Charcoal Challenge.

I've been meaning to post this a little while, but I think I just lost a little steam. I was pretty excited when MoneySupermarket.com asked me to take part in their Charcoal Challenge a few weeks ago. It fell when the weather was brilliant and on a weekend when our friends, Dan and Kirstin just so happened to be in the area.

As there were only four of us and I'm much more of a foodie than I am a decorator, I spent the majority of the £50 budget on tasty treats for the early evening event. I actually went over by around £20, but I'm super grateful to Money Supermarket for giving me the opportunity all the same - plus for the amount I bought, I actually ended up getting two barbecues that weekend in the end, plus a whole lot more food to save up for the rest of the month!



Made with passionfruit & mango juice, these were pretty good, just wish we'd skipped on the aesthetics and left out the raspberries, didn't add much to it.



Pimm's, Desperados and Snacks o'Clock! ♥



Corn on the cob will always be one of my favourites, but barbecued corn on the cob might just be the top spot of my favourite barbecue food.


Fruit, meringue and ice cream for pud :)


Managing to get our silly solar lights working, candles did a much better job at lighting the way...

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BBQ Take 2!


...a little less fancy but just as tasty ♥


I wish I'd focussed a little more on our guests than the food, but I was, as is often the case, pretty interested in putting food in my face so I think that's how it mainly worked out.

My favourite purchases for the challenge are a toss-up between the Belvoir Fruit Farms Elderflower Cordial - it's how I found out about their great photography competition (which you can still vote for!) - and the ice-lolly moulds, an absolute bargain at £2.50 from Sainsbury's and we've used them so many times since we got them, even if we didn't actually end up eating them for the occasion we'd bought them for.

I'm not sure whether I even have a shot in winning the prize, as I'm sure many others got way more creative, however, there are definitely few things better than a couple of drinks in a sunny garden with friends and it sure was fun to indulge for the evening!

Oh my, it feels like an age since our last barbecue, what with last weekend's turning out to be a bit of a wash out (Thanks, British Summertime), hopefully we'll be back on track by the time this weekend rolls around again.

Oaty Muffin Obsession!

After having a bit of a sort-out last weekend, I ended up finding one of the notebooks that I'd filled with recipes. It got me a little inspired and this recipe is actually a twist on a recipe card for 'Mini Oaty Banana Muffins' from Sainsburys - I tried those first and they were so good that I thought I'd use up the last few frozen raspberries I had left over from my go at the weekly bake off we do at work.


I kind of like that these could kind of work as something for breakfast because they have oats in, plus there's fruit so they feel healthy. They're probably totally not, but they sure are tasty, and thanks to taking in Innocent's tip from their 'Hungry?' cookbook to whisk each egg one by one, they're really light, I'd definitely say that's my number one baking tip ♥.

I wanted to share this little adapted recipe because it's been a little while and I feel like I've been doing a lot of baking lately.

Ingredients:

• 250g Plain Flour
• 2 tsp Baking Powder
• 75g Scottish Porridge Oats / & a small handful for topping
• 3 Eggs
• 175g Caster Sugar
• 250ml Sunflower Oil
• Pinch of Salt
• 1-2 Cups of Defrosted Frozen Raspberries
• Icing Sugar for Dusting

Directions:
1. Pre-heat your oven to 180°C/Gas 4 and line your muffin tin.
2. Sift the flour and baking powder into a bowl and stir in the porridge oats.
3. In a separate bowl beat together the eggs, caster sugar, sunflower oil and salt.
4. Once your egg/sugar mixture is blended well together fold in the flour, add in the raspberries and mix.
5. Spoon your mixture into you muffin cases, sprinkle the remaining oats over the top and bake for 15-20 minutes until golden.
6. Dust with icing sugar and serve.

Photo An Hour #1: 30/07.

I've been meaning to give this a go for ages, and I actually really enjoyed it, so I might give it another try in the future. I wasn't doing anything that exciting on Monday, except for catching up on personal admin and enjoying my day off relaxing. I quite enjoyed focussing in on smaller details though, it will be really fun to try when I'm really busy. I'm just assuming the rules are to take a photo every hour for 12 hours, I've adjusted them slightly and added two that I hope compliment each other.

I've spent today mucking around with my layout and details, but I won't ramble and will just show you these photographs and let them speak for themselves. I do enjoy a good photo-challenge. ♥

You should check out The Dainty Squid for the best 'Photo An Hour' posts, so inspiring and one of my favourite blogs. ♥

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9am: Sorting out what to wear and doing my hair / Last bowl of Fruit Loops for breakfast.


10am: Letting Little Doll outside / Taking in the laundry.


11am: Editing photographs / Faithful feline companion watches over me intently...


12pm: Spot of blogging.


1pm: Lunchtime, tasty salami and salad wrap / Little Doll lusting after ham.


2pm: Organising my new baskets from TK Maxx and making the space under the TV look tidy.


3pm: Working through my Turkey photo album, and there's still so much more to do!


4pm: My most detested of tasks - sorting out my wardrobe, I don't even know how it gets like this.


5pm: Moon came home and flopped on the couch to regale me with tales of his day at work.


6pm: Cooking time!


7pm: Teatime ♥
Sausages, spinach, potatoes and broad beans, nomz.


8pm: Milk pit-stop to Sainsbury's.


9pm: Settling down for my first ever viewing of 'Armageddon' with a snugmug full of coffee.

Innocent Eating.

A sleepy but much better little cat ♥
I have been meaning to post this for around a week now. I haven't got around to it because other things, like work and losing the cat, have got in the way. Now that I'm feeling slightly more stable, it's time to get back to things like this rather than lounging around.

So anyway, I've seriously been connecting with my inner domestic goddess lately and I've been pretty, damn cracking at it too. I've made some amazing food recently, apart from the fish cakes I made a couple of nights ago, won't be trusting that one again, thanks a lot, Sainsbury's. I'll be honest and say that I've had a lot of help from Innocent's latest cook book, 'Hungry?', it's actually one of the first cookery books in ages that I've seen to have uncomplicated, easy-to-follow recipes, as well as having the neat quirks that come with other Innocent products, adding an edge to the book against other cook book. It even includes pieces on 'How to Make Popcorn Last a Whole Movie', something we might put to work as some kind of drinking game, being the post-students that we are. It is a family cook books, so a lot of it is about how to feed your kids healthily, obviously Moon and I don't have kids, but it's still been fun to take recipes and pick up things in the supermarket that we might not usually buy.




We have improvised a bit, but I think that it's for the better. Unfortunately neither of us will ever be fans of butternut squash and Innocent love it. We've just swapped it for sweet potato though, which Moon regards as superior to the run-of-the-mill potato (which is simply not true), and although that may mean that it's not identical, we haven't come into a problem yet as, and (I could be seriously wrong), the texture is still fairly consistent.

Something I'm most proud of and can't wait to make again is Innocent's chicken, bacon and leek pie, we had to put off our American Pie:Reunion cinema date due to cooking it last minute and it being something that takes a while, but if you're not in a hurry, it's perfect, and if you are in a hurry, it's leftovers are just the trick.






Chicken, bacon & leek pie.


Perfect nomz. ♥

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I don't intend for this to be a review at all, I'm mainly just showing some appreciation for food, and how easy the recipes in this book are. I don't think it's just for families either, because yeah, it's pro-healthy eating but everything is affordable so I think it would be great for students too, particularly if they're away from home and have never cooked for themselves before.

Bananas and honey on toast.

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Home-made tortilla chips.
Amazingly simple, just cut up some flour tortilla wraps of your choice, drizzle with olive oil and pop in the oven for 10-15 minutes.


We had ours with chilli and sour cream to make them more of a meal rather than a movie snack.

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Not technically any kind of cooking but so delicious, and the first of it's kind that I've seen in an English supermarket. Our local Sainsbury's is a goldmine for the unusual, and as it should be really, being the size of a small aircraft hangar.

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Has anyone else noticed the lovely re-branding of Tesco's Value range? It's so pretty and cheap, so two of my favourite things. I'm a sucker for nice packaging, and I think this was definitely a step in the right direction for them.


Eggs in reverse order of size.



Raspberry sponge cake with raspberry jam filling and lemon butter cream.

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Passion fruit cheat's crème brûlée.
A Sainsbury's offering which I think needs another go. The recipe called for making caramel in a saucepan and drizzling on top, which made for weird eating as the caramel hardened on top instantly. The custard part was nice though, so I think next time we'll just sprinkle sugar on top and put under the grill as per standard crème brûlée.

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Have you done any fun cooking recently?
It's quite nice to have things back to normal again, as well as have a job, even if it's not the job.