Category: Food

  • Gifts for Foodies: Restaurant Vouchers

    Gifts for Foodies: Restaurant Vouchers

    restaurant vouchers

    I’ve got a confession to make: my partner and I love to eat out for breakfast. As often as possible in fact. You see, we’re blessed with living on the edge of the Cotswolds and there’s so many great places to go for breakfast that we’re really spoilt for choice.

    We often push back the start of our working days (we’ve both worked from home for years) so that we can take a drive to one of a number of different fantastic spots for breakfast that we’ve scoped out over the past seven years of living here.

    Why eat breakfast out instead of dinner?

    Some of our friends are really surprised that we would almost always prefer to eat breakfast out instead of dinner. It’s not the norm, I admit. But when you’re a breakfast person, then nothing can really be compared to starting the morning off with a steaming coffee while someone else cooks the breakfast of your choice.

    And we’ll try anything in our quest for great breakfasts. While poached eggs on toast remain our firm favourite offering (we even make notes and rate the quality of the poached eggs and hollandaise sauce), we’re also no strangers to a sausage bap, or even a Middle Eastern friend eggs with spiced yoghurt sauce. Shakshuka was flavour of the month around here just before lockdown, and I’ve got to admit I’m hoping it stays on menus for a long time to come!

    So when my Aunt bought us restaurant gift vouchers last year for Christmas, my Mum was surprised. She didn’t really understand why we’d want such a thing (wouldn’t an Amazon voucher be better, she said). But my Aunt understood the fact that these vouchers weren’t just buying use some food, but instead they were buying us a luxurious treat. A delay to the working day where we can sit and relax for an hour before jumping head-first into our busy lives.

    She was buying us an experience instead of just a foodie gift voucher. Another opportunity to go out and try a new place to eat. We found two new places that we’d probably never have tried before for breaktast because they were quite expensive, but we were glad we did! And to say thank you for the breakfast we video called her to show her the food that she’d treated us to (although I’m not sure waking her up and getting her out of bed was the smartest move we ever made).

    Too many people see breakfast as just fuel for the day. But if you play your cards right it can be a really great way to kick things off. On a beautiful summers day I like to get up early, start work at 6am, and then by 8am I’m ready to take an hour off and go out for breaktast. Then I’m recharged, chilled out, and ready to work through to lunch.

    And now that we’re all working from home as much as possible, this kind of flexibility can be a part of our working lives. We get to dictate the way we spend our time now, and spending our time celebrating all the different breakfasts that are out there is surely one of the best ways to start the day!

  • Vegetarian Freezer Chilli

    Vegetarian Freezer Chilli

    • 750g frozen diced onions
    • 500g frozen sliced peppers
    • 750g frozen sliced mushrooms
    • 3 tins chopped tomato
    • 3tbsp olive oil
    • 1tbsp ground coriander
    • 1tbsp ground cumin
    • 1/2 tube tomato puree
    • 1/2 cup tomato ketchup
    • 500g lentils
    • 9 cardamom pods
    • 3 tins kidney beans

    1.5cups per portion

    10 portions

    75p per portion

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  • Freezer Burritos

    Freezer Burritos

    • 300g rice
    • 2 red onions sliced finely
    •  tin chopped tomato
    • tbsp chopped garlic
    • tbsp sweet smoked paprika
    • Vegetable stock flavour pot
    • 450ml boiling water

    Put in slow cooker on rice cooking program.

    Looks... uh... great...
    Looks… uh… great…

    When cold mix in:

    • 1 cup sweetcorn
    • 1 cup peas
    • 1 cup peppers
    • 1 tin black beans
    • 1 chopped courgette

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    Screen Shot 2016-07-25 at 15.10.05

     

    I reckon this makes about 32 portions if you put 1/3 cup in each wrap (they’re the small wraps – not the big one). 1/3 cup of the above mix is about 60 calories.

    So with 1/8 cup grated cheese and one wrap, this works out:

    • Mix 60 calories
    • Tortilla 125 calories
    • Cheese 60 calories

    So that’s 245 calories per portion.

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    The whole thing works out to about 30p per burrito. Amazing!