Wench's Diets: This Week I Have Mostly Been Baking...

Custard Cookies.

Because both OH and I had promised to take food to work for different things, and because I didn't want to spend any extra money, we made these biscuits using stuff from the store cupboards. Original recipe here.  We swapped marg for butter, and sized up to make a few more.

INGREDIENTS:
icing sugar 100g
butter 200g
plain flour 165g
custard powder 70g

• Cream icing sugar & butter
• add flour & custard powder & mix to dough
• Form into a sausage shape & chill in plastic bag/ cling film for 2 hours
• remove from plastic and slice into 32 'rounds'
• place on baking tray & bake for about 10 minutes at 180

Verdict: Yum! Very Vanilla.

 Bacon and Cheese Muffins

Made in anticipation of a picnic that never happened, these ended up being breakfast, snackage, then breakfast again. They are great hot, bit taste really nice cold. Adapted from a Huge Furry Wotsit recipe to suit my available ingredients.
Makes 12.

100g streaky bacon, cut into 1cm pieces
1 red onion, finely diced
75g wholemeal strong flour
175g self-raising flour
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
¼ tsp salt
2 eggs
80g Flora cooking liquid
200ml plain yoghurt
1 tbsp finely chopped chives
100g smoked cheddar, grated

Heat the oven to 200C and line a patty tin with 12 paper cases.
I fried the bacon in a non-stick pan to avoid using extra oil and drained the excess grease on kitchen paper. I cooked the onion in the same pan, again, no extra oil, then set aside to cool.
I mixed together the flours, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt. Separately, I whisked the eggs, cooking liquid (which I got free from the Good Food Show) and yoghurt, stirred them into the flour mixture, then folded in the bacon, onion, some chives from my garden, and most of the cheese. I didn't use as much cheese as Hugh, as I didn't have much left from the Good Food Show, and thought the bacon would carry most of the salty flavour anyway.

After putting mixture into the muffin tin, I realized there wasn't much cheese to sprinkle on top, like Hugh said, but I did so anyway, just a few strands each. The muffins were baked for 18 minutes. They are cooked when you insert a stick into the centre of a muffin and it comes out clean.

How Not to Be a Right 'Nana.

 

How are we all doing? Keeping up the resolutions? Good, good...

 

I have to say I am feeling pretty proud of myself so far...  firstly, I did the very first Parkrun of the year even though it was tipping it down with rain!! As a 'well done' I was allowed entry to a competition to win a place at the Virgin London Marathon. Maybe I'll do a marathon this year then? Or not... Oh Cripes; hope I don't actually win...

 

Then when I got in, I noticed OH had accidentally opened a letter for me from the bank. Apparently I'd gone over my overdraft limit and they were going to charge me £10. TEN SQUID! I was livid!

 

I have signed up for a text alert so I get notification if I am nearing my limit within £50 or so. I can then go into my account online and pay in money to my account before 3.30pm to make sure I don't get charged. On the day in question I got the alert because I was close to the limit. So I went online, made sure I wasn't actually over, and then checked again at various points through the day. So I knew darn well I hadn't been.

 

Most people would just shrug their shoulders and eat more chocolate at such news. But I work hard to earn every tenner and I'm not going to put up with a charge like that. I mean a tenner - that's a round!

 

I decided to call in at the bank in person and sort it out. If you are ever going to do this, you must remember the golden rules of (cuts both ways) customer service:

 

• Remember the person serving you is a human being; never be aggressive or rude. Keep your eyes friendly, your voice calm.
• Use phrases like, I understand why you have to say that, but; I appreciate your position on that particular issue, however. Basically, soften up before you say 'but'.
• They do have to be a gatekeeper and say no, but be persistent. And persistence shouldn't become aggressively persistent. If you reach an impasse, pause before going back to an earlier point.
• A good way of getting them to understand where you are coming from is to ask questions. "If these transactions were done overnight, shouldn't I have seen them on my statement in the day?"
• Don't argue about anything you know you are wrong about - you will trip up. They've seen it all and can spot chancers a mile off.
• Remember to say thank you - a lot. Thank them for checking the facts again, looking things up for you, and thank them after they have helped.

 

And, dear reader, you will be pleased to know after a bit of persistence, I got my money back. And then the same person was an absolute lovely and helped me bag up my post-Christmas piggy bank change so I could bank it.

 

It's worth noting that when you sign up to an overdraft facility it's at the bank's discretion. But they look at the long-term benefits of letting you have access to services like that (because they can make more money) and as long as you don't become a credit risk or a bit of a banking lemon, it does them more good to keep you on side. Hence, going into my branch  - often - works for me.

 

And then I ate the chocolate anyway.

 

So, week 1 of 2014 and I'm making the most of what I can get, which this week was bananas. I picked up a bag of 15 for 19p. Some of them were still good eaters, but there were a couple turning very brown, some black. This is the state people think chuck/banana cake, but we wanted to do something a bit different. I had a special request from OH, who doesn't really do breakfast, but wanted some energy bars to help fuel morning exercise. I adapted this recipe from one in an old, old Weightwatchers book to do the business:

 

Banana Energy Bars

 

Yes, they're full of sugar, so have limited claim to actually being 'healthy'. But they are full of all natural ingredients and you get slow release energy from the oats as well as fast release from the sugar.

 

Ingredients and facts:

 

 

• Preheat your oven to 180 degrees C, Gas mark 4. Line and grease your tray (about 17 x 25cm - I used a lasagna dish).

• In a saucepan, slowly melt together the 100g spread, 50g sugar and 50g honey. When it's all melted, set aside to cool down a bit.

• Sift 100g self-raising flour and a pinch of salt in a bowl, add the 125g oats, 50g sunflower seeds and 40g chopped dates.

• Mash the bananas together, mix in beaten egg. Add this to the flour mixture.

• Stir in the syrupy mixture.

 

• Pour into the baking tray/lasagna dish/whatever you have, and bake for 25 minutes or so. It should be firm to the touch and golden brown.

• Let it cool for a bit, then cut into 10 bars.

 



 

Of course, this didn't use many of the  bananas... tomorrow I will let you know what I did with the rest. Nothing rude... just another recipe thing.

 

In the meantime, listen to a creepy story read by creepy old me. It's live now on Pseudopod. I read The Violin Family by James Douglas, which won second place in the Escape Artist Forum's Flash Fiction Contest 2013.

£7 Food Challenge Day 3: Curry to Combat Friday Night Bus-Fail

Hello Peeps. Bit of a fail on efforts to keep money in my purse as Stagecoach buses couldn't get me home. After waiting the best part of an hour in Milton Keynes for my bus, then the bus after that, I got a glimmer of hope when I saw the golden bus drive come the road - and skip the bus station. That meant it would be another half hour wait at least, and then a long journey home in what I knew would be heavy traffic. I finish work at 5 - I wouldn't have got home until 8. So £8.50 for a single ticket was flensed from me and dripped in sacrificial offering down the slots of the  London Midland trains ticket machines. That really hurt. At least the train was on time.

I read the free copy of Evening Standard on the way home. I promised I would scrape my brain later, but I've probably left it too late as I realised the film My Sister's Keeper is on now and I quite fancy watching it.

To cheer myself up though, I thought I'd pop into the museum on the way home to see the Private View of the Northampton Town and County Art Society 100th Annual Show. This is from the promotional leaflet.
There are some fantastic pieces on display - some for sale, others not. Pictures include portraits of Alan Moore and Jim Tom Say!

I really enjoyed the exhibition, but besides the lovely Haneke, there weren't too many people there I knew, and it really was busy, so I finished my wine (free wine, free wine) and left before the presentations.


The exhibition runs until 5th January 2014.



So home alone, I decided to give myself a Friday night treat - a most inauthentic chick pea curry with coconut rice.

It's a skinny curry, made without using oil. Sorry!

I dry-fried onion, garlic, ground coriander, ground cumin and garam masala - and some madras powder to cheat (about a tsp of each spice) - then added some grated carrot when the onions had softened, and when they had also softened, a lonely mushroom. To that, half a tin of chickpeas (okay, 2/3 - greedy) and half a tin of plum tomatoes, mashing while stirring. Boil, then simmer. Meanwhile, for the rice add a dessert spoon of coconut powder (brilliant stuff - bought a huge box for 35p in Home Bargains) to 55g rice, cover with cold salted water to about 2cm above the top, cover and bring to boil, then simmer for about 10 minutes or until the liquid has absorbed.

Sprinkle the finished thing with coriander leaf to look pretty. Shove in gob.

Right, let's kick back and watch this girly film then. And let’s have a proper hot chocolate  - with marshmallows!

Shopping - Today £0. Total so far: £5.09.