I have a confession. I have never eaten turkey for Christmas dinner… and I hope I never have to.
As my Dad couldn’t eat white meat, we never had a traditional Christmas dinner growing up. After trying turkey as an adult – I can’t really understand why people would!
Our Christmas meal evolved over a number of years and I now mimic a version of it with my own family (who certainly aren’t complaining!).Read More »I. J. Mellis Cheese
I’m not about to start disclosing my daughter’s full medical history, which would be long, boring and a bit grim at times, but suffice to say – she has a number of food intolerances. At one point we were entirely off dairy, but had begun to re-introduce it in the hope that her gut had matured a little more. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to have been the case and we’ve been referred back to the children’s hospital again. Whilst we begin the months of waiting for an appointment, we will need to manage Katie’s diet as closely as possible but that’s no excuse to exclude fairy cakes!
After keeping a food diary for the last couple of weeks, we’ve decided to not only cut all dairy again but also to try and cut her gluten intake. Supermarkets have such superb ‘free-from’ sections now, this isn’t actually that much of an inconvenience. However, it’s still fun to do baking at home and pretty easy with help from Doves Farm – the provider of all good gluten-free cooking goodies in this house!Read More »Food: Free from Fairy Cakes
Bleak, wet weather calls for one thing… Comfort food! Ordinarily, I’d be heading to my local Starbucks for a latté and chocolate fudge brownie but as it’s ‘No Spend November’ I needed to get a bit more creative with stuff lurking in my cupboards!
Chocolate brownies are really pretty simple in terms of ingredients – all you need are eggs, butter, flour, sugar and of course chocolate. I also like to add vanilla essence and chopped walnuts but as I didn’t have these in store, I figured it doesn’t make that much difference! Cooking chocolate is obviously very bitter so a lot of recipes call for a lot of sugar to balance this out but I’ve found no one has ever complained when I’ve reduced the sugar – kids included!Read More »Food: Comforting Chocolate Brownies
What does the acronymn GBBO mean to you? If it doesn’t conjure pictures of cake, bread, pastry and Mary Berry goodness, then Iet me try to educate you! Bake Off signals a happy time of year for me, it’s TV where people are genuinely nice to each other (even with last year’s bin gate) and it’s really hard to watch without feeling a little happy by the end. Also, it’s a time of year that I get baking again.
I find it very hard to watch the GBBO without wanting to get in the kitchen and try recipes out for myself. A few years ago my Mum and I decided that we would challenge each other to make one thing from each episode. It could be our own take on whatever it was but would have to generally follow the rules of the episode. We had to be honest about how everything went, take photos and occasionally have family members chip in but then we would come to a mutual decision about who won that week. Our friend Craig soon joined in and this year, despite the arrival of baby Thomas five days before the first episode – we baked along with Bake Off.
Read More »Food: Signature Bakes
Food markets are a highlight of Edinburgh weekends for me. So with the arrival of a sunny weekend, I took the opportunity to meander round the Shore at Leith whilst checking out the new(ish) food market there.
Katie had been up at half-five that morning so I guessed she wouldn’t be up for a long walk. Rather than being deterred I stuck her in the buggy and set off at a decent pace for once! She asked to get out (when spying the canons) but on the whole was happy to sit and take in everything that was going on. I did think she looked a little ridiculous as her legs are so long now that they almost drag on the floor. However, I caved into demands and gave her a dummy so thought maybe she would just look like a rather large baby.
Read More »Food: Sunshine on Leith food market
We have been having some beautiful Autumn weather in Edinburgh recently. Although there has been a definite chill in the air it has been accompanied by bright sunshine and the air is lovely and crisp.
I had all three children with me today so spent some time playing outside to make the most of the good weather but also had a fair amount of menial chores to get done such as food shopping. When I can, I like avoid the supermarkets as think it’s more fun to go to local shops – they usually have nice displays and the staff are often chatty. One of our top shops for this purpose is Welch Fishmongers in Newhaven.