Latest cooking adventure... Moroccan Rice!

I haven't cooked a proper meal for weeks as I've been so busy so I decided to set aside an evening last week to actually cook something substantial. I was getting very bored of beans on toast and pasta and pesto!

I dug out my 'Mince 100 Everyday Recipes' cookbook and decided to try the Moroccan Rice dish as it had lots of varied flavours in it and was different to anything I'd ever cooked before.

Here's how it turned out...

I'm well aware that it doesn't look very appetitising in this photo but I was really pleased with the finished product. I would never have thought of combining some of these ingredients but everything worked together perfectly. It tasted even better on the second and third day! I haven't had a freezer for the last two years so I often eat the same thing for four successive meals... let's just say I'm very excited about having a freezer soon. 

Here's how how I made the Moroccan Rice:

Ingredients

500g fresh beef mince

1 onion, finely chopped

1 garlic clove, finely chopped

1 tsp cumin seeds

1 tsp ground cinnamon

2 tsp ground turmeric

100g dried apricots, roughly chopped

50g raisins

225g basmati rice

600ml beef stock

2 tbsp pine kernels, to garnish 

Method

1. Dry fry the mince in a frying pan/wok for 4-5 minutes until it starts to brown.

2. Add the onion and garlic and cook for a further 1-2 minutes. I always add much more garlic than the recipe recommends... garlic is good!

3. Add the cumin seeds, cinnamon and turmeric and cook for 1-2 minutes, stirring constantly.

4. Add the apricots, raisins, rice and stock. Cover and cook for 15-18 minutes until the rice is tender. I had a slight problem with this step as my wok doesn't have a lid... I put foil over the top to try to stop the water evaporating but it didn't really work so my rice wasn't cooked as well as it could have been. Just something to bear in mind! Don't panic, I'm still here to tell the tale so I didn't get poisoned by my partially cooked rice. 

5. Scatter the pine kernels over the top and serve immediately. 

I'll definitely be making this dish again soon. Has anyone got any other recipes for me to try? 

Christmas presents... the baking edition

This is the third post in my 'What I got for Christmas' series... I'm feeling very blessed to have had so many lovely presents. Thanks again, everyone!

After making shortbread for the first time a year ago, I've been well and truly bitten by the baking bug. I don't bake too often as I'm very wary about putting on weight (and about spending too much money on ingredients!), but I find it very therapeutic and rewarding when I do decide to do some baking. As a result, I decided to put some baking accessories on my Christmas list this year.

I love these pretty tins my parents bought for me for Christmas. I always store my baking creations in various tupperware containers which isn't ideal, so I was delighted with these tins which will be used especially to store my biscuits, cupcakes, brownies and whatever else I decide to bake in the neat future. They're so beautiful!

I also had this apron, baking mitt and tea towel set from my parents. I always end up with floury clothes (and shoes and face and hair...) whenever I do any baking so this apron will come in very handy. I also love the fact that my apron, oven mitt and tea towels will be coordinated! I love the cheery pattern on these items and will probably end up wearing my apron every time I cook to protect my clothes. I'm sure some people will think it's quite sad that I'm this excited about an apron... each to their own!

I also had this lovely Hummingbird Bakery book from Nicola which I mentioned in my first 'What I got for Christmas' post. I can't wait to bake some tasty items from my book while wearing my new apron, then storing the finished products in my new tins! 

Did you get any baking goodies for Christmas?

Diet advice, please!

Ahh the confusing world of diets and dieting... I'm very strict about what I eat during the week and used to think I ate a healthy and substantial diet, but now I'm not so sure. I'd like some advice, please!

I go to the gym nearly every night after work and burn an average of 450 calories each time. I often feel quite weak and wobbly after a tough session, and I've had to buy some emergency jelly beans from the sweet machine on a few occasions before driving home. I also recently fainted during a Stereophonics gig because I suspect I hadn't eaten enough before going. Not my finest hour, but at least it was at the end of the gig and not at the beginning. If I had to choose somewhere to faint for the first time, I definitely wouldn't have chosen a packed arena containing one of my favourite bands of all time!

I absolutely love food (as you'll already know if you're a regular reader) and I'm much less strict on weekends, but I do try really hard to be good during the week in terms of diet and exercise. I want to lose more weight before my wedding next August, but I think my weight loss goal might be unrealistic as I haven't lost a substantial amount of weight for a while according to the scales, yet I've gone down a clothes size in the last few months. I think I must have reached the stage where I can't actually lose much more weight so it's all about toning up. For someone who weighs themselves every day and judges themselves based on their weight, this is hard to accept! I am a healthy weight for my height, but I don't think anyone ever really wants to believe those figures.

I find it so difficult to know what a healthy and nutrituous diet should contain... the media is always publishing conflicting stories about good and bad foods, carbohydrates always have mixed reviews and everyone has a different opinion on what makes a healthy diet. I'm not even sure if I'm eating enough during the week, especially as I go to the gym so often and burn 400 to 500 calories every time. I'd hate to find out that I'm actually hindering any weight loss because I'm not eating enough, not eating the right things or starving my body of the energy it needs.

To sum up, I'm getting fed up of struggling through the confusing world of healthy diets so I thought I'd ask for advice from the blogging community!


This is my diet on a typical week day:

Breakfast - 2 Weetabix biscuits with semi skimmed milk

Lunch - Beans on toast (half a can of Tesco Light Choices beans and two slices of Hovis Nimble bread, 51 calories per slice)

Dinner - Either poached eggs on toast (Nimble bread again) or a bowl of pasta and pesto, veggie stir fry, veggie curry or chilli con carne. I'm not a vegetarian, I just don't like spending money on meat!

Snacks - Apple (12:30pm), banana (4:30pm), Weightwatchers yoghurt (after lunch), two breakfast biscuits (one before lunch, one after lunch), Options hot chocolate with three marshmallows (evening), a handful or two of sultanas (evening), multivitamin with iron (evening).

Yes, I really am that strict with the timings and quantities.


I know this diet isn't particularly varied but I think it's pretty healthy on the whole. It's also important to note that my food budget is very small due to all my other monthly expenses, and I'm also way too busy to cook meals which require a lot of effort every night. I usually cook a huge meal once or twice a week then divide it into 4 or 5 portions for the rest of the week.

The big questions are... am I actually eating enough and am I getting enough nutrients from the food above? Is there inadvertently too much sugar in  my diet? Am I eating enough from all the vital food groups? Am I just thinking about this too much? Should I put my weighing scales in the bin? I'd be really interested in hearing your thoughts!

Marks & Spencer's £10 Dine in for Two

I've never even considered buying food from Marks & Spencer because I've always thought it's extortionately expensive. However, my boyfriend suggested trying their £10 Dine in for Two option over the bank holiday weekend for a change. It sounded like a good deal and we fancied a night in, so we went to Marks & Spencer in Culverhouse Cross to see what we could find. I was quite excited about seeing the words 'Food Hall'... I'm easily pleased.

You can choose a main, side, dessert and drink for... you guessed it, £10! Unfortunately there wasn't a huge amount of choice on offer, but we still ended up with an appetising three course meal.

The bolognese pasta melt looked amazing, so I didn't mind that it was the only main course on offer. There were plenty of sides available (chips, onion rings, broccoli mix, salad, peas and carrots), but we decided to go for the peas and carrots so that we could pretend to be healthy. Although the chips and onion rings were extremely tempting, we didn't really need any more carbs to go with our main meal! There wasn't much choice on the dessert front either, but our Lemon Tarte au Citron slices looked fantastic so we were happy to go with those. Neither of us are big drinkers so we decided to go for two bottles of White Grape Juice rather than getting a bottle of wine. Rock and roll.

The pasta melt only took 30 minutes to heat up in the oven, and the cheese on top was beautifully crispy when it came out. The peas and carrots took a few minutes to heat up in the microwave so we served those with the pasta melt. The melt was easily big enough for three people, but we polished it off between the two of us as we eat more than the average person. Sad but true. It actually tasted like something you'd order in an Italian restaurant, so I was very impressed. They definitely weren't stingy on the bolognese mixture and the pasta was of much better quality than the Tesco Value pasta I usually eat!

We still managed to fit in our dessert after finishing the pasta melt... there's always room for dessert! I like to think it goes into a different part of your stomach whenever I need to justify eating dessert to myself. The crust tasted like super buttery shortbread and the lemon topping was scrumptious... probably because it contained 534% of my daily sugar allowance. No complaints! Again, these slices could have probably have served 3 or 4 people quite comfortably.

The white grape juice was also a great choice. It was very sweet and tasted like Schloer, but a bit sweeter and less bitter. We finished one bottle with our meal, then drank the other bottle the next day. Much more satisfying and thirst-quenching than a bottle of wine!

Has anyone else tried the £10 Dine in for Two offer when you've decided to have a night in? What food did you choose?

A weekend fuelled by sugar

There's no point beating about the bush... I've eaten a LOT of sugar this weekend. My boyfriend decided to cook summer fruit drizzle cake and Smarties cookies especially for the weekend, and I can confirm that both were scrumptious. He used strawberries and raspberries to make the cake, and I could quite honestly have eaten the whole thing in one sitting. It was lovely and moist, with just the right level of sweetness. Luckily, I managed to show a small (ish) level of restraint. The cookies were adapted from a chocolate cookie recipe in 'The Boy Who Bakes' cookbook, and possibly tasted even better with the Smarties than they do with the chocolate chunks. The cookbook was a Christmas present from me, and Neil is quite literally turning into the boy who bakes. This was obviously my intention all along.

Cake and cookie... the Smarties cookies matched my polka dot plates!

Lunch, cake and the cookie did keep me full for most of the day. After seeing Iron Man 3 (which was brilliant, in case you were wondering), we went to Pizza Express with Liz and I ordered the Pomodoro Pesto pizza. By this time, I'd fully acknowledged that the weekend was a diet write-off.

At least I got some of my 5 a day...

The amazing cake and cookies have inspired me to bake some kind of cake after I've finished my assignments. I'm considering a carrot cake... what do people think?

Patatas bravas with chorizo

As you probably already know, I am a big fan of chorizo as it somehow makes every meal taste better. So, last night, I tried out the 'patatas bravas with chorizo' recipe from the BBC Good Food website. I made quite a lot of modifications, but followed the basic gist of the recipe. The quantities I used made enough for two portions.


Ingredients:
500g new potatoes
50g chorizo
Tin of chopped tomatoes
Squirt of tomato puree
2 onions
2 cloves of garlic
Pinch of chilli powder
Pinch of cayenne pepper
Pinch of smoked paprika
Lots of Frylite!


Method:
I didn't follow the method on the BBC website to the letter, mostly because I've only got one frying pan. So here's what I did:

1. Chop the new potatoes into quarters and steam them for ten minutes
2. Chop the chorizo into chunks and put the chunks in the frying pan along with the Frylite, onions and garlic
3. Once the onions begin to soften, add the chilli powder, cayenne pepper and smoked paprika
4. Then add the tinned tomatoes and tomato puree, and let the mixture simmer for ten minutes
5. Meanwhile, drain the potatoes and add them to the mixture for 5 minutes
6. Serve and eat!

Yummers!

Really easy to make, super tasty, and very healthy as I didn't use much chorizo. What more could you ask for?

Chilli bean con carne

I've been trying to widen my cooking horizons, so tonight I cooked chilli con carne properly for the first time. I used a recipe from this amazing book I had from my Secret Santa at work... my love of baked beans is a bit of a running joke in the office.

Here are the ingredients I used:

500g minced beef

70g chorizo (my own addition!)

One tin of baked beans

One tin of chopped tomatoes

1 onion

1 pepper (again, the recipe didn't include this but I have an insatiable love for peppers)

2 cloves of garlic

2 tablespoons of tomato puree

1 teaspoon of chilli powder

2 teaspoons of dried mixed herbs

Lots of Fry Lite!

The recipe also tells you to use 2 red chillies, but I didn't this time as I haven't used chillies before and didn't want to accidentally make the food too spicy. I don't mind a bit of spice, but I do like to be able to taste my food rather than it burning all my taste buds off. 

It was very simple to make, which is always helpful. I cooked the mince first, then added the chorizo, onions, peppers and garlic. After heating those for about 5 minutes, I added the tomato puree, herbs and chilli powder, then added the beans and tomatoes last of all. 

Using baked beans instead of kidney beans was definitely a good variation, and I think it actually improves the taste of the sauce. And chorizo makes everything taste better, obviously.

What shall I cook next?

Fajitas!

I've decided to be a lot more adventurous with my cooking in 2013, which is why I baked cupcakes and chocolate chip shortbread earlier this month. However, I also need to cook more adventurous main meals... I currently live on beans on toast, poached eggs on toast, pasta and pesto, and various sauces out of jars. This week, I decided to cook fajitas for the first time.

Here's what I used:

340g of diced turkey breast (I used turkey because it's cheaper than chicken, and needed it to be diced because I can't actually stand the thought of cutting raw meat myself)
100g of chorizo (BEST MEAT EVER)
1 onion
2 peppers
2 cloves of garlic
1 packet of Asda's own Fajita Seasoning Mix (49p - bargain!)
1 packet of wraps
A lot of Fry Lite (the seasoning mix stuck to the bottom of the wok if you didn't spray plenty of Fry Lite at it)


I basically just chopped it all up, shoved it in the wok and mixed it up... not the most difficult meal to cook. I cooked the turkey well (probably too well) before putting anything else in, due to my meat paranoia

I can confirm that the wraps were very delicious, and I had enough left over to take to work for lunch the next day. I think everyone was pretty shocked to see a variation on the old beans and toast/pasta and pesto theme. Yummers!

I think my next creation might be chilli con carne with a twist... watch this space. 

My staple 42p meal!

Ironically, although I really love food, I hate spending money on it. I don't mind spending money when I'm eating out, probably because I'm paying for the experience as well as the food, but I really begrudge paying a lot for my weekly/monthly shop. If I'm not buying meat and don't include eating out, I can usually manage to spend about £30 on my food for the month. Yes, I mean month, not week. My shopping list usually consists of pasta, rice, beans, potatoes, pesto, onions, peppers, garlic, bread, yoghurt, apples, noodles, eggs, curry sauce, stir fry sauce and cereal. I know... Carb Central. It's ok, I go to the gym a lot so I do burn off some of the many carbohydrates I insist on eating. All these items usually cost me £15 to £20, depending on which offers I can find, then I spend £10 to £15 per month on topping up on the things I use most regularly. I do occasionally spoil myself and buy some chorizo, but you can buy that very cheaply in Aldi and it lasts for ages as I don't eat much meat. So... £30 a month is achievable! Only if you live by yourself, obviously. Which, incidentally, I do.

My favourite budget meal is probably pasta and pesto. I usually make this once a week, probably even more often when I'm having a particularly tight month. If you want to make a simple meal which won't cost you much, this is exactly what you're looking for. I always make enough for three portions, so that I can take some to work for lunch on a couple of days. Here's what I use to make three portions, and how much each item costs:

Two thirds of a bag of Tesco Value Pasta (20p)
A quarter of a jar of pesto (25p - you can usually find a jar on offer for £1)
Two onions (15p - it's cheaper to buy individual onions than to buy the packets)
Two peppers (60p - cheaper to buy a big bag of Tesco Value peppers than to buy the packets of 3)
Two cloves of garlic (7p - I find it's cheaper to buy garlic granules in a pot, and they last longer)

This all amounts to £1.27. Then I divide the cost by three as I usually get three meals out of it, which makes each portion 42p! Some people would probably be able to make it last for four meals... I make myself big portions, as you can see from the picture below. Again, don't judge me, I go to the gym. Honestly.

It might look bland, but it really does taste good. And pretty healthy too, as you don't need to use much pesto. One tip... I bought reduced fat pesto last time I went shopping to try to be healthier, but it really doesn't taste as good as the real thing.

Has anyone got any other tips for budget meals? I would like to broaden my cooking horizons, without breaking the bank!