Meal Planning Monday 2016 - week 34

 

Monday
At a barbecue cookery event with Branston

Tuesday
I've got a meeting til 6.30 so won't be home til 8 and will want something quick for dinner. I'll have spiralized vegetables with salmon and my husband can put something he likes from the freezer in the oven (he won't eat spiralized veg or fish).

 

Wednesday

The hottest day forecast all week so we will make the most of it and barbecue - sausages, plus beef grillsteak for him and fish for me. I may even cook something I learned from Monday's lesson.

 

Thursday

Was hoping my husband and I would go out this evening but I've been too busy to find anything to do, and any nice bars or restaurants with an outdoor space will be packed! So tonight is TBA...

Friday

The pesto chicken I was going to do last week but didn't

 

Saturday

Lunch: toasted sandwiches - goat cheese monte cristos from Breakfast for Dinner

Dinner:  Slimming World gunpowder pork (chicken for my husband as he doesn't eat pork) with rice. Or if the weather is really nice we can barbecue. 

 

Sunday
Lunch: probably an early brunch of bacon sandwiches them I'm on a train to Hampshire
Dinner: at a friend's in Devon

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Apple and Cinnamon Cake for Diabetics

 

My father-in-law isn’t allowed to eat sugar any more so when it approached his birthday, I decided to make him a sugar-free cake. I wasn’t sure such a thing existed, or would taste good, but I thought it was worth a try if it was that or nothing – and I was actually quite pleased with the result.

 

I found a recipe for an apple and cinnamon cake on the Diabetes UK website it uses just 1 tbsp artificial sweetener (I used xylitol which I bought from Tesco) and the flavour comes from the cinnamon and the fact that there is more apple than cake! It’s a very simple recipe: you just mix the flour, sweetener, baking powder and cinnamon, then mix in the eggs and milk and the melted butter.

 

Peel and slice the apples and add them to the mixture, pour into a cake tin and bake in the oven for 35 minutes.

 

I used the recommended size cake tin and my cake turned out to be a bit flatter than the one in the picture, but it tasted really good. I was pleasantly surprised that the lack of sugar didn’t spoil the taste or texture and this is definitely something I would make again. It went down well with the birthday boy too!

 

 

 

I'm sending this to Tea Time Treats, hosted by Karen at Lavender and Lovage.

 

 

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DIY Wedding: Giant Decopatch Decorative Letters

 

Are you familiar with Decoupage? It’s simply the art of decorating objects with paper cut-outs. In card making, it usually means layering the same picture with slightly less of the image each time, so you get certain details raised off the card more than others – here’s one example and here’s another.

 

In crafts however, there’s a new take on decoupage called decopatch. It’s described as being like papier mache. Hobbycraft sells decoupatch papers which are very thin, almost tissue-like printed papers, that you cut or tear up and stick onto wooden or cardboard objects, which they also sell. They have words, letters and animals – all sorts of things including photo frames and pretty little trays which you could decorate to match someone’s bedroom or living room décor.

 

Some time ago in the sale I bought my initial and that of my now-husband and an ampersand sign. I realised a few months back that these were still untouched in my craft cupboard and I thought they would look really nice at our wedding. You can buy large decorative letters of your initials or Mr & Mrs, or even hire 6ft-high illuminated letters – which look great but the latter cost a couple of hundred of pounds to hire and we’ve decided to spend our money on other things.

 

We decided not to decorate the room where we are having the band (and a few other things – we spent our ‘frivolous’ money on something else!) with flowers, as it will be late and dark when everyone is in that room. But there are a couple of mantelpieces where I realised these letters would look really good.

 

 

 

I bought some cowprint decopatch paper at the same time as the letters which is particularly appropriate for the wedding as we had a bit of a cow theme (as my last name is now Cowe!). I didn’t realise though that you are supposed to use a special glue to stick on the paper, which dries clear and gives a sort of varnish effect. I used Pritt-Stick which worked fine but gives the letters a matt rather than gloss effect. It took a bit of time but was quite simple as I just cut strips of the paper and stuck it over the letters – some of the curves were a bit harder to do but overall I was quite pleased with it.
 

 

 

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Restaurant Review: Blues Kitchen, Shoreditch

Blues Kitchen has locations in Camden, Brixton and Shoreditch, which says something about its ethos and atmosphere – it’s young and vibrant, a bit edgy (exposed wood and neon signs) and also pretty confident that it’s cool. There’s a huge bar in the middle of the room with a large bourbon menu and an airstream caravan at the back with a table inside where you can have your own private party (which looked for all the world where the cool kids hang out). Even on a random Wednesday night the restaurant was fully booked, with a queue at the door and a doorman checking ID.



crab doughnuts

 

 

As the name suggests, the restaurant is all about the Blues – New Orleans style. This is actually another reason I wanted to go here after visiting New Orleans and various other southern states in the US as I really enjoyed the experience. The Blues Kitchen has live music several times a week (seemingly every night though we left before 10 when it started), from a New Orleans night to DJs on a Saturday and a gospel choir on a Sunday! So it’s somewhere you could come for a whole evening’s entertainment rather than just for dinner.

beef brisket

 

Though I don’t know how you’d get out of your chair to dance after eating the amount of food we had! The dishes on offer are inspired by the US south, particularly Texan BBQ and Cajun cuisine. There are plenty of specialities that I tasted in the US on offer, including buttermilk marinated chicken, New Orleans gumbo (stew with chicken and smoked sausage), Catfish jambalaya, and various burgers including the usual bacon cheeseburger but also chicken in a buffalo sauce and a Creole bean burger.

 

There’s a special burger of the month which I could hardly believe when I read what it contained. Called The Holy Cheezus (currently no longer on the menu) it offered a 7oz Angus & Shorthorn steak patty, topped with bacon, glazed onions, rocket and rye-infused béchamel sauce – so far, so standard, apart from the béchamel which sounded interesting. But here’s the killer – instead of a bun, the burger was sandwiched between two crispy grilled cheese sandwiches!

 

Holy Cheezus burger

 

It sounded like a heart attack waiting to happen but I was dying to know what it looked and tasted like and was hoping someone else would order it (I just couldn’t justify that amount of calories myself!). Luckily my friend’s husband obliged and we were all able to marvel at the sight of cheese toasties wrapped around a burger. He said it was very good but very filling!

 

I chose a meal from the barbecue menu which was along the lines of what I ate at the Weber Grill restaurant in Chicago, and had the beef brisket. It had the texture of pulled pork (it's smoked for 12 hours) and was absolutely delicious.

Oreo doughnuts

 

We had the crab doughnuts to start as I was really curious to see what they were like, but the crab flavour was quite subtle and it tasted more like eating a plain (savoury) doughnut.

After that there was barely room for dessert but I had seen in a newspaper ages ago that the Blues Kitchen served deep-fried Oreo cookie doughnuts. My other half loves any kind of dessert involving Oreos so we were all excited to try this, but it was a little disappointing - basically a whole Oreo cookie inside a doughnut. I expected it to be a bit more gooey but it was quite dry - not bad but as I was already very full I probably shouldn't have bothered!

 

inside the Oreo doughnuts

 

 

 

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Summer Soft Drinks: Apple Ice Tea and Orange & Lemon Barley Water

 

 

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You replied on 17/08/2016 06:17.

It's nice to have soft drinks in the summer that are a bit different - especially if you're having a barbecue and don't just want to serve lemonade, water or squash.

I've made two drinks over the last couple of weeks that are delicious and really nice in hot weather - I made up a big jug and served it over ice.

The first one I made was a very simple ice tea using an instant mix from Whittards and the second was orange and lemon barley water, from a recipe in Tesco magazine (see below).

 

 My favourite instant tea from Whittards was peach flavour but they don't seem to make it any more. This time I tried Turkish Apple flavour - I made it up with a little boiling water to dissolve the granules then topped up the jug with cold water and waited for it to cool. I added some sprigs of fresh mint from my garden and some apple slices - a few added extras like this make drinks look even more appealing at summer parties.

I came across the recipe for orange and lemon barley water and realised I'd had no idea you actually use pearl barley to make it.

 

 

 

 

 

To make a large jug, you need:

75g pearl barley

1 lemon and 1 orange, zested and juiced, plus extra slices to serve

3 tbsp. runny honey

 

Soak the pearl barley in cold water for 15 minutes. Drain, then simmer in 1.5 litres of water for 20 minutes.

 

Remove from the heat and add the orange and lemon zest. Allow to steep for 20 minutes.

 

 

 

Strain the liquid to remove the zest and barley and allow to cool. Stir in the orange and lemon juice and the honey and garnish with extra slices of orange and lemon.

 

This is a lovely refreshing drink that tastes as good as, if not better than, the shop bought stuff but with nothing artificial!

 

 

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Floral tag initial birthday card

Here's a geometrics-meets-floral birthday card I made for a male friend of my husband. There's no reason why men can't enjoy flowers, but the fact that these have browns and yellows as the predominant colours makes them a bit less girly.

I had a pack of sticky card toppers that featured a tag - the one in the centre of the card -that consisted of a brown background with the words 'just for you' on the bottom (I'm not sure what the words across the middle are supposed to say!) and a brown flower and a couple of buttons. I decided to make this the centrepiece of the card but knew it needed something else.

I covered a square white card blank with brown paper and added a wide strip of patterned brown paper down the side. I used two corner stickers with brown and yellow flowers from the same pack in opposite corners of the card.

Once I bought a pack of cardboard letters and have used them a few times to spell out different names so now I only have odd letters left. I had the letter D, which was this friend's initial, and the letter was brown with flowers so it worked really well with the other colours on the card.

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DIY Wedding: Homemade Table Confetti

All the weddings I can remember recently have decorated the dining tables with confetti – not the same kind that you throw over the bride and groom, but shiny metallic pieces shaped like hearts or bottles of champagne and so on. It is a relatively inexpensive way to brighten up a plain tablecloth and add some interest and colour to the table settings – even better if you can get it to match your colour scheme or theme.

 

Places like the Card Factory sell cheap table confetti at 99p per bag – one bag is enough per table. But if you want something specific – a more unusual colour or shape – it can get expensive. Even just spending £3 per table when you have 12 tables will cost almost £40, which seems a lot for something so tiny that most guests won’t even pay close attention to.

 

We had a bit of a cow theme for our wedding – as our last name is Cowe. We didn’t go over the top – at least I don’t think we did, other people may disagree! We had a cow-print wedding cake, and each table was named after a different breed of cow, and the wedding stationery – which I made myself-  had cow print hearts and mini cows which were actually table confetti.

 

I had some of the cow confetti left but it was £2.25 for a small bag so I used what I had left, along with some purple hearts – again this was a little more expensive as most places had pink, red and silver, but I really wanted purple to match our colour scheme.

 

 

I decided we needed more and found a mini hole punch for crafts in the shape of a cow on Ebay, so bought some purple paper and made my own! It did take a little while but I left it in the kitchen and every time I went past, punched out a row of little cows, so it didn’t take much effort at all. Then I was able to combine the black and white cows, purple hearts and purple cows into little bags which I sealed for our venue coordinator to sprinkle one on each table. I think it was worth the effort!

 

 

 

 

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