Category: Lifestyle

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Slow Cooked Haggis in a Baked Potato & served with Coleslaw

We catch the wee beasties that are the haggis family, on the heathery hills in the highlands of Scotland, where we pluck them mercilessly from their lovely life of gay abandon.

Are you buying this?

Ok, haggis is a lovely, and slightly spicy delicacy that is often said to the national dish of Scotland.

I do frequently get asked the best way to cook haggis.  That could be because I often blog about food, and, being Scottish, there is probably an assumption that we all eat haggis quite often.  A bit like the rumour mill about the deep fried mars bar that only the tourists ever try.

We  normally experience haggis as part of Burns night celebrations, to celebrate the poet Rabbie Burns, so in our family it has usually been restricted to being supplied by other people.  On Burns night, people would traditionally have haggis neeps and tatties (turnips and potatoes).

Macsween sent us one of their haggises to slow cook as a few of us had been talking about it on Twitter.  I did go out and buy another one to go with it, as I thought the 3/4 person haggis was a tad too small for us all as there are 6 of us.   In the end, I think one haggis for about 4 – 5 people would be perfect for us.

On to slow cooking the haggis.

I probably would try cooking it in the slow cooker, but inside some tinfoil next time, but the slow cooked way did work nicely and made the haggis not as dry as skirlie, which is my past experiences of it.  I have to admit, I do struggle with the contents, and as I don’t eat lamb, it’s not for me, but the man, 2 kids and grannie wolfed it down.

Here’s a nice slow cooker haggis recipe for using with a store-bought haggis that has already been cooked.  I’ve added the coleslaw recipe under the haggis one.

Slow Cooked Haggis with Butternut Squash and Baked Potatoes

Lesley S Smith
4 from 2 votes
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 3 hours
Total Time 3 hours 10 minutes
Course Lunch
Servings 3 - 4

Ingredients
  

  • 1 Medium Macsween Haggis For 3 – 4 people
  • 1 Medium Butternut Squash or a turnip (Chopped)
  • 1 Medium Onion Finely chopped
  • 1 pint Boiled Water
  • 50 g Coleslaw To serve

Instructions
 

Haggis

  • Take off the outer skin of the haggis and the metal clip.



  • Cut the haggis into slices or chunks.



  • Put the haggis, squash, onion and water into a slow cooker and cook on high for 3 hours.



Baked Potatoes

  • Put baked potatoes in tinfoil and cook in oven at 180c

Haggis

  • Serve as filling for the baked potatoes.

  • Garnish with coleslaw on the top.

Notes

Your haggis will come already cooked, so the goal is to thoroughly reheat it, while cooking the vegetables.

 

Coleslaw Salad

Lesley S Smith
Perfect as a side dish with most main meals, or to use in a salad.
4 from 2 votes
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 10 minutes
Total Time 10 minutes
Course Side Dish
Servings 6

Ingredients
  

  • 200 g Carrot Grated
  • 150 g Cabbage Shredded into strips.
  • 150 g Onion Shredded into strips.
  • 2 - 3 tablespoons Mayonnaise or Thousand Island Dressing

Instructions
 

  • Simply shred the cabbage, onion and carrot.



  • Mix with mayonnaise or thousand island dressing.

  • Serve.

 

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Bloggers Saving Lives – Share Niger – Child 6 – Welcome Hapsatou

A warm welcome to Hapsatou from the Child 6 team, organised by @merrilyme to sponsor children for #shareniger on Twitter.

I’ve previously blogged about the campaign and the journey by Sian To to Niger earlier this year.  Read more here.

The campaign has so far managed to raise enough money to sponsor 11 children and help with the food crisis for the next year.  Most of us couldn’t afford to sponsor a whole child by ourselves, so we’ve done child shares, which World Vision UK has allowed, and the lives of 11 families and their villages will improve thanks to blogger power.

The Child 6 Team as it was, but who are now the Hapsatou team are @geekmummy @frugalfamily, @danielleGparker and I.

Didn’t we all do well….

 

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My scabby lounge makeover – before and after. What this blog paid for.

Who says blogging doesn’t pay for anything…  My lounge was badly in need of a makeover.  Actually, it’s badly been needing a makeover for a few years now, but with the kids, and middlers propensity for temper tantrums and trashing things when his medication wears off, I really didn’t see the point of doing it.

The front lounge was last done roughly about 12 years ago and the carpet never, ever, showed any dirt.  I had no real excuse to replace it.

The lounge had deteriorated to such an extent, that the single chair in this picture had to be thrown out about six weeks ago.  Middler in a nervous mood one day, picked at it until the leather broke and then pulled it apart.  It was beyond saving.   There was a three seater which is out of view, but sadly this is the only image I can find of my lounge as it was (that tells you how I felt about it).  Boring, old fashioned and unbelievably tired.

I began to get embarrassed about it when people came to the house and that’s never good.  I didn’t want to spend blogging money on necessities as it would have disappeared into the general pot of daily living, so a new makeover was planned and executed in less than 10 days from start to finish.

Here are the pix of the end results.  Ok, the suites are not what I would choose ideally, but they fitted within my budget and were immediately available.   The TV is NOT going back into this room and it’s going to be my chill out and reading room, or a visitors only place.  It’s too light a carpet for anything else and it smells all nice and new.  I wonder how long we will be able to keep it up though.

The man was determined to lay it himself and bought a kicker to do the job.  It took him a couple of hours and saved me £120 from the original bill.

 

I just need to add a photo wall next.

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Introducing cats to cats. You Tube Video Find (Cute)

I found this on Youtube, and I really couldn’t resist sharing it.  I once had to introduce a teensy kitten to two adult cats and the process was pretty similar.  We had our cats eye each other up through glass doors for a few days, but the steps seem to be pretty common and I still get asked how to introduce cats.

The cats protection league has a section titled : How can I introduce my new cat to my existing cat? which gives us good pointers on how to make the introductions slowly and with care to make sure that they accept each other.

The general steps for introducing cats to each other seems to be.

1.  Allow the animals to smell and see each other through a door for a few days, each cat with plenty food, water and comfort.

2. Slowly introduce them to each other by scent on your clothes, and on hands until they get used to the scent of each other.

3. Allow them to be in the same room in your presence where you can supervise and ensure that a vulnerable cat is safe.

4. Take your time as some cats will take longer to get used to new cats than others.

I challenge you not to say awwwww at the end of this video introducing a kitten to a cat …

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FREE Telecare Systems for Special Needs, Eldercare or Disability

This post isn’t one for bleating or winging about what some of us can’t get, or miss out on for our disabled or elder care families.  This one I am actually very pleased with and at the same time, massively surprised about as it seems to be UK wide, but at what levels I am not quite sure.

It started at parents night at middlers special school.  The alarm system man was there to show off the systems that can be used to help families who need to know what is happening through the night.

Imagine waking up by hearing a crying child who’d been kicked out of their bed.  Imagine hearing a noise downstairs and then investigating to find a child with front and back doors open and four burners of the gas turned on !!!!!  The potential is enormous for many parents of special needs children.  Our solution was to have one adult sleep downstairs permanently.

I had asked doctors, consultants, social workers and more for solutions to it, and the only answers I could get were to lock the doors so he couldn’t get downstairs, or put new doors on so that they could be locked.  I had visions of horror in the event of fire, or if something happened and the kids couldn’t get downstairs or out of the front door as the key is under my pillow.

Cutting a long story short, coming across these alarms is kind of bitter-sweet.  We’ve struggled for years, when there was a solution on our doorsteps, and one that the council also provides for free here.  The only charge is for things like elder care fall alerts at  £1.80 a week to link up to a call centre.

The equipment is free for us in Aberdeen, and it looks free from a lot of the local authorities I’ve had a look at.  I think Aberdeenshire is £4 month, but I think most people could stretch to that for peace of mind.

After persuading my mother that she needed an alert too after falling downstairs and making this mess of herself, she finally gave in to the fact that there needs to be some way of raising an alarm when I’m here as well as when I’m away.  I was two rooms away and had no idea she had fallen face first from the top to the bottom of the stairs.

The picture was 2 days after falling.  By 5 days, the bruising had joined up under her eyes and cheekbones.  The kids said that her bruises were “growing”.   Although she looks nowhere near her 77 years, she has arthritis which makes falling actually quite easy.  There were no broken bones which amazed me.

She has two pendants and a wrist watch style fall alert.  If she falls with the watch on, it automatically sends an alert to my wrist watch and to the care centre, just in case I don’t hear it.   She can use the pendants to either just get my attention, or to go to a call centre for help if I am not here.

We have a door alarm on middlers door which is actually quite small (wandering alert).  It goes to a unit which I keep beside my bed and wakes me up if his door is opened.  He doesn’t know how I know that he has left his room and I can usher him back to his bedroom and safety.

Alert Handset

In Aberdeen, they are raising awareness of the systems as too few people seem to know about them.  My first question was “how much will it cost”.  Sceptical as usual….    The equipment was installed within 2 weeks of my initial self referral.  An assessor came out to do an assessment of what would be needed, and two fitters came a mere few days later to install all the equipment.

The service was absolutely amazing, and I don’t say that lightly.

If you know someone who could benefit from peace of mind, let them know to look for it in their area.  They really are worth having and I have to say it again, I have been enormously impressed by the Aberdeen Telecare Information Service.

We’re sleeping easier and the wrecked lounge come bedroom is getting a makeover to celebrate it’s return to being solely a lounge.

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Google Page Rank. Have you ever wondered where it means you are in the pecking order ?

To put it simply, we all know that Google Page Rank counts for some things, whether we want to admit it or not.  It’s google for heavens sake, and they are the law of he who must be obeyed for good search engine results.  It’s easy to check google page rank, but we need to know roughly where we are so that it actually means something.

An increase of page rank seems to factor as a multiplier, ie it is 10 times more difficult to get move up each step of the ladder from Page Rank 0 to Page Rank 10.  Rumour has it that there are now into the trillions of websites out there, so a little perspective when looking at the numbers helps make us feel a bit better about where we sit in the great Google empire.

We don’t know exactly how Google works it, but going by the guesstimate that it seems to work to, this is a simple way of explaining it.   The even harder thing is that we have no way of knowing at which end of the scale our sites are at.  I’m a 3, so I could be anywhere between ten million and a hundred million.  My next goal is just to slog along to get to that Page Rank of 4.

Google Page Rank 10 – THE top 10 websites in the world.

Google Page Rank 9 –  The top 100 websites.

Google Page Rank 8 –  The top 1000 websites.

Google Page Rank 7 –  The top 10,000 websites

Google Page Rank 6 –  The top 100,000 websites

Google Page Rank 5 –  The top 1,000,000

Google Page Rank 4 –  The top 10,000,000

Google Page Rank 3 –  The top 100,000,000

Google Page Rank 2 –  Low, going by the factor of 10 means within the top 1000,000,000

Google Page Rank 1 –  Low, multiplier added means within the top 10,000,000,000

Google Page Rank 0 –  Very new, or penalised for breaching google webmaster guidelines.

Find out what yours is with a google page rank checker.

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Urgent Appeal – Getting 7 year old Olivia Downie Home to the UK from Mexico

 

Update 27/6/12 – Olivia has flown back to the UK from Mexico.

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Update: Over £140,000 has been raised so far and the plane is on it’s way to get her.  Hopefully she is released from hospital in Tijuana and can come home with her family.

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This is Olivia.  She is 7 years old and she has neuroblastoma, which is a form of cancer.  She lives in Aberdeenshire in Scotland, so it is my neck of the woods.

SHE NEEDS OUR HELP TO GET HOME – Her parents are only allowed to spend 45 minutes a day with her in Mexico.

Could you imagine being in the position of having a very sick child who is stuck in a foreign country after taking a turn for the worse?  It might never happen to us, but it has happened to Olivia and her family.

She is now so gravely ill that she cannot be flown home on a chartered flight, and needs specialist help to get back as she is dying.   Her family can’t afford to get her home again, and there is a just giving page set up to enable them to raise enough cash to take Olivia home.

As at 4pm tonight, the fund is sitting at £79,000 and it needs to get to £110,000 to get her home.

If you have a few pounds to spare, please visit her just giving page at Olivia Downie Appeal. 

You can donate by text.  Text OLIV95 and your amount £1 –  £10 to 70070.

Head on over to the Appeal page and leave what you can and pass it on using one of the two twitter hashtags on the go #getoliviahome #bringoliviahome

Olivia hasn’t got long, I am hoping everyone can get her home.

If you don’t have the money to donate to the appeal, please tweet, facebook, digg, stumbleupon, reddit and more.

Don’t comment here, go and visit the just giving page.  Olivia Downie Appeal. 

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Painting with Acrylics on a Dreary & Drab Afternoon

Forget that it’s summer now as the weather has been atrocious.  I had the kids with me last week when we went out and about to get some cheapie new curtains for the lounge I am decorating.  Ok, the curtains didn’t end up as cheap as I was hoping to get them, but they’re certainly a bargain compared to the old faded drapes they are replacing.

Popping in to the Staples at Berryden, which is pretty close by, we really just went for a browse.  We came out with a basket full of cheap goodies and new school bags for August.  The kids were most excited about their find of some cheap artists canvas boxes, and the prospect of painting with acrylics.

Fab tracing by littlest.

A whole afternoon was spent dabbing, dotting and drawing and my kids were engrossed until their canvas masterpieces were finished.

Middler wasn’t interested so I tried my best to get some sort of semblance of some kind of abstract flower.  Am completely ok with how amateur it is, but we all had a fabulous afternoon and are now eagerly awaiting some more blank canvases arriving from Amazon.

My “cough” masterpiece.

The kids bedrooms will be full of their own pictures soon.  We’re planning on possibly painting a larger canvas sheet with dots and dabs to match the new lounge when I eventually get it completely finished.  It’s a tempting blank canvas at the moment.

Littlest creation. He regrets adding the dark black line around his figure.

Eldest gave his dad this for fathers day, saying that it was a picture of his dad when he gets old.

I half wish I knew someone who was a street artist to do something fancy, but you can’t win them all can you.

 

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Carrot Cake with Scotty Brand Carrots

carrotcake4

This is a lush carrot cake and sooo easy to make.  I made this using the carrots we were so kindly given from Scotty Brand.

I used small loaf tins.

Yield – up to 6 small tins.

Ingredients

  • 4 oz castor sugar
  • 4 oz demerara or brown sugar
  • 8 oz butter
  • 8 oz self-raising flour, or plan flour with baking powder
  • 4 medium sizes eggs
  • 200g grated carrots
  • 100g chopped nuts
  • 250g mascapone cheese
  • sachet gelatine
  • cinnamon
  • nutmeg
  • topping
Method
  1. Cream butter and sugar together.
  2. Add eggs and mix until the batter becomes smooth.
  3. Sieve in self-raising flour and add the carrots.
  4. Mix until all ingredients are fully bended together.
  5. Fold in a teaspoon of cinnamon, nutmeg and the chopped nuts.
  6. Spoon out into baking cases, tins or trays.
  7. Bake in oven at approximately 160 F for about 12 – 15 minutes.  Oven times may vary depending on if it is fan assisted, gas or standard electrical.
  8. For the filling, wait until the cake is cool.
  9. Melt the gelatine and mix it with the mascapone.
  10. Cover top of cakes with the mascapone.
  11. Leave for half an hour to begin to set.
  12. Add decoration, or sprinkle top of cake with ground cinnamon.

 

 

 

 

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Bloggers Saving Lives – Help Us Sponsor Children for #shareniger

Who says bloggers don’t get anything done?  Well not us, that’s for sure, we do have blogger power.

Parent bloggers have raised enough for 6 children so far, and are on the way to 7 children in Niger for the next year.  Help us do more and expand the network willing to help.  Lots of us can’t justify the whole price at over £20 a month each, so the sponsorships are being gathered in a way that almost everyone can afford to join in with.

A subscription for anything from £1 gives us some to add to the pot, or even just a one of donation of whatever you can afford gives enough to sponsor a child for a year when it is added into the pot.  Some bloggers are doing a child share and for £6 a month, they are committing to 1/4 a child each.  Two children have just donated for 1/4 of a child.  How fabulous is that.

#ShareNiger came about when blogger Sian To went to West Africa and the Niger region with World Vision.  The trip was shared among our community by blogging and tweeting, and the media picked up on the stories.

How could anyone fail to be moved by the plight of this lady trying to keep her whole family alive on the pack of baby food she is given to feed just one child.

I know you need to know more.  I have pledged and paid for my 1/4, if you can pledge anything, a family will live a little easier in the Niger region.  Supported by World Vision, and with promises from the Government to pledge £1 for every £1 we raise, Sian and Merry Raymond are gathering bloggers together to sponsor children in the deprived area Sian visited.

If you can’t afford to give money towards sponsoring a child, you could help to do your bit by retweeting or blogging and helping raise awareness among your own online community.  For anyone who read this far, thank you for reading, and lets see us get to 10 children with the support of social media.

If you can join in, click here to sponsor a child in Niger.

Sian To –  Share Niger Story

Chris Mosler – Vaccines One Year On 

Merry Raymond – how to join us and sponsor a child in Niger.