Just a nice picture

This was the view from our balcony just after the storm yesterday how beautiful does it look. 

Something out of nothing 'get your rustle on'

So as usual we have all these different food types in the kitchen but we never know what to eat and as Ashley says "get your rustle on" I went to rustle something up. 

I had fresh tagliatelle lying around as well as plum tomatoes, veggies and cold meats so I thought hmmm what cold I do to that will be scummy! 

I was mooching around on the web and came across a few recipes that tickled my fancy such as spaghetti with garlic and rosemary. 

I cooked up some of the garlic and rosemary tagliatelle plus I made my 'home-slaw' red cabbage, grated carrot, small spoon of mayo and whole grain mustard. I also had some sourdough bread which is my fave especially with marmite although I didn't put marmite on it I decided to make some bruschettas using the plum tomatoes, garlic and basil. I also shredded some chicken and chopped up some left over brisket and put it all onto a board with a few salad leaves.

It looked so scummy and Ashley was getting annoyed that I had to take pictures of it as he could hardly wait to get it on his plate!

It's so easy to make something out of nothing. The 'home-slaw' took seconds and if you buy fresh pasta it lasts weeks if it's sealed in the fridge and it only takes 2 minutes to cook. This dish is healthy too, so it's guilt free food,  which I love (apart from the cheeky beer) and Ashley could help himself to however much he wanted. 

This whole meal took me 10 minutes to do including thinking time of what to cook so this is perfect for the people who come home after a long day of work and can't think of anything worse than slaving away at the cooker.

There's so many other 'get your rustle on' menus that I've got so keep checking as something new will pop up soon. 

I am the 'rustle' queen!

Oh and the washing up is yet to be done and I am NOT doing it!

Karolina x

New year new food 'healthier style'!!

Usually when we have time off over the festive period we stock up on food for the oncoming week. This year however we had so many takeaways and not forgetting Christmas dinner and boxing day leftovers we kinda forgot to go to the supermarket. As well as being couch potatoes for at least four days watching back to back episodes of 24!

As I have felt so unfit for the last year and food is my love, I decided yesterday to go to the store to pick up some 'healthy' food such as lettuce! tomatoes and a whole rotisserie chicken to go inside some wholemeal pittas with hummus. They were really tasty and even Ashley didn't mind eating it as he is quite fussy about certain things. Don't get me wrong he will eat anything but he's particular about how much he gets on his plate so this whole healthy eating is going to do us some good and it filled us up really well.

We are huge fans of the show man vs food and we really would love to one day go to some of these restaurants in America so when I came home from the store with some beef brisket (which was on offer from £7 down to £2.80) we were so excited to have some. I've never cooked brisket before so I was looking all over the web to see what sort of dry rubs to put on it along with some BBQ sauces. I came across this website www.bbqpitboys.com and watched a 10 minute video of how to cook a brisket of beef. The dry rub consisted of salt, pepper, cumin, chilli flakes, cayenne pepper, garlic powder, onion powder and brown sugar which you liberally rub all over the brisket. 

Quite clearly the website is about bbqing and I have no intention of whacking out the barbie in the middle of winter (especially if having to smoke it for 10 hours) so I put it in the oven for just over 4 hours covered in foil. About 1 hr before it ended I poured over a large amount of Budweiser BBQ sauce which you can buy from costco it's the biggest bottle you could imagine.

I served it up with some 'home-slaw' which consisted of grated carrot and chopped red cabbage, 1 spoon of mayo (less is more) and a small teaspoon of whole grain mustard and some home made fries!!! 

Yum yum yum!! Finger licking fantastical!! 

Karolina x

Homemade peanut butter and banana doggie treats

So today I decided to bake some treats for my lovely pooch Bauer.

 As he is visiting the hospital for his monthly overnight stay I thought why not treat him for his return. 

They are really simple to make and I even made a batch just for us humans too as they are all natural ingredients (they look just like hobnobs). 

All you need is:

Preheat oven to 150C

1 banana mashed

50g of wholemeal flour

120g of porridge oats (I used about 4 mini sachets) 

3 tablespoons of organic peanut butter (it has less sugar and we don't want our doggies getting diabetes) 

1 egg, beaten

50g of dried parsley (optional for fresh doggie breath) please note I did not put any in our batch 

Put all the ingredients into a bowl and mix it all up until it forms a big ball. 

If you would like to separate a batch for yourself I would recommend adding a teaspoon of sugar as they are very bland. 

To make the shapes I tried my best at making some dog bones and it wasn't too bad it's almost like making a bow shape and then moulding it into a bone. 

I also made a few round biscuit looking shapes.

 

So here is a picture of before I put the treats into the oven.

They take 40 minutes so that gives me enough time to do the washing up bleughh and to make a cup of tea. 

And here is the after. 

They last about a week but obviously he would have eaten them all by then. 

I have put them in this jar which I bought today from Lakeland they are airtight and you suck all the air out with this amazing plunger gadget.

They come in a pack of three and Ashley (the boyfriend) decided to put his mince pies in another jar. Not too sure why?!

Anyway I have a few more recipes for dog treats which I will share with you but I need to make them first.

Can't wait for Bauer to come home. 

Happy new year to you all. 

Karolina x