Bang On The Door Birthday Card

Children and teenagers often like brand-name characters on birthday cards - not just Disney (though I think Frozen and Avengers birthday cards are very popular!) but other things like Forever Friends and the Me to You teddies. When I was younger, Purple Ronnie cards were all the rage, along with a family of hedgehogs that I can't remember the name of.

I bought a pack of die-cut stickers showing Bang on the Door characters ages ago and wasn't particularly inspired with what to do with them, as they are pretty vibrant on their own. So I used them simply on a white card, with some silver heart and star die cuts from the same pack around them. The 'special birthday' is from a pack of outline stickers I've also had for a long time. Not my favourite card but it might go down well with a pre-teen girl!

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Tuscan Chianti Chicken Cacciatora

My Tuscan Chianti Chicken Cacciatora

There's something about the idea of spending a week in a villa in Tuscany that really appeals to me. The landscape looks beautiful, from rolling Italian countryside to the sandy beaches, the small medieval towns to the cities of Pisa and Florence, where I'd love to go sightseeing some day.

Having a villa would mean getting away from it all - I imagine a rustic farmhouse overlooking vineyards, sitting at a big wooden table with my husband as we tear into fresh bread and let a bottle of Chianti breathe.

I love the flavours from this region, from zingy lemons (and limoncello) to the earthy taste of truffles when they are grated over dishes. The red wines from this region are smooth yet spicy and Italian olive oil is renowned world wide.

I also like the simplicity of food from Tuscany. Pasta might just be served with a little oil and butter - when freshly made pasta is that good, why disguise it with a sauce? The best Tuscan food is locally produced and enjoyed according to the season; chicken is free range (probably wandering around the rustic farmhouse of my imagination) and mushrooms are foraged for.

There re two other things that stand out to be about Tuscan cooking. Food is about family, and typical dishes are prepared in large quantities to serve a big family around the kitchen table. It is also traditionally peasant cooking - in other words, cheap and not wasteful. Some of the best known Italian dishes are things that use cheaper cuts of meat, are bulked out with cannellini beans, use up stale bread (panzanella), and using local herbs and vegetables to bring out the natural flavours of the dish. These days rather than being something that is done through necessity, due to lack of money, this is something that many cooks aspire to - natural flavours coming through, cooking more economically and feeding a whole family with a robust, filling meal.

I was genuinely thinking of looking into booking a Tuscan villa for our holiday next year when I was invited to enter a competition run by To Tuscany, a website that specialises in villa rentals in that very region. It must be fate!

They asked me to create my own Tuscan-inspired recipe using typical flavours and influences from Italy, so I started to brainstorm a list of ingredients. I also thought about all the things I described above - cheaper cuts of meat, bringing out natural flavours, and a meal that could be cooked in large quantities if needed, and came up with this recipe for chicken cacciatora.

Cacciatora means 'hunter' in Italian and this is a kind of hunter's stew - perhaps something that would be waiting when they returned home from a day's hunt. It traditionally uses chicken, game or rabbit, and is cooked in a tomato-based sauce, sometimes with wine added, featuring onion and garlic, sometimes carrot or red peppers - there are various versions.

I decided to make mine even more Tuscan, if such a thing is possible, by making Chianti wine an important feature of the dish (Chianti is in Tuscany, if you didn't know). Italian olives stood out to me as a good addition, both for the colour that they give the dish and the different flavour and texture. I love balsamic vinegar and how it can bring out the flavour in dishes so decided to add a splash; my sauce was going to based on tinned tomatoes and the wine, with bay leaves and rosemary for flavour (and again they look great in the dish, though remove the bay leaf before serving).

Finally for a more modern, more indulgent twist, I sprinkled a little grated mozzarella on top of each chicken thigh just before serving, allowing it to melt - the cheese has a subtle taste but adds a little creaminess that is otherwise missing from the dish and to me just seemed to be the finishing touch. Serve the cacciatora with a hunk of fresh bread and a green salad - and the rest of the Chianti of course!

 

Tuscan Chianti Chicken Cacciatora - an original recipe by Caroline Makes

To serve four, you need:
4 large chicken thighs
pinch of salt salt
pinch of ground black pepper
1/2 bottle of Chianti
1 tbsp. olive oil
100g diced pancetta
2 bay leaves
sprig of rosemary
2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
a large handful of green Italian olives
400g tinned tomatoes
generous dash of balsamic vinegar
pinch of smoked paprika
1 tsp dried oregano
50g grated mozzarella

Season the chicken and marinade in the wine for at least one hour or overnight if possible.

 

Heat the oil in a large frying pan and fry the chicken, in batches if necessary, until browned. Add the pancetta to the pan and fry until starting to brown.

Preheat oven to 180C. Transfer the chicken and pancetta to an ovenproof dish with the wine marinade. Mix in the tomatoes, garlic, olives, bay leaf and rosemary. Add a splash of balsamic vinegar, a pinch of smoked paprika and the oregano and cover the pot with a lid.

 

 

Bake in the oven for 1.5 hours; for the last 10 minutes of cooking time add the grated mozzarella on top of the chicken.

 

Serve with green salad, fresh crusty bread and the chianti and enjoy.

.
I want to win a week in one of your Tuscany villas!

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Sugar-Free Brownie Bites - Sugar Free September

If you're doing Sugar-Free September or even just cutting out/back on sugar generally you might be missing sweet treats. To follow Sugar-Free September really strictly, you wouldn't even be eating fruit because of the natural sugars. I haven't had a lot of fruit this month but I have had some as I think it's important to get your five-a-day - mainly through veg but the occasional piece of fruit is good as well.

But sometimes instead of fruit what you really want is chocolate. I've done really well so far but when we had a day out earlier this month and were taking a packed lunch, I knew my husband would want something sweet - I would normally bake something to take with us - and that I would want something as well. I ended up buying him something as a treat and made myself these sugar-free brownie bites from Nutritious Deliciousness.com.

I already had all the ingredients at home - walnuts from Lidl I had bought to add to salads, dates that I bought for another recipe that I never got around to making, coconut oil which I bought a little while ago after having read about its health benefits, and I had some raw cacao powder, which is less processed than cocoa powder and unsweetened.

In fact, I found the whole thing quite bitter and had to add a couple of spoonfuls of xylitol sweetener to make them palatable, and then they were really nice, especially after they had firmed up for a while in the fridge. I'd advise following the recipe and seeing if you can manage without sweetener, and if not adding a little to taste.

These are really easy to make - blitz the walnuts in a food processor, then add the dates, cacao and melted coconut oil and whizz again to form a dough. I'd advise tasting the mixture at this point to see if you want to add sweetener.

Turn the machine off and scrape out the dough onto a piece of greaseproof paper. The recipe advises using another piece of greaseproof paper to press down on the top and rolling them out to cut into squares, but my mixture was a bit too sticky and too thin when I rolled it out, so I gave up and hand-rolled them into balls.

This is when I tried them and decided they were bitter, so formed the balls back into a dough, added the sweetener and rolled them into balls again. I then rolled them in some more cacao to coat the outside.

Put them in the fridge for a while to firm up, and you can - almost - convince yourself you are eating chocolate truffles!

 

I'm sharing these with We Should Cocoa, hosted by Choclette at Tin and Thyme.

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You're Sew Lovely Greetings Card

 

I recently took out subscriptions to three card making magazines – Papercraft Inspirations, Cardmaking and Papercrafts and Quick Cards Made Easy – there was a great offer to get three issues for £3, which I was going to take out with one magazine but got persuaded to take all three! Each magazine comes with some great free gifts – usually rubber stamps and backing papers or similar, which are probably worth £5-£8 alone – pretty good given the magazines are £5.99. So I’m getting 9 magazines for £9, over the course of three months – I just need to remember to cancel the subscriptions after that or it will get expensive!

I liked one design in Papercraft Inspirations that I knew would be super-quick to make, largely because almost everything you needed came with the magazine. I covered a card blank with the patterned backing paper – which was very thin as it was actually a page in the magazine – and cut out the layered flower and star shape. The “You’re sew lovely” sentiment was also in the magazine, and I just added a blue button from my craft stash. One of the quickest cards I’ve ever made!

Does anyone else subscribe to any of these magazines - what do you think?

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Meal Planning Monday 2016 - week 38 - Sugar Free September

 

Sugar-Free September is going pretty well; by the 15th (time of writing) I had lost 4 pounds. A friend who is a health professional has convinced me that I do need to eat breakfast and have a couple of small, healthy snacks each day to keep my metabolism working well - for the last few months I have been skipping breakfast and not snacking, so eating nothing most days apart from lunch and dinner, which she doesn't think is a good idea. She did say my meals were really good though!

 

Monday

The Tex Mex chicken tacos I didn't do last week

 

Tuesday

 Out for drinks after work
 

Wednesday

 coconut fish curry from this recipe for me, chicken curry for him
 

Thursday
chicken chargrills and mashed potato for him, with veg for me

 

Friday

out at an awards ceremony where the magazine I produce is shortlisted

 

Saturday lunch: bacon rolls for him, sausage and poached egg for me

dinner: at a friend's

 

Sunday

lunch: cauliflower pizza for me, normal pizza for him, that I didn't make last week

dinner: roast pork for me, chicken for him; Yorkshire puddings for him with stuffing and roast potatoes (I'm going to have potatoes even though I'm doing Sugar Free September).

This is a blog hop, join in!
 

 



An InLinkz Link-up

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DIY Wedding: Photo Booth Props and Guest Book

 

 

Having a photo booth at your wedding has become quite popular, and I can vouch for the fact that they are great fun!

I got the idea from a friend's wedding as I thought a photo booth would be a fun thing for guest to do in the evening other than drink and dance. I'm not talking about when you get your passport photos done - these photo booths are creative, fun and personalised. You can choose your background and a style for the photos to be printed in, and they usually provide a whole host of props, hats and wigs and so on. Our guests had great fun piling into the booth in pairs and small groups throughout the evening!

Some photo booth hire companies give you two copies of each photo - one for the guest and one to go in your wedding guest book. But I knew that sometimes groups of friends would go in who all wanted a photo so I searched until I found a company that would give you unlimited copies of photos so everyone could have one.

I was also advised to make sure the photo booth had a good quality camera and printer - some apparently are only webcam quality and not very good! I decided to use a company called Funky Photo Booth who were local to my wedding in Wiltshire and was very pleased with their service - they even did a cowprint border for the photo prints!

 

Funky Photo Booth provided a selection of props ranging from giant sunglasses to silly hats, but I wanted something a bit more classy and also a few cow theme props, so I bought a couple of cow masks to add into the mix!

I also bought a set of cardboard chalk board style signs for a couple of pounds on Ebay. I stuck each one onto the lolly stick provided and wrote different slogans on them in chalk, which made for some amusing pictures.

As for the guest book itself, I bought a 12x12 black scrapbook from Hobbycraft which was perfect. There was plenty of space to stick the photos in the book and for people to write messages next to them, using the silver pens I also bought from Hobbycraft.

I used my Silhouette die cutting machine to cut out our names to stick on the front of the scrapbook, for an attractive personalised touch.

Looking through the guest book after the wedding was hilarious and reading the messages was lovely. It's so much more fun and memorable than a book where guests just write a message, and even though it wasn't cheap to hire the booth, it provided great entertainment in the evening for the guests as well.

 

 

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Liver Stew - for cats!

I am a mad cat lady- I only have one cat, but she's the love of my life (along with my husband of course). I feel bad sometimes that I don't have more time to spoil her but she does seem to be quite happy.

Not long ago I decided I would treat her to a home-cooked meal - and I don't mean giving her some leftover chicken off our plates (which does happen). I've actually got a little cookery book called Cat Treats - and it's all about cooking for your cat!
Of course, anything a cat can eat, a human ought to be able to eat too - it just might not be the most palatable to our tastes. I posted a picture of this liver stew on Facebook and a friend commented that it just needed some bacon and onions and would be really good!

(By the way if you didn't already know, onions and garlic can be toxic for cats.)

I bought some liver in the supermarket when it was reduced to mere pence - I hate liver so put it in the freezer knowing it was always destined for the cat!

To make 2-3 portions of this liver stew, you need:
100g liver
1 tsp sunflower oil
3 tbsp. water
15g peeled, cooked potato
1 tbsp. crème fraiche
1 tsp freshly chopped flat-leaf parsley

Cut the liver into small cubes and fry in the oil. Let it brown, then add the water and cook for two minutes over a medium heat.

Mash the potato and mix into the pan along with the crème fraiche and parsley. Allow to cool - it's not good to give this to your cat hot, but I did let her have it when it was slightly warm, and she absolutely loved it!

 

 

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