Omnomnom

One of the best bits in Janet Street Porters 'Life's too f**king short' is a recipe for the most amazing pasta sauce known to man or animal! Even better there is next to no preparing and its so cheap and takes about 30 mins.

All you need is a punnet of cherry tomatoes, some olive oil, balsamic vinegar and some fresh herbs (basil, oregano, thyme in my case). Chuck your cherry tomatoes in an oven proof dish with a good drizzle of olive oil and balsamic vinegar and sprinkle on a few fresh herbs. Bung it in the oven at about 200C for 20 - 30 mins till the tomatoes are a bit burnt and serve on pasta. We also add a little sprinkle of grated cheese. Its so tasty. In fact its so tasty I keep meaning to take a pic but when its on the table I just want to eat it :)

Om nom nom

Cooking dinner at the mo - yummy tomato & onion pasta sauce to go with Spaghetti. Its so simple but one of the tastiest pasta sauces I've made.

What you need
tin of tomatoes
1 onion, finely chopped
fresh oregano (or dried)
fresh basil (or dried)
pinch of sugar
garlic puree/ 1 clove of garlic chopped
1 tbsp sundried tomato purée
Olive oil

What you do
Fry a finely chopped onion and garlic in a little olive oil until soft
Add chopped herbs and sundried tomato puree and cook for a couple of minutes
Add tomatoes and sugar and cook on medium heat for about 20 - 30 minutes (till most of the liquid has evapourated and you get a kind of rich, tomato mush).
Pour over cooked pasta (I live spaghetti)
Top with grated cheese to make it extra yummy

Craftwise I am also signed up for another 2 swaps. One is a candy/lolly swap where we send sweeties from our country to our swap partner :) This couldn't get much better as far as I'm concerned. I absolutely adore sweets \o/ The other is one that I'm running which is a t-shirt refashion swap.

Yummy Vegi Stew Weather :)

As you can probably gather by the title, I like this time of year as its the time you can sitting in all your woolly clothes eating nice, tasty vegi stews. I made a lovely one Wednesday using some of the veg I picked up at the market at the end of the day. They were selling off bags of assorted veg for £2 which had a cauliflower, broccoli, butternut squash, tons of carrots, tons of potatoes and a few parsnips in it. Very good value for money :)
I made the stew using a couple of parsnips, about 3 carrots, about 4 potatoes, a couple onions, a pint of veg stock, a handful of red lentils, a handful of soupmix and a handful of pearl barley. You just chop the onion finely and fry for a few mins and then throw in the rest of the veg (chopped into bitesized bits) and the stock and other bits and bobs, bung on a lid and cook for about 30 or 40 mins. We had it with lots of brown bread and butter :P It was so yummy and we even had some left over for the next night's dinner too. I'll make another one next week and post a piccie or two.
I've been spending this week wrapping pressies for xmas so that I can parcel them up to send out to family. A bit fiddly but going okay so far. I've also started writing some of my homemade xmas cards but realised I haven't made anywhere near enough so I'm going to be doing lots of stamping tonight.
I got tons of bananas on Wednesday from the market too so I'm thinking of making some flapjacks tonight or tomorrow. I make mine without sugar and use Splender, honey and mashed bananas instead. I also use marg as a replacement for butter. I'll post a recipe for those too when I get round to making some.

Fruity Flapjack

Ingredients

• 8oz Margarine
• 2oz Sugar/Splender
• 2 Tbsp Runny Honey
• 1lb Porridge Oats
• 3oz dried fruit
• 1 banana mashed up

• Preheat Oven to 180c and line a low baking tray with greaseproof paper
• Melt marg with sugar/splender and runny honey
• Mix oats, dried fruit together in large bowl
• Stir in melted marg,honey & sugar and banana
• Pour into baking tray and squash down into all the corners. Cook for 30 mins
• Take out and cool for 5 mins then cut into pieces
• Leave to cool completely and then eat :)
  

Recipe for Date & Walnut Rolls

Ingredients
1 1/2 lbs of Strong, Wholemeal Flour
3 tbsp of Olive oil
1 tsp Salt
7g of Powdered Yeast
400ml of warm water
2oz Dates roughly chopped
2oz Walnuts roughly chopped

Method

• Mix together all dry ingredients
• Add Olive oil
• Add Water
• Add dates and walnuts
  
• Mix with hands into dough and turn out onto floured surface and knead for 20 minutes.
• Cover over with clean tea towel for 1 1/2 hours until dough has doubled in size.
• Knead again for 2 minutes.
• Shape ping pong ball sized balls and put on greased baking tray. Mix should make between 20 and 30.
• Bake in oven at 200oC for 20 minutes or until browned.
• Leave to cool.
• Eat :P.