Lockdown Gardening - Using Dipping Sauce Containers to Plant Seeds

Before the country went into lockdown I bought some packets of seeds to keep the children occupied with a bit of gardening. 

We had a shortage of plantpots or containers suitable for germinating seeds so we improvised with a plastic take away container, some individual sauce containers and clingfilm.

We seemed to accumulate these little pots of dipping sauce back in the days when we had a Macdonald's Drive-Thru and were given more sauce than we needed. 

Any unopened pots ended up in our fridge and eventually used up on homemade burgers, nuggets or fries. After finally using the little pots of sauce up when we ran out of ketchup and the like during lockdown we were left with lots of empty little containers.  

After washing them with the intention of keeping them for potential craft projects I decided to use them as a good solution to grow individual seedlings. With the pots being so small, I was also able to make what limited soil I had spread a long way. 

I pierced some small holes in the bottom for drainage.

They were also easy to write on with a Sharpie marker so we could see what we had planted in each one.

Once filled with soil, the seeds planted and given a little water, they fitted neatly in a plastic takeaway container.

I then covered the container with clingfilm and placed on our kitchen windowsill to keep nice and warm.

The children were so excited when our little plants started to sprout after about a week. Now all we have to do is simply tap out and remove the seedling and soil and transfer to a bigger container.

The little pots can then be rinsed and reused to grow more seedlings. 

Using these little containers saved lots of space and helped ration our limited supply of soil really well.

Apple and Pear Cake

For the last couple of weeks my children have enjoyed eating pears, so when I eventually ventured out to the supermarket I bought plenty. Then, as my children often do, they announced they no longer like pears! So I was left with two bags of ripe pears going soft quickly.

Instead of eating them all myself, I chopped up and steamed them all along with a couple of leftover apples and then puréed them. I started off with 8 small pears and 2 medium apples and after they had been puréed I was going to split the quantity in two and freeze them for use in a future cake. I was going to freeze them as I hardly had any plain flour left to make a cake now. When I went to the supermarket early last week there wasn't a single bag of flour on the shelf. 

In the end I just froze one of the portions and decided to experiment with what I had left of the plain flour in combination with other flours I had in the cupboard, desperate times call for a little experimentation! In the end I had about 150g left of plain flour and for the rest I tried 100g rye flour and 50g maize flour. And then I hoped for the best!! It turned out ok! I was quite surprised.

Ingredients

300g plain flour if you've got it! Otherwise you could always experiment!

1 heaped tsp baking powder

125g butter, plus extra for greasing

200g sugar

3 eggs

3 or 4 pears and 1 apple steamed and puréed and then left to cool (this can be done the day before and kept in the fridge)

2 tbsp milk

Cinnamon (optional)

Method

Measure out the flour into a bowl and add the baking powder and cinnamon.

In a separate bowl, cream the butter and sugar together, add the eggs and then the cooled apple and pear purée.

Add in the dry flour mixture to the butter sugar and eggs bowl along with the milk and mix well with a spoon or electric hand whisk for a couple of minutes.

Add the mixture to a lined or greased loaf tin.

Place in the oven and bake for about 45-50 mins, or until well-risen and golden-brown. For muffin size, 20-25 minutes.

After removing from the oven, let cool in the tin for 5-10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool.

Enjoy on its own, with ice cream or custard.

Easy Toilet Roll Craft - Making Bangles and Bracelets for Play Shop Display

After days and days of glorious weather, the sun is having a day off! We've spent lots of time outside enjoying the sunshine and the children playing in the garden so now the weather's changed my daughter needed something to keep her occupied indoors.

When we're outside together she is constantly wanting to play shop or café. Using her imagination to tell me the day's specials, take my order and then run to the playhouse to get everything ready.

As she loves playing shop and also enjoys making things we decided to pass a few hours decorating some toilet roll tubes into bracelets and bangles ready to play jewellery shop.

All we needed was:

2 or 3 toilet roll tubes

1 kitchen roll tube

Some Sharpies, felt tips and/or paint

Glue (we used Modge Podge)

Anything available for decoration, we used buttons, sequins, ribbon, glitter and bits from old greetings cards.

I painted the kitchen roll tube white so the bracelets and bangles would show up better on her display.

Then I cut the toilet rolls, first to open them up and then into different shaped rounds.

We then had fun decorating them in lots of different designs.

Once any glue and paint was dry my daughter could display them on the kitchen roll stand ready to play shop.

This was so cheap and easy, and she had so much fun. And after spending time together doing the making she now gets to use what she's made in a game of jewellery shop.

Easy Banana Bread

Bananas are always popular in our house, simple banana splits with squirty cream, sprinkles, mini marshmallows and smarties are a very popular desert in our house! Simple and easy.

But while everyone seems to be baking banana bread at the moment, I thought I'd have a go too! I've run out of plain flour, which is what was recommended by most ingredients I looked at, so I used self-raising flour with a bit of baking powder 'just in case'! I also added some cinnamon as I love it!

It turned out really well and all the family really enjoyed it. 

Ingredients

300g self raising flour

1 tsp baking powder

125g butter

225g sugar

3 free-range eggs

5 small ripe bananas, mashed with approx 4-5 tbsp whole milk

1 tsp cinnamon 

Method

Preheat the oven to 160C (fan oven)

Measure out the flour into a bowl and add the baking powder and cinnamon.

In a separate bowl, cream the butter and sugar together, add the eggs followed by the mashed bananas.

 Add in the dry flour mixture and mix well with a spoon or electric hand whisk for a couple of minutes.

Add the mixture to a lined or greased loaf tin.

Place in the oven and bake for about 45-50 mins, or until well-risen and golden-brown. For muffin size, 20-25 minutes.

After removing from the oven, let  cool in the tin for 5-10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool.

Enjoy on its own, with ice cream or custard.

Painting Pasta, Making Rainbows

Every day my daughter's early years teachers send us some ideas of things we can do as part of her home learning. She's four, nearly five. Today they suggested some pasta painting, something they regularly do at school but not something we've ever done at home before. We're a little limited on pasta at the moment so we had to think ahead about what we wanted to make and plan it out so we didn't waste any. My daughter decided she wanted to use lots of different colours with the aim of making a pasta rainbow. 

I wanted her to be involved in every stage so as part of the planning she wrote down the colours she wanted to use for her rainbow, she decided on seven in total. 

She then carefully counted out three pieces of pasta for each of her chosen colours. 

We are also limited on paint colours so she started off painting with the colours we had and then we discussed how we could make the colours we were missing. 

She enjoyed experimenting mixing the colours together and was quite particular about the shades she wanted so took her time adding more colour and blending.

Once she'd finished painting and let the pasta dry she arranged them on the paper in the order she wanted them. We discussed that rainbows are normally in horizontal ribbon form but as we didn't have enough pasta we had to do it in blocks of colour. Once she was happy with the design I helped her glue the pasta to a thick piece of paper.

Although it was a really simple activity it required lots of different skills. She did some planning and writing, having a guess at how to spell the different colours. As well as counting and adding. She also got to test her ideas about which colours to mix together to get a desired additional colour. Finally she was able to practice delicately painting small items. 

She really enjoyed the activity and with the beautiful weather it was something we were able to do outside.

She even drew a few extras to the finish off the picture.

Spicy Peanut Butter Baked Cauliflower

Another week of lockdown is underway and I've been avoiding supermarket shopping by relying on fruit and vegetable box deliveries to top up what we've got left in the cupboard. As I don't get to choose what comes in our weekly fruit and veg delivery I'm being a lot more adventurous in the kitchen and enjoying trying new things and adapting recipes based on ingredients I already have in the cupboard, fridge and freezer. 

This week we got a cauliflower as part of our delivery and it's probably one of my least favourite vegetables and one I rarely buy. I sought out various ideas on how best to cook this cauliflower and decided spicy was the way to go! I came across plenty of recipes that looked delicious but I didn't have all the ingredients so based on what I had available to me this is what I made.

Ingredients

For the Spicy Peanut Butter Coating:

130g smooth peanut butter

2 tbsp light soy sauce

1 tbsp honey 

1 tsp vinegar or Chinese rice wine

1 or 2 tsp hot sauce or sriracha, to taste (I used 2 as we like spicy food)

2 TSP ground ginger, could of course use fresh ginger grated or puréed ginger but we only had ground ginger in

3 cloves of garlic

100ml water

1 tsp vegetable oil (or sesame oil)

Generous pinch of salt and black pepper

1 Cauliflower chopped into sliced florets

1 Carrot cut into thin strips or ribbons

½ Red Pepper cut into thin strips

Spring onions to garnish (approx 2)

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C.

Blend all the ingredients for the peanut butter coating. Taste and add more seasoning as required.

In a large casserole dish or baking tray lined with greaseproof paper, lay out the chopped florets and cover with the peanut sauce.

Bake for 20 minutes, then add the red pepper and carrot mixing the ingredients gently, at this point I also added another tablespoon of water to help mix and coat all the veggies. Then back in the oven to bake for another 10 to 15 minutes or until cauliflower is tender.

Serve on its own, as a side dish or with rice, noodles, salad and grains or in a wrap.

It went down really well and is definitely something I would make again. Next time I make it, I may make some extra of the peanut butter coating so I can water it down ever so slightly to use as a sauce. Would also work with chicken, pork or vegetable kebabs.

Orange Polenta Cake

During this time of lockdown due to the Corona Virus one thing I'm doing more of is baking, cooking and gardening. Tasks that I used to find a chore are now a welcome distraction from our new monotonous routine of homelife. 

With all four of us spending the last four weeks confined to our little house, and trying to juggle working from home whilst also overseeing that our two children (aged 4 and 9) are keeping up with their school work, as well as keeping them entertained and in good spirits during this difficult time, a little cooking escapism has been really appreciated! No one ever wants to help me prepare meals so it's a little time to myself exploring a more creative side! I've even been surprised that some of my culinary creations have been well received, even by two somewhat fussy children! 

One of my most successful and popular bakes so far has been an orange polenta cake. First made due to the small amount of flour I had left in the cupboard, polenta that had been in the cupboard for ages and some sorry looking oranges that needed to be used!

Ingredients

250g unsalted butter

200g caster sugar, I've also used demara when I ran out of caster sugar, have to adapt and experiment at the moment!

4 large eggs

150g polenta

200g plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

3 medium oranges or 4 or 5 small tangerines or satsumas (whatever you've got in basically!) and the skin from 1 (steamed and puréed)

Method

Steam the oranges including the skin from one in a pan with a small amount of water for about 10-15 minutes. Drain off most of the water and blend the oranges and skin until a smooth purée. I still have an Avent steam and blender that I used to make baby food when weaning which I kept because it's really useful for this sort of thing. Leave to cool. 

Heat oven to 140C (fan). 

Grease a large cake tin with butter, I used a large round cake tin about 25cm.

Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. If the butter is straight from the fridge, chop into cubes and give it a blast in the microwave for 30 seconds to soften it up.

Add the eggs and mix thoroughly. Add the orange purée and mix.

Add the dry ingredients flour, polenta and baking powder. Mix well with a spoon or electric hand whisk/mixer.

Transfer the mixture to the tin, spread evenly, then cook for about 45 mins or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. 

Remove from the oven and turn out onto a wire rack to cool.

Serve with cream or ice cream, or perfectly moist on its own.

Easter Pom Pom Chicks

Handmade Lace Effect Flower Wedding Invitations

In an earlier blog post I wrote about my dream wedding stationary and there were so many gorgeous invitations that I would love to have had as my invitations. However due to doing a little cost cutting we decided to make our own and I am over the moon with how they turned out. They did take a long time though!

I'm trying to go with a lacey theme for our wedding as I prefer this to any glitz or sparkle so I was looking for invitations that were 'cut out'. I found some lovely laser cut invites but they were pricey so the best alternative I could find were use paper punches from Martha Stewart crafts. Available through some online UK craft websites, ebay and Amazon.

This is our final wedding invitation.

 

We bought some pre-folded gatefold/wardrobe cards from Hobbycraft and used Martha Stewart Deep Edge Punch - Daisy Lace for the top and bottom. We added some hydrangea flowers, another Martha Stewart stamp with some stick on tiny pearls and then tied the 'doors' together with some silvery grey organza ribbon (also bought from hobby craft).

 

Here's a few pictures of what we used and how we made them.

 

 

Pre-Folded Gatefold Card

 

 



Using the paper punch we puched along the top and bottom of the card.

 

 



It took a few attempts to get it all to line up, which we practiced using normal printing or scrap paper to avoid wasting card.

 

 

 

 

 

The card after it was punched.

 

 




 

We added a silver insert stuck down with double sided tape. We then added a smaller white paper square on which our invite wording was printed.

 



Using the hydrangea punch we made some white and silver/grey petals.

 

 

The petals were assembled using double sided tape and finished with a small adhesive pearl.

 

 

We tied the gatefold doors together with some silver/grey organza ribbon. To attach the ribbon we pierced a small hole in the card, pushed the ribbon through and knotted it.

 

See Martha Stewart on Amazon for the range available in the UK.


I'm so pleased we've made something ourselves that is really personal and fits in perfectly with the style of our wedding.

I was planning on trying to make my own wedding cake but after a couple of failed attemps with the decoration side of things I have conceeded and have ordered one. I am still aiming to make a few more things for the wedding which (if successful, lol!) I will post here on my blog :)

Jill. x

Our Easter Cress 'Egg Heads' Video

Jill. x