Recipes

If I was given a Euro for every time my man asked me what's for dinner I'd be rich. I guess that idea wouldn't ring true considering his money is my money. Hmm for a minute there I was getting excited about hiring someone to cook for me.

A girl can dream, but for now I am stuck cooking the meals, unless he can smarten up his skills or we can make friends real fast with a cooking whiz. Wouldn't it be nice to be spoilt, trying out new meals, and the friend might even teach the man how to cook.

At the moment his cooking expertise stretches as far as the freezer. He can take out a frozen pizza base, jazz it up and 20 minutes later it's on the table piping hot. Pizza nights are great but a girl has to watch her figure!

OK, I'll be reasonable he can make a mean pizza and fry up a steak or two, but mutli-tasking in the kitchen spells DISASTER! He tends to yell out for help, with this tone of desperation that he has botched up the meal.

It's down to me to the rescue the meal and save the kitchen from filling up with smoke. He does try and I shouldn't be too hard on him but I don't want to tempt fate, so maybe it is time to buy a barbeque. At least if he burns anything it will be outside, so the kitchen and I will be smoke free.

On Sunday I got up earlier than usual and mosied on down stairs and got this strange look from the man. It was the look of "oh you're up and oh you're going to disturb (read annoy) me".

As I am such a nice person, I sat on the couch with my coffee trying really hard not to annoy him. With the coffee drunk, and my brain and body now in sync I headed for the kitchen to make him surprise, pikelets.

The last time I made pikelets I had a little problem with the mixture, the pikelets kind of looked like rubber coasters. Two batches later they were still less than desirable so this morning I thought I would try out a recipe that I found online.

I liked the look of the recipe because it didn't call for a lot of ingredients, I had to use a minimal amount of sugar and a little butter to the pan.

With the ingredients whipped up and the pan ready to go I popped the first tablespoon in and perfecto, it looked like we were having nice thick pikelets for breakfast.

In between cooking the pikelets I was running back and forth organising the breakfast table. I got out all the conserves, lemon and sugar, honey, maple syrup and butter to turn them into heavenly delights.

With the table set, the coffee poured, and pikelets nice and hot we sat down to a long breakfast sipping coffee and enjoying the most amazing pikelets we have ever tasted.

This is recipe is fantastic and if you would like to make them yourself you can find it at taste.com.
Definitely a 5 star winner!

This is something I never expected to read, a bigger breakfast in the morning may in fact help people lose more weight over the long term because eating a larger breakfast reduces food cravings in the morning whereas a smaller breakfast doesn't.

I'm not sure how much weight I could lose by eating a larger breakfast but I must confess to being very hungry by lunchtime and I often snack mid morning to keep me going. The man in the house is worse than me, he grazes all day long.

What I found really interesting reading that article was the difference over 8 months that was noticed between the two groups of dieters. One group was on a lower calorie smaller breakfast diet and after a few months they stopped losing weight and started gaining weight again.

The other group was on a higher calorie large breakfast diet and started losing weight much slower in the first few months but at the end of 8 months were still losing weight.

A few of my friends and family are a little bit overweight and they all seem to eventually put weight back on again so I might mention this to them and see if it helps.

Last week when we were at the Supermarket I bought myself some Strawberry Jam (jelly for my American readers). I love Strawberries and I absolutely love Strawberry Jam, it's my favourite. So of course I have this rule about Strawberry Jam or any jam for that matter. It must be flavoursome, contain loads of fruit and not overly sweet.

Having a jam criteria requires a little patience and light reading at the Supermarket. This usually means I send the man off to start the shop and in the meantime I can compare the list of sugar verses fruit, size of jar, and price without being nagged to hurry up. Did you know that some jams contain more sugar per 100grams of product than fruit?

I find this quite alarming, consumers think they're buying jam and in actual fact they're eating sugar with a bit of colour and fruit thrown in. If you're going to buy this type of jam you may as well save your money and sprinkle sugar on your toast.

Don't get me wrong sweet jams have their place just not on my toast. If I happen to buy jam that's too sweet I use it as jam filler in biscuits, cakes and slices. When I make jam on toast I like it to be warm so the butter can melt and mix in with spreadable jam. I love how the aroma of the toast and freshly brewed coffee fills the air, and makes for a wonderful breakfast knowing your jam will taste devine.

I feel good about reducing the amount of sugar in our diet and I get more fruit for my money. For brand name sake I am not going to mention the name but I will share the info about the fruit verses sugar content so you can be sure to buy real jam.

The sugar verses fruit content for a 340gram jar of jam will be something like this;

Sweet Jam
45g fruit per 100g of product
60g sugar per 100g of product

Real Jam
60g fruit per 100g of product
44g sugar per 100g of product

If you would like to make a difference to your family's sugar intake, take your time and read the ingredients label, you'll be surprised.

A biscuit for any occasion.

Ingredients
7 oz butter
Vanilla essence
3 oz castor sugar
9 oz plain flour
5 tablespoons of arrowroot/corn flour

Method
Cream butter, vanilla and castor sugar.
Fold in plain flour and arrowroot.
Press into a tray and prick with a fork, then cut into fingers.
Bake in a slow oven at 150 degrees for 45-60 mins.