Time well spent

Here’s a run down of all of last week’s photos:

… An addict of graze that is. It’s the strangest thing to be addicted to, but I feel I can safely say I’m not alone. Well at least I hope I’m not alone What is it? It’s a way of snacking on things that are genuinely good for you, so you needn’t feel guilty on nibbling on food throughout the day.

I like to think I’m a pretty healthy eater. Pre-graze I regularly snacked on nuts, dried and fresh fruit while at work. Chocolate tends to sit in the cupboard for months on end, unless it’s Green & Black’s chocolate. Not a big fan of crisps, though my addiction to Wotsits came out of nowhere and still niggles at me. I cook my own food most nights – have a takeaway maybe once a week. So graze sounded like something that would suit me.

How did I find it? A friend of mine – Rach – tweeted about ‘graze boxes’. I was intrigued, I went to the website and ordered my first box. So it’s all down to her! I sat there and rated all the foods I could find on the website and waited for my first box. I was more excited about getting food in the post than I should have been.

I’ve been ‘graze-ing’ for just about a month now, getting a box every week. I think I’ve had one box where I nibbled at it and left most of it, but that was down to me not rating the foods properly.

The box lasts me a couple of days, my current one’s on its third day! Depending on how much nibbling I do the boxes last a while.

So far, these are what I would classify as my favourites, crazy names for some amazing bits of super food:

• Whispering Garden
• All of the olives!
• The Cranberries
• Figgy Pop
• Dark Chocolate Fondant (Yes, they do have chocolate too!)
• Limoncello
• Natural Vanilla Seeds
• Wasapea
• Italian Stallion

You could argue that I could make a lot of these mixtures at home, rather than spending money on graze. True. But I like the mixtures they do. It adds a bit of variety. Like I already said, I have been taking dried fruit and nuts to nibble on at work already, but I had been getting bored of what I’d been taking. This has given me a bit more of a choice and opportunity to not be bored with the food.

I just wanted to write this because I really love graze. I think it’s a fantastic idea, it’s good value and I wish I had thought of this! Sadly UK only. If you are in the UK, give it a try.

I love baking. Well, maybe love’s too strong a word, but it’s fun and strangely relaxing. However the last few times I’ve done any baking I’ve made things where I’ve known the recipe so well I didn’t have to look at it. And I’ve tweaked it to my tastes and baking habits. Which is great, but felt it was time to bake something new.

My mum’s been at me for a while to bake bread. She kept saying to me over and over again how easy it is and how cheap it is and how good it tastes. I can’t disagree with any of those things she said. I came across a bread recipe which sounded incredibly easy and pretty much fool proof. For some reason I’m slightly scared of baking bread. I just know how wrong it can go!

I found this recipe for Ciabatta bread. 1 minute bread – how hard could it be? It really wasn’t that hard at all. Made the dough on Friday night and I was a bit scared as to how wet the dough was. It was pourable! But I kept the faith and the next morning I baked the bread and tadaa….

I need to tweak the recipe a bit – add a bit more salt, add a few more herbs and add a little less water, but it worked out better than I thought and tastes really good! I was a bit of a doof and in my excitement of actually baking I put greaseproof paper down and forgot to put flour on it. Which led to the bread getting stuck to the paper. Not doing that again!

Next in my bake heavy weekend were some cupcakes. Chocolate cupcakes. I’ve got my ‘own’ recipe for double chocolate chip muffins. Really simple recipe where you shove everything in a food processer, blitz, pour and bake. This one’s a bit more complicated.

Chocolate souffle cupcakes with mint cream is the recipe of choice. Souffle do scare me. I’ve never done anything souffle-ish. I just had this image of it not rising/cooking and just coming out bleugh.

Pleasantly surprised that the recipe worked brilliantly. Again, I need to tweak a few things. Though I did have a few scares along the way, when the butter started separating from the melted chocolate mix and it really didn’t look good. Next time I need to add a little less coffee and try and grind the instant coffee a bit more – it just didn’t dissolve and some of the cupcakes have almost whole granules of coffee! Here’s how one of my cupcakes turned out:

I’m surprised how light it is! Even a day later after everything’s sunk a fair bit. Very, very chocolatey. I might want to try using chocolate that’s a little less dark – even though I love dark chocolate, it’s very dark and rich.

Since spying that recipe on Smitten Kitchen I’ve seen a few more I feel the need to try. Though with the amount of time I spent in the kitchen this weekend I don’t think I want to do that level of baking for a while. But I want to try something new again!

A very lazy Sunday afternoon. Still recovering from being ill, the afternoon was spent on the sofa, film and some Green & Black’s chocolate. Please note I didn’t eat the whole bar! Just a few squares.

I haven’t been all that well recently, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been taking a photo a day. Sadly the quality of said photos reflects how I felt! Crappy! Here goes the last few days:

This week seems to be turning into things that come through the letter box. And here’s another.

Huge thanks to Rach for pointing me in the direction of www.graze.com – a place to get a weekly dose of healthy, but good tasting food. This is my first box and it looks pretty good so far!