By George

Happy St George’s Day!

I only remembered it was when I saw an offer on something random like double cream at Sainsbury’s on Saturday :-)

But as it is the patron saint of England’s day, what about some classic English food? Like this, for example:

Ya can’t get much more classic English  than apple crumble. Admittedly it’s not usually eaten in the mornings – but who says you can’t have pudding for breakfast? You can when it’s this one.

I’d forgotten just how good that is; it was perfect with a dollop of plain soya yoghurt on top – even I couldn’t quite go for custard or ice cream for breakfast

It started so well but the rest of the day’s food wasn’t patriotic at all; although Mullerlight yoghurts are made in Shropshire, for example, the company itself ain’t exactly home-grown… the name’s a slight giveaway… but hey, some credit for a partial effort, surely!

So here’s something else that does fit the day’s theme:

You can’t get much more English/British than talking about the weather and I think it’s probably quite apt that it’s poured down all of St George’s Day. Also, notice the fact it’s going to rain every day this week – as it did last week – and this is a county that’s not only in the grip of a drought, but where there’s a strict hosepipe ban. And you also can’t get more English than something that mental.

I love it

What’s your favourite classic English food?

Born to run

I’ve decided it’s time to reveal a secret. Bruce wrote that song for me.

Never mind the fact I wasn’t born at the time… The Boss just knew that one day, there would be someone like me, a queen among runners.

And let’s face it, the only reason Usain Bolt doesn’t race with a watercolour paint-reddened nose and a homemade reindeer tail sewn on to his shorts must be because he hasn’t thought of it yet.

Ahem.

I’ve run two 5ks and if you’d said to me the day after the first one that I’d not only volunteer to do another but actually actively enjoy it (and during the race too, not just afterwards) I’d have laughed. Loudly.

But I loved the second one. Having thought I’d collapse in a heap of knackeredness within the first hundred yards, I really enjoyed the feeling of being able to do it – of having the energy to accelerate going up hills, of being able to enjoy the experience of running along the seafront – and, of course, overtaking people on the finishing stretch!

I decided straight away that I wanted to do the Race For Life this summer. Then, when I saw there’s a 10k being put on in the town I work in this year, I was tempted by that too. But of course, to do that, and even to do another 5k, I need to do more than the preparation I did last time, ie diddly squat. Which brings me on to the point of this post.

To prevent eejits like me hobbling around for days after a race, and because with summer (hopefully) on its way, more people will be getting into running, AXA PPP healthcare is holding a live chat session on running next Thursday, April 26.

It will involve a team of experts, available to answer questions on training for people at every level, from beginners upward, to diet and nutrition, to preventing and dealing with injuries – and lots of other lovely running stuff. The timings are:

10am-noon: John Grudington, personal trainer, fitness and physiologist.

2-4pm: Personal trainer Lucy Wyndham-Read

5-7pm: Nutritionist Dr Sarah Schenker

If you want to take part, you can just join in on the day, or you can submit questions on the website, or use Facebook or Twitter. My question would be: How can I fit in training for a 5k, and then a 10k, round a full-time job? I included the 10k bit in case that motivation stays with me. I think it’s fair to say I won’t be trying that one without any preparation!

AXA PPP is also sponsoring this year’s Race For Life and there’s a competition to win £100 to add to the money you raise doing the race (£200 if you’re a member of AXA PPP) You just have to have a Just Giving page and have raised at least £50 to take part. It’s a weekly prize draw, until August 3, full ts and cs here.

Are you a runner? How did you get started? Why do you do it?

This post is sponsored by AXA PPP healthcare but it’s entirely my own thoughts and opinions

Time – is of the essence

There was I on Monday morning, happily thinking it wasn’t going to be too much of a missionous week.

I’m editing this week, so I knew I’d be finishing later than usual on Monday and Tuesday – but then I got a helpful little email reminder about a meeting last night – and then a message about a planning application I’d been covering, which was to be decided at a meeting on Tuesday night. Two 12-hour days in a row? Owe ya one, Outlook

When you get in starving at silly o’clock, you don’t want to be faffing around with dinner so it’s been all about fast food – but I ain’t talking McDonald’s. Tuesday’s dinner was some fish cakes, made by my mum on Good Friday…

… frozen and reheated by me on Late Tuesday. Mashed potato, white fish and salmon, + veg pile = balanced, delicious dinner, ready within five minutes. Thanks Mum

Yesterday’s dinner was just as speedy – and similar, now I come to think about it:

I went into Waitrose before the meeting (serious crack red pesto shortage – but while I was in there, I happened to notice that Lindt excellence bars are on buy two for £2.50. You’re welcome) and saw a reduced-price fish pie, meant for children. It was cheap, it was gluten-free and as it was meant for kids, it was crap-free too

Also because it was supposed to be a children’s meal, there wasn’t too much of it, which was a bonus, as I ate it at gone 10pm. I hadn’t bought any form of ready meal for years and don’t plan to again – but for a one-off, ready in three minutes dinner, it was all good.

Other things I do to save time during the week include making two or three helpings of porridge at once and keeping it in the fridge. It might mean you have to cut a slice of porridge when you want it… but by the time you’ve added more water, stirred and reheated, it tastes no different from usual. Honest!

I did think I had to work tomorrow night too but as it turns out, I’m not. I can’t say I’m sorry. It was great to leave the office at 5pm today and when I saw the best ice cream ever (I’m not joking) in the farm shop up the road on my way home (I’d stopped for spinach but what can you do when one of these grabs you by the throat?!) I couldn’t resist treating myself.

Ice cream’s quick and easy too, you know

How do you save time during the week? Favourite speedy meal?

Catching up

Where does time go?!

From the minute we were catapulted into a deadline day-after-two-bank-holidays on Tuesday, last week seemed to last about two hours… mental.

It included some very random weather on Wednesday. Having left work in bright sunshine and driven through rain on the way home, it was dry as I got near the yard then, a mile out, I saw what looked like snowdrifts on the road… it was hail.

It had seriously drifted to up to four inches thick, I’ve never seen anything like it. But as I’ve been a complete eejit and left the memory card of my camera in my work computer, I’ve only got the ones I took on my phone the next morning:

Random but beautiful…

Gone now though, thank the good lord

Something else I need to talk about is this:

I was lucky enough to be sent some Twinings green tea bags to try and although they didn’t tell me to say so (!) it’s definitely the best green tea I’ve ever had. Smooth and with a lovely flavour, with none of that almost-bitterness you sometimes get with green tea. Twinings will no doubt be pleased to hear they’ve got two new customers; not only me but my mum’s bought some on my recommendation too

And talking of my mum, I went with her to see the Hunger Games the other day. If you haven’t seen it/read the books and don’t want to know, skip this bit

We both thought it was brilliant. I’ve never seen a film version of a book that’s been any good at all before – the huge liberties taken with storylines usually really wind me up *cough* Peter Jackson, Lord of the Rings *cough* – but this one was something else. The way the Gamemakers worked for example, I’d never even thought about but that control room, with Seneca Crane saying things like “get me a tree there” and the way it was so clearly a game to them, really added something to the story. And although they did add bits,  like Snow and Crane’s conversations and the rebellion in 11, it was all to explain the story and I liked the way Crane had to fall on his own sword with the berries… all in all, definitely a winner.

But now, of course, another weekend has gone and it’s almost Monday again… how did that happen?!

Pigging out

Happy (belated) Easter!

I hope everyone had a lovely (and chocolate-filled) day yesterday and a good bank holiday weekend. The sun that showed its face here on Friday didn’t hang around, which was a shame.

But it’s been good anyway. We went to the Rare Breeds Centre on Saturday, which is run by a charity and does a brilliant job.

And if you want to pick a good time to go there, spring is definitely it:

I want one of those baby goats.

Aren’t they lovely? The lambs were cute too:

But the best bit was undoubtedly the pig racing:

So, so funny. The pigs are chasing food but you can tell they enjoy the running anyway because they overtook the children carrying the bucket!

Then of course, Saturday evening was chocolate o’clock. Let’s not go into details. It was gooooooood

And talking of chocolate, and the self-restraint mentioned in my last post, I had cause to make another cake, for my friend’s little girl, whose birthday it was. She loves horses and riding (and chocolate) so this is the one I came up with:

I said to my mum, who’s amazing at decorating cakes, that however much I start off doing it properly, with piped icing or sugar paste, I always end up just painting on the cake

Of course this time, I scraped that icing saucepan to my heart’s content. With the amount of the stuff I’ve got outside in the last couple of days, it would be fair to assume I’m sick of chocolate now. Not a bit of it.

On Thursday, my colleague who’d also given up chocolate for Lent asked in a mock-serious voice whether I’d learned anything from the experience. I said yes, two things.

I’ve learned that it is possible to exist without chocolate, although only just, and I’ve learned just how much I like ice cream. I’m not sure that’s entirely in the spirit of Lenten observances but still. It’s a lesson learned.

Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s a bag of Cadbury’s Mini Eggs calling my name…

Have a great week!

 

A superhuman feat

I think it’s fair to say that on Wednesday night, I achieved a superhuman feat. It was tough, mentally and physically, and I very nearly just – gave up.

But in the end, I was triumphant. The human will, it appears, is capable of withstanding more that you would ever think.

Have you ever tried icing a chocolate cake without stuffing any excess into your mouth with a spoon licking your fingers? Then you’ll know where I’m coming from

I hadn’t made any cakes for the café since Christmas but I bumped into the owner last week and he asked for one, a chocolate one, in time for Easter… which meant making this Fudge Icing of Untold Deliciousness (and also of Supreme Unhealthiness)

And as well as virtuously washing the whisk up straight away and resisting the siren song of the scraped-off excess, I even managed to decorate the top with seasonal Cadbury’s Mini Eggs and avoid any of them jumping into my mouth *pats self firmly on the back*

It did make me laugh though when I got an email from the owner of a farm shop near me, also asking for a chocolate cake – which meant I had to show the same restraint last night as well

I didn’t take a picture because it was exactly the same as the one above, except with chocolate buttons decorating instead. And while I was at the shop dropping it off this morning, I spied this little lot, on sale for £2 for the whole box:

What a result.

As was not setting my alarm when I went to bed last night. It had been a knackering week, with a couple of late nights so I was tired – enough that I didn’t wake up till 11.30am! I hadn’t done that for ages but it was lovely

On a more serious note, did anyone see the Samantha Brick article the other day? If you didn’t, it was a feature in the Mail about how she’s struggled in life because of her beauty and how other women hate her for it. People everywhere were talking about it and of course, it attracted more than 5,500 comments on the Mail’s website, as well as countless spin-off pieces and a follow-up in the next day’s paper, in which she said: “my detractors have simply proved my point. Their level of anger only underlines that no one in this world is more reviled than a pretty woman”

But if she’d just written a piece saying: “I’m happy with my looks; I’m beautiful”, I don’t think anyone would have been bothered, other than thinking “good for her” to be self-confident; it’s brilliant to be happy with your looks and she is good-looking. It was the way she blamed her beauty for every perceived slight in her life, from friends dropping her to female bosses turning against her which I think got up people’s noses.

And this is from someone who once wrote a piece about using sex appeal to get ahead, in which she said she’d put friends on the “back-burner” when she was pursuing a man to advance her career… any thoughts?

I’m off to enjoy the sunshine, which has made a surprise return – have a great Easter weekend!

Slightly struggling

I wasn’t feeling too special today.

But I can’t ask for any sympathy as it’s entirely self-inflicted. I’ll just mention Jagerbombs, double vodkas, a free bottle of champagne and the throwing of some (possibly, or not) amazing dancefloor shapes – and leave it there

I’ll blame the above for my blonde moment of the day: when I put some blueberries in my budget non-digital microwave to take the chill off them, (weird sensitive teeth) I forgot and left them in there, heating away = blueberry sauce:

Not quite what I’d intended but still. Not bad:

After that, I thought going out on the bike would make me feel better – and it did, if only because it was a beautiful day; cold but sunny and lovely, with blossom coming out everywhere.

Then when I got back, randomly, I felt like baking so I made these:

I got an email from Baking Mad a couple of weeks ago, inviting me to enter a competition for Easter recipes on their site. And Easter seems as good an excuse as any for carrot cakes, plus I think these would make a nice change from the chocolate overload, so I re-made the carrot cupcakes (or should that be cupcarrotcakes) which I put in a guest post for Jemma last year:

Preheat oven to 180C and line a 12-hole tin with paper cases.

180g rice flour

150g carrot, grated

125g brown sugar

1 medium eating apple, cored and grated

Zest of one lemon

3tbsp rapeseed oil

2tbsp apple puree

1 large egg

1/2tsp ground mixed spice

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

Sieve the flour, baking powder and spice together into a large bowl, then stir in the sugar, carrot, apple and lemon zest and mix.  In a separate bowl, lightly beat the egg with the oil and apple puree. Pour the egg mixture into the dry ingredients and mix well. Spoon into the cases and bake for 18-20 minutes, until a skewer inserted comes out just about clean. Leave to cool.

To ice them, I used about 50g sieved icing sugar, mixed with enough lemon juice to form a paste. I got a bit trigger-happy on the lemon and it ended up too liquid, especially as I also added some pink food colouring… some confused thought about pastel colours for Easter was behind that, I think… but I’m not sure it worked

So I put some mini chocolate eggs on top. You can’t say they aren’t Easterish.

I like the Baking Mad site; it’s got a variety of recipes for different occasions (this banoffee layer pudding one is definitely on my list and I spotted some banoffee under the cupcake recipes tab too)

And talking of Easter, I’m looking forward to this week. Not only the two four-day work weeks and bonus double weekend in between – but it’s only six days until I can eat chocolate again. If I don’t post on Saturday or Sunday, not to worry; I’ll just be in a blissful sugar coma somewhere

Have a great week!

Strange times

Has anyone else had that post-clock-change disorientation this week?

There I was on Monday, driving along thinking happy thoughts to do with the fact there was bright sunshine at nearly 6.30pm, when I realised that I’d left the office at 6pm and spent over an hour in a meeting – and that I hadn’t put my car clock forward.

So there I was thinking even happier thoughts to do with its being sunny at nearly 7.30pm, which helped make up for the fact I was on my way to my second evening meeting, at a parish council in the middle of nowhere. The daylight also meant I found my way to a tiny village hall on a back road in said middle of nowhere. It had got dark by the time I left and I got spectacularly lost, of course, but still. Let’s look on the bright side (geddit?!)

Stranger still has been the beautiful summerlike weather but because it’s still March and so clear (did anyone see that Nasa map of the UK without a single cloud covering it?) it’s also been so cold first thing – going from frosty grass and about 0C at 7am to more like 20C in the afternoon – January to June within six hours

You probably can’t see in the picture but that pond was really steaming the other morning, and with the frosty grass and bright sunshine, it was stunning. Almost worth getting up at 6am

But because it’s been feeling summery (and because I’ve still got ten days to go till I can eat chocolate) I’ve been well into this sort of thing for puddings:

The Yoo Moo strawbswirlmoo, which is a blend of creamy natural and strawberry frozen yoghurt, with strawberry sauce and dried strawberries was lovely… and the pot had a cool picture under the lid:

Something else that always feels like a summer food to me is coleslaw:

With butternut and a delicious aubergine burger – and the coleslaw was made with garlic mayonnaise, which could well be my new favourite thing…

But to make the most of the weather, we (all of editorial plus the online journalist) decamped en masse to the pub the other lunchtime. sitting in the sun with a Pimm’s? That’s always been a favourite thing – summer’s definitely on its way

With a spring in my step

Well, the rabbit training didn’t happen.

It turned out not enough people had signed up (how is that possible?!) so it’s been postponed till the end of April. Not impressed

Instead, I went to a full council meeting on Wednesday. And it was so much fun!

Hmmph.

More positive is the fact that spring is most definitely here.

Hasn’t it been beautiful? So warm and still light enough, when I get to the yard in the evenings, to see the hundreds of daffodils everywhere and the blossom just starting to come out.

The birds are still singing their hearts out at almost 7pm… and THE CLOCKS GO FORWARD TONIGHT! Feeling the love for British Summer Time

Another good thing this week was this:

I hadn’t made a cake for ages but it was a bloke at work’s 40th so it was about time. I wanted to make a coffee cake (I’m not selfless enough to make a chocolate cake when I’m not eating the stuff!) so I used this BBC recipe, deglutenised and undairified (both technological cooking terms, you know) and tweaked:

225g plain flour (I used Doves Farm plain GF blend)

85g brown sugar

50g caster sugar

50g ground almonds

3tsp baking powder

1tbsp coffee, mixed with 1tsp warm water

2 eggs

250g plain soya yogurt

5tbsp rapeseed oil

Preheat oven to 180C and grease and line two 20cm loose-bottomed cake tins.

Mix the flour, baking powder, almonds and sugar together by hand till well blended, then make a well in the centre. Beat the egg and pour it into the well with the yoghurt, the coffee mixture and the oil then mix well with a wooden spoon till smooth.

Pour into the tins, smooth the tops and bake for 20-25 minutes, until an inserted skewer comes out clean.

I filled mine with cream cheese icing, with more coffee mixed as above added, and topped it with 50g of icing sugar blended with enough coffee mix to make a smooth paste. If I’d had walnuts, I’d have added some to the cake and put some on top. But as I didn’t, I didn’t

It went down a treat at work. I think next time, I’d add a bit more coffee to the sponge and use a vanilla cream cheese buttercream to fill, as a contrast and similarly, use this chocolate icing to top it because that would take it to a whole new level. But it was delicious and had a great texture. So moist (sorry), thanks to the yoghurt and, in contrast to a lot of gluten-free cakes, it rose really well.

And there’s lots of possibilities for this cake too… as soon as Lent endeth, a chocolate version of this cometh. Ain’t no doubt about that

Don’t forget about the clocks tonight… and it’s supposed to be another beautiful day tomorrow! What are your favourite signs of spring?

Keeping Mum

Where does time go?!

I can’t believe how quickly a week’s gone by since my last post. Or my last posy, as I just typo-d

This one’s all about my mum.

Like last year, I went with her to the Mothering Sunday service in her church, where she sings in the choir. It’s always lovely, with Sunday School children singing and handing out bunches of spring flowers to everyone and it’s always packed.

I took my mum some presents, of course, including another batch of these:

She loved the beetroot cookies when I last made them so I wielded my heart-shaped cookie cutters again.

I covered some in lemon icing, created what I fondly believed to be artistic drizzles on others:

And left some totally naked. Cover your eyes, kids.

I also took her a heather plant, and a mug which says it all. Thanks Mum for being great xx

It wasn’t intentional that everything was so – pink! There was also (just visible on the sofa) a helium balloon I’d got from work, because I thought it would be funny. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any helium. And just in case you’re wondering whether it’s possible to blow a helium balloon up yourself, it ain’t. I know

She liked the cookies, as did I. I had to test a couple, after all.

Some other random deliciousness from this past week:

Jessica’s white bean gratin, with mushrooms added for good measure; delicious.

Some more carrot cake truffles:

Also delicious. And talking of carrots, I love my job. Those aren’t two completely unrelated statements either because on Tuesday, I’m going to an animal behaviourist’s new obedience class, for a feature for the paper. And when I say obedience class, it involves agility too – and it’s for rabbits.

I kid you not – and the behaviourist says she’ll bring a couple of “spares” so even those that don’t own rabbits can have a go too. The mind boggles.

Can’t wait and, of course, because it’s for a feature, there’ll be a photographer there…!

Have a great week