Sweetheart Porridge

Have you heard about the Great British Porridge Challenge? You can read more about it on my other blog, Competition Grape Vine and submit your entry on their website or Facebook page. Your porridge recipe could win a gourmet experience at Simon Rimmer's restaurant, Earle. The closing date is March 6th.

And you can win a hamper of Mornflake goodies in a separate competition, over on the Grape Vine blog.

Here is a recipe from The Porridge Lady to give you some inspiration for your own entry.

Sweetheart Porridge     

 

This recipe uses the natural sweetness of berries topped with the sweet treat of white chocolate.

Serves: Two

Cooking & preparation time: 6 mins

Ingredients

15g white chocolate

80g Mornflake jumbo oats
200ml milk
200ml cold water
80g frozen berries
1 dessertspoon runny British honey

Method

Coarsely grate the white chocolate and set aside.  

Into a deep saucepan place the oats, water and milk.
Then put the saucepan over a high heat and cook for 2 mins stirring constantly.
Reduce the heat to a simmer and cook the oats for a further 2-3 mins or until you have a nice creamy Porridge.
Pour the Porridge into two bowls.
Swirl the frozen berries into the Porridge (they will be like little frozen fruit pops!).
Top with a swirl of honey.
Finally garnish with the grated chocolate and serve hot to your sweetheart for breakfast. 

More metal

I wasn't very happy with the card I made for this week's Less is More metal challenge. Fortunately I had one more scrap of sheet metal in my bits box, this time gold coloured, so I decided to play around with die cutting it before embossing. I'm rather pleased with the butterfly that resulted - it's very crisp and bold, and I think it goes well with the textured black card I mounted it on.

Meal Planning Monday February 24th

It's just dawned on me that I've planned and shopped for about twice as many meals as we can possibly fit in to one week! That's what a trip to the Farmer's Market does.... Anyway, some of the food has been popped in the freezer and the less perishable stuff left for later in the week and early next week, and this is the plan that's resulted. But first, a little look at some of the highlights of last week:

Actually the gnocchi was a definite LOWlight, but the egg curry more than made up for it - I wrote about them here.  And the scrumptious chicken and rice dish was one of Mark's creations - he's put the recipe on his blog.

This week's menu is

Monday Wild boar sausages with mash and onion  gravy and Brussels sprouts

Tuesday  Armenian Lamb with Pilaff (an old favourite from the 1970s Cordon Bleu Monthly magazines)

Wednesday Rack of lamb with gratin dauphinoise and green salad

Thursday Onion tart because it (as I predicted) got squeezed out by the egg curry last week

Friday Lasagne

Saturday and Sunday Mark will cook one night, the other we'll have a baked Tunworth cheese. Unless he wants to do the Tunworth, in which case I'll do a steamed steak pudding.

Why not share your meal plan for the week using the linky at At Home With Mrs M ?

Not what I expected.....

Do you ever make something and find that the finished item bears absolutely NO resemblance to the image you had in your head before you started? Most of the time, my makes aren't *exactly* like my mental picture, and often I chop and change and rearrange things as I go along.

But I planned this one from start to finish before I started to make it, and stuck to the plan, and it's still turned out to be completely different!

This week's challenge at Less is More is a recipe; we are asked to use something made of metal. I had a scrap of bright green sheet metal that's been in the "too good to throw away" box for years, so I embossed it with a butterfly folder, framed it with a slide mount covered with fabric-textured paper and mounted it, with some ribbon, onto textured white card.

The flash reflecting off the metal has obscured the texture of the white card, and overall I'm not at all happy with this card. If I get chance to do one I like better, I'll be back later in the week.

Mum's the Word

It'll soon be time to start thinking about Mother's Day - it's on March 30th this year (at least, it is in the UK - I've never known an event to be celebrated on so many different dates!) so that's what I've been thinking about for this week's CD Sunday challenge, which is Quotations.

I typed this Ralph Waldo Emerson quotation into Word, played about with the size and font until I was happy with it, then printed it out and die cut it. A background paper from the CD The Best of La Pashe 2012 and a bit of matting and layering makes a very simple looking card:

Then I turned to the inside. I used a sheet printed from the CD, but it can also be bought as a Double Decoupage sheet from La Pashe. To make the main image glossy to help it stand out from the background, I printed the sheet twice, once on glossy card and once on matte, but you could save paper and ink by using images all from one sheet. I know I'll use the remainder of each sheet so it wasn't that wasteful!

I used the same dark blue card I'd used for matting on the outside to create a liner with a pop up support for the image, then other images from the sheet to make the background. I did consider using the decoupage layers on the sheet, but the card wouldn't have folded properly flat then which would have removed the element of surprise when it is opened.

Competition Grape Vine: COMPETITION: win a pair of tickets to the Country Living Spring Fair

You may not be aware that I have another blog, all about competitions, and at the moment I'm running a competition that you might be interested in if you love food or craft - why not pop over and have a look?



Competition Grape Vine: COMPETITION: win a pair of tickets to the Country Living Spring Fair

Twenties style

I've recently  had a bit of a craze on early 20th century American literature, triggered off by having read  "Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald" by Therese Anne Fowler and "The Cult of Nostalgia" by Bruce Bruschi. Both books made me think of this stamp which I bought years ago from Dimension 4th - the dresses are the kind that I imagine the glamorous ladies of the 1920s social scene would wear for elegant afternoon teas. And just look at the prices! 2/- in  old money is 10p now. For a hat! The shoes were 1/- (5p), one dress 2/6 (12.5p) and one of the dresses a whopping 7/6 (37.5p) - and that was for the finished product, not just for a paper pattern.

I used papers from a My Mind's Eye set that had been free with a magazine last year, stamping the image on to two of the papers to use to paper-piece the garments. I'd wanted to make the garments stand out from the background, but looking at it on the screen now I wish I'd done the shoe too, I think I will go back and add it after I've posted this!

Cutting one of the papers with pinking shears, adding buttons, faux stitching and a dressform give a feel of a dressmaker's studio to the card - perhaps the dressmaker was selling her finished creations?

I'm joining in with

Oldie but a Goodie - Buttons

Craft Room Challenge - Colour Challenge

OLLCB - challenge 150 Fashionista