A little homemade goodness.

Decorating has started in the lounge - the first coat of paint is on and the second will be done tomorrow. We went for a light grey in the end, and it's already looking fab - can't wait until it's all done! I keep thinking about the accessories I want and colours to fit in with the scheme, I just need to not get carried away...!

Tonight was a little bit of indulgence; I made me and DH homemade pizzas. He had bacon and mushrooms on his. I had spinach, mushrooms and capers on mine. It was very yummy, though it needs a bit of tweaking to be perfect - DH said he doesn't mind being the guinea pig in the meantime! 

Here is mine:

Still can't get the hang of getting it into a circle, but I can practice! Tasted good though. A nice homemade meal that was definitely cheaper than a takeaway pizza. Plus you can choose exactly what you want on it too. 

Homemade definitely is best. 

Homemade ready meals.

Something that I'm going to try and use a bit more to my advantage over the next few weeks are homemade ready meals. I'm going to make more than needed and freeze the leftovers, therefore creating homemade ready meals. 

I'm hoping that it'll make life easier in the long run, even if it's slightly more effort in the first place. 

Tonight we had spanish chicken bake, which was leftovers from a previous night. I made enough for four portions, and froze two of them. When it's been frozen, it doesn't look particularly good....:

But, once heated through it tastes pretty good! 

It's a Hairy Dieters recipe, which can be found here and it's really straight forward and healthy. 

Do you do your own "ready" meals? How do you set it up? How long can things be frozen for?

Rain, rain, go away.

I spoke too soon before about the sun shining - the weather has been awful here today! It's rained pretty much all day and it's been very dark and gloomy. Pffft. 

I've been thinking lately about what we eat (as always) but also how much processed food we eat. Over the coming months, I am going to try and cut down how much processed food we buy and therefore eat, and go back to more basic food stuffs. 

Another cheap-o tea here:

Spaghetti puttanesca, from the good food website but with some small changes (more capers and anchovies, no olives) and all food from the food cupboard again. It took less than 15 minutes from start to plate. 

N xxx

Simply does it.

I am loving the sunshine at the moment - finally feels a bit like summer!

I'm trying to incorporate more vegetarian meals into our diet, as it's healthier and also cheaper. 

This is what I made tonight:

Bean chilli with HM potato wedges. First time I've made either, and it was pretty tasty! The wedges look really pale in this picture, but they were cooked properly :) they were a nice change from rice with chilli. By using tinned harricot beans, kidney beans and chopped tomatoes, it made a pretty cheap meal for us both :) 

N x

The 'I can't believe you made that' cake.

I love cookery programs and cookery books. When Lorraine Pascale's Baking Made Easy was on the tv, I did watch it and found it to be very enjoyable. She made some amazing things and made it look so easy at the same time. 

So, when I was asked to make a cake for an 18th birthday party, I knew exactly what I was going to make. I was going to make her 'I can't believe you made that' cake, with a slight variations. I used strawberries instead of raspberries, and with chocolate fingers instead of chocolate cigarillos. 

I have to admit, it turned out pretty good. 

Please ignore how rubbish the picture is, I was taking it in a hurry!

Chocolate cake, chocolate buttercream, chocolate fingers and strawberries - who isn't going to like that?

I must admit, making a cake for the first time for someone's 18th birthday wasn't the brightest plan in hindsight, as I was pretty stressed whilst making it, but the end result was fine. In fact, if the whispers are true, it was better than the bought birthday cake they had as well ;) I'm happy with that. 

N xxx

Leftovers.

Whilst writing our food shopping list for the week, I noticed that there were two sorry looking bananas languishing in the fruit bowl. Oh no! So, I googled banana loaf, as I've never made it before, and set to work making something tasty from these:

These probably could have been eaten - but they were "past it" for both me and DH! 

All I needed to buy for this was some more butter and some eggs - both of which will be used in a variety of things, so no bother there. I quickly whipped up the batter:

and popped it in a loaf tin and then in the oven and then:

Tada! Banana loaf :) this is just cooling down on the side - DH really wants some but I've told him to wait for it to cool down a bit first, so that it's easier to cut into slices. 

Frugal living, using leftovers so that it's not thrown away. 

N xx

Lazy sundays and cake.

Me and DH have had a really lazy Sunday morning - we didn't get up til past 10am and even then we've just been sat around. I love weekends like this, where we can just be happy in each other's company and that's it. No rushing around to be somewhere. 

So, what goes really well on a lazy Sunday is an equally lazy breakfast (brunch?) when you get up. I'm not the biggest fan of bacon and eggs, plus we don't have any in, so this is what I had for breakfast/brunch this morning:

This is homemade banana loaf with strawberries and raspberries. Breakfast doesn't get better than this. If I thought that I could eat cake for breakfast every day of the week and not end up looking like a house, I totally would.

Speaking of cake, I've had a herman cake on the go for 7 days now. That's a german friendship cake, where you have to tend to it for 10 days before you bake a cake. It's quite a long time to be thinking of making a cake, so I hope it's worth it! Not had one before. This morning Herman looked like this:

This is before I stirred him, as per the instructions for day 7. The cake mix is just left on your kitchen side with a tea towel over, and it bubbles away quite happily. In fact, if there are no bubbles, them Herman has died :( but, mine seems to be very happy bubbling away. Once stirred the mixture goes back to looking like a regular cake mix, but tomorrow it will look like this again before stirring. I can make the cake on Wednesday, so I will let you know the results! 

Ahhh cake. Yum.

N xxx