Come Dine With Kay!

 Turkey Meatballs & Chickpeas in a Piquante Pepperdew Stew!

This recipe is being entered in the Peppadew ‘I love British Turkey’ blogging competition.  Many thanks to my Mother In Law for the recipe, she is a far better cook than I’ll ever be.  Right, here goes nuffink!  Please click play on the link below, and use it as background music?  I’m trying to set a scene here…. ;O)

In the true spirit of ‘Come Dine With Kay!’ you have all arrived fashionably late…..bearing huge bottles of wine and gifts boxes of chocolates, lovely!  I’m wearing my best smart casual outfit (jeans and a clean T’shirt for once), and I must say you all look very swish too!  And wow!  Look at you! …..my goodness, you’re not shy with the sequins are you!

While I faff around in the kitchen trawling the fridge and the cupboards for ingredients, I would love you all to have a comfy seat in my erm…mostly immaculate living room.  Please make appropriate small talk and kindly ignore the towering pile of toys shoved into the corner.  I’d appreciate it if you could stop kicking the toybox and setting off the Zhu-Zhu hamsters.

First of all I’m going to raid the cupboards and the fridge for my ingredients and have a small glass of wine to steady my nerves.

Ignore the Basil, it just wanted to be famous so it barged in on the photo shoot.

Here I have fresh coriander, 400g of minced turkey, a tin of chopped tomatoes (with the same amount of water added), 2 sliced onions, 1 small chopped chorizo sausage, 2 mushed cloves of garlic, ground cumin, salt, pepper, olive oil, cayenne pepper, chilli flakes, a tin of chickpeas, paprika and last but not least Hot Whole Sweet Piquante Peppadew Peppers!

Right, so this is the bit where you wander around the house checking out if I’m a nutter or not.  Up the stairs you go, I’m happy here banging the cutlery about.  ‘Don’t worry about me!’ *Pours another glass of wine*

Oh no! I’ve forgotten to tidy away my antique, priceless, collection of silverware.  It’s all on display.  Silly me.

First of all I mix the garlic with the turkey mince:

Do I really have to stick my hands into that lot? *shudders*

Next I roll them into small balls, whilst giggling nervously and making a crap joke about small pink balls.

You have to have balls to attempt this kind of thing!

Then (whilst ignoring the bangs on the ceiling and the laughter from upstairs) I begin frying the chorizo in the pan until the fat starts to flow a little.

Why are they making such a racket upstairs and why did I choose a dish that spits fat at me all the time! ‘Ow!’  And my top is ruined!  Grease spots galore. Oops.

‘Ah, you’re all back!  Did you enjoy your tour?  So sorry about leaving the silverware out….’  *waits for complements*  *doesn’t get any*

‘What do you mean you went through my wash basket?!!!  Oh no, of course I don’t mind.  You’ve brought something down with you?’ *Kay lapses into a stunned silence as you (yes you with the sequins…)  wave around my all in one, fluffy, multi-coloured fish, fleecy adult-baby-gro outfit that I wear on very cold evenings and on camping trips*

‘No I don’t mind!  I said you could look around didn’t I! *smiles sweetly*

Kay thinks: ‘Well, it’s the burnt bits at the bottom of the pan for you milady!’

I return to the kitchen and begin shallow frying the meatballs in a glug of olive oil whilst swearing under my breath so my guests can’t hear me.

‘Where is my goddam spatula?!’ Fry meatballs till browned.

‘I’ll put on some music shall I?  Some nice relaxing classical music maybe?’

‘What? You prefer Guns and Roses?!!!’

Kay thinks: ‘Sequin top lady is cruising for a bruising, I might have to drop a meatball or two on the floor at this rate’ 

I have another slightly larger glass of wine and listen to the male guest with the blue spikey hair who is ‘art-critiquing’ my favourite sea-side painting.  I just like seagulls!  Get over it!  (I think this rather than say it because I’m trying to be nice and get more points)

‘Oh yes I agree, these sort of paintings are rather outdated, but I do like them!’ *stares daggers*

I return to the kitchen and:

Fry onions till translucent.

Return chorizo to the pan, add spices. 1tsp of cumin, 2 tsp of paprika, 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper or chilli flakes. Sneeze. Not on the food obviously.  Put this on a high heat for a couple of minutes.

Add chopped tomatoes with additional water. Splash my top even more.

You should all be slightly plastered now as I’ve kept the ‘Come Dine With Kay!’ evening rolling along nicely with the strongest red wine I could find at Morrissons.  Great!  I’m sober as a judge though.  *hiccups*

‘Would anyone like another glass?’ *fills everyone’s glasses to the brim*

Kay thinks: ‘Well, it if I get them drunk they won’t notice if the food tastes rotten.’

Add chickpeas, and a quarter of a jar of roughly chopped Sweet Hot Peppadew Peppers. Simmer for half an hour. Drink more wine to numb your tastebuds. Not sure how this will taste….

I’ve had to split up spikey haired bloke and you.  I think to myself, ‘Oh hell, I should have found a cattle prod as well as a decent recipe.’

‘Just come into the kitchen and sit down will you?’ ‘There’s no need to cry now…..I know your outfit is well…a little erm, showy, but the man has no taste!’  ‘I think you look lovely! Kylie carried the look off beautifully’ (about ten years ago, but I’m not going to say that am I?!

You stagger back into the living room, sloshing your drink onto my pastel blue carpet.  I begin to wonder if I’m seeing double, and the spikey bad-hair-cut-man is threatening to chew his own arm off (I think I’ve taken too long), and I think it’s time to serve up!  Brace yourselves! I proudly carry my prized praline Denby casserole dish into the front room.  I am showing off, but then this is the telly, I’m pulling all the stops out here!

Taaaaa Daaaaah!!!!!!! Thish ish a lovely dish innit! (slurs)

*hiccups*  *pours another glass* *downs in one* *fills glass again* *T’is nerve medichine you see*

There you go!  Plonks casserole dish on the table.  Knocks a few knives and forks on the floor. Ah well, a bit of dirt never did anyone any harm.  I pick them up and put them back on the table and sway slightly.

Dinner is served!

‘Well, tuck in everyone.  Let me know what you think!  It’s not like it took any effort or anything!’  Pitta bread goes nicely or you could add rice.  I chose pitta bread because I always make soggy rice and you can’t go wrong with grilling bread can you? Or can you?

‘Stop spitting out the hard bits of bread!  It’s just not nice!  Honestly I’m  not inviting you lot round again.  No, you can’t dip ZhuZhu hamsters in the food.  Oh for gods sake, I give up’

*********************End credits scroll down the screen******************

Narrator:  ‘Will Kay win or did the guests think her dinner was just a turkey of a meal?  Find out next week…..’

Narrator: ‘This dish features delicious moist turkey meatballs, complemented with a lip-smacking spicy tomato and hot sweet piquante Pepperdew pepper sauce. The chickpeas add an exciting slightly nutty contrast. Best enjoyed with a sensibly sized glass of red wine and good company.  Ahem!’

The Jenny Craig Diet! Day 1

A Waffle and a Vlog

It’s such a typically girly thing to say – ‘I’m on a diet!’ I can barely even believe I’m writing this to be honest. The one I am trying is the Jenny Craig diet which you can find out more about if you click the above link.

(See if you can spot my usual catchphrase!)

If you want to keep up with my dieting and my cravings for steak, red wine and chocolate, please do feel free to subscribe to my YouTube channel.

I will admit I have never, in all my life, been on any  kind of diet regime and have simply tried to eat healthily where possible and exercise isn’t really an issue for me as I spent vast amounts of time trogging up and down hills.  Despite my efforts my weight has gone up from 9 1/2 stone when I was approx 25 years old, to the slightly podgier 11 stone that I am now.  I’m 5 ft 7, so I’m reasonably tall, but I know that this isn’t my ideal weight, and my clothes don’t fit as well as they should.  I blame having kids, grabbing food as and when I can instead of eating in an orderly manner, binging on chocolate, and takeaways……oh and being incredibly greedy.

So, when I was given the chance to review the Jenny Craig diet, I thought, ‘Well, why not! What is there to lose apart from weight?’  So I signed up, had my initial consulatation and I was off.  I’ve also decided to go vegetarian over the next two weeks, it’s something I’ve wanted to do for years, but frankly I love the taste of meat, I just don’t feel happy about the treatment of many of the animals that we find on our dining tables.   I know I could buy free range, raised in a lush green field  in Oxfordshire, fed on the finest organic grain, meat – but it is expensive!  Anyway, this is just an experiment for me to see if I can manage without bacon butties  and achieve some weight loss in the process really.  We shall see!

It’s fairly easy during the day, but I always eat in the evenings to reward myself for surviving a usually hectic day.  That’s when I really struggle.  Last night I had a glass of damson gin and a quarter of a packet of crisps because it was a Saturday night and I told myself it’s ‘cos I’m worth it!’ which was cheating really.  I shall be updating as I go along, and wish me luck!  I’d love to know if anyone has tried any other diets that have worked for them, a lot of people struggle with weight loss at this time of year and helpful advice never goes amiss!

Making Xmas Decs with Yummy Dough!

Making Xmas Decs

with Yummy Dough!

This little bucket of fun saved me from complete insanity this afternoon.  It was the first day of the Christmas holidays and it was chucking it down.  Sausage kept trying to throw himself off the sofa onto cushions he had thrown onto the floor as a makeshift ‘playground’ and Darlek was pleading for TV every couple of minutes – so Yummy Dough craft it was!  The overall summary of the doughy afternoon is at the end of the post.

When you open the packet, this is what you find!

Four white plastic bags with printed serial numbers and...

...an orange spatula and...

...a syringe?!....

So, it’s very simple!  Each bag needs precisely 15ml of water adding to it; it then needs mixing until it’s like a crumble mixture – then finally kneading until it resembles dough.   Easy peasy.

You can even use the bucket to mix the dough, as long as you rinse it between mixing the different colours.

Mix flour type stuff with an precisely 15ml of water.

The syringe is simply so that you mix only 15ml of water with the dough, no more, no less.  I know this is important because our green dough turned into a horrid sticky mess because I added an extra 2 teaspoons.  See daughter’s hands when she tried to knead it:

Anyone for a hug?

Once you’ve mixed all the bags you get four lovely juggling ball sized lumps of dough to play with!

Nice vibrant colours! They reminded me of multi-coloured over-sweet scone dough

After squishing them around on a tray for a while, rolling sausages and stamping shapes we came up with these ‘biscuits’ which we decided were destined for our christmas tree. I used a chopstick to make holes in them, so they could be hung on ribbons once they were cooked.

Sausage favoured sausage shapes, Darlek made a bird's nest, I made spots :O)

These were all placed on greaseproof paper and bobbed in the oven at 120 degrees (fan assisted) for the recommended 12 – 15 minutes, and then for another 15 minutes after that.  I think ours took longer because some of them were very thick.

They came out of the oven, cooled down and had ribbon threaded through them. After that we hung them on the tree!  Darlek insisted that the bird shaped one went on the same branch as the bird’s nest one, which I thought was incredibly sweet.

Both Santa and the Yummy Dough biscuit are unlikely to survive beyond Xmas day.

So, what do I make of Yummy dough?  Right, let’s get the negatives out of the way first.  Not that there’s many or anything.

Presentation!  I wish they’d made the individual plastic bags look prettier, and that they’d had the actual colours written on them in child friendly print, rather than serial numbers that would have looked more at home on the side of a tin of paint from B & Q.  And the syringe, oh dear.  It looks medical, it is medical!  I’ve used similar ones myself for administering Calpol.  Surely it would look better if it was in a bright colour at least, and had doses of water marked, rather than numbers of milliletres on the side.  There was something rather disturbing about seeing my daughter in charge of a syringe. The bucket itself looks fun and is packaged so well for kids, the contents just don’t match up I’m afraid.

Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree, how Yummy are your Branches! *sings*

The positives!  It tastes quite nice, rather like very, very sweet scone dough mixture.  It dries up very quickly when it crumbles and falls on the floor so it can easily be hoovered up, much easier than playdough I found.  The dough moulds fairly easily into shapes, rather like the consistency of stout ginger biscuit mixture.  Once baked it felt very sturdy and like the decorations would actually last for quite a while.  I reckon, uneaten, they’d survive until next year if not beyond.  The cooked dough felt as tough as salt dough if you’ve ever come across that.

So, that’s what I thought at least! If you’d like to buy some of this Sarah and Luisa Yummy Dough you can find it HERE!

I also recommend that you have a look at their fabulous, beautifully done Yummy Dough website, it’s really quite adorable and a useful resource if you’re thinking of how to use Yummy Dough with your kids.

 

I was given some Yummy Dough to review and inadvertently stick in my hair, no other financial reward was given.