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I’ve been reading Jamie Oliver’s “Cook with Jamie: My Guide to Making You a Better Cook”. Since this book was given to me it’s been sporadically used, but I decide to try reading it from cover to cover to learn something new. I’m still in the process of reading it now.

So far I’ve found Jamie’s emphasis on good quality ingredients has intensified my interest in this subject. Jamie says Italians eat very well but fairly cheaply by buying expensive meat to eat a couple of times a week and great risottos, pastas, frittatas on other days to drive down the food bills. This concept could replace the idea of eating cheap mass produced bargain meat everyday, as seems to be a trend in Britain. My husband is a big meat eater and I discussed these ideas with him, what can I say, Jamie Oliver won him over! Less meat, but better quality, more expensive meat for us from now on.

In the light of all this my husband charged me with the task of finding us some good local farm shops. Boy did I do a good job! We visited Calcott Hall Farm Shop, Billericay, Essex. When we walked in we were blown away. We’ve shopped in a lot of farm shops, but this beat them all. Every shelf was packed full of the best quality vegetables, displayed beautifully, there was such a range of homemade products, a great butchery department, something for everyone and it was all competitively priced. The staff were really friendly and helpful and we can’t wait to visit again.

If you live in Essex or are visiting I urge you to try this shop out. See their website here. Maybe you have already visited this farm shop – please leave a comment, what did you think of it? What about farm shops in your area? Any recommendations?

First Flat Cookbook by Tiffany Goodall is a fantastic book. When I first opened the book I was really impressed. I think this is a book which stands out against its contemporaries; it is new, refreshing and delicious. This is not just a regurgitation of the classics but easy modern recipes that will inspire young cooks. Recipes are set out in useful sections such as 10 minute meals, food to share and weekend brunch. Every single recipe is accompanied by a series of helpful photos, turning this into more of a manual than simply a cookery book. This layout gives a whole different feel to the recipe book and I really like it – in fact I don’t own any other cook book set out using this concept, but I’d like more in this style.

Tiffany designed her book for anyone setting out in their own home and getting started on cooking for themselves. The blurb says “this book is perfect for busy lives and small budgets”, here lies the reason I love this book; I am busy and I have a small budget! This book is packed full of delicious, easy recipes, ideal for busy people like me and who isn’t busy?

Now, this book is aimed at the generation straight from college, busy with a new job, a new home and for this it fits its brief perfectly. However, I have one complaint, I am a young mum with a family to feed and I adore this book, my husband raved about it – this is not a book just for those with their first home – no way! These recipes need to shared by us all.

When it came to cooking some of the recipes there was much debate between my husband and I because there were too many recipes we wanted to eat! In the end we chose the Danish Frikadellars, which are little pork meatballs served with creamed cabbage.

Wow! We enjoyed this meal so much, it was easy, quick, delicious and it was good to try something we’ve never cooked or eaten before. Just right for a cold night and a meal by our fireplace. We’ll be making this again. In fact there are a lot of recipes that will be making their way onto my regular weekly meal plans.

So if you love food, enjoy cooking and like delicious, easy recipes buy this book. This is a recipe book for everyone.

Here is your chance to win a packet of Hale & Hearty Rich Chocolate Brownie Mix. A big thank you to the lovely people over at Hale & Hearty who kindly provided their Brownie Mix as a giveaway in conjunction with my own Chocolate Cheesecake Brownie blog post. It is great to present you with an alternative brownie recipe because this is a gluten free cake mix. In fact it is a good job I managed to control myself from ripping open the packet and baking it myself – this cake mix really does look delicious!

All you need to do to enter this competition is to sign up to my newsletter. Type your email address into the newsletter box in the right hand column of my blog and you will be entered into the competition (if you have already subscribed to the newsletter you are automatically entered, no need to resubscribe). The winner will be selected at random from the mailing list on the closing date of 31 October 2010 and the winner will be announced: 1st November 2010.

If you’d like to read a bit more about this brownie mix there is a review and pictures of the brownies being made on glutenfreemrsd.blogspot.com

Good Luck!

On our wedding list we had a set of very expensive non-stick dishwasher proof saucepans. I cook a lot and 5 years on the frying pan in my set is not holding up so well. Recently I tried to cook a Tortilla, the spanish version of Frittata. The difference was that the tortilla required me put a plate over my frying pan turn out the nearly cooked contents and then slide it back into the pan to cook the underside. This was easier said than done and my frying pan let me down, hence the reason I have not blogged on this topic and no pictures of the finished product have appeared! It’s a shame as I cooked the recipe to the instructions of Miriam Clegg, our Deputy Prime Minister’s wife, who is Spanish and sent her recipe into the Times a couple of months ago. I thought a recipe from the Deputy PM’s wife would make an interesting blog and hope to try again soon.

Now, the reason I’m sharing this kitchen disaster is to ask for your thoughts on non-stick pans. Can anybody recommend an excellent non-stick frying pan which is also a reasonable price? Please leave your recommendations by commenting below. I look forward to your advice!

Just a quick post for all UK readers.

The Daily Express and The Daily Star have a £5 discount voucher for shopping at Lidl. If you spend £30 or over £5 will deducted from your bill. The voucher is available in the two newspapers all next week and the voucher is valid until Sunday 3rd October 2010.

I love Lidl. I think it is great value and they sell lots of good products from the continent. Their yogurt is delicious, their olives and sun-dried tomatoes very good value, their free range eggs are 6 for 99p and I think it is the cheapest place to buy a free range chicken. I also buy all my cleaning products at Lidl too; if you haven’t shopped there before you will be surprised by how much you can save on your weekly shopping bill.

I bought a Daily Express yesterday for my voucher, it cost 70p. Look out for the voucher – happy shopping!

*If from time to time you find special offers please email [email protected], or post details on my facebook page, so I can share them with other readers.

My local baker is only a short walk away, Baby G and I usually make a trip once a week to stock up on their speciality bread. Sadly they have been shut for their summer holidays but they are open again and I’m desperate to get over there this week. They make a fantastic range of yeast free products. I’ve been trying to avoid too much yeast in my diet for a few years now. After taking antibiotics I got several stomach bugs in a row and found out I had candida. This took the form of a yeast infection in my stomach with too much bad bacteria and not enough good bacteria to fight off any stomach bugs. Ever since then I’ve thought it good to limit the amount of yeast in my diet. I’ve discovered it is in all sorts of food from sausages to crisps. I still can’t figure out why crisps need to have yeast extract? Can anybody answer that for me?

Now, my local baker’s is the only place locally that we can buy yeast free products, they make good bread, delicious rolls, pastries, sausage rolls as well as other yeast free products. I adore their Chelsea buns, although they are not yeast free! This year they are finalists in the Essex Food & Drink Awards Baker of the Year. As you can imagine I voted for them and I hope they win. They are good old fashioned bakers doing a good job, the shop has been the same forever and unlike modern competitors they don’t need a fancy sign or marketing gimmicks, they have loyal customers. I have been pleased to find they do have a website and it is regularly updated.

I love the shop so much, there is nothing better than having good local shops within walking distance. Walking to my local shop I feel good about myself; getting some exercise and fresh air makes me feel a little less guilty when I tuck into some yummy treats!

Rewind a week and we were celebrating my birthday. As well as the gorgeous cake I talked about yesterday we ate a smoked fish dinner from Cookies Crab Shop in Salthouse, North Norfolk – a favourite of Stephen Fry’s, read what he says about it here.

This is the healthiest fast food I’ve ever eaten. For the past four years we’ve been visiting this little shop come bistro and ordering a takeaway plate of food. As the picture shows you can order a selection of their own smoked fish with a yummy salad. Order, wait in the shop for roughly three minutes and then drive away with an omega 3 packed meal; you can also eat in the shop or the garden next door as the photo below shows. Bring your own alcohol if you like to have a drink.

We drove away with the (paper) plate of food on top of our car. I thought hubby had put it in the car, he though I had and 200 yards down the road it landed in the middle of the road. We had to stop and run back to get it. By a miracle and the amount of clingfilm wrapped around it nothing escaped the plate and just the beetroot juice was leaking out! So not only is a Cookie’s Crab Shop dinner delicious, quick and healthy it also seems to be indestructible!

Anybody visiting the area should make a trip to Cookies, with beautiful scenery all around and a view of the sea beyond it is a destination in itself.

This photograph shows Daddy and G with our takeaway smoked fish dinner before it landed in the road!

I’ve always enjoyed making cakes and slowly over the years practising and reading cookery books I think I’ve got quite good at it. Well, at least my friends and family have told me so. Whenever I bake a cake I hear “If you’re making cake save me some!” or “Is there any chance you could make more of this?” and “Did you actually make this yourself?” – why do people ask that last question? Yes I can make good cake!!!!

When my birthday comes along my Mum starts to worry: who will make the cake for the cake maker? For my 30th birthday my family had planned a surprise cake with my picture to be printed on it, this was to be bought from Asda, but due to the printing machine being broken in several shops it didn’t materialise. Anyway, I had guessed that my cake was being organised, partly because I ordered a photo cake for my brother on his 30th and partly because everyone went off shopping to Asda. After predicting my surprise cake early, I was really pleased to find I was wrong.

Since we were on holiday in North Norfolk my parents went to the market town of Holt and bought a fantastic cake from a shop called Byfords. I’ve seen the cake in Byfords shop window before and thought it looked good and I’m happy to say it tasted as good as a homemade cake. It was delicious.

From the packaging we found that the cakes have become so popular that they have moved out from their cafe to make a new company called Sponge. As well as being able to make mouthwatering traditional cakes the company are clearly forward thinking. Here are some of the great offers they can provide:

1. A cake subscription – delivery of a cake a month for the same price as a subscription to a glossy magazine; a great present idea.
2. Delivery of a cake anywhere in the UK for £20 – so if you can’t be with your family or friends then you can send them a cake so show you are thinking of them.
3. Pimp your sponge – add anything from candles to wrapping paper to personalise your cake.
4. Gluten free cakes in certain varieties.
5. Sponges made in small batches to ensure high standards are met for all cakes.

With my cake was a postcard asking me to share my sponge moment. My photograph shows my sponge moment; after a busy and long day my little boy feel asleep before his dinner and was put to bed fully dressed. Later in the evening with a hungry tummy Baby G, who is cake mad, woke up just as the cake was being served (how did he manage that?) and so a sleepy baby boy still cuddling his toy dog made his entrance just in time to enjoy our cake and star in my photo!

Thank you Sponge for making me a birthday cake that is as good as I could make myself.

www.sponge.co.uk

I’ve been using turmeric in my cooking for a long time but I really need to use more of it. I’ve been reminding myself how many health benefits it has.

Here are 10 reasons to add turmeric to your diet:

1. Reduces the risk of childhood leukemia.
2. Is a natural liver detoxifier.
3. May prevent and slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease by removing amyloyd plaque buildup in the brain.
4. It is a potent natural anti-inflammatory that works as well as many anti-inflammatory drugs but without the side effects.
5. May aid in fat metabolism and help in weight management.
6. Has long been used in Chinese medicine as a treatment for depression.
7. Due to its anti-inflammatory properties, it is a natural treatment for arthritis and rheumatoid arthritis.
8. Has been shown to stop the growth of new blood vessels in tumors.
9. Speeds up wound healing and assists in remodeling of damaged skin.
10. May help in the treatment of psoriasis and other inflammatory skin conditions.

Top Tip:

• One quick way to add turmeric to your diet is to put a teaspoon in with rice before cooking. The rice will turn yellow and be much more healthy!

A couple of months ago I blogged about a pasta I bought made from buckwheat and rice flour. It was made by Hale & Hearty and it was really good pasta. Now the lovely people at Hale & Hearty have sent me some more products to blog about.

Hale & Hearty was started by Ana-Catarina and Christian Konig, a celiac himself, who had a wheat intolerant daughter. They wanted there to be a better range of products on the market so their family could enjoy more things to eat; they found the answer by starting their own company making products themselves. All the products they make are gluten and wheat free.

I do not have a wheat intolerance but I do like to vary my diet and often look for alternatives to wheat. I found that sometimes I was having toast for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch and then pasta for dinner and too much of any one ingredient, in this case wheat, isn’t good. I’ve tried wheat free pasta before, normally made from rice flour, and it hasn’t been great, but that’s why I blogged about Hale & Hearty: their pasta really is better than other makes!

Last weekend we enjoyed trying the pancake mix from our Hale & Hearty sample which is made from rice flour, tapioca flour, quinoa flour, buckwheat flour as well as other healthy ingredients. The ingredient quinoa itself contains 50% more protein than wheat. When we ate the pancakes for breakfast we could taste all the goodness that had gone into making them. The blend of different flours gave a slightly nutty flavour and was better than an average pancake mix. Hale & Hearty’s use of fantastic nutritious ingredients meant that the pancakes were surprisingly filling and really mouth-watering! They were packed full of goodness and really did make a ‘Hearty’ breakfast.

Hale & Hearty may originally be designed for those with a food intolerance, but they are so healthy and delicious they must become mainstream products. They really are for everybody to enjoy and with cake mixes, pasta, bread sticks, cereal and bread mixes there is something for every occasion. I say if you want to eat healthily, eat Hale & Hearty.