It's been a busy past few months! The blog rather fell by the way side amidst making 2 wedding cakes and 2 celebration cakes in the space of a month (perhaps I shall share some photos later), travelling around the south of England on research and studying. I also gave my first conference paper this week, oh my pretty scary stuff but quite fun, they also feed us and free food is always a bonus, especially accompanied with free alcohol, I think I could get used to this conference thing!
Anyway, I do have quite a backlog of recipes to share with you now that things have quietened down a little. Today though I want to share something really really simple yet incredibly delicious, just to ease us back into this game!
Peach season is upon us! I think peaches have to be my favourite fruit and I can demolish a punnet of peaches in a day, but thats ok because they're totally healthy so I don't feel too bad about it. My favourite has to be the yellow flesh peaches they just seem so much sweeter and juicer than the white flesh, and necatrines? forget about it. Is it just me or do they taste weird? But yes, peaches. Peaches are delicious and I'm so happy that I can get them in the supermarkets again. I love that they are only sold in season since I think that fruit sold out of season is just kind of meh... you know the strawberries in December that just taste like water or Blueberries that have literally no tartness or sweetness just mushiness. Ick. Well its the season for Peaches, Strawberries and Blueberries so I am one happy camper right now! My three favourite fruits right at my finger tips in all their sweet, tart, juicy glory! It's also the season where the weather gets warmer which seems really nice at first, until it's too warm, you know that british thing right? There's like a 3 degree window of too warm... too cold. Yesterday was one of those days that it was a case of nope... too hot. But a girl still want's dessert! Just, not turning on the oven because oh dear god please no more heat.
This is where today's recipe comes in. Here at the grad house we try to eat healthy, sure the odd bar of chocolate sneaks its way into my belly more often than it should occassionally... but we try to get plenty of fruit and wholegrains and cook things from scratch so we know what's in them. We're still working on the vegetables because we have very different tastes in those! I love broccoli, sprouts, green beans, cabbage, Mr Grad... not so much. But that's another post and another recipe! So, eating healthy, this fruit salad is a really easy way to get delicious fruit into you diet without having to munch your way through endless apples. As a bonus it also has the flavours of Mojito in it which has to be like the best drink ever. What's not to love??
Now the warmer
weather is coming in I don't feel like filling up on a steaming bowl of
porridge in the morning, but I do like my oats! They are so very
healthy and tasty. What's a girl to do??
But then I
discovered this wonderful, magical food called overnight oats! Have you
heard about overnight oats? I think I'm quite late coming to this party
but they are pretty amazing! Basically you toss oats, milk, chia seeds
and whatever flavours you like into a jar, shake it up and throw it in
the fridge overnight. In the morning you have gloriously thick oats that
have absorbed all the liquid and become tender and delicious!
I
also love them because they are so simple, no faffing about in the
morning with the stove when you're sleepy and likely to burn down the
house. No bowls/saucepans to wash up. Everything gets made into the jar
and shaken up and then you can eat out of that jar too. Bonus! You make
them the night before so it's just grab and go and you can make them up
for a few days and not have to worry about breakfast! yay!
They are also so
incredibly healthy! No nasty stuff in it and it's a really good way to
get fruit into your breakfast as well as protein and everyone knows the
oats are like the best superfood. What's not to like?
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| See? So healthy! |
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| Into the jars it goes! |
It's been so long since I updated here hasn't it? Life has totally gotten in the way... well I say life, I really mean the PhD has gotten in the way, which seems to be life anyway so hey ho... I've been scootling around the UK to archives and conferences and all that kind of stuff and I also started teaching! That's right, they let me loose on the first years at the uni! It's been fun but pretty exhausting, I also have way more sympathy for my Professor's than I ever had before! But now term is ending and I finally have a few moments to myself so it felt like it was time to crack open the blog and share some recipes that have kept us going over these past few months. This is one of my favourite bread recipes to make, so easy, simple, quick and delicious.
We love bread in this house. We eat it every day, more than once a day. There is nothing better than a warm slice of bread fresh from the oven. I am quite simple in my tastes and quite enjoy it on it's own with a tiny bit of butter and a sprinkle of salt or just alongside a slice of Salami, oh and of course slathered in Nutella for breakfast, lunch afternoon snack. Mr Grad will eat it with pretty much anything, Salami, Cheese, Chilli, Artichokes, Tomatoes, you name it.
One of my favourite breads though is one that is purely savoury, Focaccia. I adore it! It's insanely delicious, all nice and fluffy and chewy with a delicious olive oil taste. It also makes the best sandwiches (amazing with Porchetta!) and is even incredibly tasty as a grilled cheese!
I have a recipe for Focaccia that I've been making for at leat 6 years, I don't even remember where I got it from, I just know that I love making it, it's so easy and versatile! When I say easy, I mean EASY, no kneading, no fancy equipment or anything, just a bowl and a spatula and you get the fluffiest, tastiest bread you can imagine. You can also flavour it in almost anyway you want which is awesome, I love it with Rosemary or Sage.
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| So fluffy!! |
Pizza, boy do we love Pizza in this house, we eat it atleast once a week! We are not fans of premade pizza though. I mean some of them are edible like the super expensive supermarket 'fresh' ones that cost as much as a small child but they are quite convenient when they are on offer. Frozen pizza? never ever liked it, in fact, confession time.. as a child I hated pizza, like really loathed it because we only ever ate that icky, super cheap, frozen pizza at home. You know the kind, they cost about £1 for 4 and are full of sugar, salt and other nasties. Take away pizza? Forget about it, they are so horrificly bad and over priced! It was only when I tried making my own pizza once I got into cooking that I discovered that actually it was pretty good! Then I met Mr. Grad and tried proper pizza, made in a pizza oven in a resturaunt run by a little old mamma and there was no turning back! It was heaven... it was also gigantic! Ever since then I've developed a very good appreciation for pizza and enjoy it quite a lot!
There are many recipes out there for pizza, some good, some not so good. Whilst you will rarely ever be able to make the awesome pizza that you eat in pizzeria's in Italy at home (unless you are amazing enough to own a pizza oven in your back yard, and if you do... can I be your friend??!!) this one is pretty darn good! This recipe I got from a little old grocer in the village that we stay in in Italy and it's soooo good and tasty! It's also really easy and cheap. In the time it takes for your pizza to be delivered you could be eating this and I guarantee you it's a million times better and has no hidden nasties in it!
This recipe is also so customisable. Once you've made the base, go wild! .We added sliced onions at the same time as the mozzarella to one of
ours. You could add thinly sliced Aubergines, or break apart some
sausages and scatter over or perhaps some pepperoni. Mushrooms also go
really well, just slice them thinly and add with the mozzarella, try
adding some mascarpone with it too, or ricotta! Artichoke hearts are
tasty too. To jazz up a plain old margherita scatter over some fresh
rocket and a few shavings of Parmesan. Even bacon works well on pizza!
You
can also totally skip out the tomato sauce and make 'white pizza'. Just
follow the instructions above omiting adding the tomato sauce and cook
as directed. Onion and Mozzarella are super tasty. You could also go the
Quattro Formaggi way and add dollops of Ricotta, lashings of mozzarella
and pieces of creamy gorgonzola (or stilton!) topped with a sprinkling
of Parmesan for a truly delicious cheesy pizza (you can also add cheddar
if, like me, you don't like blue cheese.)
We eat a lot of pasta in this house easily 3-4 times a week. Mr. Grad gets withdrawal if he doesn't eat a big steaming bowl of pasta at least once every 2 days. Left to his own devices I'm pretty sure pasta would be his sole food source for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Myself, I love pasta but I can't eat it everyday, I get bored with eating the same food too often. I do have a good repertoire of pasta dishes, most of them are really simple and quick and totally delicious.It's a really cheap way of eating too, you can buy giant 3kg bags of pasta for around £3-4 from the supermarkets which will feed you for a good few weeks! We always have a couple in the cupboard, it's even better value when they run promotional offers and you can pick up a bag for £2!
What I love about Italian cooking is that it doesn't have to be expensive and fancy, in fact expensive and fancy is pretty much the antithesis of Italian cooking! It's all about simple food with good ingredients that are healthy and delicious Pasta is quite central to Italian food and its eaten in one form or another most days. There is also something so comforting about sitting down to a big old bowl of pasta surrounded by family all laughing and joking and sharing in the deliciousness in front of you.
So, Spaghetti Carbonara, we've all heard of it. Spaghetti, Eggs and Bacon combined to make an amazingly delicious dish that ticks all the boxes, cheap, easy, quick, yummy. But, on the market there are some just awful imitations, really I've never understood the need to buy Carbonara Sauce in a jar, it's full of sugar, salt and unnecessary ingredients and additives. Then there are the ready meals that you cook in the microwave, one look at the bowl and its just so unappetizing, a gloopy white mess with stringy things in it... yuck! You can even buy the whole meal in a can, you know the famous baked beans brand, horrifying! We jokingly took a
tin of it back for one of Mr. Grad's friends, 4 years later he still
dare not open it! Seriously people it takes 4 ingredients to make your own (plus the spaghetti) and I guarantee you it's 1000x better!
Carbonara is probably Mr. Grads go to comfort food and I often make it for him at the weekend when he's home for lunch and it always goes down particularly well. Sometimes if he's had a tough day at work I'll make it for dinner, although I don't usually partake in that meal, it's a bit too heavy for me in the evening! But that eggy, carby goodness seems to cheer him right up, or it might be the glass or two of wine... but lets go with the carbonara shall we?
