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Ever wondered what to do with that spare apple or two that nobody wants, or the odd ones that fall from the tree? My youngest came home from school, all fired up to show us what he’d made so quickly with an apple at school.
Who am I to say no to that…..
No measurements, no being picky, this is just a pinch here and there and off you go.
I’d a block of 425g Puff Pastry, and we used about a third to a half for this.
Yield: 4-4.5 Apple Turnovers.
Ingredients
Puff Pastry – around 200g.
Sugar.
Milk.
2 Small Apples or 1 Large.
Method
Roll out the pastry, to an approximate large square.
Cut the pastry into smaller squares, so that you have four. Tidy the edges if you feel you need to. Littlest had made a couple of his more of a rectangle, so we had to fiddle around with it a bit at the stuffing stage.
Peel, core and chop the apple, then divide it up into your pastry pieces, in the centre.
Fold the squares over, point to point, then press down on the edges with a fork.
Brush the tops with milk, then sprinkle on sugar before piercing the turnovers. Then, simply bake in pre-heated over at 220 Degrees, or following your own pastry pack advice, for around 15 minutes.
We were sent a pack of Protein Cheese to try, and I first used it to make a lovely wee snack, which isn’t high in calories, nor in fat or carbs, which is always good for us diabetics, or for those watching our weight, as well as just wanting something a little different.
Protein Cheese, by eatlean, seems to be new on the market, although we had our sample for a while before I opened it. At first, I found it a little strange-looking, as it seemed slightly translucent, but how it looks, doesn’t affect how it tastes. With 37g protein and only 3% fat in every 100g, it’s a good option. It’s also suitable for vegetarians, and made in the UK, using milk from the UK. I’ve even spotted it in my local supermarket recently, so it’s becoming more well-known.
These mushrooms with cheese and sun-dried tomatoes, would even make a great tasting raw food addition as a starter or party nibble.
Each Single Mushroom Snack.
32 Calories
4.6g Carb
0.4g Fat
1.8g Protein
Stuffed Mushroom with Protein Cheese and Sun Dried Tomatoes
100gMushroomscentre stalk removed and slightly hollowed out.
3Sun Dried Tomatoessliced, or 25g.
30gProtein Cheesegrated.
Instructions
For this, I used regular sized mushrooms, and not large ones, although the big ones would do fine too. I got 5 mushrooms for my 100g and slightly hollowed them out.
I used sundried tomatoes from a jar, and washed mine thoroughly before using them. I wanted all the oil off them.
Place some cheese in the mushrooms, then popped some sun dried tomatoes on top, before adding a few more strands of cheese on top.
Pop your snack into the oven around 180 degrees for 15 minutes.
This is seriously my first try with those pasta and rice replacements, the Konjac Flour ones, that are mainly water. With 8kcals per 100g of drained rice in the version I just tried, its a serious way to reduce calories for those who watch their carbs like me. How bad could it be? It only has 0.1g Carbohydrate per 100g. That’s almost zero calories for a lot of food.
This is rice shaped konjac noodles, not actual rice itself. I think I expected a more ricey texture and shape, and that’s where I failed at the outset. The product doesn’t try to pretend it’s something that it’s not, but I did misread the label and half expected a rice like texture. I’ve left my image until the end, in case it hits you the same way as it does me.
What are Konjac Noodles?
Well, they’ve been hailed as a dieter’s dream. There are several brands, mostly around noodles. barenaked rice, Zero Noodles, Slim Rice / Slim Noodles / Shirataki Noodles. They’re all made of the same thing. The Konjac plant is a red flower with one leaf, and a long spike, that’s grown in Asia. Most noodles will come from and be imported from China.
It’s generally known as a starchy tuber, that is processed into glucomannan flour, which is then used to make the noodles. The rice I have, actually looks like pasta, but far too much like squiggly little worms for my eyes to come to terms with.
Although they’ve been around in Japan for years, they’ve only recently been gaining popularity over here, and I can’t believe I’ve gone all this time without even ever hearing about them. It all started when I spotted a pack in Sainsburys and picked them up to read the pack. My first thought was that it was a con, and complete rubbish. Some people know these as water noodles as they’re so high in water content, which probably explains why they actually taste of nothing until they’re mixed with other ingredients.
The generic Google bumf says these noodles are to fill us up, or to bulk out our food. I do love pasta, and I miss it now that I rarely eat it, so finding something to replace that would be perfect, but Sainsbury didn’t have the pasta version, so the rice it had to be.
The rice/noodles contain 96 per cent water and less than 4 per cent glucomannan fibre. I checked reviews, and there were so many positive ones, I thought I’d give it a go. I already had my “barenaked rice,” to try them out, but wished I’d gone for the proper pasta versions and ordered online. The rice is just tiny rice sized pieces of the larger pasta versions.
There were also as much negative reviews as there were positive, so I was a little cautious from the outset. Complaints included a fishy smell when the packet is opened, to the rubbery texture when it’s eaten. So here goes. I added it to a mix I make frequently for myself, with Dolmio Light Sauce and peas.
On opening the pack, the fishy smell was there. I put my rice into a sieve and ran it under cold water for a couple of minutes, and the smell was gone. In truth, the smell was no worse than buying fresh cod or haddock and getting it home, so it didn’t smell half as bad as the reviews said – to me – anyway.
Step 2
Cook the rice on the hob for around 8-10 minutes, with a little salt. I didn’t want to take the chance of the fishy smell still being there.
Step 3
Sieve off the water and rinse through again.
Step 4
Return the hob, add the peas and Dolmio sauce, heat thoroughly.
Result
To be honest, it didn’t soak up the Dolmio like rice does, and it looked pretty awful in the bowl. Eating it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but as rice, it slides down and the texture is more rubbery than rice.
It didn’t replace my rice craving, but it did fill my belly with a couple of spoonfuls.
I think the fact my dish looked more like little worms in my Dolmio put me off, and I might prefer this rice in a stir fry. The taste wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, so I’m prepared to try it out with some different dishes, and one that doesn’t look like squiggly worms when I’m eating it.
I couldn’t finish more than two small spoons of this, but it’s given me ideas, and I think I could tolerate it better as a proper pasta dish, where it doesn’t look off-putting in the dish. Actually, I might not even notice it isn’t real pasta at all, as it has a similar mouth feel to pasta for me, but slightly more rubbery.
How it looked was what stopped me eating it, rather than how it tasted. It didn’t taste terrible at all. It took on the flavour of the Dolmio very well, so although it isn’t a true replacement for rice, it does reduce calories going into the belly. I couldn’t cope with it as a rice replacement, but as a pasta one, I think Konjac and I will get on very well.
See what I mean below… Little worms. I just couldn’t… It’d be much better in a stir fry for me I think, but if the appearance doesn’t put you off, it could be a very good bulking agent for other foods indeed.
Along with a few fellow bloggers, I had the opportunity to appear in a leaflet for the Scottish Royal Highland Show this year.
Hamlyns of Scotland, who commissioned the leaflet, kindly gave me permission to post my recipe on my blog too. Here it is, the front cover of the leaflet, which apparently went down very well, and the recipe and images from making sticky toffee pudding with some oaty goodness in it.
I think I might even try replacing all the flour with oatmeal at my next attempt with this. The consistency might be different, but as I love the nutty taste of oatmeal, I suspect it would go down very well here.
Oaty Sticky Toffee Pudding Recipe
Ingredients
For the pudding.
200g Medjool Dates, stones removed.
100g Self Raising Flour.
100g Hamlyns Scottish Oatmeal.
150ml Boiling Water.
2 Teaspoons Bicarbonate of Soda.
2 Eggs.
100g Butter.
2 Tablespoons Black Treacle.
150g Demerara Sugar.
100ml Double Cream.
For the toffee sauce.
350g Golden Caster Sugar.
100g Butter, cubed.
500ml Double Cream.
1 Tablespoon Black Treacle.
Method
For the pudding.
Chop the dates into small pieces. Put them into a bowl and pour over the boiling water and set them aside. Leave them to soak in until everything else is done.
Put your oven on, to around 170C/160C (Fan).
In a mixing bowl, add your flour, oatmeal, bicarbonate of soda and sugar, and stir it around. Melt your butter so that it’s easy to mix in, and add it, along with your eggs and black treacle. Mix by hand, or use a low setting on a mixer, to ensure the mix isn’t handled too roughly. When the pudding mix looks slightly curdled, add in the double cream and fold it in by hand. Don’t worry about the texture. At this point, it might resemble batter more than pudding mix. Just remember, that it isn’t a cake mix and doesn’t need lots of air added. Using a spatula to scrape the sides and bottom of your bowl is a good idea.
Mash the dates into the water, then pour it all into the bowl with the rest of your ingredients. Again, fold in by hand. The mix may look curdled, but it’s fine.
Grease your baking tins and pour the mixture in. I used two moulds. One traditional round pudding mould and a flat one for the family to tuck into as soon as our toffee pudding was ready.
Bake for 25-30 minutes, until the pudding is cooked.
For the toffee sauce.
In a thick bottomed pan, add the sugar and butter with around three quarters of the cream, then slowly bring to the boil, stirring all the time.
When the sugar is dissolved, add the black treacle and bring the mix to the boil, letting it bubble for a minute or two at the most.
Take the sauce off the heat and beat in the remaining cream. Your mix will be a gorgeous toffee colour, and look lovely and glossy.
Combining the pudding and sauce.
Slide a knife or spatula around the edges of your cakes, and slide them out of the tins if possible. If a little of the cake sticks to the bottom, its fine. Just use your spatula to scrape it out and pop it on top, then use a knife to smooth it out. The pudding is gooey and it will repair easily and can even be slightly moulded if needed. Toffee sauce is going on the top, and it will hide any slight imperfection. If in doubt, wait until your pudding is cooler before attempting to remove it from the mould.
Pour a little toffee sauce into the bottom of your moulds. Replace your pudding, letting it sit in the toffee sauce, then pour some more on top. Keep aside around one third of the toffee sauce for serving.
If you’ve left the pudding overnight to soak up the toffee sauce, it will be more sticky and gooey than if eaten immediately. If you want to heat the pudding up before serving, that’s fine too.
Enjoy on its own, or with a little yoghurt and strawberries.
This works fine for me, but you know your own soup makers and what the limits will be. Change the amount of ingredients to suit your machine. Check your instructions if you are not sure.
This is something I tend to make quite frequently, with differing amounts of fruit, to change the taste. I’ll add others as I get time to. I quite often forget to take pictures, which I should get better at. It’s fab for adding protein, especially where it’s missing in anyone’s diet. I can’t persuade my mother to eat meat now, unless it’s cold, and I’m hoping to find a version of this that she’ll eat, but I’m not there yet. #fussyelder
Two of my boys love this style of dessert, especially if I add a few sprinkles on the top, like this one, or some chocolate shavings, or mix a little fresh cream through it before serving. This recipe could easily be split into two, as it’s rather a large serving. I often have something like this for breakfast or lunch.
Cut the carbs by using berries.
High Protein Frozen Mango Yoghurt
Lesley Smith
My preference is for Skyr, because of the silkier taste but today, I had Fage, Total 0% in the fridge, which has similar properties in the plain, with slightly different protein amounts from Skyr.
Take one or two chunks of your mango and keep it to one side. Add the rest to a blender, with the yoghurt, and blend until it reaches a consistency you like. I prefer mine not to be completely smooth, but we all have different preferences.
Add the mixture to an ice cream maker if you have one (and use it) or if you're like me today, I popped it into a freezer proof plastic tub and let it chill for an hour, then took it out and stirred it before putting it back.
I like to leave mine for around 4 hours, then stir briskly, before it's totally set. I like that consistency. If I make for the kids, I'd add a touch of cream at this stage and mix it in well, then pop it back for another hour. The larger portion you make, the longer it will need to be in the freezer for.
Use the mango set aside to decorate the top, and add sprinkles for some lovely colour, or to make the dessert look impressive on the table.
For however it happens, sweet potatoes don’t send my blood sugar as high a regular potatoes. It’s a real shame, as we grow potatoes on our plot and have some to use year round. We do eat a lot of potatoes though, and many go into soups. Sweet potatoes aren’t an easy grow, especially this far North of the border, where there isn’t much sunlight in a year, although I really do wish we could grow them.
Anyway, this is a nice and simple slow cooker recipe, although remember that my amounts are fairly large, and you might be better cutting them down for a smaller slow cooker or smaller family batches.
I’ve used round steak from my local butcher, the lean butcher in Chattan Place, Aberdeen. He delivers across the UK, so it fits in well for me. I dislike having to actually go shopping terribly often. I find the round steak is perfect for us, but slow cooking does well with tougher cuts of meat too.
500gMixed Sweet Potatoes. Mine are white and orange.
2Dessertspoons Cornflour.
Seasoning or Stock.I used chicken seasoning, and put in 3 teaspoons.
Salt and Pepper to taste.
Water.
Instructions
When you're vegetables are all chopped, add them to your slow cooker, with the meat. At times, I will lightly fry the meat and onions, but for slow cooking, the method of cooking seems to be more than enough for us to miss out this step at times.
Stir the cornflour into a little water in a cup, until it forms a smooth paste or is dissolved completely. It should look a little like milk. Add to the slow cooker.
Add seasoning and or stock cubes etc.
Stir the ingredients around well.
Add enough hot water to cover around half way up the ingredients. Be careful not to scald yourself.
Pop on the lid and cook for 4 hours on high or 8 hours on low, for a high wattage slow cooker. Adjust the cooking time based on your knowledge of your own machine. The vegetables are likely to take the longest to cook, especially the carrots and white sweet potatoes.
If your gravy looks too thin close to the end of cooking, mix up a little more cornflour and water, and add to the slow cooker, stirring the ingredients, and let cook for a further half hour.
Before I start my review, I have a confession to make. A miserable tale of electronic devilishness.
Like the annoying snapper at a wedding, I’d walked around the restaurant, pointed my lens at everything I thought looked amazing, and sat back in the knowledge I’d a lot of lovely images, including great ones of my kids enjoying a rare evening out with their parents. Cheerily I loaded my SD Card, looking forward to printing some off for the kids and for my review, to find nothing registering, nada….dead as the preverbial Dodo.
So, in short, all I can do is tell you how it went for us. Pictures usually say a thousand words, but in this case, the thousand words will have to do instead. I’ll try to make them easy reading, but I know that without those colourful additions, it’s really difficult to convey how good our experience was last week.
To make up for it, I’ve borrowed some images directly from Harvester, so thanks go to the PR team allowing me to do that.
This blurry picture is the only one I’ve got from my phone when we were about to leave the house. Not ideal, but I was looking forward to going out with my family.
Setting
The lovely offer of a meal at our local Harvester was welcome indeed. We had a very lovely meal, which was a really nice family evening, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Seeing my boys eat so much was nice too, although the fussy youngest went for a kids meal, which was no problem.
Image Courtesy of Harvester.co.ukImage Courtesy of Harvester.co.uk
Our Harvester, the Ghillies Lair, is set at the Bridge of Dee, and overlooks the Dee itself. The restaurant has a lovely extension with views over the River Dee, which would be a lovely sight on a nice evening.
The Bridge is old, very old, and dates from 1527. It’s used daily by all sorts of traffic, to leave or enter the City of Aberdeen. It’s built along a row ribbed arches, using granite and sandstone. I’ve known that bridge my whole life. Along with the old suspension bridge a bit further along, it’s steeped in history, and we’re lucky enough to still be using this one, although the suspension bridge was closed to traffic long ago.
The Ghillies Lair has an outdoor seating area, overlooking the river, for lovely summery days, and although we’re not there yet, but I’ve fond memories of sitting outside on a nice day for an ice-cream when I used to work at that end of town.
Service
What can I say! Our server was lovely and nothing was too much trouble. She was polite and friendly and they accommodated my wish for the BBQ Chicken Stack, without the BBQ sauce as I don’t often like it. She even posed, in good spirits, for an impromptu picture that’s gone belly up with my SD card. Perhaps she’ll be very pleased about that… I did spring it on her, without warning…. 🙂
Image Courtesy of Harvester.co.uk
Menu
Three of us went for the set menu, we had one child dish and I chose from the regular menu. In our local Harvester, there’s an evening set menu, where from 5pm every evening, we have the choice of a main meal + either a starter or a dessert for £10.99, or add a third course for £2. There was lots to choose from and the menus are online, so it’s easy to take a cheeky peek before you go.
Image Courtesy of Harvester.co.uk
Drinks
It was nice to see the option of drinks that we can refill as often as we want ourselves, as with three kids, our drinks bills, even for soft drinks, often outprices the cost of meals. No worries here, with the ability to choose from several different options, and fill up with ice and fizzy drinks as much as we wanted. I know many people don’t like fizzy drinks for kids, but when we’re out, it’s a treat, and I’ve always been happy enough for my kids to choose what they want. Sometimes one of mine chooses a water or orange juice, but refillable drinks tick the boxes for me.
Sauces
A whole bar of them. Loads and loads to choose from. BBQ, tomato, relishes, mayonnaise, speciality glazes and lots of different sauces to choose from.
Salad Bar
What can I say. Lots of different choices, from coleslaw, beetroot, pickled onion, tomatoes, lettuce, carrot, and much much more. The trays were replenished throughout and I felt confident I was eating fresh food. It’s not a one visit fits all, so we could visit the salad bar as often as we liked. My eldest went up three times for a top up. There was plenty to go round for everyone.
Image Courtesy of Harvester.co.uk
Bread, butter, croutons, dressings, bacon bits and more, were also available. If someone goes in there and says there’s nothing to choose from, I’d think they were nuts… Wait, that’s exactly what my youngest said…… No problem. Kids menu and chicken in a southern fried coating with chips saved the day.
Main Courses
The man and middle child chose from the set menu, going for the Signature Fish and Chips, with Ice-Cream for afters. When their fish and chips arrived, the plates were brimming over with the large fish and enough chips to even keep middler happy. He’d already eaten four or five of the small bread rolls from the salad bar, and a bowl – brimming full of salad. Eldest went for the set menu burger, and I had the BBQ Chicken Stack. There’s a sauce station with lots of different sauce and glaze options, so I had plenty to choose from. Much more than I’ve ever seen in any restaurant I’ve been to in the past.
Image Courtesy of Harvester.co.ukImage Courtesy of Harvester.co.uk
Dessert
Spoiled for choice, we couldn’t decide. Three opted for the simple ice-cream, but I decided to throw my calorie budget to the wind and go for the Rocky Road – a sundae full of chocolate brownie deliciousness, topped with fresh cream, and including honeycomb and fudge pieces.
My youngest chose the Chocolate Fudge Cake with Belgian chocolate sauce and real dairy ice-cream, and the slice that came seemed huge. He did have a dilemma when he compared it with the Eton Mess Cheesecake, as the raspberries in sauce and fluffy cream were a definite screaming taste bud temptation.
His eyes popped when the cake was carried out. ‘I’m going to eat it all,” he announced to our waitress, with a smug grin…. She smiled knowingly.
Image Courtesy of Harvester.co.uk
At the point he exhaled with exhausted happiness at eating as much as he could, eldest quickly slid the plate over and began to dig in. By the time he sat back and patted his full belly, there was even a little left over.
Information and Nutrition
This may not seem like much to some of you, but to some pernickety chiels, like me, and many others, allergens and nutritional content is important. I want to know where I sit with my calorie and nutrient budget for the week.
Working a weekly budget fits high calorie items into my life. I don’t do deprivation. As a diabetic, it’s essential for me. At many restaurants, I have to guess by plucking figures out of thin air and hoping for the best, but not with the Harvester – as they had all the information on their website.
They also have an allergen, gluten and milk guide, so meals or special diets can be planned in advance. I had two very high calorie dishes, but because the information was all there, it was easy to fit it all in, and be confident that I’d got it pretty right. And it was worth every last wicked calorie…
Overall
Between the five of us, we ate masses of food. Apart from the meal, how much else we eat, is up to us.
With the unlimited salad, sauces, breads and fizz. I can’t imagine anyone ever leaving a Harvester, and still being hungry. And with a clean and fresh ladies room, everything I looked for ticked all the boxes. I don’t remember having such a lovely evening with my boys for quite a while. Having all the teens in one place and eating together gets harder and harder as they grow older.
Although we benefited from a welcome voucher towards our meal, we thoroughly enjoyed it, and will be back as full paying guests. We’ve been to Harvesters before, and always enjoyed the experience.
Hey you all, protein is something that many of us just don’t get enough of. As a newbie runner, upping my protein count is important, to make sure I have the ability to repair the damage done to my muscles as I learn to run.
I wanted something lovely and puddingy, but not always a smoothie, and this is it…. with a whopping 40g protein in a serving. Split it in half if you want to keep to 20g Protein in a serving.
The longer it is in the fridge, the thicker it gets, so if you can make it the day before, or a few hours in advance, that’s even better. If you use a different protein powder, factor in the different amounts of protein.
Feel like cutting the calories and carbs a bit? Reduce the flour and swap out the banana, and perhaps use unsweetened almond milk. Add even more protein by using cows milk. I sprinkled one square of grated white chocolate over the top.
Add all the ingredients to your blender or Nutribullet. This makes enough for one person. Blend until completely smooth.
Pop your pudding into a glass/dish and put it in the fridge for an hour, preferably longer. I put mine into the freezer for a couple of hours if I can.
This is a veritable taste bud smacking flavour. You must like the sweetness of sweet potato, and the chilli flavour that tempers it. If you just want a very sweet soup, simply leave out the chilli, or add some cream to make it even richer, but I suspect that would be too much for me.
I used zero onions, as I wanted the sweet chlli type flavour from my soup.
Add all your ingredients to the soupmaker.
Top up with water, to above the minimum and below the maximum levels.
Crumble the stock cubes over the top, and mix well with a wooden spoon.
Make sure your lid in on properly.
Choose the smooth setting. I put this through my soupmaker twice. I did one cycle, then gave the soup a good stir before putting it on again. You can judge it by the results you get on your own version. I found it quite thick. I'd even be tempted to leave out one tin of chopped tomatoes in future, and add it for a second chunky setting for a more lumpy style soup, but I don't yet know if that would take my ingredients below the minimum line. I'll have to try it.
In this new e-book, Soup Maker Recipes there are 30 More tasty recipes, each one of which, has a fabulous picture to let you see how my versions turned out. I’d like to thank everyone who supported me with my first book, and those who were kind enough to leave reviews for me. My books are not available in print format, but if I can work out the formatting, I might eventually manage to do that.
You can buy this book on Amazon, along with my first e-book. Book 1 is Red and Book 2 is Green.
Buy from Amazon – Kindle App Reading
You can read it by downloading the Kindle app for your devices, or by viewing online in the Amazon viewer. Click the “shop now” buttons in the Amazon widget to take you to the books. The recipes include lots of new ones that are not published anywhere else, although I will share one or two on my blogs over the coming months:
See some of the pictures, and which soups and smoothies are included below.
Along with a few fellow bloggers, I had the opportunity to appear in a leaflet for the Scottish Royal Highland Show this year.
Absolutely lovely, I made extra and will add garam masala ect to make s lovely smooth curry sauce
Nice post!
Looks delicous...thanks for sharing the wonderful receipe...