Tuesday 24th November - Not a great day for food + porridge

I know I'm writing this a few days late, but you'll see why from what I'm about to tell you! 
Tuesday was a write-off when it comes to feeding ones mouth. However it did not intend to be this way. It all started with the usual breakfast of coffee, and then at about 9am I decided (very unlike me) to have some porridge! Now I don't usually make porridge, but it was like as if I knew that my body would need 'extra' feeding today. 

The porridge I made is very simple. All you need is:
Porridge oats
Milk (I used semi-skimmed but just because that's all we had)
Some sort of topping - I used Daylesford Organic Prune Compote, available from Ocado (optional)

1. Fill a saucepan with the amount of porridge oats you wish to consume.
2. Cover with milk. I decided that this is the easiest way. There's no need to weigh out your milk and work out the ratio of oats to milk, as long as it's covered then you're fine, unless you like yours really runny or really thick, you can alter it. 
3. Heat slowly and stir until the milk has soaked into the oats, or to your liking. Mine took about 5 minutes.
4. Finish with a topping of your choice. The most popular are: golden syrup, fruit, compotes and jams. I used a prune compote and then garnished it with some redcurrant. How very seasonal of me!

If you know of any other toppings for porridge that I've missed, or unusual ones, then please let me know!

So back to my day...
After the porridge, and a few hour later, since I knew I was off to the dentist, I decided to make sure I ate some sort of snack, but not a full blown lunch, as I could have that afterwards couldn't I?
My snack of choice were some Quavers. I know. How healthy.
Off to the dentist I went with my wisdom teeth intact, and out I come 2 teeth-less. The dentist suggested I could have these problem wisdom teeth out there and then! I almost chickened out and said I needed to work myself up to it and book the week later, but then as I was leaving I suddenly thought, since it's such a quick procedure, it may as well do it and save me coming back. So I went for it. It wasn't painful, just strange being all numb. I was advised not to EAT or DRINK or even RINSE until after 6 six hours. I was so hungry by this point. I spent the evening curled up on the sofa, thinking of food. All I could eat were cold foods, so after the 6 hours were up I ate: brie (nice and soft), sushi (the most troublesome - I feared that I got a piece of rice stuck in the gap!), and a chocolate M&S sundae (mega yum, apart from the hidden honeycomb pieces which proved also troublesome). 

So yeah... not a good day for food, but I'm glad I was blessed with little pain after, but just a rumbling tum the next morning!

Jess x

The Food Diary - Saturday 21st November - Tom Kha Gai and Cirencester

Hello there!

Hope you are all having a lovely, relaxed Saturday! It's very chilly over here; temperatures have dropped very low and it could snow! Would love the latter to happen, just not next week as my sister is coming to visit. Would not appreciate it then!

Today has been a really good day when it comes to food. The morning started off with the usual, and then after all morning getting ready, Fabio and I went to Cirencester to have a little wander and some lunch. If you've never been to Cirencester, I'd definitely recommend it. It's so cute and quaint, but not too small; it has a wide selection of shops. I actually think it's on par with Cheltenham when it comes to shopping! 

Two foodie destinations we stumbled upon:

Jesse's Bistro: A 2AA Rosette restaurant up a little side street, behind Jesse's Butchers, where the produce comes from. It's quite hidden which just adds to its character. It's fairly pricey, but nice for the kind of afternoon where you fancy a treat, or perhaps a meal with the 'rents! 
Fabio opted for the twice baked cheese souffle. I had a little taste and it was perfectly light and creamy, and very cheesy, but not too overpowering. 
For ours mains I had the whole cotswold Roast partridge with game chips, autumn vegetables and game juniper sauce. The partridge was tender and the veg just right. The game chips were quite something though! At first I thought they were crisps, which they technically were, but they had an oily 'just fried' taste; they were shaped like a criss cross pattern. Never seen anything like them before! Odd, but nice. 

Fabio had the beef burger with Emmental cheese, gherkin, beef tomato and chips, dressed leaves and club sauce. The burger looked so good! And Fabio had high praises for it (he is quite a burger connoisseur). It was the kind of burger that looked like it would be hard to get your mouth around. The club sauce also tasted like pickles, which I found interesting.

http://www.jessesbistro.co.uk

Keiths: OMG, this place is amazing. It's like a tiny (very tiny - it's quite hard to walk through it as it's so popular!) little coffee shop but then it also sells an array of coffee beans (which they will grind to your liking for you) and tea, behind the counter. it's very oldey-worldy, and smells divine. The majority of this 'emporium' is the large stock of European sweets and biscuits they sell. There were many boxes of chocolates and biscuits, from the German Lebuchen to the French Mon Cheri; many bars of marzipan, and also jars of conserves - I felt like I was on holiday in all the countries at once! 
Fab and I picked up a bag of Christmas coffee from behind the counter and I found a sachet of creme brûlée flavoured hot chocolate and candy cane hot chocolate. Apparently it's from Canada, so that'll be interesting to try! 

They don't have a website, but here's an interesting article about it from the Gloucestershire Echo. Echo http://www.gloucestershireecho.co.uk/Keith-s-coffee-shop-Cirencester-institution-40/story-21079610-detail/story.html

Tom Kha Gai

As you know, there other night I experimented with a recipe from Rosa's Thai Cafe and I said I would share it with you. We both were very pleased with this spicy, traditional thai soup as it was very quick to make, yet very rewarding, and warming!

Ingredients

Serves 2

500ml Coconut milk
4 lemongrass stalks (you can find these in Waitrose)
4 slices of galangal (I couldn't find them in veg form, so I used 2 tbsp of the galangal paste - also found in Waitrose)
3 red chillies, sliced
4 coriander roots (left this out because of my coriander dislike)
8 white beech or small button mushrooms, quartered
5 cherry tomatoes, halved
250g chicken breast, sliced into small strips
2 tbsp of Nam Pla (thai fish sauce)
Coriander leaves to garnish (obviously I left this out!)

1. Heat coconut milk until boil. 

2. Add sliced lemongrass, galangal, chillies, coriander root, mushrooms and tomatoes. Make sure you use a big enough pan at the start, as I was lucky all of it fit in the pan I chose.

3. Add chicken and stir over high heat for 2-3 mins until almost cooked through. 

4. Season with fish sauce and lime juice and stir over high heat until cooked all way through.

5. Garnish with coriander, if you're crazy, and serve immediately. 

We served ours with sticky rice. 

The Food Diary - Wednesday 18th November - Scrummy goujons and Madeira cake

Morning all!

How are you all doing on this blustery day? It seems to be brightening up here though, which is good as I was worried about our bin blowing away! 
So I didn't manage to get back to you all r.e what I ate last night, but I will tell you now, it was scrum. Fabio and I went to our local pub quiz night (The Cheese Rollers in Shurdington). The food there is homemade, so I really enjoy it. I chose the chicken goujons, much to Fabio's delight! Usually I find these to be either the frozen kind, or that the batter/breadcrumbs are too hard. These were perfect however. The batter was crisp and light; the chicken was fresh and succulent. They'd obviously just deep fried them (not the most healthiest, I know). I will MOST definitely be coming back for more!

Today I am currently baking my weekly cakes to sell at our local farm shop: Sticky gingerbread loaf and mincemeat loaf. I change the cakes monthly, however the mincemeat one will be here to stay through the months of December too, what with it being Christmas and all (our house knows it - currently I am blasting out the Michael Buble tunes already!)I will share this recipe with you in the days to come. 

So this morning I started off with my usual morning caffe latte with a slice of Madeira cake that I baked on Monday; one of the recipes I was testing for the business. It's proving to be a winner in our house, especially with the coffee! I will leave the recipe down below again for you all (it's a Mary Berry one from her book Mary Berry's Baking Bible. In case you are wondering, yesterdays curry came from her book Mary Berry Cooks.)

I've also eaten so far, a banana. I'm trying not to snack on so many sweet things, as I am always instantly drawn to the chocolate biscuits in our cupboard, but since I've already eaten cake this morning, I was like no. Although I know bananas are full of sugar, but it's good sugar right? 

Tonight I am cooking Tom Kha Gai soup to warm up the cockles of our hearts! It's Fabio's favourite, so he's excited. We will be having it with sticky rice, the only obvious accompaniment! I will be sharing this with you tomorrow, for sure. 

Merry November! (Secretly wishing it was December!)

Madeira Cake

Ingredients 

175g unsalted butter (softened)
175g caster sugar
225g self-raising flour
50g ground almonds
2 large eggs
1 lemon, finely grated

Method

1. Pre-heat oven to 180c/fan 160c/gas 4. Grease a 7inch (18cm) deep cake tin and line base with baking paper.

2. Measure the butter, flour (no need to sieve), ground almonds, eggs and grated lemon into a bowl. Beat for 1 minute and then turn into your tin and level. 

3. Bake for 1 hour 15 minutes, or until golden brown and skewer inserted comes out clean. My oven took about an hour, but mine is a VERY hot oven, so I always have to be careful.

4. Leave to cool for 10 minutes and then turn out onto a wire rack.

Don't worry if it cracks - it only adds more character. I added a dusting of icing sugar in a star design on top. Why not try this but with a different design?

New series - The Food Diary - Tuesday 17th November

So here I go again. Back to blogging! You can probably tell that the Le Cordon Bleu training took up A LOT of my time..hence why there's a post on my first day and then the writing stops! So sorry. I'm very excited, however, to be starting this blog again, as I do feel that it's good to have some sort of outlet to just talk about how you are feeling and most importantly, what you are eating! 

I hope my new 'series' of blog posts, in amongst others, hopefully, will encourage you to share what you eat in your daily life, as I find this the most interesting. The choices we make, be it a quick snack because you can't be bothered or a full gourmet meal. I tend to hop between those two quite often! I would love to say that I'm one of those who makes healthy choices on a daily basis, but I just don't. I'm human. I like sweet things. I do however try and be conscious of what I eat, and tend to pick at food a little un-often. 

I'm not going to put pressure on myself to post here, as I know when I do, I tend to not do it. I hope to write some other posts on more detailed topics, to provide more of a background to my diary posts, and also to provide you guys with more content to read, if you'd prefer not to listen to me rambling on about my day!

Here goes!

Okay so today I am feeling very hungry. Like constantly. I've so far drunk my morning caffe latte (a mug of milk heated up in the microwave with a spot of brewed lavazza or Ily coffee from the cafetiere). I drunk this a long with a piece of my homemade madeira cake that I made yesterday, when I was testing recipes for my new potential cake business. 

I usually just have coffee, so I can't really explain why I am so hungry at this hour, when I've eaten extra already: I also had a petis filous yoghurt (strawberry) and a paprika rice cracker. It is 12:10 I guess.. which means It's time for lunch! Lunch for me today will be the leftovers of our spiced vegetable casserole from last night. I used a Mary Berry recipe, which I can leave down below for you all, as it was rather nice and lovely and warming on a wintery eve.

Tonight we will be eating at our local pub at the end of our lane, as it's quiz night and we want to make more effort to meet the neigbours! Perhaps I will be back later to document what I had.

Hope you've enjoyed this rather long post. I also hope you are as interested as I am in what other people eat! I just want to know, what did you eat today?

Spiced Vegetable Casserole
Serves 4

Ingredients

2 tbsp olive oil (the book states vegetable but I much prefer olive)
1 onion, roughly chopped
1 garlic clove, crushed (I didn't have any for mine!)
1 tsp turmeric
1 can of 400g plum tomatoes
1 bag of the Waitrose butternut soup mix (I used this as a substitute for a whole butternut squash, as I hate cutting them)
Half a cauliflower, broken into small pieces
1 yellow pepper, deseeded and cut small
1 can of 400g chickpeas, drained
600ml of vegetable stock (I use unsalted versions)
2 tbsp of Harissa paste (2 tbsp is more than enough for this quantity. The book's recipe serves 10 and uses this amount. I added 2 as I like spice, although it was particularly spicey).
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

I omitted the coriander, as I despise it!

1. Heat oven to 160c/140c fan/ gas 3.

2. Heat oil in a large flameproof casserole dish. Fry the onions until transparent. Add the garlic and turmeric and fry for 30 seconds.

3. Add the tomatoes, squash soup mix, cauliflower and peppers. Stir and then add chickpeas and stock. 

4. Boil and then cover with a lid and cook in oven for an hour.

5. Remove a couple of tbsp of the juice to blend in with the harissa paste. Stir back into the casserole and adjust with seasoning.

6. Serve with rice, and also a couple of slices of buttery sourdough. Perfect!