Culinary Cupid

Sean was on a late shift so I wanted to cook him a special breakfast and lunch and send him off to work with more than just an average sarnie.

My Eggs Benedict was ok, Sean spotted the ready-made hollandaise sauce hidden at the back of the fridge (fail), I over cooked the eggs (fail), but I toasted the muffins to perfection (result). To be honest I'm not a morning person and Sean is the King of Poached Eggs so I think I did pretty well for a first attempted. Lunch was much better as I managed to cook his Filet Mignon rare and artistically stacked the chips and mushrooms with the precision of Gary Rhodes (well sort of).

I sent him off to work with two pretty good looking baguettes and a bundle of homemade shortbread. Not sure if will make his shift go any quicker but hopefully ease the pain a little.

Bananas in Pajamas

So, it's 11:30pm, you have four manky looking bananas sitting in your kitchen, what are you going to do? Well, in hindsight probably just go to bed, but for some reason I decided to get baking and I settled on Nigel Slater Banana Bread recipe. 

Although being half asleep this morning after my late night cooking wasn't great the fact I could eat this banana bread for breakfast made up for it :-)

It tastes lovely, it's really moist and surely it must be semi healthy even if it does have loads of sugar in it?! When I make it again I'm going to add in some cinnamon as I think it would make it even better and a lot of other banana bread recipes call for it. Also, I might sprinkle some brown sugar on top before it goes in the oven, give it a bit of a crispy topping.

Breakfast with Hugh

It's January, a new year and a new chance to be semi-healthy and lose some weight, but a weekend breakfast should be better than the usual Weetabix of a weekday. The calorie laden bacon sarnie and full English isn't really going to cut it so I went on the hunt for a new recipe for my repertoire. Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's latest book 'River Cottage Everyday' had a recipe for drop scones, it seemed a better choice, it still felt like a treat but was lots healther.

It's really simple to do and needs very little ingredients and then once you have them you can chose whatever toppings you like. I opted for a healthy combination of honey, orange and blueberries, although deep down I wanted to smother them in Nutella, maybe I'll wait until February for that when new year resolutions are just a distant memory :-)

Hangover cure - The Scottie's Sausage Sandwich

After a very drunken Christmas party last night the only thing to sort out the hangover is a sausage sandwich from a family-run Italian cafe around the corner from my work called Scottie's.

Apparently their busiest day is always the day after our work Christmas party as everyone stops off on the way into work to help make the day more bearable!