Simply Cook

Back in August I received an email from Simply Cook tempting me back to them with a half price box.  I had ordered myself a cook box back in April, however by the time it had arrived I had already received my results from my food intolerance test.  Each and every single recipe that was sent to me contained either garlic, chilli, ginger or meat stock – none of which I was able to use!  I gifted the box to a friend, and had accepted the fact that it just wasn’t meant to be.  Now that I’ve started introducing garlic and chilli back into my diet (I tried yeast, and it’s definitely a no go) I am now able to try out all of the lovely recipes that I had been sent out previously. 

Simply cook send you out a variety of different recipes, flavourings and spices every week, fortnight or monthly depending on your preference.  Each box costs just £8.95, which makes each meal pack just £2.23 (excluding anything you might need to pick up at the shop like veggies, chicken or pasta).  They normally do special offers on their boxes from time to time, however they offer a friend scheme for customers who are already signed up.  You can get your first box for £1 by using my name – lauren mcghee – in the promo code box, or clicking the link here https://simplycook.mention-me.com/m/ol/avm-lauren-mcghee-2

In my box I was sent a spicy vegetable stew, a Thai green curry, a spicy rice dish and a chorizo pasta dish.  Seeing as I’m vegetarian, I gifted the chorizo pasta dish to my dad, who cooked up a storm with it and told me it was amazing!  So good in fact, that mum decided to follow the same recipe guide – however adapted it completely to make it vegan.  She even made her own home made pepperoni for it!

So far I’ve made the spicy vegetable stew and the Thai green curry – both of which have been amazing!  The recipe cards come with a short and sweet shopping list for the extra bits that you’ll need to buy for each dish, you simply tear it off and take it with you to the supermarket, it’s really easy.  I made the Thai green curry dish for me and my boyfriend, and so had to prepare and cook them separately as he eats meat.  Despite this, the prep and cooking time was not hindered in the slightest, all it meant was two pans and splitting the flavourings.  Even though both dishes had half the spices it should have done, they were so strong and powerful that everything tasted simply delicious – it was really, really good!  The  whole meal only took about 30 minutes to prepare and cook, which was really surprising to me seeing as I don’t normally cook from scratch and following recipes normally means that I have to add an extra 20 minutes if not longer. 

I’m so super impressed the simplicity, easiness and taste of the simply cook dishes that I will definitely be ordering again!  The one thing I will tell you to look out for is the ingredients list, unfortunately you can only filter out the fish dishes and not all the meat ones, so if there is a dish you really like the look of double check that it is one you can actually eat.

What's your favourite dish to cook from scratch?

 Until the next one, 

Summer Berries at Tesco

This month The Orchard at Tesco invited me to be a part of their Summer Berries programme, which I was super pleased about because its strawberry season!  They kindly sent me a £3 voucher to pick myself up a punnet of berries of my choosing, and in return would like to know my honest thoughts about the product I chose.  I grabbed myself the largest and nicest looking punnet of strawberries from my local Tesco, with a dessert in mind that I found from my nutritionists website here.  I’ve been dying to try out coconut cream for a while now, so thought that this would be the perfect opportunity to give it a go!

The strawberries are the most gorgeous shade of red ever – they look really healthy and fresh in the punnet, as if I have just picked them off a farm myself there and then!  As I washed them under the tap, the sweet aroma of the strawberries filled the kitchen, which is one of my all-time favourite smells ever.  There is nothing quite like the smell of fresh strawberries.  I picked myself a decent sized portion from the punnet, and cut them into halves to enjoy with my coconut cream.  The smell grew stronger as I did this, and the juices spilled onto the chopping board – proving that I had a really delicious and fresh bunch too! 

To make your coconut cream, you simply need to purchase yourself a tin of full fat coconut milk.  Pop in the fridge overnight, and the next day your milk will have turned into a really thick cream – which is absolutely delightful with strawberries, might I add!   I added a tiny amount of agave nectar to my bowl for a little extra sweetness, however this really was not necessary because the strawberries tasted as good as they smelt!  Sometimes when I buy strawberries, I find them to look really appealing but taste rather bland or simply like water as I make my way through the punnet.  Tesco did not disappoint with these ones though, every strawberry tastes as good as the last one – and unfortunately for me, my family seem to think so too!  I went to bed with a near half full punnet last night, only to discover this morning that I’ll be needing to make another purchase sooner rather than later! 

I’m really, really pleased with these strawberries from Tesco, and super chuffed that I got to try them for free, thanks to The Orchard programme!

What’s your favourite summer berry?

Until the next one,

August Lust List

So July was a pretty busy and rather expensive month.  Hulk needed a vet check that ended up costing a small fortune, it was brought to my attention that I was driving around with an illegal tyre – goodbye fitty dollars – and then I had three birthdays to fund.  That being said, I decided that my vegan subscription box could wait till this month (I can’t wait for it to come now though!) and decided to skip the Nakd delivery too.  It’s hard to believe that we are now in August – where had this year gone?” – and now that most of the birthdays are done for the year (there is still two to go for me) it’s time to start thinking about Christmas as I’ve lots of people to get for.  This month I have a few bits that I’ve had my eyes on for a while now, which I’ll hopefully be able to pick up throughout the month.

Beauty Box

I’ve been fancying treating myself to a beauty box for quite some time now, however over these last few months I’ve noticed lot a beauty bloggers posting about how they’ve not been overly impressed by some of the more popular boxes.  After doing my own research, I discovered You Beauty and Love Me Beauty – both reasonably priced boxed with a difference – if you’re quick enough, you get to choose what items you receive in your boxes.  Since going cruelty free though, it’s been a tough one trying to find a month when the boxes contain a good selection of suitable brands.  August looks like it could be the one though for both – so now I’ve just the decision to decide on what one I want.  Watch this space…

Multipurpose Balm

You’ve heard me whine and whine again about my dry lips and sore skin around my mouth – so this month I’m determined to find something that is going to solve the problem once and for all!  It popped up on my Facebook ads that Dr Pawpaw were on special offer in Superdrug, so naturally this is one I’m considering as I’ve heard great things about this cruelty free balm.  It’s also been suggested to me several times that I give the Lush Ultrbalm a go, as again they say it works wonders on dry skin, sore lips and simply just tired skin.  This is another strong contender as let’s face it, I do enjoy a Lush trip.  The final one I’ve seen throughout this last month was actually one featured in the Love Me Beauty Box, is the Dr Lipp balm.  Although I’ve not heard so much about this particular one, the website suggests that it does exactly what I’m looking for.  Stay tuned, as I’m going to make sure that this is the month that my lips stop hurting once and for all!

Bakedin

After one of my favourite bloggers posted online several weeks back that they had received a lovely selection of mug cakes from a company called Bakedin, I was very much interested to see what it was all about.  I thought it would make a lovely and quirky present for a couple of people, but didn’t have much hope in finding anything that would be gluten and dairy free.  I was pleasantly surprised though when I came across a gluten free brownie cake mix and mug cakes!  After an email questioning if the recipes could be adapted to dairy free alternatives – they got back to me very promptly confirming that it should work with no real problems.  I think I’m going to try out the mug cakes first, so fingers crossed everything turns out fabulously!

What are you treating yourself too this month?

Until the next one,

Food Intolerance Test – Foods I Can Eat

I’m now starting my fourth week on my yeast/dairy/gluten/garlic/chilli/ginger free diet – what a mouthful, huh?  It was really daunting and difficult to start off with, but I can actually say that I’m almost enjoying it now.  I’ve seen a great improvement to my overall health this last month; I’m not bloated every day, my skin feels and even looks healthy, I’ve lost weight and I’ve felt that I’ve had a lot more energy overall.  I don’t tend to take many naps anymore either, which was something I used to do near every single day!  So yeah, I’m really happy that with another two weeks to go, there is still potential to see even more good come from my diet change. 

Mum made me some blueberries muffins!

At the end of the six weeks, I’m looking forward to introducing garlic and chilli back into my diet… slowly.  I’m pretty content now with my gluten/yeast/dairy freeways, but I’m really excited to get some flavour back into my life!  I’m just really hoping that these are not the foods that are contributing to my eczema, as the one thing I miss the most from this whole experience is garlic! 

When we discovered that chilli and garlic is in almost every single jar of pasta sauce, we improvised and made our own!

There are a number of foods that I have come across this last month that are surprisingly gluten/dairy/yeast free – which have pretty much been my go too snacks and dinners:

-baked beans         

-almond butter                 

-quorn roast chicken peices

-pombears             

-kettle chips                     

-quorn peppered steak

-ruffles bars           

 -seabrook lattice crisps     

-linda mcarthney red onion sausages

-skinny popcorn      

-propercorn                      

-quorn bacon

-nakd bars              

-eggs                               

-fruit yoyos

-rice cakes              

-rice                                 

-fruit winders

-plant based milks  

-violife cheese                   

-free from salad cream

-free from pasta     

-free from chocolate          

-fruit and veg (low sugar preferably)

-frys peppermint creams                                  

-tellytots                         

-alpro yoghurt        

-lizis granola                     

-seabrook ready salted crisps                       

-coconut oil            

-nutribix                           

-tofu 

-ninebars  

There really isn’t that many things that are suitable, but at the same time I’m still really surprised by the amount of choice there is for the people who simply cannot eat gluten or dairy alone.  I thought that these two would be the most difficult for me to stick too – but it turns out that finding foods without garlic, ginger and chill has been just as equally awkward!

Overall, I’m pleasantly surprised by how much I have actually enjoyed watching what eat, I feel really good about my overall health at the moment and I hope that I have the will power to keep going in the long run!  I’m hoping to be able to cut back on the flavoured water that I drink daily too, because I’ve recently become more aware of the artificial sweeteners and how they can affect the body.  One thing at a time though kids!

Do you know anyone adjusting their diet right now too? 

Until the next one,

Food Intolerance Testing

Back in April after another trip to the doctors regarding my eczema, my dad very kindly offered to pay for me to go and see a nutritionist.  My little brother had just received his results from his own trip, and after it flagged up that he had an intolerance to  foods that we never would have suspected – he thought it would be a great idea to see if there was something that I was eating that could potentially cause my skin to flare up. 

The test consisted of a few general questions about my current eating habits, what my diet is like and how often my skin acts up.  She then went on to take a small blood sample from my finger by pricking the skin – as this would allow her to test for up to 50 foods that I may be intolerant to.  A week later, my nutritionist got back to me with some surprising results.

Nakd bars have been my saviour

The three foods that first flagged up as triggers were chilli, ginger and garlic.  I wasn’t quite so surprised by this, as when I actually sat down and thought about it, it made perfect sense that this could be causing my eczema.  I live at home, and thankfully my mother is still more than happy to feed me and cook me dinner (god bless you mumma) – and as a family we eat a lot of spicy food.  We also like garlic.  My mum really likes garlic – and so chilli and garlic tend to end up in most of the foods we eat.  I tend to have ginger on occasion, usually it’s in a sweet treat or tea – but not as often as the other two.  So yeah, it made perfect sense.  I’ve been advised to cut out all three for up to six weeks, and then slowly introduce them again to see if it makes an improvement or causes another flare up when I start eating them again.  So these last two weeks, my foods have been really, really bland – it turns out that it is not just my mum who puts chilli and garlic in everything.  The shops do too.

The most shocking intolerance for me anyway, and the one that has caused me the most problems is the intolerance to yeast, which appears to be the major one.  Again, yeast appears to be present in a lot of the convenient foods that I would normally go for – cereals, bread, frozen foods and even some sweets.  It was a real challenge to find foods that are chilli, garlic, ginger and yeast free to begin with.  Then we had to add gluten and dairy to the mix.

To allow myself to rid my body of the bacteria’s that could potentially be there as a result of consuming yeast products, I also have to follow and gluten and dairy free diet.  Now if you thought it was bad enough going gluten or dairy free alone, you have no idea how much more difficult it is to do both.  And avoid yeast.  And chilli, garlic, and ginger.  It’s madness. Especially when I’m already a vegetarian.   

But yeah, this is what I’m doing right now.  And honestly, although my skin hasn’t improved as of yet (it can take up to four weeks for any noticeable difference to be seen), I actually feel a lot better overall.  I’ve not felt bloated daily, nor have I felt the need to take naps throughout the day every day.  It’s definitely a work in progress, but I’m really excited to see if this could be the cure to my skin problems one and for all.  I plan to share the foods that I have been able to eat in a week a so, just in case there does happen to be anyone out there who is illuminating foods like me.

Until the next one,

Chocolate Brownies

A few weeks ago now, when I still had the baking bug, I whipped together a batch of chocolate brownie cupcakes!  I used a recipe I found on the BBC Good Food website that I’ve listed below for you to refer to.  I made some changes when following the recipe, which I found to work pretty well – but you guys might feel better following the pros.  Either way, let me know how you get on below, mine turned out pretty good!

·         185g unsalted butter

·         185g best dark chocolate

·         85g plain flour

·         40g cocoa powder

·         50g white chocolate

·         50g milk chocolate

·         3 large egg

·         275g golden caster sugar

First, I preheated the oven to 180C.  I then mashed up the butter into randomly cut blocks in a large bowl and chucked in the dark chocolate that I had broken up into squares.  I then put the bowl into the microwave for around 3 three minutes – taking it out every thirty seconds to check and stir.  Once full melted, I put it to the side and left it to cool.

Next, I weighed out the flour and cocoa powder and put the two into a medium sized bowl.  The online recipe said to sieve the two before mixing them together, but when my mum pointed out that she never sieves anything (and her baking is amazing) – I decided to skip this step.  I’d probably just make a mess anyways.

The next step was to break up the chocolate bars – which I found to be a hell of a lot easier than what the online method made out to be.  I pretty much just broke the bars up into the squares, and then broke the squares up further into random chunks and mixed it all together.  This resulted in a lot of random sized chunks, which I wasn’t super fussy about because let’s be honest – who doesn’t like big chunks of chocolate in their brownies?

This next part was messy, thankfully though my mum has an electric hand mixer and so it didn’t take nearly as long as I had anticipated.  I cracked the eggs into another large bowl, and tipped the caster sugar in with it.  I then used the mixer on the highest speed for around about three minutes, until it turned to a nice thick and creamy mixture.  This probably doubled in size and the colour became a lot paler – like the online method stated. 

It was then time to pour the chocolate and butter mix in with the egg and caster sugar, which didn’t take very long at all.  I used a wooden spoon to mix it all together, and added in the flour and cocoa powder to the mix.  I added this in little by little, folding it through so that the mixture came to a thick and sticky consistency.  When this was ready, I then chucked in the bowl of chocolate chunks and gave it another stir.

The brownie mix was then ready to pop into the oven – and so I poured a little bit of the mixture into each cupcake case, leaving enough room for them to raise a little.  Around about 25 cases later, the brownie cupcakes were ready to pop into the oven and to be left for 20-30 minutes until they became nice and spongey.  When ready, take them out of the oven and leave for about 10 minutes until cool!  And voila – you’ve got some super tasty brownie cupcakes ready to be munched on!

Does anyone else make their brownies into cupcakes?

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1223/bestever-brownies - in case you prefer to follow the pros.

Until the next one,

Lauren x

Chocolate Chip Cookies

So on Wednesday, I was feeling a little creative and decided that I was going to put my baking hat on and go a little nuts.  I’m not a baker, and so by nuts, I mean I whipped up a batch of chocolate chip cookies.  I followed a recipe on the BBC Good Food website listed below, only I doubled the recipe.  I wanted to make big, chunky cookies, and so doubling the recipe meant that I would still get the same amount of cookies as the standard batch, just bigger!

You will need:

300g salted butter (soften before use for an easier mix)

160g brown sugar

160g granulated or caster sugar

Vanilla extract (to your preference)

2 large eggs

450g plain flour

1tsp bicarbonate of soda

1/2tsp salt

400g chocolate chips

The above ingredients are for the double batch that I made, for a standard batch, simply half the amount per item.

To start, you should preheat the oven to 190C/170C fan/gas 5.  After this, I then lined four (that’s right, I had four trays of cookies) with a non-stick greased baking paper to stop them from sticking to the trays. 

Next, you mix the butter and sugars into a bowl, and beat them until thick and creamy.  Once this was done, I then added in the vanilla (which I’m not going to lie, I added about half a 90ml bottle to the mixture), and slowly poured in the whisked eggs.  The toughest part was sieving in the flour, bicarbonate of soda and the salt to the mixture and mixing it all together until it came to the cookie dough.  The mixture was so tough that I actually managed to snap a wooden spoon, how many of you can say you’ve done that whilst making cookies?!  

RIP

Finally, you add in the chocolate chips and stir them in so that they are mixed all the way through.  I used two bags of milk chocolate chips on Wednesday when I made them, and today used three bags, one milk, one white and one dark.  I will be following today’s footsteps forever more, just so you are all aware.

Finally, you’re ready to scoop them out onto your trays and pop them in the oven.  I placed large round blobs of the mixer on the trays, I managed approx. 7 cookies per tray.  Because they were larger, the cookies did take a lot longer to cook (today about 20-25 minutes) – but it is totally worth the extra time!

Once cooked, leave them for about 5-10 minutes and tada!  You’ve got yourself a tasty, and very calorific snack… enjoy!

Please note, that this recipe was sourced from BBC Good Food, I simply altered the recipe to my own preference :)

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2459643/vintage-chocolate-chip-cookies

What’s your favourite dessert to bake?

Until the next one,

Lauren x