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Shakshuka – Baked Eggs
Week 2: Recipe 2 Make Once Eat Twice To make this simple and delicious meal of shakshuka (baked eggs) you’ll need half of the sauce made yesterday for the taco fries. Although to be fair you could make this first, and the taco fries second if you wanted to! I use small baking dishes for everyone in the family so each person gets a dish with sauce and 1 egg. However, if you don’t have these you can bake this meal in a large ovenproof baking dish and dole out the individual portions once cooked. Ingredients (serves 5 people) Half of the sauce recipe made yesterday 5 eggs Handful of…
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Taco Fries
Week 2: Recipe 1 Make Once Eat Twice I know I’m a week behind, don’t worry that will be fixed over the coming months! Unfortunately the entire family came down with the flu this past week and everything had to go on hold while I dealt with that. This week’s recipe is based around a vegetable and bean stew which I use to make a taco fries dish on day one, and day two will follow tomorrow. Once again this is a low fat recipe making it slimmer friendly, it’s high in fibre and protein. Remember this sauce will do you for 2 full sized family meals (family of 5)…
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Mac & Cheese
Have you ever reached into the fridge and pulled out a carton of milk that is perhaps a day past it’s ‘best before’ date, and even though it smells okay you thought you should just pour it down the sink and be done with it? Providing your milk has been stored inside the fridge, and not on the door of the fridge (which is prone to temperature fluctuations), you are probably okay to cook with it. The only way that I can combat the temptation to eat convenience food during the week is to plan ahead. There are weeks where I hate the planning and organisation; I really rail against…
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Leaving Cert Energy Balls
When 6th year started last September it seemed like June was a lifetime away. We’ve had many a battle of wills about the 17-year-old’s eating habits. She leaves early in the morning which means I get to see exactly what she’s taken (or not) for lunch before I head out to work. There’s been a couple quite a few early morning phone calls to make sure she has enough food to get her through the day in school. She isn’t a fan of breakfast, and truthfully would skip it only for her Dad makes sure she eats every morning before going to school. I can’t make her study, harder or…
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Courgetti With Pesto
Some days amazing things happen. Like getting a phone call asking me to demonstrate healthy recipes as part of the Navan #MyHealthyTown initiative. I had to pinch myself! This was one of the most popular dishes I demonstrated in Navan for Morphy Richards last weekend. Everytime I heated the pan, it was like an advertisement for certain gravy granules and attracted a crowd. It seriously only takes about 7 minutes to put together. Thanks to popular request I’m sharing the recipe on the blog so it’s easy to find. I also shared it on my Instagram yesterday if you’re interested.
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St Patrick’s Day Pie
St Patrick’s Day Pie is made at a time of the year when the core ingredients are still fresh, seasonal, and local. I accept it’s also a cheesy/corny name for a pie, but with the green, white, and gold colours what else could I call it? Apparently it’s “Pie Week” in the UK. There’s a week for pies now? I just had to redeem myself after the whole Leftovers Pie affair a few weeks ago. You could eat this pie still warm from the oven, or you could wait for it to go completely cold, wrap it in a snug covering of greaseproof paper, then put it in the fridge…
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Warming Soup
After 5 days in a row at the allotment, I’m taking a break today. It has been great to get back to work, even if it’s a bit hard going at the start of the year. We’ve been adding to our raised beds, changing the format of the polytunnel, and much more. This warming soup has been on the go all week. I made a couple of batches. The gentle heat instantly starts working as soon as I have a bowl in my hand, and the fresh bitter greens along with citrus hit from the lemon is a real change to a classic thick blended soup. The key to making…
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Review: The Happy Pear Cookbook
In this book we hope to inspire you to eat more veg. That is it, plain and simple. It’s a great introduction to a book that is packed with recipes from The Happy Pear in Greystones, Co Wicklow. Much more than that though, the book is full of the philosophy behind Dave and Steve’s journey to becoming vegetable evangelists, and retailers on a mission. The identical twins (for the shop, and book, are a play on words) are the best advertisement for the way of life that the book espouses. While the recipes are at the heart of The Happy Pear cookbook, woven throughout are experiences of their family, employees,…
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Dynamite Broccoli
We are slowly working our way through the Autumn vegetables from the allotment. Last week I used up the last of our own broccoli and I admit I’m a little bit disappointed that it’s all gone now. I’ve planted some other varieties of brassica (the vegetable family that our broccoli belongs to) for over the winter. It’s not as if we have no vegetables, it’s just that it’s one of my favourite vegetables. Recently the 15-year-old whispered over dinner that she actually liked broccoli when I cooked it. That is huge for a green-vegetable-hating-teenager let me assure you.
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Out Of Date Vegetables
When I go to the grocer’s I like to go to the rack at the back of the shop first. My local grocer has a big spiral stand-alone shelf near the fridge where he puts his out of date vegetables that have gone a bit squishy. There’s nothing wrong with the vegetables, just most people like to buy firm, crunchy veg and not things with a bit of give to them. This week I got the selection above which was sweet potato, aubergine, red pepper, spring onions and garlic for just a few cents. I’m not a fan of hard work to get a meal to taste great so here’s…
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Beetroot Roast Lemon Salad
It’s so hot I’ve considered (not for the first time this year) cooking biscuits on the car dashboard. Unfortunately I’ve discovered it’s not quite hot enough here so I’ll have to forget about that fantasy for another day, or a trip abroad perhaps. I made the mistake of putting the boys to bed 3 hours late last night. We were out and about and by the time we got home they wanted a snack which pushed bedtime to 10.30pm. There wasn’t a hope of them lying on this morning though because the 2-year-old gave the household a rousing rendition of ‘The Wheels On The Bus’ at 6am. It was very…
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Garlic Beans
The teen swears that her all time favourite meal is my homemade baked beans. She is always happy with a slice of toast and a big ladle of goodness and I’m delighted that she’s eating well. Feeding hungry teens on a budget can be tricky!
