Showing posts with label cooking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cooking. Show all posts
Like i mentioned in my previous post Lazy girl guide to cooking, I have learned to cook an array of different meals since moving out and over the last year I have learned some tips and tricks to make my food cook quicker and taste better. The best thing I have done is invested in kitchen appliances! Making a great home cooked meal everyday can be very time consuming and take a lot of energy so at the minute I have two appliances which help me out a lot.
T H E S L O W C O O K E R
Best invention ever made, there I said it.
For someone who gets anxious about cooking various meats, my slow cooker has become my life safer. I always worry that I haven't cooked meat enough or that I'll cook it too much and ruin the taste but with this, I can leave the meat in the cooker all day and know neither will be a problem. I'm still trying different things out in it all the time but my favourite meal to make is a roast with shredded chicken, it is the easiest thing to do and saves you fathing while watching everything else and entertaining the family on a sunday. I mention how to make shredded chicken in my previous post so pop over if you want to try it.
I found out how to make shredded chicken on Pinterest of all places, it seems there is a H U G E cooking community on it! I always thought it was more for clothing and interiors but I was just looking in the wrong place. I look on Pinterest for most of my meal ideas now because there is something for everyone and with slow cookers, you can cook basically anything in them! Chicken, Pork, Lamb, Mince, Lasagna, Pasta, Potatoes, even a deep dish pizza. If you want to see what I have been pinning on Pinterest click on my Slow Cooker Recipes board.
Lastly, the best thing about a slow cooker is you can place all your ingredients in there in the morning, go out all day and when you get home in the evening the food is cooked and ready for you. I know i am going to be using my slow cooker even more in winter because it means I can spend more time during the evening in the bath rather than cooking. goals
T H E S T E A M E R
This is a recent addition to my kitchen collection bur I have fallen in love with it already and use it most days. I bought a 3 tier Russel Hobbs steamer from Argos which aren't too expensive and stack away really easily.
I bought one of these because I was tired of spending all night in the kitchen standing over my hob boiling my veg. I love veg and i like to have it with every meal but boiling it can be a nuisance especially while your in the middle of cooking a roast. My mum suggested I get a steamer and I haven't looked back since.
Like the slow cooker, you can cook most things in the steamer from veg and potatoes to fish and chicken. On a daily basis I throw baby potatoes and veg in with some breaded chicken in the oven and we have a easy, quite healthy meal. One of the reasons I bought the steamer was so I could cook different vegetables more regularly. Callum doesn't like broccoli whereas I love it but i never saw the point in boiling some just for me . With the steamer I can throw some in with some peas and carrots and it is no extra work for me.
Having both of these appliances make cooking a roast dinner for my family a breeze! I have my meat in the slow cooker, my vegetables in the steamer and my roast potatoes in the oven and I still have room on the side (and time to dance around the kitchen to Mamma Mia)
I am planning to write another post about some recipes I have been making lately and both of these tools will feature heavily in it! Hope I haven't made you too hungry reading this!
Back in May I wrote a list of objectives I wanted to achieved over the summer, a little summer to do list and I thought It would be a good idea to look back over the list and see if I actually achieved anything because yes, I'm sorry to say... Summer is over in my eyes. Bring on the blankets, fairy lights and hot chocolates.
#Get a new job
The most important goal of the summer was to get a new job and thankfully I have achieved that. If you haven't read a few of my more personal posts lately you might be questioning this goal but I don't want to bore you with the topic anymore so head over to a previous post to find out all the details. Anywho I am now in a new job, with amazing work friends and a much better work life balance. I really couldn't have found a better place to work at and I am so thankful it all worked out in the end.
#Become more fit
This was always going to be the up in the air idea, would I start working out or would I forget or just not be bothered. Annoyingly right now I am not signed to any gym BUT i do have plans to join one with Callum in October so watch this space!
#Grow my hair
I am proud to say I haven't caved and chopped all my hair off yet, I have even had a trimmed and the dip dye taken higher to balance out the length of my hair. I have even invested in a hair oil so hopefully that will encourage my hair to grow even faster. I am aiming to have my long bum touching hair by the start of next year so wish me luck!
#Finish off the bedrooms
Even though no physical progress has been made in the bedrooms, we do have plans in place. A colleague at work has agreed to make and fit my wardrobes since he is a carpenter which is amazing. Having someone I already know come over to make my wardrobes takes a load off my mind and makes me excited about the process. Once they are in my blogging/beauty room can really take shape. I have already made plans of how I want my space to look so I will definitely make a post about it when it happens.
#Fill up my cooking book with recipes
Do you know where the best place is to get dinner recipes? Pinterest of all places. There is a whole community of food lovers on it who share all their favourite recipes and I get most of my dinner ideas from there. My book is filling up but I definitely have room for more!
#Get the garden started
This ambition was a bit ambitious for myself really... I bought some lovely plants and painted my garden table and chairs to make the place feel homely and then all my plants died in the crazy heatwave we had. I have since replaced the plants and so far they are still alive, just. My plan is to spend more time in the garden now it is cooling down so hopefully by next summer the garden will look like a jungle.
#Visit another country
It's been a long time coming but I am finally going on holiday! After the year I have had this holiday can't come quick enough. Cal and I are going to Majorca at the end of the month and I can't wait to spend a whole week sitting by the pool reading hundreds of books and exploring the island. Hopefully being on holiday will spark some new ideas since there is nothing better than letting your mind run wild with no distractions.
What have you done this summer?
This summer I am planning on overhauling my life and basically sorting my shit out. This year has taken me on a roller coaster and it is only the fourth month in so I am expecting big changes this summer and I will make them happen.
# Get a new job
My work life has changed dramatically this year as you all know now and not for the good so my main aim this summer is to get a new job. As much as I love retail I really do think I need a change of environment and surroundings. Something closer to home with less stress would be the ideal situations so fingers cross something that ticks them boxes comes up.
# Become more fit
I don't really care about losing weight and going on a diet, my plan is to tone my body and become more fit in general. Although since moving out my eating has become so much better and I am learning to cook something new everyday, I still have weeks where my eating is terrible especially if I am working long hours. I am planning to join the local gym with Cal in the next month or so which will be really good for me, I used to go gym nearly every day when I first left school as a hobby so I can see myself getting really into it again.
# Grow my hair
I have had short hair since 2015 now and I think it is about time I went the other direction and grew my hair (if I can) I have been trying to grow my hair since I was 16 and it would never grow past my boobs so I ended up giving up and going for the chop. Now I am ready to try again and hopefully grow my hair long and put more bleach in the ends so my dip dye starts higher in my hair. This is how I hope to have my hair soon...
# Finish off the bedrooms
We are nearing a year in our house now and we still haven't finished everything we would like to because we aren't made of money and life gets in the way. We still need to get built in wardrobes in the master bedroom and once that is done we can get rid of all the rails of clothes in my little room and turn it into my blogging/beauty room. Once that is complete I think my blogging game will become stronger and more routined.
# Fill up my cooking book with recipes
Like I said my cooking skills are getting better with every Mary Berry cookbook I read (she is my gal) and everything that I really like to make I write up in my own little cooking diary. It has four different colours on the pages so I can separate my cooking lists, slow cooker recipes, recipes for dinner and baking recipes. I love filling in this book (because I have no life apparently) and get wait for it to be full.
# Get the garden started
My garden is a blank space at the minute and I really want to make the space into something beautiful and relaxing so in the summer I can sit in my quite place and read a book or do some gardening. I plan to dig out all the plants in my front garden and start from scratch and decide what me and cal want to have.
# Visit another country
Lastly I really want to go on a holiday aboard this year and get out of England. I have some ideas in the pipe line with my family to have a big group holiday but if that doesn't work out, Cal and I will definitely go somewhere by ourselves. Maybe a weekend in a city or a week by a pool in a cheap hotel in Spain. My ideal holiday would be Benidorm but no one shares my love of it :(
I am a big fan of Mary Berry because she is a pretty cool lady in all ways. Since moving into my own house I have tried to become a cooking goddess, I've made baby steps...
So I saw this book in WHSmith reduced to £7 which is really good for a Mary Berry book which are usually £20 + so I was excited to pick it up and enroll Mary's help making me a better house wife.
I thought I'd talk you through my favourite recipes from the book and talk you through how some of them went!
I really needed to expand my cooking ability because I was a lazy cook before and I have made one recipe from this book already and I am making another one tonight so hopefully tonight goes as well as the first time!
~Roasted Sausage & Potato Supper (page 62)
This was the first recipe from this book that I tried and it was delicious. I followed most of the recipe including sausages, baby potatoes, peppers and onions but I also added in broccoli and carrots which are my favourite vegetables. It is basically a roast dinner that is roasted all together in a stock cube which makes the flavour really rich and everything a bit wet which is what I like. I did add some gravy on the top just to make it more soggy because I love gravy on everything! It was always really easy to make! You just chop all your veg and potatoes in half, whack it all in a roasting tin with oil and you are done.
~ Meatballs in Tomato & Basil Sauce (page 70)
I love anything italian so I had to make the meatball recipe!! I am making this for one of my friends tonight and I am a little bit scared because meatball can go either way.
And here are just a few of the more recipes I want to make from the book next...
#Chilli Burgers (page 77)
#Cottage Pie with Crushed Potato topping (page 78)
#Lasagne Express yess pleaseeee! (page 201)
Lastly here are some deserts I can't wait to try!
#Celebration Chocolate Moose Cake (page 242)
#Granny's Litter Shortbread Biscuits (page 264)
#Lucy's Strawberry Slices (pages 267)
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