This Week I Have Been Mostly….

This week I have been mostly wanting to crawl into a hole, if I’m honest. I haven’t had the best of weeks mental health-wise, and it’s been hard enough getting out of bed, let alone actually wanting to do stuff or eat any food.

I go through periods like this, but I’ve been feeling fairly ‘off’ for around a month now. It’s been various different things that’s caused it, and I’m sure anyone I spend time around, friends, family, colleagues would say they hadn’t noticed any difference. I’m fairly good at hiding it. It’s my full-time profession, you know.

Other than feeling like a head-case, I had my birthday last week. I turned 35 – and before you assume, no that’s not why I’ve been feeling low. I enjoy getting older. I think I might struggle with 40, but that’s a way off for now.

I took the day off work, as I usually do for my birthday, and spent the day in my PJs, watching YouTube and then saw My Neighbour Totoro for the fist time. I really enjoyed it! Film 4 are currently having a month of Studio Ghibli films, and so I’m recording them all so I can watch the ones I’m interested in! We ate Chinese on my birthday evening, and enjoyed a relaxing evening in. It was exactly what I wanted, and needed.

The following day I was totally spoiled by my work colleagues, and they got me some amazing gifts. I’m a lucky girlie!

A couple of days after my birthday, I got a belated birthday treat – Ariana Grande released her 4th album.

I’ve been listening to it non-stop since, and I will say on first listen I wasn’t into all of the songs, but now I love them all. My favourite is Goodnight and Go, which takes some of Imogen Heap’s song of the same name, and makes it very Ariana. It’s stunning and makes me tear up every time I hear it! There are a lot of tracks about her past and current relationships, anxiety in general and some which speak to the tragic events at her concert in Manchester last year. She even made the final track ‘Get Well Soon’ to be 5:22 (the date of the attack) by adding 40 seconds of silence at the end. I always loved Ariana Grande but this album has cemented it even more. It feels more grown up, still fun, but a little more ‘sorted’.

This past weekend we watched A Quiet Place and really enjoyed it. Since I love film so much, a guy at work told me about an awesome app called Letterboxd (which is also a website) where you can rate and review every film you can imagine.

 

You can add them to your activity feed, which diarises when you’ve seen them, and you can add movies you want to see in the future to your watchlist. I find this function to be really useful because I’m always seeing trailers for films, or hearing about them, and then forgetting I wanted to see them! You can also follow people on the app, and this means you’ll see films other people watch, who might have similar tastes to you. It’s a great way to discover new movies! It’s also user-friendly and looks great so that makes it the kind of app you want to use. No, this isn’t a sponsored section – I just really it! If you have this app, or decide to download it, feel free to find and add me. I’m Groggits (of course!)

We’ve been continuing to plan our Florida trip, and 17th August saw Disney World’s first Halloween party of the year. Yes, in August! It’s barmy that they’re making them earlier and earlier every year, but the first party was sold out, so I guess there’s demand for it! But the coverage of the party looked great, and seeing all the Autumn decor up on Main Street USA has made me so excited to go back! We’ve even found more places we want to eat at, and I can see me being the size of a house when I return…. eek!

So that’s my little life-update for now. I’m very much ready for a proper holiday, and we’ve got a few exciting things to look forward to ahead of the holiday, so I’m hoping my mood will improve between now and then. Either way, I need to remind myself not to be too hard on myself.

Here’s to beating those obstacles.

Food Challenge Recipe 32: Rice-Stuffed Tomatoes

I’ve made a few recipes from Smitten Kitchen during this challenge, and the last one I made Baked Tomato Sauce for Pasta was SO GOOD I knew I wanted to try another of her recipes soon.

I saw this recipe online, and actually made it on the same night as another of my favourite bloggers made her version of the same recipe – great minds and all that.

I like tomatoes, but not as much as my husband. Unfortunately, I was spoiled by an over-use of acidic tinned tomatoes in the 90s, and that somewhere ruined my like for the fruit. And I’ll also point out that the tomatoes we can get where I live tend to be watery and tasteless for most of the year. If I can find a recipe that brings out the natural sweetness of them, without having to add too much sugar, then I’m all in.

I will now add a disclaimer, that though I used to ALWAYS read a recipe over before starting, on this occasion I did my becoming-more-usual thing of skim-reading and missing the important parts…. nice work, Erin. So there were a couple of mistakes, but I think I managed to improvise adequately!

So, first off, I took 4 large vine tomatoes, and cut the tops off. I then scooped out the flesh, making sure not to pierce the bottoms or break the sides.

I salted the cavities, and turned them upside down on a plate to drain.

My first mistake was to throw out the tomato tops, because I was meant to keep them to pop onto the tomatoes later. But I didn’t – doh!

The flesh went into my blend-active bottle, to be lightly blitzed into a pulpy liquid.

My second mistake was to miss the part of the recipe where I needed a frying pan with a lid. I don’t own one of these, but I could have used a saucepan, and I didn’t. So, you’ll need a frying pan with a lid for the next part…..

I added some olive oil to the pan, and once heated added 1 tbsp of chopped onion, 1/2 crushed garlic clove and some chilli flakes and cooked them for a couple of minutes.

Then I added 6 tbsp of arborio rice and cooked it together for about 3 minutes until the rice had started to toast.

Then I added the blitzed tomato pulp, brought it to a simmer and reduced the heat to medium-low. I seasoned this with a little salt and a tsp of dried Italian seasoning.

I mixed this together, and then covered with an improvised lid – some kitchen roll. This wasn’t greatly effective and it absorbed come of the steam, so later on in the cooking process I needed to add a little boiled water, to help the rice along. This simmered for 10-15 minutes (until the rice was par cooked). I tasted this towards the end, and added some sugar, pepper and salt, to taste.

During this cooking time, I prepared some red potatoes by chopping them into cubes and coating with seasoning and a little oil.

The rice was ready, so I popped the mixture into the tomato shells, which were filled 7/8 of the way. At this stage you can either pop the tops back on, or some breadcrumbs. I had neither (doh!) so I just went with them the way they were.

They stood up in a prepared (oiled) baking dish, in amongst the potatoes which helped to keep the tomatoes upright.

These baked in the oven at 180C (fan) for 30 minutes. I jostled the potatoes about a little on a couple of occasions to stop them from sticking too much.

And once they were done, they looked like this:

The rice had started to brown and crisp up on top, and the tomatoes were soft and beginning to burst a little at the tops.

So, what was the verdict?

The rice was cooked just right, and the top part of the rice was slightly crunchy which I really enjoyed. The seasoning was spot on and the tomato shells were perfectly cooked.

The potatoes were a great accompaniment. I’m a ketchup fan, so a little ketchup to dip both elements into, brought the whole dish together.

This was a fairly simple and very tasty dish. I’d like to try this again, and perfect those two elements I messed up, so I can see what difference it makes.

I give this recipe 7.5/10

 

 

It’s Ma Birthday!

Today’s my birthday, and I’m turning the big ‘ole 35. I’m pretty sure that means I now tick a different age box when I fill out forms.

It also happens to be World Calligraphy Day, which seems fateful as I have been learning calligraphy (and LOVING IT) since the start of the year!

Gary, SO generously got me an iPad and Apple Pencil as an early birthday present, a couple of months ago, and I’ve been playing around with it. Very recently I actually made something which I was pretty pleased with. If you follow my instagram accounts, then you’ll have seen this already (@lettersbygroggits and @groggits) but here’s what I made:

I used procreate for the lettering and Adobe sketch for the watercolour background. I’m looking forward to having more fun using these apps and my Pencil!

Anyway, today should be a day of SUPER laziness, and watching a lot of TV, if it all goes to plan. I usually take my birthday off work, so I can just bask in the overwhelming reality of getting older.

Here’s to another epic year of living!

Food Challenge Recipe 31: Watermelon Sorbet

It’s still hot. Well, it is at time of writing this…. who knows what the great British summer will be offering as you read this.

Either way, this week’s recipe is something hydrating, cooling, and ended up being pretty delicious!

I love melon of all kinds, but I really love the freshness of watermelon. What’s great is that you can buy packs of freshly prepared melon, which makes making things like sorbet super duper easy!

This sorbet recipe uses an ice cream maker, so the first thing you need to do is put the inner bowl in the freezer if your machine requires this.

I took 625g of prepared watermelon and popped this into a blender, along with 100g of caster sugar and 2 tbsp of lime juice.

This was all blitzed together until smooth, but still a little pulpy.

And that’s it! You tip it into your ice cream maker and follow the instructions for how long to churn it for.

It was in our machine for about 25 minutes.

At this stage it’s soft-serve, so it needs to go into the freezer for about an hour before eating.

What came out was a lovely light, fluffy and gorgeously soft sorbet. It wasn’t too sweet, the lime juice cut through any sweetness but worked well with the fresh watermelon flavour.

Obviously, this was a super easy recipe, if you have a blender and ice cream maker. My only complaint is, and this was the case with the other sorbet we made, that after a few hours you are left with a solid block of watermelon ice. In order to eat it, you kind of have to take it out a while before you want to eat it, or soften it in the fridge. But that’s not a problem and the flavour isn’t lost.

The verdict: I really liked this recipe. For ease and flavour, I couldn’t have asked for much more. My only issue is how hard it goes a few hours after it’s made, but this could be something to do with the churning time. I’ll have to practice!

I give this recipe 8/10

What is Mindful Eating?

I only heard the term ‘Mindful Eating’ last week, and I was interested in seeing what that actually meant. I’ve been practicing the Buddhist idea of Mindfulness in one way or another for around 10 years, and it makes a lot of sense to me.

If you’re not familiar with the term, it all boils down to being present, getting rid of all the peripheral thought that makes our minds fuzzy, and really listening to yourself.

My relationship with food is fairly good. As a child we didn’t buy junk food, home cooked meals were most nights, and on the odd occasion we had frozen pizza or ready meals (it was the 80s!) as we’d just got a microwave. I was allergic to artificial food colouring, and most sweets had those in, so I didn’t eat them and I’ve never liked fizzy drinks. We also believed I was allergic to chocolate, though it’s very possible that this was just early lactose intolerance symptoms. We didn’t have chocolate bars, and I remember eating a Club biscuit, finding it had no biscuit in it, and feeling really naughty that I was eating what was essentially a chocolate bar….. I didn’t tell my Mum (hehe)

Over the years my habits have been on the healthy and then on the not so healthy side. Portion sizes grew and then diminished. Once I’d started running, my relationship with food changed. I wanted to eat food that was good fuel for the type of exercise I was doing, portion sizes were relative to the amount of energy I needed, and I was drinking a heck load of water to hydrate. I felt my body benefitting from these changes and learned what it needed and responded to.

So, when I began looking up what Mindful Eating was, I realised that’s what I’d been doing without even knowing it.

According to Mindful.org, Mindful Eating is:

Mindful Eating is:

• Allowing yourself to become aware of the positive and nurturing opportunities that are available through food selection and preparation by respecting your own inner wisdom.
• Using all your senses in choosing to eat food that is both satisfying to you and nourishing to your body.
• Acknowledging responses to food (likes, dislikes, or neutral) without judgment.
• Becoming aware of physical hunger and satiety cues to guide your decisions to begin and end eating.

Someone Who Eats Mindfully:

• Acknowledges that there is no right or wrong way to eat but varying degrees of awareness surrounding the experience of food.
• Accepts that their eating experiences are unique.
• Is an individual who by choice, directs their attention to eating on a moment-by-moment basis.
• Gains awareness of how they can make choices that support health and well-being.
• Becomes aware of the interconnection of earth, living beings, and cultural practices, and the impact of their food choices on those systems.

This made a lot of sense, and worked alongside what I have been doing for a while. But it was great to see it written down in this way. It’s not about stopping yourself from eating what you consider to be ‘bad foods’. It’s not about feeling guilty if you have one donut in a month. It’s about listening to your body, understanding what makes your body feel good, and making choices that are right for you.

I’m glad to see this is something people are following and learning from. I feel like Mindful Eating is just good sense, but so often I see people not listening to their bodies, feeding themselves junk food every day that their bodies simply can’t use for nourishment, or eating far too much food in one day based on the amount of exercise they’re doing.

I’m not judging those people – everyone’s individual relationship with food is so so personal. It can be a source of comfort, anxiety and some people don’t get any joy from food at all. But I think Mindful Eating is an accessible and simple place to start. There’s no fad dieting, no restrictions and no health dangers. To me, it’s just good sense.

Food Challenge Recipe 30: Baked Breadcrumb & Herb Chicken Fillets

I’m going to start this recipe with a preface of the fact that I HATED this recipe. So if you’re looking for a tasty chicken goujon recipe, this isn’t it. If you just want to read about how much I hated eating this (or the little of it I actually ate) then please read on…

Gary and I eat chicken goujons a lot. They go with so many meals, and you can put so many sauces on them. And if you know us, you know we basically live for sauce, and finding food to go with it is secondary to the actual condiment.

I found this recipe on a website for a company who do meat subscription boxes. But it’s not a great recipe, and I hadn’t realised that part of the method was missing from it until after I had started.

Anyway, I put the oven to 160c and prepared a tray for the chicken to go on.

In a bowl I mixed 1 tsp paprika, 200g panko breadcrumbs (I actually used a little less than this because I had the end of an open packet – but this was way more than I needed), 1 tsp garlic powder, 1 tsp dried oregano, salt and pepper.

Then I mixed 1 beaten egg, 20ml of soy milk and 1 tbsp of olive oil. This was the part of the method that was missing. I wasn’t sure where the oil came into the recipe, so I just added it into the egg mixture and hoped for the best….

The chicken was dredged in the wet bowl, and then covered entirely in dry mix before being popped onto the tray.

I used some skin-off chicken breast fillets (enough for two people).

These went into the oven for 30 minutes.

And this was the finished article.

As you can see, the whole thing looks pretty dry. The breadcrumbs hadn’t absorbed any of the chicken juices and it was all just meh.

It wasn’t all the recipe’s fault. The quality of the chicken I picked up from Tesco was also pretty nasty. We both ate a little and then decided we didn’t want to eat any more, so just ate the veg I’d served it with.

There was little to no flavour from the seasoning in the breadcrumbs, and there were way too many breadcrumbs to be practical. The overriding flavour was the oregano, which isn’t where I thought the flavour would lie.

Overall, I give this recipe 1/10.

Going to Florida Without Visiting the Parks….. Are you Mad?!

Well, yes, I may be a little mad. But it is entirely possible to visit the State of Florida, and stay in the Orlando area, and NOT visit any theme parks.

Not everyone has the budget or the inclination to visit theme parks. Think of the millions of people who live there who don’t visit the parks. I personally love the place, and even though I would love to go to Disney World and Universal Studios on every trip, it’s just not practical from a time and money perspective. Plus there is SO MUCH to do when you’re there, it would be silly not to venture away from the parks and see what else is around.

What you choose to do will be purely down to what interests you. My personal choice is to try to get a little bit of Disney and Universal in my trip, without forking out on the park tickets.

To do this, I usually check whether there are any event tickets I can buy (if the budget will stretch to it) for one evening in a park. I tend to visit during the Halloween period, so there’s Halloween Horror Nights if you can stomach it, at Universal Studios (I tried it and hated it, despite being a huge horror fan. Let’s keep the peril on the screen and not in my face, thank you very much), and there’s Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party at Disney’s Magic Kingdom (much more my style). Both offer you entry and the run of the parks for a dedicated number of hours on one evening.

You also have the option of the park’s leisure areas, so City Walk for Universal and Disney Springs for Disney. You don’t need a park ticket for either of these. City Walk has restaurants, bars, shopping and I believe there’s a cinema there too. Disney Springs is bigger and offers shopping (both Disney Parks merchandise and other branded stores) restaurants, bars, bowling, cinema, and other activities.

I personally LOVE Disney Springs, because there’s so much to do. The shopping is great, the restaurants are excellent and there’s a lot to do and see. Plus parking is free there, unlike at City Walk.

From Disney Springs you can also take a free bus to any of the Disney resorts so you can have a nosey around the hotels, partake in their activities and eat in their restaurants. I love visiting the resorts even if I’m not staying in one.

But if you’re not at all interested in exploring Disney or Universal property, you can still have tons of fun. The little all-American towns in the Orlando area are well worth an explore. Places like Celebration and Kissimmee are lovely and one of my favourites is Winter Park with it’s shopping, restaurants and little train track that runs right through it.

It’s also home to the head office and flagship store of one of my favourite brands Rifle Paper Co.

As you’re probably aware, I’m back off to Florida in a few weeks, and we had loads of things planned. As well as going back to pretty much all of the places above, we intend to pack in a lot more. Our trip is double the length we stayed last year and I still feel like we won’t have enough time to fit everything in!

Included in our trip is an NFL game at the Tampa Bay Buccaneers stadium, a trip to the Kennedy Space Centre (a bucket list item!), Wonderworks (a hands-on science exhibit) and possibly a visit to adventure golf and an epic looking escape room!

Of course I plan on visiting the shops, and the list I have is getting as long as my arm! Have you been to Orlando and had a non-park holiday? I’d love to hear about the places you’ve visited and the activities you’ve done! Maybe something you suggest will make my list for this year’s trip!

Food Challenge Recipe 29: Baked Tomato Sauce

This week’s recipe was adapted from one I saw from Smitten Kitchen, after seeing her post about it on instagram. I have one of her books, but this recipe wasn’t in there, so I got it off the website.

When I saw the ingredients and method, it looked so simple, but I was afraid that the mild watery cherry tomatoes available to me would affect the flavour of the finished sauce. Thankfully, this recipe, and the accompanying ingredients, worked together wonderfully to create a fantastically fresh and beautifully tomatoey sauce, in all the ways you’d want it to be tomatoey!

Here’s what I did for sauce enough for 2 people:

I took a small punnet of cherry tomatoes (about 250g) and sliced each one across its equator. Then I lay each one out, cut side up, in a baking dish, which had had 1 tbsp of olive oil coated over the bottom. You need to create a single layer of tomatoes.

Next I combined 1/6 cup of panko breadcrumbs, 1/8 cup of vegan parmesan, 1 tbsp of lacto-free mature cheddar cheese that had been grated and 1 crushed garlic clove. I mixed them with a fork to combine.

Then the whole lot was spread over top of the tomatoes.

You’ve got to make sure each tomato has a good amount of coating. Then I added a little salt and pepper, and drizzled with 1/2 tbsp of olive oil.

This was then popped into the oven at 180c (fan) for 20 minutes, until the crumbs are starting to brown and the cheese is all melted.

At this time I put some pasta on to cook, so that it was ready at the same time as the tomatoes.

At the end of their cooking time, I took the baked tomatoes out of the oven and added 1/8 cup fresh chopped basil and lightly mashed the tomatoes with a fork.

This created the sauce! The recipe then asked for another tbsp of oil to be added, but I didn’t want to add any more oil for dietary reasons. I don’t feel like it needed it.

I then mixed in the pasta, and Bob’s your uncle!

The finished sauce was fresh, tasty and well seasoned. The tomato flavour wasn’t lost. The breadcrumbs had mushed up, so weren’t crunchy at all, however they had mixed with the cheese to create a savoury, thick, seasoning. The basil was a fantastic addition. It added a fragrant green freshness.

We chose this pasta shape because I know it holds onto sauce very well. If you make this, I’d recommend that you use a small pasta shape that will hold onto the sauce, too.

I can see me making this pasta sauce regularly. It was simply, quick and so tasty!

I give this recipe 10/10

 

This Week I Have Been Mostly….

And so the wonderful run of hot, sunny and dry weather continues. I’m totally loving this weather, though I could do with it being a little warmer in the day and a little cooler in the night. We were promised a thunder-storm on Friday which turned into about an hour of rain, which was much needed.

So, a couple of weekends ago, we headed to London’s Hyde Park to see Bruno Mars performing at the British Summer Time festival. I’ve gotta say, festival food has changed a lot. I actually looked forward to some food van noodles, but there wasn’t a noodle to be found. It was all artisan pizzas, chicken wings and vegan falafel. They had sold so many tickets it took us an hour to get to the front of the line for chips, and we’d chosen the shortest line to queue up at! They weren’t even that nice… But that wasn’t why we went.

Bruno was, of course, amazing. He always is! Gary got me some merch (I hate that word) when I got chilly, and now it’s too warm to wear the sweater I got, but I loved wearing it that night. I’ll crack it out again in a few months.

I also visited a launch of a new type of corporate Christmas even (Christmas in July!) and had a lovely evening with my bessie (who I’m lucky enough to work with!) drinking fresh mocktails and eating the most amazing calzone from The Calzone Kitchen. The tunes were banging, the sun was setting and it was nice to have some catch-up time!

This past weekend I visited the Cosgrove Craft Fair to see a friend’s stand. Apollo Creative, you may remember, made my Mum’s birthday present recently. I picked up a couple of bits for my home and a gift for my niece. Check Apollo Creative out on instagram!

We’ve been having some quiet weekends of late, since we’re trying to save some cash for our upcoming holiday, to Florida. We have a few more little trips lined up, but nothing major (from what I remember!)

I’ve also been thinking about how I want to ‘cover’ my holiday on my social media channels. I usually just post the odd photo when I’m away, since I’m taking a vacation and I want to be ‘off’ for the duration. But since we now have instagram stories and IGTV I was thinking I might do some videos, a bit like I did last year, of places I’m visiting, stuff I’ve bought etc. Do you think that’s something you’d like to watch? Obviously I’ll write some blogs on my return, too 🙂

That’s it for now. Do you have any exciting trips coming up? I’d love to hear about them!

Food Challenge Recipe 28: Sweet & Spicy Baked Cauliflower

I’m trying to get better at tolerating spicy foods. It’s not that I don’t like it, or I’m not willing to try it, it’s just that too much spice in food results in me being unable to taste ANYTHING any more. That’s not the point of food!

But I don’t avoid heat, and at times will deliberately try foods slightly outside my comfort zone in a hope that it’ll ease my tolerance up. I’d wanted to try a baked cauliflower recipe for a while, and so when I saw this one, I thought “why not??”!

You start with 4 cups of cauliflower florets. For me this was a whole small cauliflower head.

For the next part I grabbed a quart sized Ziplock bag to put the liquid for the marinade into, which made for a quick mix and simple cleanup.

I added 2 tablespoons of maple syrup, 2 tablespoons of olive oil, 1 tablespoon of Sriracha (the recipe asked for 2 but I was too scared to add that much hot sauce!), 1/2 tablespoon of light soy sauce and 1/2 teaspoon of black pepper.

To this I added all the cauliflower, sealed the bag and smooshed and shook the whole lot until it was covered as evenly as I could get it!

I’d already lined a baking sheet, and had the oven on at 180c (fan). This might have been a little hot, so next time I’ll bake this at 170c.

I was able to simply pour the whole lot onto the sheet, spread it out evenly so that everything had the chance to bake and crisp up (if the tray is too crowded the veg will steam instead of crisping) and pop it in the oven for 30 minutes.

I took my baking sheet out a couple of minutes early, when I noticed some of the edges were starting to char. I also think that my tray might have been slightly over crowded in areas as the florets were a little too moist in parts. I gave one of the florets a try whilst it was still warm.

I was glad I hadn’t added too much Sriracha as the bit I tried was really rather spicy! But my intention for this recipe was to allow the cauliflower to cool, and then top a salad with it. So that’s what I did!

Once it was cool, I found the spiciness had reduced a LOT. In fact, if I make this again, I might add more hot sauce if I intend on eating this cold again. The flavour was really lovely. Spicy but also sweet (like the title suggested!) and the cauliflower flavour still came through nicely.

I really enjoyed eating this. We had quite a bit left over, and I must admit it did leave the fridge smelling rather pungently of cauliflower, but the flavours were really good even days afterwards.

I give this recipe 7/10