Celebrity cooking

I have got into 2 celebrity cooking shows this week.

First of all Celebrity Masterchef on Watch. I think it is from Last year. I haven't watched the whole series. I started at the last 2 episodes of the heats.

I am trying to understand why celebrities go on these shows. You would think they would want to give a good account of themselves.
In Masterchef, Gemma Atkins admitted she had never cooked anything before. So OK, first of all why would you admit that? Then how do you go from never cooking to making an omelette? or a Chicken stir fry for that. I do cook but I can't for the loife of me make an omelette that actually looks or tastes good. She did manage to spoil her stir fry by adding way too much Tabasco sauce but in the second round she pulled it out the bag. For one of the rounds the celebs have to go into a serving restaurant and cook food for punters. That is bravery.

So we are down to the final with Craig Revel Horward, Nadia Sawalha and Midge Ure and it is getting tense. I am enjoying seeing Revel Horward especially under stress and having to deal with the criticism. He is very out there with his food design.

Celebrity Come Dine with me is a whole different story. We have Abi Titmuss, Leslie Joseph, Paul Ross, Linda Lusardi and Rodney Marsh.


Rodney Marsh has never cooked in his life and I doubt if he knew where the kitchen was before this show. His daughter did most of the prep for him and in the evening when it came to cooking the meal, His guests did most of the work too.

Leslie Joseph was a complete disaster. The Lamb was hardly cooked so Linda Lusardi was slicing it up and grilling it. The veg were all rock hard and the chocolate mousse was bitter.

She is a complete mess so why would she let people see her?

I can imagine that Linda Lusardi will be wonderful as the mum of 3 and I think that Abi Titmuss will win it.

Digsy's Diner

I am getting on very well with my Meal Planner. We have followed it to the letter so far and it is a lot less hassle for the kids as they can look and know exactly what we will be eating.

Today would be a new experience as the meal on the planner was Lasagne. I have never eaten or indeed made Lasagne in my life before and this recipe was a bit different in that it was the cheaper option. Not only did I bulk out the meat with lots of veggies, lentils and oats but instead of using Pasta I would be using pancakes as they are a lot cheaper to make.

This morning I made the pancakes ahead of time and left them to cool. It was quite an easy process. I have never been good at pancakes and would get a lot of duffers before I got a good one but I got 5 out of 5 today.

I made the meat sauce this afternoon. Same basic recipe as Bolognese so nothing hard there either. I left it on the lowest heat to simmer for a while.

At 5pm I made up the cheese sauce and went to work with the Lasagne...Meat first then pancake then cheese and build up the layers until you reach the top. Then I sprinkled a little bit of that really strong Cheese.

I put it in the oven then for about an hour on low heat.

At 6.15 it was the time of reckoning and guess what?? It was delicious! I made up a little mushroom stir fry to go with it but I really didn't need to at all.


The Pancakes soak up the cheese sauce and they really go well with the other tastes in the dish. The texture is good too. The kids mopped it up in no time at all so that is when I know it is a real success!

Yummy Scrummy

A while ago Bill and I were watching TV just flicking through the channels when we came across Jamie Oliver making 2 superb recipes. The second of these was like a Chocolate bread roulade.

Sweet Rolled Bread of Chocolate, Hazelnut, and Banana:
1 jar chocolate spread
Chopped toasted hazelnuts
2 bananas, sliced

Basic Bread Mix: Mix all the ingredients together and knead into a dough.
On the rolled out dough use a palette knife to cover the surface with chocolate spread. Sprinkle some toasted chopped hazelnuts and the sliced banana onto the dough. Roll up into a cannelloni shape and then roll the long snake shape inside itself to form a snail shape. Sprinkle with chopped hazelnuts. Transfer to a baking tray dusted with flour and allow to proof for 15 minutes.
Bake in a preheated 400 degrees F (200 degrees C) for 35 minute

I didn't add Bananas or nuts as I can't eat either of them but I did sprinkle with brown sugar and chocolate chips.

It came out brilliant.


So much so that there is hardly any left.


It is very moorish and I guess it is also extremely fattening but I estimate it cost about 70p and I still have enough ingredients to make another 2 at some time or another. It would be nice for breakfast too.

1 Massive success this time round!

Day 1 & 2

First day of the new regime went to plan as the Pizza and Chips option was always going to be a winner. The pizza was something I already had in my freezer for last week and the chips are cheap from ASDA at 40p a bag.

Today was my first go at making Bolognese from scratch using cheap easy ingredients. I would have normally just bought a jar of pasta sauce to use.

Unknown to the kids, I used the bulking tactics set out on MSE threads for making meals stretch. I added lentils and oats to my mince, onions carrots, peas and sweetcorn. I used chopped tomatoes instead of the usual jar of sauce and whizzed them up with the hand blender to the same consistency. I half cooked it in the afternoon and finished it off just before dishing it up this evening.



I think I got a thumbs up. DS asked if there was potato in it and I guess he meant the texture of the lentils. Bill said it wasn't tomatoey enough but that is easy to rectify.
I cooked way too much but that was planned so that I can freeze it and use it again when we have Pasta on Friday.

I really enjoyed it myself. I felt proud of myself for succesfully following a path and creating this meal that I could happily have had seconds.

Today I made bread

I couldn't wait for delivery of my new breadmaker so I bought a bread mix from Sainsburys and decided to have a go by hand.
The mix I used today was Parmesan and Sun dried tomatoes.

First of all I mix the ingredients with water until it was the right consistency. While I left it to rest I watched Punk'd they were punking Zak Effron off of High School Musical.

The next step was to knead and stretch the dough until it was ready to go into the tin and go in the cupboard to proof.

I watched the rest of Punk'd until it was ready to go in the oven and then I watched Little Miss Sunshine.


The bread only took 30mins to cook and I couldn't wait for it to cool so I cut into it straight away.


The crust was a bit hard but it was absolutely gorgeous. I think it might have been a bit stodgy inside but I cut a couple of slices and made Bacon butties and they were absolutely fabby Yummy drool.


I can imagine that it will be so much better cooked in the breadmaker but at least I know I can do it by hand.
I got the teens' approval too which is always a good thing.

I've another one in the cupboard but that is a multi-grain loaf so I will probably be eating that one myself but I will definitely be buying this one again.

Tuesday

I got up this morning and really needed to go to town but Bill was supposed to come with me so really I wasted most of the day waiting for her to get up.
She eventually got out of bed about 12ish and went to put the Sky+ on to record a new show she has got into then we found that our Sky+ services had been restricted. We couldn't record or watch anything on the planner. All because I refused to pay the £5 handling fee on paying my bill by cash. So I had to relent and pay the Damn £5 although I don't agree with it.
We didn't get the services back immediately though so I said she may as well watch the show and we would go to town after that. Only thing then would be we would have to rush and get home for 3pm in case DS didn't have his key.

I wanted to try and get a covered over litter box for the kittens because they are a bit ferocious with kicking the litter all the way across the room.
Unfortunately the only closed in ones that Wilkos have are huge and cost £11.49 and I ain't paying that. I will wait and see if I can get one from petsathome (Or whatever that big place is called)We were walking back up the path towards home and I could hear an alarm. I joked saying "It better not be ours" but as Bill reminded me we hadn't even set the alarm before we came out. Well what do you know - As I got closer I realised it was ours. How embarrassing! I opened up and went in to find the electric had gone off and that must have triggered it. Luckily it did stop but I sent Bill to get some electric.

This evening I did a bit of baking and made a Blackberry and Apple crumble for pudding. It was absolutely gorgeous especially with the Raspberry ripple ice cream I bought in town. I wish I would be more inclined to do home cooking more often.

Bought myself a Christmas pressie

Today I treated myself to a new microwave since my old one want *POOF* on Tuesday.
I saw this on offer at Argos...
... And thought at that price I couldn't say no!
I haven't had a combi microwave / Grill before so I have no Idea how tio use it to it's best. The manual really doesn't tell you much.
At least I can do Baked beans and Rice pudding now (Not together Stupid)

Experimenting with food

For ages I have wanted to experiment with cooking.
Every week I have been watching Gordon Ramsay's F word and desperate to try out one of his recipes. Especially the Fast food recipes that are only supposed to take about 15 minutes.

Friday I bit the bullet and told the kids I am going to try one of Gordon's pasta recipes. Knowing that they love Pasta so this should be an easy one for them to try.

I didn't do it exactly like the recipe. I missed out the chili and the pepper and I didn't have olive oil so used normal sunflower oil. (Have you seen the price of olive oil??)

It actually turned out very nice. I put a bit too much cream in though so it took me a bit longer as I tried to reduce the cream off a bit.

The verdict of the children was that they loved it. DD didn't like the Prawns but gave a thumbs up for the rest.

Might try another GR recipe next Friday.