Pancakes for breaKfast

With the kids or on your own we can celebrate food over this strange time of lockdown. You can make pancakes for breakfast, especially at this special time of Easter!

2oz plain flour, 2 eggs and a little milk makes 6-7 small pancakes. Double that for more, halve it if you are on your own (give left overs to the birds) 🙂

I use gram flour as I can’t eat wheat but use any plain flour!

mix it up together with a fork squashing any big lumps, little lumps don’t matter.

Turn on the pan on a high heat and add a tiny bit of oil (we are cooking them not frying them) and spread it out over the pan. You might have to add a little more during cooking all the pancakes but remember a teeny tiny bit!

put a large spoon of mixture into the pan.

Your pancake needs turning over with a spatula as soon as little craters start to appear like the ones I’ve ringed around.

Only leave it like this for a few seconds and then put on a warm plate and make the next one.

Note: When the pan looks like it’s smoking, don’t panic, just turn the pan down a little but not a lot, you need it hot.

Then you can put them on the table with all your chosen toppings 🙂 You can use savoury toppings if you prefer.

Note: in your enthusiasm, don’t forget to move the pan safely of the heat.

For the more fussy among us, just jam is ok 🙂

Happy eating!

 

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Chilli Harvest Part 1

I haven’t been very successful in my green house for a couple of years but this year has been good. Below is a photo of part one of my chilli harvest from my four super duper chilli plants.

I’m so pleased and there’s more to come! 🙂

A Small but perfect Harvest

I do love growing things, it makes me very happy. Here’s an example of my small but perfect harvest 🙂

Me and Mr O. love broad beans so they are a must. I’ve never grown the yellow beans before and they have done really well.

Delicious cucumber, really sweet,

and my first ripe chilli is being used tonight in dinner!

News From My Greenhouse

I just realised that I haven’t reported on how things are doing in my green house. Well they are doing grand!

I have two lovely aubergine plants with fruit and more flowers,

four chilli plants doing amazing, full of fruit,

and twelve tomato plants, several different varieties, performing quite well.

I am so enjoying growing. All my plants are being fed with organic seaweed plant food. 🙂

Tomatos and Chillies

Over the last month, as you know, I’ve been starting to sow my seeds.
I went down to water them today and not only did I have cayenne chillies and aubergines sprouting which I knew about

….I have a Roma tomato

and a birds eye chilli as well!

I just love it when everything starts growing 🙂

Tomatos

I have just written a postcard to a lady who has sowed up to 150 varieties of tomatoes in one go. Her enthusiasm was contagious so straight away after writing the card I was out in the garden sowing mine. I definitely didn’t worry how many I sowed! 🙂

I sowed 12 different varieties, a couple saved on kitchen tissue so I won’t know the variety of those until they have fruited. Some of these are the ones I got free from a magazine.

I find, with me, extravagance pays. Last year I didn’t sow many and didn’t do very well. I hope this year is going to be different!

I sowed them in organic vegetable compost that I bought. When I pot them on I will use my own homemade compost. I don’t tend to sow into my own compost because of the weed seeds in it.

New Years Marmalade

It’s the time of the year for marmalade, the Seville oranges have been in the shops and thoughts are directed to making a years supply of marmalade. The reason for this sudden desire to slice 6 pounds of oranges is two fold. It tastes better and it’s cheaper!

For several years now I’ve put the oranges in a food processor to chop them, but this year I decided to slice by hand. Oh my word, I was so surprised how pleasant it was to sit and slice the oranges by hand (with a nice serrated steak knife) in the quiet. A very simple life thing to do, and it was easier to extract the pips too!

Once the sliced oranges have soaked over night they are meant to be simmered to reduce the liquid by a third. When I had heated the the water in the pan and added the sugar I realised I hadn’t done that!!!

I managed to rescue it by taking some liquid out, adding more sugar and a bottle of liquid pectin. Here on my pantry shelf are twenty jars of marmalade. I now feel like Moomin Mama and I have a very happy husband!

It tastes exceptionally good too 🙂

Garden Success

How do you see success in your garden? Are you like me expecting that you can achieve what you might  consider great things as well as working and looking after you family and your house?! I continually have to put this success into perspective. There is only so much time you can put into growing things unless you are putting all of your time into being self sufficient (so my husband keeps telling me)!

I’ve just been out to explore the garden that gets attended way less than I’d like, to pick some things for lunch and this is some of what I saw.

I have pumpkins,

beetroot,

chillies,

peppers

and tomatoes

and my husband says I should call this success! 🙂

Banana Pancakes

Well there’s been a lot happening at Simple Life HQ, so much so it has kept me away from you.

We’ve had some hot weather the last week or so here and though I love bananas I can’t eat them fast enough. When it’s hot you need some recipes using the ones which have become very ripe! I generally google around for ideas and then make something completely different or inspired be what I’ve seen.

So banana pancakes! I just used the basic batter recipe that I use for just about everything 2 oz flour (I like to use gram flour) 2 eggs and as much milk I need to get it to the consistency I want.  (recipe for two people) and then just added half a ripe banana mashed up.

Then I sliced the rest of the banana up and layered them with the pancakes, yogurt and runny honey.

Yum!

It was delicious.

Using gram flour makes it very light and I use sheep’s yogurt which is very light too and all very good for you 🙂

Blood Orange Marmalade

When I saw the blood oranges were in season on the market stall I like to use (nice un-packaged fruit and veg) I thought I would try making some marmalade with them to see what it was like. I should have worked out the costings so I could share with you how little you can pay, but I forgot to record it so I might add it later.

They are not very attractive are they? 
..but look how pretty they are inside!
I chop my oranges in my food processor for quickness. ..
….then the marmalade is all pulpy and nice.
I did have some trouble with the recipe I found, so had to do some adaptation from my normal Seville orange marmalade recipe to get it right. Trust me, if you have a go at preserving and it doesn’t work out, it could be the recipe and not you!

Here it is, yum! It’s very perfumed compared to other marmlade I’ve made. I collect and re-use jars, keeping the pretty jars for me, they look nice in the pantry, and fill some plainer jars so I have some to give away 🙂