is a bit like a broker I suppose, but for example if I was looking for car insurance then I would look on Quidco, and they offer cashback if you go to the websites via quidco. Does that make sense? Anyway, it is worth signing up and if either of us need anything (like car insurance, house insurance, hotels, even places like Play have quidco on purchases) we go through them (when I remember- another target for me to work on!) and it all adds up. Every penny counts after all!

Which loyalty cards do you like?