LFC - Lesley Fried (baked!) Chicken.... Finally beat the fast food chain 😜

I did it!!!

After stating awhile ago I would start making my own nuggets so we don't even need to use frozen I finally did it 😁😁!

I found the recipe using my 'All recipes UK' app on my phone. It looked simple. Chicken breast, breadcrumbs, a little salt and pepper, Parmesan, and mixed Italian herbs. Literally coat chicken in the breadcrumbs and bake in the oven. It took 5 minutes to prep and about 25 minutes in the oven. One thing that did surprise me is normally with this sort of thing you dip in beaten egg before putting in the breadcrumbs, but with this recipe it calls for melted butter. 

So to make this abit more authentic I chopped up a corn on the cob and boiled them until cooked, then peeled potatoes and made some chips in my actifryer (air fryer). 

So all in all no deep frying involved yet we had chicken nuggets and chips!

Verdict - half hour to make, children love it as fun activity making the nuggets, and completely clean plates. They think they have had a naughty meal when in fact all perfectly healthy. Great meal and will become a regular in the Aspinall house.

Wonton soup surprise!!!

Last week I made the decision to make wonton soup from my Thailand cook book. The thought process behind it;

1) fun to make wontons with kids

2) family loves prawns

3) healthy

4) I have rice paper wrappers in the freezer.

5) looks easy!

Ok mistake number 1.... It's not easy! Oh actually it would be easy if I had not made mistake number 2... Using thin rice paper wrappers normally used for dimsum rather than pastry wonton wrappers.... Doh!

Now if I were making the wontons alone it would be so fast, but I had 2 helpers who loved making the little parcels, and as well as testing my patience it took twice as long as it should.

Now I have learnt the hard way that if you place wontons made with rice paper into boiling water to cook they explode. Sigh. So out of my lovely plate full only 4 managed to remain in tact, 1 each, lucky hey!

The soup itself is made using very simple ingredients, Chinese cabbage, beansprouts, soy sauce and stock. You then cook king prawns at last minute and add the wontons.

Now why is this post called wonton soup surprise I hear you ask? Well surprise number 1 was exploding wontons and surprise number 2 is when I tasted the soup I thought "oh dear.... It's just cabbage water", and I was prepared for the kids to spit it back at me, baked beans were on stand by. Imagine my surprise when they ate every drop, and the old man had seconds! You see each component on its own was nothing great, pretty tasteless. But together, it was so moorish.

So yes, this is another one I will make again, but next time I'll buy the correct wrappers.

Taking those next steps towards smugness!

 As you're all aware I already try my best to ensure that all our meals are home cooked, only resorting to takeaway, ready meals or jarred sauces as a last resort. Well I decided that in an effort to ensure we are only eating the freshest produce, supporting local business and also in an attempt to save some money, that instead of doing all my shopping at the supermarket I will now use the farm shop and local butchers buying only what's remaining at the supermarket. But I wanted to do this without effecting my daily routine too much, basically I only wanted to do this is if it was easy... See at least I'm honest! 

So I changed my routine, instead of planning on a Saturday and doing all on line I now plan on a Thursday. The reason for this is that looking at my whole week I had 30 minutes on a Friday between picking Morgan up from school and her swimming lesson, and I worked out that gave me enough time to stop in the high street and go to green grocers and butchers. So now me and Morgan go walking down high street with my little old lady bag on wheels and get our shopping before her lesson, and she finds it fun as she helps me choose and after 3 weeks of doing this I am finding the produce so much better, quality and taste, and also I'm saving between £10 - £20 per week! Oh and I feel rather funky with the bag... Ha!

I then on Friday after dinner order all the remaining on line (that way if I can't find everything in town I can add it to the supermarket list)

My next step towards smugness is trying to make my daughters packed lunches less processed! She always has the following;

*sandwich

*piece of fruit

*yoghurt

*meat snack (eg mini pepperami)

*cheese snack (eg cheese string)

*biscuit or chocolate 

So the last 2 weeks on a Sunday me and the girls have baked cake, this is then cut up and substitutes the biscuit or chocolate in the lunch. This is lovely, because it's still a sweet treat but all homemade so I know what's in it and the best part is the girls do it with me, so it's a fun relaxing job.

Last week we made lemon drizzle cake, which was gorgeous even if I do say so myself;

Today we made a chocolate tray bake, not as good as the lemon cake if you ask me but the girls love it.

So there you go.... I'm slowly getting there.

Salmon parcels, not everything low-fat is tasteless

Friday night was salmon parcel night, now this is a tale of positives and negatives.... Easy to make, did not take too much time, and myself and my old man liked it.... However the children ermmmm let's just say not to their taste. Now they both like salmon so that is not the problem, but I will explain more later.

The recipe is out of my 1000 low fat recipes book, it's an old book and you can buy it on amazon etc, I've had it so long I can't remember when and where I got it. It's a simple idea, salmon fillets wrapped in filo pastry with mushrooms, tomatoes and basil. Served with a tomato sauce and I added new potatoes and green beans. Fun to make as kids can help make the little parcels and a simple fresh meal. I brought ready made filo sheets as it's so much easier! Then just pop in oven.

Now the kids were excited as they like salmon and pastry however the disappointment on their faces when they saw the mushrooms was a sign of what would happen. Following points of critism from my children;

1) why would you spoil it by putting mushrooms in there?

2) OMG there's tomatoes in there too...why?

Finally... (3) mummy why put it on top of the tomato sauce because you've made the pastry soggy! (Ok I was trying to make the presentation better)

I didn't have to cook anything else as they ate the potato and veg, picked off and ate the pastry, and scrapped all veg off the salmon and ate bits of the salmon.

It took about 45 minutes in total however that included messing around with kids whilst doing it. But probably will not be able to make again as not a popular one, unless I just wrap the salmon with no veg inside but that would be boring!

Wow.... Pan Haggerty mmmmmm

Thursday night and the plan was to cook pan haggerty from the hairy bikers "mums know best" book, and yes people I stuck to the plan 😊

I chose this recipe as it was a one pot dish, looked simple to make contained all ingredients my children love, and it was certainly a good choice.

It didn't say timings on the recipe but looking through I thought well this should take half hour.... Big mistake! It took an hour so instead of sitting down at 6:30pm we were eating our dinner at 7pm. The main reason for this is the preparation, lots and lots of sliced potato carrot and onion! I am no professional chef and this took ages.

But you can get kids involved, Florence loved helping me layer the food in the pan.

Turned into a craft project rather than dinner haha! Oh and I did cheat and buy ready grated cheese, it just saves so much time!

Once all cooking everything done in 25 minutes, so I will do this again but next time I'm going to prepare everything in the morning or night before. Save a lot of time on the evening.

So verdict, timing can be improved on, ingredients... Simple and cheap! Taste... Wow! This is now one of our favourites. Kids literally licked the bowl clean, Morgan stated it was just yummy! So yes we will definately be having this again, big success!

Oh and I worked out for the one I made 520 calories for 1/4 of pan.... Brilliant! It's decievingly healthy!

For the recipe please visit hairy bikers web page, buy book or follow link below;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/panhaggerty_93163

Enjoy!

#hairybikers

#panhaggerty

#bacon

First day back on horse!

Well I did it, I started back on planning and my general organisation routine, first day in and so far feeling loads better for it.

For this week I have planned the following;

Today - sesame chicken 

Wednesday - japenese noodle salad

Thurs - pan haggerty

Fri - salmon parcels

Sat - lamb steaks

Sun - roast chicken

So tonight I cooked sesame chicken with celeriac mash from 'Holfords, nutritional cookbook'. Patrick Holford writes the optimal nutritional bible. Please find link to his site below;

https://www.patrickholford.com/books/the-optimum-nutrition-cookbook

 I had to cheat... Could not find celeriac and was running out of time so improvised and brought ready made mash from marks & Spencer's, chose carrot, swede & potato. Have to admit it was a really good accompaniment. Yes I know I could have made own mash, but time was against me. The chicken itself was a simple dish, coated in sesame seeds and grilled. It used potato flour instead of wheat to reduce my gluten, and was a simple dip and grill routine.

Point to note... Keep close eye on chicken it can burn quick!

End result was liked by all family, (except Florence who didn't like mash.... But I didn't make that so hey ho), 3 clean plates! Chicken was really moist, and nice balanced meal. Looking at it I was worried it would be dry as there was no sauce, but it did not matter, it really did not need it.

All in all took me 20 minutes, but probably add another 10 minutes for fresh mash.

#chicken

Breaks over, just had AS blip....

I'm back!

I warn you this blog post is not really cooking related and may contain some moaning and an insight into the more bleak less organised side of my life....

For those of you that have noticed I've not really posted anything for about a month, reason being is I just ran out of steam! I suffer from a medical condition called Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS) which is an arthritic condition that effects all of my joints and can effect organs. With me it also effects my eyes (I get bouts of iritis) and my bowels. With joints hard tissue forms between joints which can then harden and turn in to bone, the end result is that bones fuse together. I take medication for the condition and also following lots of reviews and guidance from my consultant I do yoga every day to open my joints and prevent fusion and cycling etc to keep muscle at a good level to protect joints. Well... What has this got to do with my blog I hear you ask....? A side effect of AS is chronic fatigue. I don't just mean a little bit sleepy I mean fall asleep whilst standing up sleepy. 

For awhile my work/job has been pretty stressful as I'm under staffed and trying to do several things at once. This results in me working really long days. It has been all I can do and taken every ounce of energy to get home at night, feed kids, get them to bed, finish whatever report I was working on then when I relax... I fall straight to sleep. So basically work and fatigue have taken over and I've been a bit if a zombie. My planning went out of window and yes if I'm honest we've lived on 50% take away as I've been in too much pain to stand in kitchen or honestly so tired the thought of cooking made me cry! So we have slowly used up all frozen meals I made, my husband has been cooking, I've done some simple meals or it's been take away.... I told you I was not superwoman! My friends probably wonder where I am as I have vanished, you see when I get like this I can't function, conversations are difficult to hold and just getting through the day is enough. It is really difficult to explain. Imagine you are just a shell, you see that you are you in the mirror and your going through your daily activities but that spark is missing. So I apologise to my friends, those close know me and understand but still I love you all and I'm not ignoring you.

Anyway I have just had a holiday, I feel refreshed and today finally I feel my old self. So it's back to planning :-) I'm about to go and plan this week, I have today off and will get myself sorted, shopping etc.

Spent the weekend in a tent looking at the sea, best tonic ever!

AS though does have its up sides... Without it I would not have gotten into cooking like I have, you see I researched how to naturally cope and found that by reducing certain food groups and processed foods you help your body as it uses less energy to process these foods and this energy can be used to fight the condition. So I reduced meat, gluten & processed foods and really did see a benefit. Please note I said reduced, you don't have to remove them, this makes life harder and I'm trying to improve. I told my consultant who thinks its great. 

Also rather than breaking me down AS has made me stronger! Stronger in mind and more determined, nothing is going to beat me... It won't beat me!

So on a lighter note, I'm back, recharged and ready to get back into action and kick AS's butt! After all I have a family to take care of can't be sleeping... So less of that and back to food! Cheers 😊