Busy Bees in Sussex

Currently I am staying on a farm in Sussex. It is a beautiful part of the world and also perfect for photography!
Me and my family and been put in charge of feeding the pigs in the morning. It is such a fun job and the pigs are always to excited when they hear us coming. There are some piglets as well. There are four and are so sweet to look at!

Every night we put out a nature camera which captures photos in the dark! We have got photos of badgers, rabbits, foxes and lots of wild birds such as pheasants and sparrows.

Photo of a badger we took using the nature camera!

We have been very lucky to experience some great weather! We have been on many walks with the dogs and have thoroughly enjoyed them!
I   would definitely recommend sussex as a place to come and stay.
I used to live down here and I had some really magical times.

Below is a photo I took of a bumble bee pollinating some flowers I found in the woods. The lighting is perfect and really shows of the colors and  the beauty of where I am staying. I hope to post more photos of the farm when I get the chance.

Today I am going into a local town and hoping to have a look at some of the shops. We are also going for a lovely long walk with a pub lunch at the end of it!

Bumble bee pollinating a flower in the woods

Calf in the fields near were we are staying

How to stop food cravings

I was reading the Easter edition of the Waitrose magazine and I came across a very interesting article about how to stop food cravings.

Follow a low glycemic diet when possible, avoiding sugar and refined carbohydrates. These foods give a sudden sugar high but I the space of at least half an hour they can quickly lead to hunger and and energy dips.

If you are in the midst of a craving, remove yourself from the situation and try to ignore your hunger. You could try going for a walk or calling a friend or even reading a book, to distract yourself from your hunger.

If want sugary snacks such as biscuits or chocolate, try swapping them for nuts, dried fruits or fresh fruits or vegetables such as a handful of tomatoes or raspberries.

Swap unhealthy savoury snacks such as crisps, roasted or salted peanuts for carrot sticks and houmous or olives,

I hope this is a helpful to stopping un healthy cravings!

Good Eggs

This Easter don't just restrict your self to chocolate eggs. Eggs are an alternative to your average toast or cereals at breakfast time. What an amazing amount of goodness is packed in just one egg!
Eggs contain 14 important nutrients such as vitamins and iron.
They contain vitamin B12 which helps to make red blood cells in the body.
There are many different uses for egg such as omelette, scrambled egg, poached and fried fried egg. These are quick and easy and can be made any day for breakfast.

For a boiled egg

Boil and water until bubbling and add in egg. Boil for 6 minutes and serve with buttered toast, salt and pepper

Personally I enjoy and boiled egg in the morning before a busy day!

Breakfast smoothie

I am hoping to try this delicious receipe soon. I first saw it on Jamie Oliver's YouTube channel. It is very refreshing and includes all the essentials for a good breakfast to get you through the day.  It has carbohydrates,  dairy and protein.
Makes 1 pint
1 banana
Handful of porridge oats
2 tablespoons of fat free yoghurt
Handful of nuts
Frozen mago or any other frozen fruit
1, squeezed lime

Blend until the consistency that you  like your smoothie!

Larder essentials

In my eyes here are just a couple of supplies essential in a larder

• Rice
• Pasta
• Tea
• Coffee
• Salt
• Pepper
• Herbs/Spices
• Stock Cubes
• Tins of: tuna, beans, chopped tomatoes, sweetcorn
• Sauces (tomato, oil and vinegar)
• sugar
• flour (plain and self raising)
• dried fruit
• biscuits (sweet and savoury)
• Jam and marmalade
• Marmite

Lemon and poppy seed cake

This is an old-fashioned tea cake - a is a great pudding served with lots of lemon or vanilla ice-cream.

115g unsalted butter (softened)
115g castor sugar
4 large free-range eggs
180g ground almonds
30g poppy seeds
zest and juice of two lemons
125g self-raising flour (sifted)

for the lemon syrup

100g castor sugar
90g lemon juice

for the lemon icing

225g icing sugar
zest and juice of one lemon

Method

Preheat the oven to 180ºC/350ºF/gas 4. Grease and line the bottom and sides of a 20cm springform cake tin with greaseproof paper.
Using an electric whisk, beat the butter with the caster sugar until light and creamy. Add the eggs one by one, beating each in well. Fold in your ground almonds, poppy seeds, the lemon zest and juice and the sifted flour. Spoon the mix into the prepared cake tin and bake in the preheated oven for 40 minutes or until lightly golden. You can check to see if the cake is cooked by poking a cocktail stick right into the sponge. Remove it after 5 seconds and if it comes out clean the cake is cooked; if slightly sticky it needs a little longer, so put it back in the oven. Allow the cake to cool on a rack.
Make your lemon syrup by heating the sugar and lemon juice in a pan until the sugar has dissolved. While your cake is still warm, make lots of little holes in the top with a cocktail stick and pour your syrup over.
To make your icing, sift the icing sugar into a bowl and add the lemon zest and juice, stirring until smooth. When your cake is almost cool, put it on a serving plate and pour the icing carefully over the top. If you pour it on to the middle of the cake, then let gravity disperse the icing down the sides, you get the 'drizzle' effect! Give it a helping hand with a spoon if you want.

Poll

Hi everyone!
I thought about starting a poll about which kind of recipes you would like me to post! I will give each poll a week for you too make your desisions! I made one today about different kinds of cake.
Personally my favourite is the lemon and poppy seed cake! It has a lovely moist flavour due to the ground almonds in it. It is a Jamie Oliver receipe but I added a spoonful of lemon curd to give it a lovely flavour!
Be sure to check the poll each week to choose which recepie you would like me to do! It really helps so I can do create posts that you enjoy! :)

Cook Books

I have a wide variety of cook book which inspire me to try different cuisines and styles of cooking or baking. I don't have a favorite cook book but I enjoy looking at vintage cook books which have lots of distinctive ways of cooking that I may have never seen before!

Some of my cookbooks

As you can see in the vintage cookbook, they drawings are so colourful, they have a very
vintage look about them!

 These are some of my cook books about different cuisines. They each have a selection of recipes originating from a specific country. With these kind of cook books you can create authentic European dishes!

Close up Garden Photography

My garden is a north facing garden so we don't get the best of the light when it is sunny, but when it is sunny I like to make the most of the sun to take some photographs!
Here are some of the photos I took:

Leaves of the olive tree

Landscape photos

Even though the lighting wasn't great this after noon, I still managed to capture some of the beautiful landscapes that Forest Green had to offer!
I also enjoyed a meal in the nearest restaurant called the Parrott. I had a seasonal vegetable soup with rosemary and home made bread. I am hoping to find the recipe and upload it to my blog soon!

Quirky cog on a barbed wire fence

Hidden house on the edge of the field

View of Forest Green

Menu and the Parrott

Photos

 I realise these aren't recipes or food related but I thought I would share some of the photos I took whilst walking my dog this morning! Photography has become a new hobby as I got a new camera yesterday. It is a cannon PowerShot SX400. Its a great little camera to carry around and get a quick photo!
I was thinking about doing a section on this blog for some photography. I haven't decided what kind of style I want to take my photos in, but I enjoy close ups, landscape and nature photography

Italian Breadsticks

Most of my bakes are inspired by the Great British Bake off!
These bread sticks are created by Ali, one of last year contestants. They include unusual but delicious flavors and are fun to make!!
Follow the link to find the recipe to make these bread sticks!  http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/italian_grissini_86213

 

Home made whole meal bread

This bread is a simple recipe that can be made using a bread maker or just simply by hand (when kneading you can just use plain white bread flour) I prefer the old fashioned hand method because I feel I get more of the satisfaction when the final result comes out of the oven!
Secret to success:
It may sound like cheating but you get the same satisfaction by using a supermarket bought bread mix! There are loads of different varieties, whole meal, plain white, granary. All you need to add is butter and water (and some elbow grease when kneading!)
I am going to enjoy a slice or two of my bread with some salmon and boiled potatoes with lots of lovely butter on top!

Banana scotch pancakes!

This simple recipe can make a filling and fun to make breakfast!
Scotch pancakes (also known as drop scones) are North American and the raising agent is baking powder.

These pancakes have such a wide variety of toppings to choose from! But the classic is lemon and sugar, or for scotch pancakes banana and honey!
Some other ideas for toppings for toppings are:

• Fruit and cream
• Blueberries (jam or compote) 
• Ice cream
• Chocolate sauce
• Caramelized bacon

Ingredients for Scotch Pancakes 

1. 200g of plain flour
2. 1 level tsp of Bicarbonate of soda
3. 2 level tsp of cream of tartar
4. 50 grams of castor sugar
5. 1 egg
6. 250 ml milk
7. 50 block butter or margarine

Method

1. Put flour, bicarbonate of soda and cream of tar tar into a measuring jug
2. Add in sugar, egg and milk
3. Using a stick blender, blend the mixture until smooth. Make sure all the mixture has been mixed in
4. Warm up a frying pan and wipe with the butter or margarine
5. When the fat begins to smoke, drop a spoonful (or more if you would prefer) onto the pan
6. When the top begins to show bubbles flip and the under side should be a nice golden brown
7. Put onto a plate and add your chosen topping!

Winter soup

For this tasty soup you will need:

6 floury potatoes

1 turnip

6 carrots

1 large onion

chicken stock cube

3 cups of water

salt and pepper to taste

herbs to flavour

2 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil

 

 

 

Handy Cheese biscuits

These 'handy' biscuits are very simple and  desirable for the cheese lover! They recipe is also very simple: 120g plain flour, 120g cheese (grated) and 120g of butter. Mix all the ingrediants together and roll into a ball and roll out and cut into shapes. Bake for 10 - 20 minutes. You can add some more cheese on top if you want and even cheesier bake!

 

Seville

Recently in the half term break I went to Seville. Our hotel was very near the bull fighting ring. I couldn't stand going and watching it - the building was very grand to look at and the horses were also magnificent with thier riders. In most restaurants I went to thier were bulls heads from previous fights. The heads are treated as almost trophies from when the Matador kills the bull.

 

In Seville they are more excited about Tapas than Paella. I mostly enjoyed the anchovies on toast (tostadas anchovie) and the garlic prawns (gambas al ajillo). The really good Tapas places are on the outskirts of town. The family run ones produce wonderful home cooking at reasonable prices. In one bar I went to it had a big, long breakfast bar where you ordered you food and they called your name and you went up to collect it. You could see the kitchen in the back and it was about a metre square - yet producing such wonderful food!

 

Trying different cuisines

 

Eating different types of cuisines can improve your tastes and ideas for cooking! Even just going to your local Chinese takeaway can help you to taste other ideas of cooking.

Or if your taste buds are really tingling you can go to the true cuisine then you could go to the country, Italy for pasta and pizza, Spain for Paella, India for the smells of pungent currey or England from fish and chips and a good old roast dinner!

 

I wanted to try an Asian fusion dish so I took myself off to Wagamamas and tasted a mini ramen. A simple salty broth with sweet corn, bbq chicken, noodles, carott and wild water cress. It's a really simple meal you could make yourself or to just have it in the restaurant!

The dish as it came to me.

France - Le Crotoy

My summer travels took me to France this year. We stayed in Le Crotoy which is in the region of Picarde. The Somme was not far from our house, just a bike ride away! You had to catch the tide at the right moment as it comes in and out very fast! We classicaly ate moules and frittes in a restaurant that over looked the wide stretch of river. You had to mind your toes as there are crabs in the water. We bought a shrimp net and went shrimping hoping to find some for our dinner (they are lovely boiled with a knob of butter) some generous fisherman kepy giving us buckets full of shrimps as they saw we were struggling to catch our own! A few crabs found thier way into the bucket but we put them back as they are not for eating!

Lots of beautiful yet abandoned house are along the streets of Le Crotoy - they make wonderful photgraphs!

From this photo you can see how far the water can go out as it is barely visible from where the photo was took! Some days the beach is full of families building sandcastles and having fun in the water and others it is just empty, despite the weather being magical!

The restaurant which served such wonderful food and drink, a perfect combination with that lovely view!

We travelled accross the island to the other side called Saint Valerie. Charming roof tops and houses light up during the wonderful sun set! You are very lucky to catch it when the sun set is out!

                    

Friendly Bake Off

 

Recently a friend and I were inspired by the british bake off and decided to have a small go at the invention test. We were given 4 oz flour, 4 oz sugar, 4oz butter and 1 egg. This is what one of our bakes looked like! In the center there is home made red current jam!