Sunday bakes – ‘I don’t know what to do with my leftovers’ pie

So I have all the left over vegetables in the world, honestly there is a fridge full. But veggies on their own and cold, can be boring. So tonight I baked a leftover pie.

Ingredients

Whatever is in my fridge, on this occasion:

2 small onions, diced

1 sweet potato, diced

3 carrots, diced

Handful of chopped cabbage

Packet of cooked chestnuts, chopped

Pack of filo pastry sheets

Rosemary

Sage

2 cloves of garlic

Vegetable stock

Method

After you have diced the vegetables fry the onion in a saucepan, add the garlic and then all the rest of the vegetables. Pour in some boiling water and add the stock. Simmer for 5 minutes until the carrots and sweet potato are cooked. Add a little plain flour to thicken the sauce. 

Line small buttered dishes with 2 or 3 layers of filo pastry then spoon the mixture into the lined dishes. Wet the edges of the pastry and pull them together across the top of the pie. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes until the pastry is crispy. 

10 New Year’s resolutions that are actually worth it

Most resolutions just add to the list of things that you feel guilty about not doing, but here are just a few that will help you build up your reserves to face the rest of the 'to do' pile.

1. Be kind - especially to strangers.
2. Eat your greens - B vitamins are used to create mood-enhancing chemicals by your brain. A friend recently told me that chewing on some rosemary can lift your mood better than chocolate, which would make my rosemary chocolate truffles a few weeks ago the ultimate boost.
3. Do it little and often – works for almost everything, exercise, learning something new, eating chocolate and, yuk cleaning, yuk.
4. Go somewhere new – there are some amazing places out there and even if you are a nervous traveller, like me, it is worth it.
5. Read more – it’s just fun. Plus, in the correct dosage it will make you a better conversationalist and a more interesting person (which I'm sure you are already).
6. Do what makes you happy – but that doesn’t include TV. Actively doing something during your free time, I find, raises your self-esteem. The happier you are the more energy you can put into doing all the things that you don’t like but need to be done, like life admin.
7. Go outside – go for a walk, put in your headphones and listen to some up-beat music or a book on tape.
8. Make new friends – no one will replace your old friends in your heart of course but making new friends throughout your life can help you adapt to change as it comes along, and people are nice.
9. Volunteer – this one is a bit obvious. There are some great small charities out there. My personal organisation of choice is Contact the Elderly, they arrange monthly tea parties for the elderly at volunteers’ houses to combat loneliness in old age.
10. Sing – Doesn’t matter whether you sound like the egg clue in Harry Potter 4 or not, belting out your shower power song can make you feel great.

Have a Happy New Year!

Now bring us some Figgy pudding

Merry Christmas to all!

Just a quick festive treat today, as it’s Christmas, Figgy pudding.

I had no idea what went into a Figgy pudding before I started and as it turns out it’s time, lots and lots of time. Mixing all the ingredients takes no time at all but the pudding needs to steam in a pot for two hours so make sure you allow for that. 

Ingredients

250g butter   

750g dried figs

150ml brandy

700g dried fruit (I added currants and cranberries)     

3 eating apples, peeled, cored and grated

175g golden caster sugar

175g dark brown sugar

200g breadcrumbs

200g self-raising flour

1 tbsp mixed nutmeg, cinnamon and ginger

200g cooked chestnuts

Method

Butter three 1-litre pudding bowls.

Blitz 500g of the dried figs with the butter in a blender and then add the brandy and blend more.

I used the blender to make the breadcrumbs and I added the whole chestnuts so they both came out in fine pieces.

Pour into a bowl and add the rest of the ingredients and mix thoroughly. 

Cut a small circle of baking paper to go at the bottom of each of the pudding dishes and then cut a large piece of paper to go over the top of each bowl, butter this and then fold a pleat down the centre (it will give the paper room to move as the pudding expands). Lay the paper on a piece of tin foil. 

 Pour the mixture into the bowls and smooth the top, then lay the paper over the top of the bowls and cover with foil. Tie the paper and foil around the top tightly with string. 

 

 

You will need to take your biggest saucepan or dish, place a folded piece of tin foil at the bottom and put one of the pudding bowls on top of it. Fill the saucepan with boiling water until it reaches the top third of the pudding bowl then leave to simmer for at least two hours, checking often on the water level and topping up when necessary. 

Time for Christmas eve drinks, food and games. 

Merry Christmas everyone.

Brooching the subject of Christmas

A couple of weeks ago while shopping for something for my great aunt for Christmas I came across a lovely brooch on ebay. I ummed and ahhed about it for a little while before deciding against it but it got me thinking about brooches. I have several lovely ones in my possession that used to belong to my grandmothers, but I never really wear them. I would love to wear them on my camel-coloured A line coat but I’m almost always travelling around London in it so am afraid, in the bustle, that it might be knocked off and lost.

This year I also had a dilemma with my Christmas tree. I’ve moved the living room around to make it more rabbit friendly and my usual tree spot has been taken up by Turner’s cage, so instead of a full sized tree I went for a small, table-top one. This however left me with full-sized baubles appropriate for a full-sized tree but none for the miniature tree that I had brought home. So I’ve had to improvise.

The two quandaries merged in my head and I found the answer to my ‘no small baubles’ problem in my ‘never get a chance to use my brooches’ problem. I made my grandparents’ brooches into temporary Christmas baubles.

I used some of the ribbon left over from last year’s presents, tied a slip knot at one end and a figure of eight at the other. Depending on the shape and set of the brooch I pinned it to the ribbon through the figure of eight knot and then used the slip knot end to tie it to a branch, finishing the knot off in a little bow, to make it look a little less like I had executed them.

I think the end result is quite pleasing.

So there you are, when in doubt, dig out the family heirlooms.