Turning dreams into a reality?

Image Credit: http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/221664

An item that is on my bucket list and something that Mr M and myself have been considering over and over again is the possibility of buying another property to keep as a holiday home. We both adore holidaying in England, we love spending time by the coast with our children and the dream of having another home where the children will be able to go as they grow up (perhaps with their own children one day) is something I often have a little whimsical dream about. A holiday property could also be (potentially) a great investment for the future, and as I’m seriously lacking in retirement plans, we’d definitely consider letting it as a rental. For some reason I am quite excited at the prospect of running a holiday let, albeit long distance!

One of the first stages of our plan is location – we just can’t settle on a place but do have a shortlist, which includes Norfolk, Dorset, Devon and Cornwall. That really narrows it doesn’t it?  The second stage is looking at mortgages and working out whether financially it could be reality or it should remain just a distant dream.  I mean in my head, I can make it work but in reality? Who knows?

There’s also the fact that I am a bit scared at the prospect of taking on another large financial commitment, although mortgage rates are so much lower than when I last bought a house, what if our situation changes? It’s nice to sometimes just have a dream and I tend to spend a lot of time procrastinating, looking at pretty cottages on the Internet and daydreaming about what colours I’d paint the walls.  Then I worry that we’d feel like every holiday had to be taken at the holiday house, seriously restricting my need and desire to explore new places.

Whilst looking at interiors and endless pictures on property websites is a lovely way to waste a few hours, it’s not ever going to help the dream become a reality and it’s probably coming to the time where we have to put up or shut up! 

Disclaimer: This is a sponsored post

Giveaway: Luxury Picnic Hamper & Jersey Royals

Today I have a lovely giveaway for you on my blog today courtesy of Jersey Royals.  A few facts for you... Jersey Royals have been grown on Jersey for over 130 years and there are approximately 20 island farms growing Jersey Royals today over approximately 7,300 acres.  The Jersey Royal season begins in November under glass and then the main outdoor crop is planted from January to April. Harvesting usually starts in April however this year the harvesting season has been a bit late due to the atrocious weather conditions we have suffered over the winter!

What you can win:

The prize is one luxury hamper along with some Jersey Royals for you to enjoy at home (Prize value is around £45). 

What you need to know:

The prize will be supplied direct from the PR agency and there is no cash alternative. In the event that the item pictured above is not available, an alternative may be supplied.  This competition is open to UK residents only.   Please check out the T&C's listed on the Rafflecopter widget below.

How to enter:

To be in with a chance of getting your hands on this prize just follow the Rafflecopter instructions below.  The competition closes, and the winner will be drawn on Friday 7th June 2013. Once the winner has been drawn, address details will be needed by the end of Monday 10th June 2013 to arrange timely delivery. In the event that the winner cannot be contacted, another name may be drawn.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Good luck!

ThePrizeFinder - UK Competitions

Meal Planning Monday (13th May 2013)

So it's halfway through May already. I don't want to gib on about the weather but for heavens sake. Seriously. We had to turn the heating back on this weekend and the last three nights in a row I have been in bed tucked up with a hot water bottle. Ridiculous. Despite having some accidental sunburnt arms on Bank Holiday Monday I am beginning to think that summer is actually going to pass up by. I want to have BBQ's. I want to go camping. I want to get the paddling pool out. I want to go on picnics. I want to leave the house without my big padded duck-feathered filled coat. Grr. 

Rant over. For now.

On with the meal planning.  After last weeks no-plan week I'm back with a vengeance. This is how it looks for this week.

Pulled pork in baps with fries and coleslaw

Pizza

Buffalo chicken quesadillas

Chilli con carne & rice

Macaroni cheese

Fantastic fish pie

Cheesy enchiladas

Yum. I'm hungry just thinking about all that yummy goodness! I will not be partaking in the macaroni cheese as I'm not a fan and instead I'm going out for tea with my friend before we go to see Gatsby - so excited!

Okay - so now it's your turn! If you're new to my blog or #mealplanningmonday all you have to do is this - write a blog post about your meal plan for the week and submit the URL of your post using the Linkytools below. If you've not got a blog but want to join in, that's fine - just leave a comment below telling us what you're planning this week.  Any questions, just grab me via email (in the contact page) or on Twitter @madamding.  

Also, the monthly recipe Link Party for May is now active and so far I have a grand total of ZERO entries, so please get linking! It will run until the end of the month, so if you make something in May that you're proud of and want to share, add it to the Linky on that page which you can find HERE. 

Look forward to reading your blog posts!

Pin It Forward UK

Unless you've been living under a large, hard, stone thing that looks incredibly like a rock for the past year or so, you're probably going to know what Pinterest is or at the very least, heard of it. If you don't know what Pinterest is then let me tell you that it is an online tool that helps you collect and organise all the things you love - kind of like an online scrapbook. Let me also tell you it's just a teensy-bit addictive. (I may be lying actually...it's HUGELY addictive!).

So yeah, Pinterest. You create "boards" about anything you like, onto which you can "pin" things from all over the internet or even from within Pinterest itself - I spend an awful lot of time checking out other peoples boards when I should be doing something more productive. Of course, being a food lover I pin lots of food ideas to my boards including my own home cooking but I also have many other boards for home inspiration, craft ideas, a board that covers my love for the Duchess of Cambridge (slightly random maybe) and one that helps me compile the shortlist for my future husband (Justin Timberlake, Brandon Flowers, Ryan Gosling and Leonardo DiCaprio are currently in the running). I also have some more specific boards that have themes like sprinkles, cherries, pumpkins, chickens and the evil font that is Comic Sans.  This summer I'm travelling to Italy and France and I'll most certainly be making boards to help me plan that trip and more importantly, the food I shall be hunting out!

I find Pinterest hugely inspiration and I like that it's so visual. Things catch my eye immediately and I can quickly pin them so I can refer back to them later. I've found some amazing things to cook so far and it's introduced me to some truly talented and creative people that I may never have come across otherwise.   One of those is Laura from Keeping Healthy Getting Stylish who will be talking about her love of Pinterest on her blog tomorrow so do check it out.  Laura's blog covers all her passions - healthy delicious food, fitness, fashion, beauty and style and amongst her Pinterest boards she has one full of her own lovely recipes that is well worth having a look at.

If you haven't yet got yourself an account with Pinterest, why not give it a whirl? Sign up via this registration link where you can follow my boards and get yourself pinning!

Cream-In-My-Coffee Brownies (DeLonghi #coffeechallenge)

Recently DeLonghi asked me if I'd like to become the proud owner of one of their beautiful Vintage Icona Bar Pump coffee machines in return for taking part in their coffee challenge.  I was challenged to use my 'inner Heston' to create a recipe taking inspiration from wherever I liked.  

My new baby, yes, I left the sticker on. Duh.

As you may have noticed, on my blog, I try to focus on recipes that the whole family can enjoy so thinking about how I could incorporate coffee into a recipe whilst keeping it child-friendly was a little bit of a challenge.  My children, whilst on the whole can be quite adventurous have never really encountered coffee and I wanted to make something that they would like. Whenever I am starting out trying to develop a recipe or come up with meal ideas my first port of call is this - my kitchen library! This isn't all of it by the way, though I probably shouldn't admit that!

After a few hours of flicking through my books and recipe folders, bookmarked recipes and Pinterest ideas I decided that the route I wanted to take was to bake something so that helped to narrow it down somewhat.  With a little help from the children, we settled on what is probably their most favourite of desserts - the classic and somewhat unbeatable chocolate brownie. I didn't really want to do just a basic mocha-style brownie so had to have a little think about what other flavours went well with coffee. I almost went for including pecan or walnut in the mix however my children aren't huge nut-lovers and after searching for a bit more inspiration I settled on a "cream in my coffee" theme and just needed to decide how to do the "cream" part. The natural solution had to be cream cheese so that's what I did.  The recipe that resulted was a mash-up of a few different ideas, using my usual no-fail brownie recipe as a base. 

Cream-In-My-Coffee Brownies

Ingredients

100g unsalted butter

200g good quality chocolate, broken into pieces (plain or milk, either is fine)

100ml freshly made strong coffee

225g caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

3 medium eggs

85g plain flour

30g cocoa powder

1 tsp baking powder

for the cream mixture;

200g cream cheese

60g caster sugar

1 medium egg, beaten

1 tsp vanilla extract

Method

Preheat the oven to 180c/fan 160c/gas mark 4. Line a brownie tin with baking parchment.

Melt the chocolate and the butter together in a bowl over a pan of simmering water. Stir in the hot coffee and leave to one side to cool slightly.

In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs and sugar together with the vanilla extract and beat until smooth. Fold the melted chocolate mixture into the egg mixture. Sift on the flour, cocoa powder and baking powder and beat until glossy. Set to one side.

To make the cream mixture, put the cream cheese into a bowl and beat until smooth. Stir in the caster sugar, beaten egg and vanilla extract.

Pour two thirds of the chocolate mixture into your prepared brownie tin and smooth. Take the cream mixture and spoon over before taking the remaining chocolate mixture and adding this in dollops over the top. Use a spoon or knife to create a marbling effect.

Pop into the oven and bake for around 35-40mins until the middle is just set. Leave in the tin to cool completely before removing and cutting into squares.

I was really pleased with how these brownies turned out. They were wonderfully gooey and soft - I tend to like my brownies a bit fudgey and verging on under-baked rather than cakey and the cream cheese made them really moist. The coffee flavour in the brownies was not overwhelming, more of a hint of coffee which is what I wanted really as I didn't want to put the children off. Certainly the brownie could probably take even stronger coffee than I made but I think that's down to personal choice. 

These were lovely as there were for an afternoon snack but were also enjoyed warm with vanilla ice-cream. I think for a more adult dessert a coffee sauce would be AMAZING with some of these brownies and ice-cream. You can make a basic sauce by bringing brown sugar, double cream, a teaspoon of vanilla extract, a knob of butter and a shot of espresso to a slow boil and stirring until it becomes thick like a syrup.  Serve the coffee sauce warm over the ice-cream and brownies....and enjoy!

Hope you like the look of my brownies, I can't wait to see whatever the other #coffeechallenge participants have come up with!

Cookbook Review: The Great British Farmhouse Cookbook

You know how I love a cookbook right? Well obviously I can't turn down the opportunity to review a new one. 

Yeo Valley Family Farm's "The Great British Farmhouse Cookbook" is written by Sarah Mayor who is the daughter of the couple who started Yeo Valley back in 1961. Her parents Roger and Mary Mead started out with some cows and a few sheep and opened a tea room. The story goes that the clotted cream they made for the tea room resulted in lots of skimmed milk being left over so they decided to try making yoghurt and that is how Yeo Valley has come to be the largest organic business in the UK. If you didn't know, you can actually visit Yeo Valley and visit their tea room along with their organic gardens.

The book starts with a good introduction and is split into sections, the recipes in which don't always have a strong dairy-base you may or may not be pleased to know. The sections include The Dairy, The Farmhouse Kitchen, The Veg Garden, The Farmyard, The Pastures, The Woods Hedgerows Fields & Streams and The Fruit Garden. Some might find the section organisation a little irksome as they are based on where the recipe originates from rather than the type of dish so you'll find desserts and bakes all over the place, rather than in once place.

Many of the recipes are traditional and what I would call home cooking which is perfect for the majority of us who are just that - home cooks! Some of the recipes can look quite daunting at first glance, with long ingredient lists and wordy methods however the recipes really aren't complicated and many of the ingredients required are what I would call store cupboard essentials.  

There's quite a few recipes suitable for vegetarians but being a book from the countryside and a working farm, there's a fair few meat and game recipes too so if you're looking for a cookbook with a strong veggie emphasis, this may not be for you however don't completely dismiss it as there are some gorgeous sounding recipes in here.

The book itself is very well presented with good quality paper (I'm always a fan of matt pages in a cookbook) and really nice photography, both lifestyle and of the food itself, with each recipe having a good colour photograph of the end result - almost a must for a great cookbook in my opinion.

There are lots of things I am looking forward to trying out namely; 

• Blue Cheese & Leek Tart in Cheesy Oatmeal Pastry
• Deep Filled Nutmeg & Custard Tart
• Somerset Cider, Honey, Walnut & Raisin Bread
• Herby Scotch Eggs with Sage & Lemon
• Sumatran Lamb Curry
• Spinach, Wild Garlic & Filo Pie

So many yummy things to try but I'll start with the filo pie I think. I had something similar in a vegetarian restaurant recently and it was delish so I'd love to recreate that.

The Great British Farmhouse Cookbook is available to buy now.

Thai Salmon

When I started making this the other week Mr M turned his nose up at the smell. Okay, it didn't smell that great whilst marinating it, I mean fish sauce doesn't have an entirely pleasant smell does it? But I have to say he thoroughly enjoyed it, and I did too!

It's a really simple idea but I love the fresh Thai flavours with the salmon. It's worth noting, whilst this is really quick and easy to put together, you do need to allow time for it to marinate. I didn't really forward-think and had to rejiggle dinners around and in the end left this to marinate overnight. 

The recipe serves 4 and whilst I have talked about grilling, you could also BBQ the salmon if you so wished!

Thai Salmon

Ingredients

4 salmon fillets
1 small red chilli, deseeded and finally chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped 
coriander, small handful, roughly chopped
1 tbsp fish sauce
1 tbsp sesame 
2 tbsp honey
1/4 cucumber, diced
red onion, diced

Method

First you need to start by marinading the salmon. This needs to be left for at least 20 minutes or overnight. Pop the salmon fillets into a dish and cover with the chopped chilli, garlic, coriander, fish sauce, sesame oil and honey. Season well with freshly ground black pepper and refrigerate.

When you're ready to cook, pre-heat the grill to medium-hot.  Grill the salmon fillets until it is crisp at the edges. To make sure it's fully cooked (if you like it that way!) keep cooking until it feels firm to the touch. 

When cooked, serve with the diced cucumber and onion sprinkled over the top.

I also served this with some noodles, white rice and sweet chilli sauce. 

It was really yum and will definitely be a fav!