I Love Soup

It’s getting to that time of year.
The chill is setting in and it won’t be long until the snow comes!
There’s nothing better than coming in from the cold to a nice big pot of soup.

Easy tomato soup (slimming world friendly)

I do follow recipes most of the time! But I do tend to side track away from the recipe and add my own spin on it.
I find with soup nothing can really go wrong as long as you add in seasoning.

The easy tomato soup is one the monsters and Mr enjoy.
1 tin chopped tomatoes, 1 carton of passata, 1-2 onions, 1-2 carrots, 2 cloves of garlic, seasoning and 2 pickled onions.
Put it all in a pot and summer gently until veg is cooked. And then blitz with blender.
It is that simple and doesn’t take long.
I sometimes add a little chopped fresh chilli to give it a bit of a kick.
Or you could add rice into it to make it more of a meal.

Bolognese Soup

The great thing with soup is you can make any kind with any ingredient.
You can make a light kind such as my tomato soup or you can make one that’s more filling and have as your main meal. Such as the Bolognese soup pictures above.
My friend at my Slimming World class made that off the top of her head. And I think it’s fab.
Just make bolognese as you would and add in beef stock or more chopped tomatoes/passata to make it more soup like. And there you go a meal in a bowl.

What’s your favourite soup recipe??

Cake Cake and Cake

There’s nothing better than good cake. And I like to think I make a good cake.

From biscuits to cupcakes to loaf cakes to Swiss rolls and lots, lots more.
I enjoy every aspect of baking. If I haven’t made a cake before, I’ll more than happily take on the challenge of trying it out.

Raspberry ripple cupcakes

I am still learning new techniques and would love to learn the more intricate designs of cake decorating.
Hopefully, I will be able to attend some more classes in the near future.
The latest class I attended was at Lasswade High School in the evenings.
The class was run by a fantastic lady – Joanna Jarvis. She has her own cake company Heavenly Tiers and she makes some gorgeous cakes.

Mickey Mouse themed birthday cake.

I like a good cake to myself, but it does no favours to my healthy eating plan. Although A treat once in a whole doesn’t do any harm.
9 times out of 10 I end up making cakes and giving them to neighbours, family and friends to get their opinions on them.

Handmade rose.

The cake I want to make next is the rainbow cake 🙂
It looks spectacular. And I think it would go down a treat with children.
I may even make it for Lolly’s birthday next month.
I will be sure to blog about it 🙂

If anyone has a recipe or book they would recommend. Let me know.

In the meantime head over to Heavenly Tiers and check out Joanna’s fabulous work.

Meal Plan Monday 29 October 2012

I have been mulling over most my cookbooks this weekend, for the meal plan. And still am!
You know where you fancy something different, but don’t quite know what? That’s how I have been.
Also, I’m awaiting the delivery of my first veg box from the Little Veg Company, so the meals could change slightly depending what’s in the box.

Monday – Grilled pork with baked potato and stir fried veg

Tuesday – Meatballs in a tomato and roast veg sauce.

Wednesday – Grilled spicy chicken with some sort of rice

Thursday – Bacon and Mushroom pasta

Friday – Haddock Kedgeree

Saturday – Squash and bacon risotto

Sunday – Roast beef with the trimmings

Thanks to Mrs M for hosting the meal planning Monday.
Pop along and have a look 🙂

Saturday Caption – 27 October 2012

One of my favourite photos from the “summer”.

We had a trip up to the Fringe Festival to soak in some atmosphere. And bumped into some celebrity chums 🙂

Head on over to Mammasaurus and have a look at the others.

Bo’ness Car Museum

Every Sunday we try to have a family day.
This is normally the only day we can spend a full afternoon together due to working commitments between myself and The Mr.

A few Sundays ago, we decided to use a Groupon for the Bo’ness Motor Museum.
I’ve never been before, the Mr has, when he was a lot lot younger.

I was looking forward to going as they advertisements saying they had the original Bond cars along with the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang car.
The monsters were really looking forward to it. Junior especially as he is like is dad, fascinated with cars.

It was a lot smaller than I expected.
The cars were packed into a couple of rooms and there wasn’t much space between them.

There were other famous film cars there, car from Harry Potter, the Jag from 51st State to name a couple.
Along with a few more Bond cars. And classic cars that hasn’t been in any films, at least I don’t think they had, I don’t tend to watch films for the cars unlike the Mr.

There was also a room upstairs, I say room, more the size of a small bedroom. This had signed books, costumes, outfits celebrities had worn. In my opinion I felt it quite tacky. As it seemed anything that was for sale with an autograph the owner had just bought.

The museum also had a soft play instead that is themed around the children’s film Monsters Inc.
Its not the best soft play we have been to (we have been to a fair few).
Junior and Lolly played for about 30-45 mins before getting bored, which is unusual for them.

The monsters enjoyed our day out there, myself, not so much.
I’m glad I bought the Groupon family ticket for £9 for the visit. As I don’t think it’s worth the normal £18.
Don’t get me wrong, the Mr enjoyed it and loved looking at all the famous cars, whereas I just wandered around as I am not a huge car fan.

For more information head to their page Bo’ness Motor Museum

BBC Good Food Show 21 October 2012

BBC Good Food Show is one of the highlights of my year.
I have been going for the last 3 years and think its fantastic and a great day out.

When I first walk in, I am always in awe of how big the hall is and how many different retailers/food producers there are. And then the excitement sets in.

One of my first stops was to the Ochil Fudge pantry.
I could not believe how many types of fudge they had. The servers were friendly and were more than happy to let me try some different kinds before purchasing some. (These will be reviewed in a blog to come)

Another stall that caught my eye was The Kids Cooking company.
My attention went straight there as my monsters love to cook. Their items were great. Any child would love them.
They had aprons to chef hats to cookie cutters to mixing bowls and so on. I got Junior and Lolly a cooking set to add to their Christmas presents.
And they were great value at their show price of £10 each instead of £16.95.

The Little Veg Company were also there. I haven’t seen them before. So was quite interested in what they do.
They delivery fresh farm fruit or veg or both to your door. There are a choice of boxes small, medium and large.
The medium (which I signed up for) is £16 per box and delivery is free.
The produce is picked early hours of the morning you get it delivered, which is amazing! And it’s all locally sourced. Fantastic!
More on this soon as I will blog when I receive my first box.

Last on the agenda for the day was our Supertheatre show of the Hairy Bikers.
I have never seen them live before and was a bit dubious whether I would like them or not. And I absolutely loved them. They were hilarious. And their on stage banter was magic. I am definitely going to see them again at some point.

As I said, I love the good food show, however I always have the same complaint every year
There isn’t enough seating areas do you can sit have lunch or just to take the weight off your feet.
There’s always a mad rush to get a seat when someone vacates it.

So please Good Food show organisers, can you do something about it???

If you want any more information on any of the stalls I’ve mentioned. Here are there links.
The Little Veg Company
Ochil Fudge Pantry
The Kids Cooking Company

When visiting let them know who sent you 🙂

Silent Sunday – 21 October 2012

Ssshhhh it’s silent Sunday………….

Head over to Mammasaurus and check the others out 🙂

SFA Mini Kickers

Well its been a typical wet and dreary October week holiday, as always in Scotland!

For that reason I am glad to have enroled my older Monster into the Mini Kickers programme. This is a fantastic programme that was recommended to me by some friends who’s little boys had been previously.

It is run by Midlothian Council and the SFA (Scottish Football Association) and the class is taken by a trained professional, who has a lot of patience to deal with the kids at class.

This one was on for 3 days and was 45 minutes each session. Enough to teach them a little about football and enough to tire them out for a little bit of peace when you get home 😉

The cost of the course is reasonable, £13 for the 3 sessions, which I think is great value for money

Lolly watching her big brother 🙂

They are run in the school holidays, so if you don’t have any plans, but want to do something with your monsters, enrol them into one of these.

The class is aimed for 2 1/2 – 5 year olds and they don’t need to have much football experience. My son hasn’t got any at all (his dad is more into cars) and he soon got into the swing of things and has loved it that much that I am considering enroling him into a football course.

At the end of the 3 day session the children are given a certificate for their participation. Which I think is a lovely touch.

I would highly recommend these sessions for your mini monsters 🙂

They run these sessions all over Edinburgh & the Lothians, you will be able to check out when sessions are on through local papers (like I did) or the SFA website

Monster High Cake

Another first for me in the cake kitchen last week – a monster high cake.
This was for a little girls birthday party at the weekend. And was arranged by her mums friend as a surprise.
I think that’s fantastic!

I started off mixing my Hummingbird vanilla cake recipe (one of my favourites)
I use my kenwood chef for practically all the cakes that I make.
I simply could not live without it.

I had to double the mix volume as I would be using 2 x 10″ cake tins and sandwiching them together.
They were sandwiched together with homemade buttercream and strawberry jam. And then dirty iced and left to set in the fridge.
Vanilla cake with buttercream and jam is my bestseller.

The next day I got some black fondant from my local craft shop, Paperlace, in dalkeith.
I normally colour fondant myself but the last time I attempted to colour some black, more got on me than anything else!
I covered the whole cake and smoothed it out.

Now to focus on the skull.
This was the challenging part. I didn’t quite know how I was going to make that so I focused on rolling the fondant balls for the edging of the cake, while I figured out the skull detail.
And oh what a job that was! I put on some Olly Murs and that soon helped time to go by!

I had my idea for the skull. And that was to print off a picture, cut it out and place it on fondant and draw round.
It was a tad fiddly but I would do that again. Unless I get a printer for edible pictures. So if anyone wishes me to test one out. I’m more than willing 😉

I mixed up pink and black royal icing to colour in the bow part.

I placed this on the top of the cake. For an extra touch I added some pink edible glitter to give it a sparkle.
I got out my Wilton nozzles and piping bag and used butter cream to write the birthday girls name on the cake.

The final step was to stick on fondant diamonds on the side and then the fondant balls.
And cake done 🙂

I have myself a good pat on the back with the final cake. I’m really happy with it especially that it was my first Monster High cake.

The best part, as always, was a text to tell me the birthday girl loved her cake 🙂
Fantastic!

If you’re looking for a cake for any occasion get in touch 🙂

Go to Hummingbird bakery for more info and recipes from the fabulous bakery.

Paperlace is my local craft shop and is fantastic. Staff are always friendly and helpful. Check them out on Facebook. Search for Paperlace

Joes Peppered Beef Steak

Have you heard of Joes Sausages before??

I hadn’t until I started my weight loss plan with Slimming World.

Briefly, Joes Sausages are a fantastic company that make burgers, sausages, marinated meats etc,and these are all syn free on the Slimming World plan.

I haven’t tried the whole range, although I am working my way upto that, as the products I have tried so far have been tasty.

The peppered beef steak was no exception to this. It was really peppery but not in the overpowering sense, it was just right.

They came in a vacuum pack (excuse the date on the pack, I had frozen them) and we had 3 good sized steaks without a streak of fat in sight.

I fried them in a pan sprayed with Fry Light (another favourite at SW) and they didn’t take long to cook, we had them medium, so just a few minutes on each side.

They were served with baked potato and some stir fried veg. The next time we have them I am going to cut them into strips and make beef fajitas with them, mmmm. Watch this space 😉

The one downside to Joes is the P&P, as I think if it is just one person ordering them the charges are a little bit dear, however, if you order 16 or more packs you receive free delivery. Even then, if it is an order just for 1 person, its a lot of meat to be ordering! Joe’s could try lowering the minimum order amount for free P&P.

I order mine through my local SW group, so personally don’t pay any P&P, and in all honestly if I wasn’t ordering through group I dont think I would order.

Just visit Joe’s Sausages to have a look at their tasty range, and another one to try is their Chinese Chicken