Barefoot In The Kitchen

This recipe is based on a recipe from Maggy Woodley at Red Ted Art.  It’s really, really easy, really quick, and relatively mess-free: you’ll only need a bowl, a wooden spoon, a teaspoon, a cup, and some muffin tins.  The original recipe calls for a pot, which I’ve taken to mean a traditional Aussie/US cup: 8floz.  You can use any pot, though: even a mug will do.

You’ll need:

• 1 pot sugar
• 3 pots self-raising flour
• 1 pot yoghurt (I use goats’ yoghurt)
• 3/4 pot oil
• 1 egg
• 1 pot blueberries
• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence

How To:

Preheat the oven to 180C / 350F / Gas Mark 4

Put all the ingredients apart from the blueberries into a bowl.  Mix them together thoroughly, then fold in the blueberries.

Spoon into muffin tins.  Bake in the oven until golden: about fifteen minutes.

Leave to cool in the tins for about fifteen minutes, and then cool on a wire rack.

Enjoy.  Keep in a locked tin if necessary.

The weather outside currently looks like this.

Over the last couple of days, it’s given me cravings for warming winter food, including this lovely simple spicy bean mixture.  It’s wonderfully cheap to make, filling, and healthy.  You can use it wherever you’d use baked beans, or on it’s own.  It’s great on pitta bread.

So, here we go…

You’ll need:

• an onion
• a green pepper
• a tin of kidney beans, drained and rinsed
• a tin of taco mixed beans (baked beans can be substituted if you can’t get them)
• 2 teaspoons of paprika
• 2 teaspoons of cumin
• 1 teaspoon of chilli powder (or more to taste)
• 6 tablespoons tomato ketchup

First, peel and roughly chop the onion.

Then, peel and chop the green pepper.

Heat some oil, and add the onion and the spices.

When the onion has softened, add the green pepper and give it a stir.

When the green pepper is getting soft, add the beans and the tomato ketchup.

Put a lid on the pan, and simmer for ten minutes.

Eat and enjoy!  I eat mine with copious amounts of sour cream to cool them down.  They’re good with grated cheese on top, too.

David tried these as his first taste of chilli and now has an addiction to the stuff, just like Daddy.  This is the second batch I’ve made in three days.

I’m participating in the Best Of 2009 Blog Challenge.  Every day this month, I write something different about what’s happened this year.

See this little boy here?  He doesn’t sit still, like, ever.

This is often a problem.  We still live in a small flat; it’s winter, so we can’t use the garden; David’s bedroom is David-safe, but everywhere else he has to be either strapped down or closely supervised.  The weather is horrible at this time of year, and he’s only just walking, so trips to the park happen once in a blue moon.  This is why we spend most afternoons in the best place in the world, ever: a soft-play centre a half-hour drive down the road.

I know I come across as slightly obsessed, but most of the pictures of David at the Daily Photo are taken there.  They have the biggest baby and toddler area in the country, with lots of lovely sensory things for babies.  It’s incredibly well thought-out, and David adores it.  His absolute favourite are the fish in the bubble tube.

I love it too, of course.  It’s very reasonable to get in.  The food is good: standard soft play centre fare, but just really, really nice.  (There’s a nice balance of healthy and unhealthy: David has started asking for chocolate buttons when we go there.).  The most wonderful thing is that he can run, well, high-speed crawl around in complete safety, and tire himself out nicely.

I’m going to let the pictures do the talking.