Monday 26 September 2011

Tea and cake make Sundays great!

Recently my weekends have been filled with moving things, unpacking items, painting and other housework, which it bores me to contemplate so I won't relay the details to you...  This weekend was a little different, on the Saturday I got the boring chores out the way did some baking and packed up my little blue car for a trip to see my sister in Nottingham. 

The saturday night was filled with games of Rockband, Dr Who and anticipation of the following days events.
 The next day I iced the cupcakes I had made, my sister iced her cake, we went walked to Molly's Marvellous Market and then went to Cake Eaters Anonymous in Nottingham town centre.

The place was filled with other like minded cake enthusiasts and there was an abundance of cake!

Obviously we had to have tea with the cake, it would be rude not to!

The event helped raise money for the Nottingham Multiple Schlerosis Therapy Centre and was covered by the regional news section of BBC News. There were traditional cakes, biscuits and even a cake biscuit hybrid served in a plant pot!

All in all it was a very nice way to spend a Sunday evening! Same again next month?

Monday 19 September 2011

52 Recipe Challenge – week 12.

I’ve had to take a bit of a break from the blog recently  as I mentioned in an earlier post and mainly from the recipe side of things as I haven’t been doing as much home cooking as I normally would be. I put this partly down to not knowing where half the cooking implements have been packed for the last few weeks not just laziness...  One of the good things that happened when I was packing was coming across forgotten treasures like money in pockets, sparkly shoes and a little recipe zine I bought from a festival.

This little zine was bought a few years ago at Peace in the Park from Sheffield Animal Friends and whilst I am not vegetarian I like to have a few vegetarian recipes in my recipe repertoire. The recipe I chose to try this week was Carrot & Ginger Soup.

To make this recipe you need:
2 Tablespoons Olive Oil
1 Onion chopped
450g Sliced Carrots
400ml Water
225g Diced potatoes
1 Tablespoon fresh ginger
Salt and pepper

I started off by heating putting the oil in the pan and chopping up the onion, when this was done I heated up the oil and added the onion which I cooked on a low heat for 5 minutes.

Whilst the onion was cooking I washed and chopped the carrots, ginger and potatoes.

Then added them and a sprinkle of salt to the pan.

Once this was all in the pan I fried them for about ten minutes before adding the 400ml of water which I then brought to the boil before letting the mix simmer for a good fifteen to twenty minutes.

Once the carrots were cooked I took it off simmer and tried to blend the mix in the food processor; however there wasn’t enough liquid so I tried to poke it with a coffee spoon.... when that didn’t help I decided to add some more water which let me blitz the mixture properly.

Once it was blended I glanced over the recipe again and realised I missed out the bit about putting the pepper in with the water so I sprinkled it with pepper in the hope it would help.

I ended up freezing the soup and eating it for lunch at work the next day, it did the job of warming and filling me up but it wasn’t as tasty as I would’ve liked it to be. 

If I try this recipe again I think I will grate the ginger as the recipe suggests rather than chop it and try to taste the mix for seasoning rather than realising it needed it too late.

Sunday 18 September 2011

Five More Great Things...

I thought it was time once again to share some great things from the last few months:

Great thing number 1:
Sheffield’s second annual food festival, which was smaller this year due to council cuts but still great with stalls from local producers and restaurants including one of my favourites, Aagrah.

Great thing number 2:
Tramlines, Sheffield’s citywide free festival featuring local acts such as the Kate Jackson Group and Heaven Seventeen as well as acts from further afield such as the Ash and Los Campesinos.
I caught The Kate Jackson Group playing the Barkers Pool Nandos stage on the Friday, three years after the end of the Long Blondes Kate Jackson is still a great front woman with a formidable voice. I also managed to squeeze into a packed Bowery to catch the Dutch Uncles set at the end of the night. The next day I watched Dananananakarod on the Barkers pool stage before dancing along to the wonderful Los Campesinos. On the Sunday I finally made my way to the main stage on Devonshire Green to watch the brilliant Jonny Foreigner make the noise of five people whilst only being a three person band, after they rocked out we danced and sang along to The Futureheads. 

The Futureheads might be older than Jonny Foreigner but they know how to work a crowd.   The last act we caught of the evening was the big headliner Ash who we thought only had two hits but were surprised to find they had a good seven or eight.

Ash put on a good show rolling out hit after hit but they struggled to be as good as Jonny Foreigner or The Futureheads. I really enjoyed the atmosphere of the festival and was slightly overwhelmed by the sheer number of bands playing but plan to see more next year.

Great thing number 3:
Bought our first house

This year me and my boyfriend decided to start house hunting and found a gorgeous little house we wanted to buy, so after having an offer accepted and months of negotiating we finally got the keys to our first house at the end of July!

Once that was done we got to work painting and decorating, before deciding we’d put it off enough and moved in at the start of September.

It took Frankenstein and Tuxedo a bit to get used to it...

...but now they seem just about settled.

Now the real work starts, unpacking and finding homes for all our things!

Great thing number 4:

My sister passed her driving test – Congratulations big sister!

Great thing number 5:
Finding Cake Wrecks in my local supermarket..
I’ve loved the blog Cake Wrecks for a while and find their posts hilarious so I was both pleased and disturbed when I came across these chappies in the supermarket.

So those are some great things which have happened to me and my family recently, what’s great in your world?

Monday 12 September 2011

No place like home...

I have taken a slight blog hiatus recently due to bank holidays, decorating and packing.

 And moving house...

So things have been a bit crazy around here lately and the blogging had to be put on hold but fear not it will return soon! The kitchen is nearly normal only three boxes in there now!

That's all for now folks but keep your eyes peeled!