Goose Egg Carbonara

Just a quick post as I'm very sleepy today and you'll probably read this and see lots of mistakes.

So you know the other day we went to the Farm and got lots of eggs well my ditzy blonde brain finally remembered we still hadn't eaten that bloomin goose egg! So we had it for tea last night.

Most nights I try to cook similar meals for the husband to be and I. So he'll have a bit of meat added and I'll have a bit of cheese!  Nom!

Carbonara is something that we can have together,  you just have to be a bit cleverer at the start. Cook his lardons,  mushrooms and onions separately and cook my not bacon bits in a separate pan. I'm not having any of that disgusting mushroom and onion business!  Add peas. Boil the pasta and then it's on to the egg business.

The egg business... normally it's an egg yolk each but last night it was a goose egg for two... how romantic!

So you separate the yolk from the white and put it in a jug.  Grate lots of vegetarian parmesan cheese (now available from Tesco, Sainsburys AND Morrisons!) whisk the egg yolk and gradually add the cheese. I really can't give you measurements as we do it by taste. When you have a thick paste add a small ladlefull of the pasta water to the mix. It's the starch from the pasta water that makes the sauce. Taste the mixture to see if it tastes cheesy enough. If not add some more cheese or pasta water. Add pepper if you so desire but you probably don't need salt as the cheese is quite salty already.

Pop your bacon/not bacon mix into your pre warmed pasta bowls. Drain the pasta add the egg/cheese mix to the pasta and stir, stir, stir. Before your very eyes the mixture will turn into a beautiful velvety sauce. Pour this and the pasta over your bacon mix and mix together in the bowl.

VERY IMPORTANT!  ADD GARLIC CROUTONS!  EAT AND ENJOY!

I've gone a bit shouty and even sleepier now so I'll sign off. Lots of love xBx

Baby Bunting

So here in our little white house on the hill we've been very busy making things for our wedding. My lovely mummy is doing lots of the big things in her slightly bigger house and here in my bedroom I've been managing to do the little jobs. The jobs where it doesn't matter if I fall asleep on the job! 

We've been collecting jam jars for several months now and I've been trawling the Internet to find lots of ideas for how to decorate them as holders for flowers and tea lights. 

Mum has made lots of bunting to decorate the garden and I've made some teeny tiny bunting for the cakes. I've decorated the jars with twine and my Auntie Topsy's old buttons and then I had the idea of putting some baby bunting on them too. What do you think? 

I like doing all this making, it is reminding me terribly of all the cutting out and gluing that I used to do in my 'past life' as an early years teacher. I woke up this morning thinking about baby bunting and the lovely story Each Peach, Pear Plum...plum pie for pudding this weekend me thinks!

Each peach, pear, plum, I spy Tom Thumb,

Tom Thumb in the cupboard, I spy Mother Hubbard,

Mother Hubbard in the cellar I spy Cinderella,

Cinderella on the stairs I spy three bears,

Three bears out hunting, I spy Baby Bunting,

Baby Bunting fast asleep, I spy Bo Peep,

Bo Peep on the hill, I spy Jack and Jill,

Jack and Jill in the ditch, I spy the Wicked Witch,

Wicked Witch over the wood, I spy Robin Hood,

Robin Hood in his den, I spy three bears again,

Three bears still hunting, they spy Baby Bunting,

Baby Bunting safe and dry, I spy plum pie,

Plum pie in the sun, I spy�..EVERYONE!

Orders from the CEO of the cake club

So yesterday I had a message on Facebook...

Hello

The CEO of the Cake Club is BACK!!!!!

I just thought I would let you know I'm back working with the team now, so any time you feel like making another batch of your wonderful cakes, they will be very welcomed.
Hopefully they will actually make it to the office without 'you-know-who' tampering with them. LOL
Take Care
Simon x

Bit forward I thought but when the CEO gives an instruction one must step to it! So I decided to make a batch of brownies for the cake club. I had to have one myself, just for quality control purposes and I have to say they were mighty fine. The raspberries (which were from the parentals last summer crop) were lovely and tart next to the dark chocolate.

I had a very bad night with pain last night, spent most of it in the bath and sadly I didn't think to fetch a medicinal brownie and now they've all gone off to work with Mr Lardshow! Darn it! 

So here's how to make the brownies...

INGREDIENTS

100g dark chocolate chunks,

50g milk chocolate chunks,

125g salted butter,

200g soft brown sugar,

2 eggs,

70g plain flour,

25g cocoa powder,

100g raspberries, 

METHOD

1. Heat the oven to 180/160 fan/gas 4 and line a baking tray with parchment paper. Do not use a stupid brownie tin like I did, it's impossible to get the brownies out!

2. Gently melt the butter, sugar and chocolate in a pan. Remove from heat.

3. Stir the eggs one by one into the chocolate mixture.

4. Sieve the flour and cocoa powder and stir in. 

5. Add half the raspberries and scrape the mixture into the tray.

6. Scatter over the remaining raspberries and bake in the middle shelf for 30 minutes. Cool before slicing into squares. Enjoy!

Goosey Goosey Gander

Just wanted to share these pictures with you. We went back to the Farm the other day to see if there were any eggs. Every time we went over winter there were no eggs and we always left bereft but this time...

This time there were eggs and not just hen's eggs and bantam's eggs but a whole big fat whopping GOOSE egg!

So we bought it!  I have absolutely no idea what to do with it or how to even go about cooking it but it was just something that filled my little heart with joy so I thought I'd share it with you all too. 

XBx

Back again

Ello all, I've been a bit absent from here for a while,  haven't really felt like blogging much but the lovely Mr Lardshow bought me a tablet for my birthday and I thought maybe I should use it for something more worthwhile than just looking at pretty things on t'internet!

So I thought I'd dip my toe back in by showing you a few of the things I've been getting up to in bed recently...we're getting married next month (eep) so I've been saving my spoons and have just been doing little things in bed. My pain management doctor has been working with me to help me have more structure to my day, I have to get up in the morning, have to eat properly and I have to do 'something' every afternoon.  It's helped a lot with my lack of purpose feeling recently. It can be very boring and lonely even with two mad cats.

Here are some of the bits and bobs I've been up to...
I can't work out now to write captions on the pics so hopefully in the order the pics are... making the wedding invites,  cutting out bunting triangles ready for mum to sew,  making confetti cones, baking some very rushed cakes for a comic relief bake off at Mr Lardshow's work (my cakes didn't soon,  competition had some spun sugar on theirs, i was MOST upset!),  making some diamond wedding anniversary cakes that never got delivered because of all the bloomin snow! Turning old clothes into pet beds and cushions and finally a relaxed birthday hot chocolate in Shrewsbury.

I will try to get a bit better at getting back into blogging. It is good medicine for me!  xBx

P.S. the photos haven't come out in the right order...I give up but I'm sure you can all work them out.  X

Boomerang Biscuits

Just a quick post.  I dont think I could feel any rougherer if I tried. My kidney pain has spread up into my ribs and I am not liking it...not at all! 

Anyway,  I think some of my readers don't believe that I actually do bake in bed.  I do...
As much as there are days where my body just wants to hibernate life goes on and I have to keep going.

One of Mr Lardshow' s friends has got a wonderful job down under and so to celebrate and say good luck we made them some boomerang biscuits. 

So back to the bed baking. I made it downstairs and collected all of the ingredients, propped my sore ribs up and used the heat of the electric blanket to help soften the butter.   Genius idea I thought...
So by the time Mr Lardshow got home I was struggling to ice the biscuits but they eventually got done.

Im quite chuffed with how they turned out . Thank you again to Weena Fish for the boomerang idea x ♡ x

Vegetarian Lasagne

Hmmmmm...I can hear you saying it at the thought of veggie lasagne. I spent most of yesterday saying the same thing.

You see I've been a vegetarian for 22 years and apart from bacon butties I've had no desire to eat meat. I never really liked the taste or texture of meat and I don't really like meat substitutes like tofu or Quorn. However a certain husband to be has had a hankering for lasagne and so yesterday I took the plunge and bought some Quorn mince *shudder*. 

Here's how to make it...

I browned the mince and while it was burning nicely I chopped up a carrot and half an onion into the teeny tiniest pieces imaginable and added these to the mince. Once the onions had softened I popped in a squished up garlic clove and a handful of basil and a tin of tomatoes. 

While the mince mixture was bubbling away I made a white sauce...I did add mustard and a generous handful of cheese to it so it wasn't a true bechemal sauce but it was tastier. ..

Now to the construction.  You put a layer of mince, cheese sauce and lasagne over and over again until you have run out of ingredients.  Try to finish off with a final layer of sauce and a generous sprinkling of veggie parmesan. 

Bake, serve and enjoy xBx