I’m enjoying…..
….polishing off the last of the Christmas chocolates and treats including these Hayfield Manor Chocolate Brownies. One of my 11 year old boys said I have to go back and buy loads more. Most of us are confirmed chocoholics in my house and we know our brownies so that means these are good, really, really good. We would stretch to calling them AHmazing. I picked them up in Brown Thomas and having just googled I’ve come up with a recipe here but I don’t think I’ll try making them. I will leave them as that exquisite treat that I will look forward to buying again next Christmas.
….reading. Finally I am reading again and slowly reaching back out beyond recipe books! These three are in reach of my bedside at the moment and I’m dipping in and out of my friend Anna Burns’s book – ‘The Food Nanny – The 10 Food Rules to Prevent a Frighteningly Fat Future for Your Kids.’ Anna has a sound nutritional background behind her to back up her sage words. This book presents a sensible, doable list of ‘rules’ that is conveyed in a non-preachy way and there are great tips here for those struggling to get enough fruit and vegetables into their kids.
Catherine Cleary’s ‘A Month of Somedays – How One Woman Made the Most of Now’ tracks her self-set challenges to accomplish a range of skills, each within chunks of 30 days allotted time. So far I’ve enjoyed reading through her flute playing and gardening and I’m currently admiring her dogged determination to get through a 30 day Bikram yoga challenge where at one point she is doing back to back classes (these are 90 minutes each, quite a challenge). At the end of the day the message here is ‘Yes, you can…’ Whatever it is you’ve ever wanted to do or try just give it a go. As I’m fond of saying to my kids myself there are plenty of excuses for not doing things but quite often not too many reasons. So get up off yer ass and go on, go on, go on 🙂
….cooking vegetarian. 3 of my friends have daughters who are vegetarians or semi-vegetarian. Is it more of a girl thing I wonder? There were 4 girls and 3 boys in my family growing up and 2 of the girls went through lengthy vegetarian periods (10 years) and none of the boys. I’ve never given up meat but when I lived on my own in Boston I cooked many meat free meals for myself simply because I love vegetables. I love the crunch, the chew, the flavour and the vibrancy they bring to the plate. With one of my friends asking me to put some vegetarian recipes up on the blog I was more than happy to do a bit of research to add some more to my repertoire. So from Donal Skehan’s Kitchen Hero book I’ve picked out Roast Squash & Bulgar Wheat Salad. Then there’s this fabulous Cauliflower, Courgette and Goat’s Cheese Pizza pictured below with Donal’s salad. Finally there’s the Bean Enchiladas recipe that is incredibly filling and tasty and what makes it better yet is the fact that most ingredients are from the store cupboard.
Talk to you in February! Enjoy, x Sheila.
