Tag Archives: easy to make recipes

What’s in the cupboard? Muesli

Making nutritious muesli with ingredients already at home is easy, quick and provides a great, filling meal for either breakfast or as a Saturday lunchtime quick-fix meal.

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Ingredients

Serves 1

60g porridge oats

15g brazil nuts, roughly chopped

30g dates, chopped

30g blueberries, washed

1 banana, peeled and chopped

150ml milk

Method

  • Put all the ingredients in a bowl and mix.
  • Add milk.

Dawn: And eat! It’s this simple!

You can use whatever ingredients you may have in the kitchen cupboards and fridge. Apples, grated. Sliced pears. Cranberries – fresh or dried. Dried fruit of any kind including raisins, sultanas, currants, mixed fruit, apricots. All count towards the UK Government’s recommended “5-A-Day” and make for a healthy breakfast or alternative lunchtime meal. 

And remember: only include nuts of any variety if you’re not allergic to them! 

For more easy to make and oh-so simple to follow recipes, then follow this blog at www.forfoodlovers.wordpress.com and over at Twitter @Love_Food_UK. The Cooking Whiz is also on Mumsnet and Facebook. 

How to Make Sage and Onion Stuffing

Stuffings, also known as forcemeats, fillings and sometimes also referred to as farces, can be used in a number of ways. They can help keep meats which can be traditionally ‘dry’ food moist during the cooking process or help absorb some of the natural oils and juices found in some meat, or they can help increase a meal size which has small amounts of meat in it to a meal portion at little additional cost.

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Ingredients

Makes enough to stuff one medium size chicken

50g butter

1 medium size onion, peeled, sliced and diced

3 slices of wholemeal bread, made into breadcrumbs

2 tsp sage (dried or fresh)

1 egg, beaten

Salt and pepper

Method

  • Melt the butter in a saucepan and then add the onion and sage cooking for about 5 minutes.
  • Stir in the breadcrumbs.
  • Add the beaten egg and mix the ingredients together. Season with salt and pepper.

Dawn: Warm water can be added in place of a beaten egg and works as well to bind the mixture together to allow it to be handled when you come to stuffing poultry and/or meat. Don’t add the liquid until you are ready to use the stuffing. Don’t put the stuffing into poultry or meat until you are ready to cook it as bacteria could penetrate the stuffing which might not reach a sufficiently high temperature during cooking to kill them. 

It’s also a good way of using up bread that is 2-3 days old and a blender is a very quick way of turning the slices of bread into breadcrumbs. If you don’t have a blender, a cheese grater works just as well in making breadcrumbs, too.

There are also other options that can be used instead of bread and they can include rice, suet or sausage. I tend to shy away from suet because it’s pure fat.

And when cooking poultry or meat that is stuffed, calculate the cooking time based upon its total weight. 

For more easy-to-follow and easy-to-make recipes and food ideas, then follow this blog here and keep up-to-date on Twitter. Facebook and Mumsnet are websites you’ll find us on, too – so keep looking for tasty recipes coming!

 

Mixed Berries Smoothie

Whether for an energizing breakfast or a filling lunch, smoothies are a great way of having some or all of the recommended “5 A Day” to help us become healthier by adopting a few small changes into our everyday eating.

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Ingredients

Makes 1 large glass

1 banana, peeled and chopped

75g mixed berries (fresh or frozen)

75g low fat natural yoghurt

25g porridge oats

150ml milk (type: personal preference)

1/4tsp cinnamon

Method

  • Put the banana in a blender, adding the mixed berries, yoghurt, porridge oats and milk.
  • Blend until all the ingredients are combined together to form a thick liquid.
  • Pour into a glass and dust with some cinnamon. Then serve with or without fresh berries atop.

Dawn: This is a quick and nutritious meal for any time of the day and helps you consume two of the recommended “5 A Day” fruit and vegetables intake that helps towards a healthy and fit way of life.

When you feel good from the inside, you look great from the outside!

For more recipes from the Cooking Dynamo follow @Love_Food_UK on Twitter and follow this blog www.forfoodlovers.wordpress.com. You’ll also find us on Mumsnet Bloggers Network and Foodies100…oh, and did I mention Facebook at www.facebook.com/lovefood.forfoodlovers? See you there for more fab recipes and food chat!