I decided this week to have a look in my cupboards and see what was available for Recipe of the Week, rather than buying all ingredients new. In my house there is always (for no particular reason) chopped tomates, tomato puree, garlic and onions. On this search I also found kidney beans and mince. It doesn’t take a genius to work out what I made! Forget the pack mixes - homemade chilli is the best and most of the time you’ll find most of the ingredients hiding away in the kitchen. Don’t forget that if you have to buy the spices for the first time and it seems a bit expensive - you won’t have to buy them every time!

My usual chilli recipe is a bit ‘play it by ear’ so I got this one from BBC Good Food. Enjoy!

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We’ve already featured a cottage pie recipe, but I absolutely love shepherd’s pie too. It’s great comfort food, especially as we wander into the colder months, and I like being able to add any random vegetables that I have lying around. Mmmm just writing this is making me want to go home and cook one right now! This recipe is actually to make use of leftover Christmas turkey, but you can use chicken or just plain old lamb. Either way it’s delicious. The great website I found this recipe on is American and so the measurements are in cups, sorry!

Turkey and leek shepherd’s pie

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Continuing our support of British Food Fortnight I’ve decided to upload a recipe which is my all time favourite (i’m a simple soul at heart), plus it’s guaranteed to satisfy all hectic mum’s sweet tooth, albeit in a very British way.

Apple crumble is by far one of my favourite puddings, especially during the winter months when served with hot custard and its guaranteed to be my number one choice whenever I’m out for a meal in a pub and its on the menu - what I love about it is that you feel a little bit healthy because its got fruit in it!

I remember once at university a friend of mine was given the task of making the pudding at a meal she was going to. She thought of apple crumble which I agreed was a great idea and offered my help. “No, no” she said “I’ve got it covered”. Two hours later she had created a…I can’t really call it an apple crumble, but it was something with apple in it! She had bought the crumble ready-made and then also bought the apple mixture ready-made and then had just layered it up and voila! It tasted absolutely awful and I vowed that one day i’d teach her a proper recipe for it, so Sue, this ones for you!

Homemade apple crumble

Picture from www.saidaonline.com

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This week marks the beginning of British Food Fortnight, so that means roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, cornbeef hash, shepherds pie (check out my cottage pie recipe but use lamb instead), apple crumble with custard and of course fish ‘n’ chips! not very carb free but I’m drooling already!

Off carbs next week then…….

I was tempted in this post to just say, instead of cooking just go down to your local chippy and treat yourself and the family to good old fish ‘n’ chips (complete with mushy peas and gravy of course!) but then I know that some of you will be thinking “but that’s not organic, fresh and healthy”! But the truth is that every hectic mum deserves a night off sometimes and children absolutely love the novelty of eating dinner out of a newspaper – not too sure why.

 
But for the mums out there who would rather stick to homemade I’ve found a great recipe to make your own. It’s from the BBC Good Food website and appears to be a lot healthier than what I’ll be eating!

Best of British Fish ‘n’ chips

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Cruising Femail on the Daily Mail’s site, as I often to, I came across a great recipe for homemade ice cream which both intrigued and excited me. And made me a little hungry. I’ve never tried to make homemade ice cream before or anything in ‘that family’ so it was a little daunted but it looked so nice! So off I went and had a little go.

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