Tag: review

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Review: New Morphy Richards Sauté and Soup Maker

I bought this Morphy Richards Sauté and Soup Maker with Serrated Blade recently, to replace my older Morphy Richards Soup Maker.  I love the quantities and ease of cleaning with the Morphy Richards soup makers, so there was not even a discussion in my mind as to whether I should get one or not.    I was lucky enough to get mine from Costco at a great price, though Amazon seem to have them for around £52.

I have six people to feed, and my mother, who had dementia, is also diabetic.  To get good food into her, the soup maker is just so easy.  I throw all the ingredients into the pot, then twenty minutes later we have bowls of great tasting soup for her.

I did find that trying to sauté ingredients with my old maker was a bit of a faff, as it had to be done separately, so another pan to clean.  Because of that, I rarely bothered, unless I wanted a specific taste.  I did get a bit of a surprise when I switched on the Sauté and Soup maker, to find out just how quickly that it heated up the integrated sauté function.

The inside of the soup maker has a coating, which you can effectively fry onions, butter, garlic and any vegetables you fancy on it.  The smells that come off are amazing and to be honest, they really do make any soup taste much more appealing.

morphy richards saute and soup maker featured

The secret to good soup is always great stock, but there are ways to cheat with good herb and stock pots.  You have to find a way that suits you.

Here’s a little about the maker.

Sauté 

Just pop a little butter or oil into the bottom of the jug and throw in onions, bacon bits, some herbs, garlic, ginger or spices and let them fry for a minute or two.  I use a wooden spoon to give the vegetables a little stir around while they’re cooking.

Morphy richards saute and soup maker 3

Settings

We can choose which settings to use.  Smooth takes the soup into a quick pureed state, while chunky is just that, although it takes a few minutes more for the soup to be ready.  There’s actually even a pause setting that allows you to remove the lid and add some seasonings before the cooking starts again.  There’s a blend function for if the soup isn’t smooth enough for you, and the last one is the juicer function, which I have to admit, I haven’t used with this soup maker yet.

Morphy richards saute and soup maker 4

Serving Capacity

1.6 litres, or 1.4 litre options.    The booket says for servings up to 4 people, but I manage to get enough with one kettle full for three adults and three children.  And if we need more, it only takes 20 minutes to make it, so I can have another pot brewing while we eat our first bowlful.

Non stick coating

This is a fabulous addition to the soup maker.  I’m not sure what more I can say.  It is easier to empty the soup immediately out of the soup maker and rinse it off there and then.  Dried on soup is harder to remove afterwards and you don’t want water to get into the electrical points.

Morphy richards saute and soup maker 2

Making soup is a dawdle in a soupmaker.  It even means that I can just leave it to get on with the job while I do something else.  Anything that saves time foodie wise is a bonus in my eyes, and I don’t have to worry about a pan drying out or boiling over.

A soup maker is the one item, apart from an oven obviously, that I will replace time and time again in my kitchen when one fails.  I can’t say more than that really.  Have I said before how fabulous these are?  Maybe so, but I’ll probably repeat myself for the rest of my life on this item.

I have a fair few soup recipes online.  You can find them here if you’re interested, or check the soups section on the menu bar.

 

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Review & Easy Chicken Casserole Recipe: Using Tesco Berndes Cookware, From the Tesco Sticker Promotion

We gratefully received a Tesco Berndes Cookware cast iron casserole dish, from the Tesco Kitchen range, with the challenge of creating a meal in one pot.  I’m familiar with one pot cooking by using my slow cooker, but cooking a meal in the oven as a casserole hasn’t been a common occurrence for me.  The only casserole dish I owned, was not quite able to hold a full meal for six people, so my new dish was perfect for the job.

I really like the large handles at either side of the pot, as they make the dish easy to remove from the oven.  I could fit my hands with oven gloves on around the handle.

Don’t forget to put an oven glove back on to lift it again though.  Four of my fingers suffered when I made that rookie home cook mistake.

Berndes 3

The Berndes Casserole dish has received 5 out of 5 in a recent review on independent.ie, beating some big name rivals! Read the review here.  There are three sizes, the 20cm, 24cm and the biggest, which is 29cms.

Berndes 20 cm Casserole Dish
Berndes 24 cm Casserole Dish
Berndes 29cm Casserole Dish

In-Store Sticker Promotion:

Tesco are running a sticker promotion between 29th September – 25th January 2015 where you can save up to 70% on exclusive Berndes cookware products at Tesco. For every £20 you spend online OR in-store you can collect a sticker, once you’ve collected five stickers you can use these to save up to 70% off professional kitchenware items.

The Berndes range of casserole dishes starts at £119, up to £134.99.  You can save up to 70% off the Berndes cookware range with 10 stickers at Tesco, find out more at bit.ly/1uwNo3f  You can use your stickers up to Sunday, the 11th of January 2015.

Giveaway

I’m also giving one of these fabulous dishes away.  For the giveaway, the colourful 24cm dish is the prize, and it’s a lovely one, worth £120.  Keep an eye out on the blog, as it will be live later today.

Berndes 24 cm Casserole Dish
Berndes 24 cm Casserole Dish

 

Tesco Challenge For Me:

To create a meal in a pot and share the recipe with them.

My Recipe For The Tesco One Pot Challenge:

Easy Chicken Casserole Recipe

Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Course Main Dish

Ingredients
  

  • 1 Chicken Stock Pot
  • Boiling Water
  • 50 ml Olive Oil
  • 1200 g Mixed Vegetables I used baby potatoes, leek, carrot, turnip and red onion.
  • 1 Colemans Chicken Casserole Sachet
  • 5 Chicken Breasts Diced
  • 3 heaped teaspoons Cornflour
  • 3 tablespoons Cold Water

Instructions
 

  • Set the oven to 220 Degrees C.
  • Add the olive oil to a shallow frying pan, then sear the chicken to seal the meat. Add the onions and carrots towards the end to lightly fry those.
  • Add the chicken and vegetables to the casserole dish. Top with the chicken casserole mix and stock pot. Fill the dish to almost three quarters of the level of contents, stir, then cover the dish with a lid, or tin foil.
  • Reduce the heat of the oven to 180 Degree C and cook for up to 2 hours, or the chicken and vegetables are fully cooked.
  • If you prefer a thicker gravy, remove the casserole from the dish about ten to twenty minutes before the end of cooking. Mix cornflour with a little water until it is fully dissolved. Add it to the dish and fold into the casserole. Put the casserole back in the oven until the gravy has thickened.
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Review – Nintendo DS Puzzler World 2013 Game

Being asked to review this game was no hardship for my boys.   The game arrived swiftly in January and my boys have rattled through the puzzles with great gusto.

They have absolutely loved the ability to have lots of things to do on it, and it’s kept them entertained for a fair while on car journeys.  I didn’t want to jump in and review too quickly as quite often the telling of a game is how quickly it is discarded in favour of other things.

Nintendo DS Puzzler 2013

All the games start off quite easily and they get more and more difficult as the game goes on.  There are hints that you can use by token to help if you are so stuck that you can’t get any further with it.  Once you complete the easier levels, you unlock more difficult ones, so you just keep getting challenged more and more.

Puzzler World 2013 is a huge collection of puzzles in one little cartridge.

– There are over 1200 puzzles and bonus games.
– There are a whopping 27 different puzzle types.
– Play is through Challenge Mode to unlock brain-bending Master Mode puzzles.

There are Crosswords, Wordsearches, Sudoku, Fitword, Codewords, Link-a-Pix, Pathfinder and new puzzles such as Loko, Number Jig and Maze-a-Pix.

The bonus games happen after each Challenge Mode and include Missing Piece, Symbols, Chain Letters and Hangman.
Puzzler World is a game for the family to enjoy, and offers a huge variety of puzzles which could well keep you entertained for months!  The games become more challenging as you progress so it’s easy for younger players to get stare, while the advanced Master mode provides renewed interest for more seasoned puzzlers.

What did we think?

I think the game is actually really good for grown ups who like puzzles.  I found myself pottering with it one morning and the time just sped past as I was determined to win a game of Sudoku.  I think very young children might struggle with it alone, so it would be a good game for kids and parents to play together.

I really like that if I only have a few minutes, the game can be picked up and played without having to worry about long drawn out puzzle sessions.  It has also saved a fortune on the word search books that my eldest insisted on buying every week to keep him busy.

I’m not sure how long the novelty will last, but it has been a good game for my boys.

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Adoption Week Part 2 – A Sibling Thing

I saved one of the nicer parts of adoption to this week for a very special reason.

The official adoption week focussed on the negatives but for our family we had a fabulous adoption week.

I received a phone call last week from a woman who is the adoptive parent of one of my boys younger siblings.  After asking periodically for nearly 7 years to, have some kind of contact set up, a mutual acquaintance put us in touch.    It was a short conversation as I was on my way out to pick up on the school run, so I arranged  go and meet the other adoptive mum on Wednesday last week.

It turns out that our local social services department has been telling porkie pies to some of us, and I imagine that it wouldn’t be an unusual situation.  I have to wonder what the issue would be about letting us be in touch with each other – especially when all the public information seems to point to keeping channels of contact open.  Whatever the reason, I doubt that we will actually ever get to the bottom of it.

I was a little apprehensive on the way to meet her as this is all new territory to me and I didn’t know if she would be totally open to the boys meeting.  I shouldn’t have worried.   I was introduced to her daughter who helps her care for adoptive and foster children and I immediately felt at home.

We chatted and reminisced about the things that we had both been through to adopt and then we chatted about the boys.  Her son and my boys had never met, but the similarities and behaviours were incredible.  The same medicine that doesn’t work for my boys doesn’t work for her son.  He has the same sleeping and eating patterns and much much more.  Nature really does play a huge part as their lives have been so different.

After time whizzing by for a couple of hours, it was time for me to leave, and I asked if the wee lad could come to the club we go to on Saturdays as I felt that would be a good place for them all to meet.  A fleeting meeting in a crowd is soo much easier than being faced with each other in a room and not knowing what to do.

I told my boys that their little brother would be at the club on Saturday and I tried not to get their hopes up, just in case his mum didn’t manage to get him there.

Saturday came and my boys talked about nothing else.  It was all about the little brother they were about to meet.    They had football matches, and it was middlers birthday, but that all paled into insignificance with the prospect of a sibling meeting on the horizon. Thinking back, it just have been quite daunting for them all.   At least my three had safety in numbers on their side.  The poor little toot that was about to face my pack had to do it alone.

My boys door watched for the first 10 minutes of the club and then went to play badminton.  When I saw their little brother arrive with his mum, he looked so little and scared.  He sat with middler for a while to play Lego, although they ignored each other, but each aware of the other sitting across the table.  Littlest and elder plucked up the courage to go and speak to him after about half an hour and from then on, tootie, littler and eldest were joined at the hip.  I’m not sure middler really understood and he was happy to puddle on with what he was doing.

Tootie and my boys chased each other, played football and their faces smiled non stop.  It was lovely to see them getting on so well for a first meeting.  One of the other mums who is lovely was choking back the tears as she watched them playing.   It was a long time coming.

On the way home in the car, I asked the boys if they liked their brother, and two of them said yes.

Then littlest pipes up:

“he didn’t act like a brother.”
“why not,” says I totally confused
“well he was too nice to me to be a brother.”

That had me stumped.

Little bro is planning to come back to more sessions at the club and although I am waiting to hear from his mum to find out how he was afterwards, I am hopeful that this is one contact that will remain forever in their lives.