Cooking

The nights are really drawing in now and after last weekend saw an unseasonably mild start to November the temperatures have taken a turn this week. Yep, defrosting cars is back on!

On Wednesday it was fireworks night, although you wouldn’t have known it round here as it was pretty quiet (which pleased the cats!) I imagine there will be quite a few displays going on this weekend.

We did get a little firework fix last weekend though at our annual friends Halloween party. This year the theme was tube stations….which is actually a lot easier than it sounds! We had King Cross, Angel, Shepherds Bush, High Barnet, Elephant & Castle, Kew Gardens, Holloway, Baker Street, Paddington, Wimbledon and Waterloo (ok, so it was me and my best friend dressed as the Abba girls – but you get the idea!)

It was a great night! Below is an obligatory firework photo, and also see if you can guess the tube station from the ‘tubebat’ which was part of a quiz our friends put together.

(the answer is below)

Needless to say there were a few sore heads on Sunday….but nothing that a berocca and a bit of comfort food couldn’t solve 🙂

Speaking of comfort food, now Autumn has officially made herself known I have been inspired to get back into the kitchen and try my hand at some new recipes. It’s out with light summer salads and in with the sausage and mash (bye bye waistline…see you next Spring….hopefully!)

I mentioned in a previous blog post how Mr A and I were having fun trying to incorporate chilli’s into pretty much anything we cook. My favourite’s so far are our home made Chilli Sauce (recipe from the One Pot Chef on YouTube) and a variation of Thai Chicken meatballs.

So on Wednesday when the air was biting and I was thinking about chips, the Young & Hungry blog post for Chilli Con Veggie hit my blog reader. I had no choice but to hotfoot into town to get the ingredients.

Made with sweet potato, butternut squash, chickpeas, tomatoes, peppers, onion. spices and chilli’s, it was the perfect solution to a chilly autumn night. I served with a few potato wedges (not home-made I am ashamed to say but hey, one thing at a time!) and didn’t make the guacamole to go with it but it certainly went down well with Mr. A, he was most impressed when he walked through the door! It was so tasty, so tasty in fact that we had it again last night 🙂

You’ve probably guessed by now that I am not a fan of the cold, but the longs nights do have their upside…I no longer need to get home from work and feel the need to ‘make the most of the sunshine’, instead I can get home, put on the PJ’s, pour a little glass of wine and settle down with my knitting. Bliss!

I am currently working on a Möbius cowl, it’s been a fun knit and I will do a separate post about this soon.

Bye for now!

And the answer to the Tubebat is of course……..Finsbury Park!

I have been a bit rubbish the past week on keeping up with the Blogging101 daily challenges. But now I’m back and here is what has been happening!

Blogging 101

I experimented with trying out different themes last week, so much so that I lost about 4 hours last Monday night playing about with themes, backgrounds colours, images etc only to pretty much return to my original theme but this time with added header photo. Ha!

On my list of things to do this week is play about with widgets, strike up some conversations and have a look at blogrolls. The latter I am looking forward to getting to grips with as (if I understand the brief correctly) it allows you to follow other blogs that aren’t on WordPress. I have visited quite a few other blogs in the past which I have really enjoyed reading but not figured out a way to link them apart from signing up via email.

Wins and Fails in the Kitchen

In my last blog I was all excited about our new chilli plants and had a few ideas up my sleeve of what I was going to try to make. I am pleased to report that my attempt at Young & Hungry’s Chilli Chicken was a success!

First I mixed up all the spices and chilli’s.

Then added the chicken

Then cooked in the oven – it was so simple and tasty!

I also made Chilli and Cheese Straws with a tried and trusted recipe from an old Be-Ro book. The yellow chilli’s are the scotch bonnets – super hot!

Here are the finished straws! They didn’t last very long, Mr A was going on a stag do and needed to eat them all to line his stomach….hmmmm….

And for my final show and tell…..

I have been to Bath this weekend for my best friends hen do. It was flipping brilliant. We hired a house and had a bit of a party and this is what we wanted to make – vodka jelly worms! They look simple enough right?