After making my steak pie the other day I had some puff pastry left over and went hunting for a recipe to use it up and so I came across this nice little recipe from James Martin. It took minutes to make and was really delicious.
New Years Eve or Hogmanay as it’s known in Scotland is bursting with traditions such as the customary “First Foot”. As the clock strikes midnight there is a chorus of “Auld Lang Syne and then comes the “First Food”. “The “first foot” is the first person to cross the threshold into a house after the chimes of midnight. Usually the “first foot” brings gifts of salt, coal, bread or shortbread and whiskey and if it’s a tall dark stranger then that’s good luck. ”
I always loved New Years Eve when I was growing up in Scotland, it was so exciting as a child going out to visit family in the middle of the night!
On New Years Day every year we’d go to my grandmother’s house and tuck into a big hearty plate of steak pie without it New Years Day just isn’t the same. In accordance with this I decided to make a steak pie for us to enjoy this year on New Years Day, this is my recipe..
Let me first begin by wishing everyone a belated Merry Christmas!!! I hope you all had a wonderful time over the festive period. Ours was special this year since it was our son’s very first Christmas. My uncle joined us from Scotland for the holidays so it was truly a family event.
Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas in our house without roast turkey and the trimmings, so that is exactly what we had. This is how the main course looked but I’ve included the recipe for the soup and the main course below.
One of my favorite things about the weekend is breakfast and this morning’s breakfast was not a disappointment. I decided to be very good and give making smoothies a try, what a success! I grant you, smoothie making is hardly rocket science but a wonderful way of getting as much yummy fruity goodness into one serving.
We’re all ill here at the moment so a shot of vitamins is exactly what was needed.
WAKEY WAKEY BREAKFAST SMOOTHIE (makes about 1.5 Litres)
INGREDIENTS
PREPARATION
For my birthday this year I got three new cookbooks, Nigella Express by Nigella Lawson, Rick Stein’s Mediterranean Escapes and Jamie Oliver’s new book Jamie At Home. As anyone who has frequented this site will know I’m a very big fan of Jamie O and it was merely a matter of time before I featured a recipe from Jamie At Home.
This recipe is definitely one I wish I had last summer as we had a glut of tomatoes grown on the balcony and this would have been perfect.
This zingy little number really pepped up my Sunday afternoon. Cobbled together in the same time as it took to prepare the spaghetti, that’s definitely what I call fast food! See what you think.
Last night I was watching the new series from Nigella Lawson called Nigella Express. As you would expect from the title it’s about cooking great tasting food with minimal effort and time. The episode I watched showed Nigella’s take on an Alsacian classic, “Coq Au Riesling”. Living in here in Basel on the doorstep of Alsace good Alsacian wine is not difficult to come by so I decided I’d put Nigella’s claims to the test. So here it is..
Having an 18 week old hasn’t left me much time in the kitchen lately but this is slowly changing. For dinner this evening I turned to one of my favourite cookbooks and one which has featured on this site on a couple of previous occasion, that is The Great Big Burger Book by Jane Murphy and Liz Yeh Singh. I used organic minced beef for added flavour, I really think it makes all the difference.
I’m at a complete loss to explain where the past 13 weeks have gone and how on earth they’ve past so quickly!
Matthew has grown to a whopping 7.3kg already and is 60cm tall. Parenthood is an absolute joy!
Over the past few weeks we’ve had lots of visitors all here to meet our little man and in a couple of weeks time my best friend Natalie and her mum will come over from Scotland for a long weekend.
Sorry for the absence dear readers but as you can tell from my last post all those weeks ago we’ve been really busy here since Matthew arrived!
Stewart my darling husband has been taking care of mealtimes as I take care of Matthew’s bedtime routine.
I’ve been breaking myself in gently back into the way of cooking and so last weekend I made a huge pot of chilli. The weather today was really hot and we decided to go for a picnic so when we got home we weren’t in the mood for anything too heavy and so after trawling through the cupboards I came up with this quick and healthy snack.
