What’s Cooking – Plum Nutella

Do you remember a few weeks ago I shared with you a Quick and Easy Cinnamon Biscuits recipe that we made together with Iwona from Smakowite Jadlo? This wasn’t the only thing we baked / cooked together during her visit. We made a lemon curd cheesecake, beetroot soup, breakfast onion & cheese rolls and… my favourite – plum nutella, which I would like to share with you today.

Ingredients:

• 1 kg plums
• 120g sugar
• 1 tbsp cocoa

Method:

First things first – wash your plums well and pat dry with kitchen cloth.

Then remove all stones and cut your plums into halves.

Place them in a large frying pan, add sugar and fry gently for about one hour stirring every 5 minutes or so, to avoid any burning or sticking.

Then when most of the juices have reduced and your plum mixture begins to thicken a little, add the cocoa and cook for an additional 15 minutes.

Place in a glass airtight container and allow it to cool.

If you have made a bigger batch you can place your plum nutella in several glass jars and pasteurize them so it lasts for longer. In order to do so:

1. Wash your glass jars in boiling water ensuring they are totally clean and sterilised.
2. Fill your jars with hot plum nutella.
3. Close the jars up, making sure that all the lids are as tight as possible.
4. Place your jars on a baking tray and cook in the oven preheated to 180C for around 10 minutes
5. Or place in a large cooking pot (with a teacloth at the bottom so your glass jar doesn’t touch the pot bottom directly) fill with water, almost up to the rim and allow to boil for 30 minutes.
6. Remove from the oven or cooking pot and allow it to cool.

This way you can enjoy your plum nutella for longer, or any jam type creation for that matter.

This plum nutella is perfect with pancakes or as addition to cakes, cupcakes or muffins or simple treat it as a jam and enjoy it with a slice of nice bread.

Alphabet Project | S is for Scrumping

Scrumping – Stealing fruit, especially apples, from someone else’s trees.
Oooops 😉

Alphabet Project is hosted by PODcast

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Who / What Am I? 15/08

Good afternoon everyone!

Today I would like to start with a special question for you.

When sharing isn’t a good idea?

You might think that sharing is a positive thing, it is sign of kindness and love and good behaviour, but believe me sharing isn’t all that good!

Mark likes to share; he is not a greedy person and if he could he would really give away all he has. I love this about him but come on there has to be some boundaries.

He is off sick. He has flu, at first I thought that he has a case of man flu; you know the one which you can cure with some good TV shows and lots of Hot Toddies but no… He has a real flu and Mark being Mark has decided to share!

For this moment I am still up and running but I can feel this pending doom encroaching and there is no stopping it.

So, you see sharing isn’t all that brilliant in some situations.

😦

Moving on…

Melissa was right last week! Blackberries won the day! Have a look…

This was actually taken during the dog walk. There are so many blackberry plants around the field where we go for walks, it’s wonderful. All I need to do is take a plastic container with me and whilst the dogs run around doing doggie stuff I can pick a box full.

I really like this time of the year when “food” can be just picked from the bushes, shrubs or trees. There are some lovely plums growing close by too 😉

According to Huffington Post the leaves and barks of the blackberries can be also consumed. Apparently they are good for treating mild inflammation of the gums or even a sore throat. I had no idea about it, did you?

Now it is time for a new picture puzzle.

Who / What Am I?

Stay safe and enjoy your weekend!

Alphabet Project | M is for Mango

The mango is a juicy stone fruit

belonging to the genus Mangifera…*

Alphabet Project is hosted by PODcast

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Who / What Am I? 01/08

Good Friday everyone!

What a fabulous day! Yesterday I overcome with a huge craving for some smoked salmon, so today I left the cave in order to procure some. I bought a beautiful Lapsang Souchong Tea Smoked Salmon by Heston and some rustic bread, try saying that three times quickly. Immediately upon arriving home, I added double butter to the ripped apart bread, carefully arranged a piece of my smoked salmon and set about devouring my dream food. Oh my, do I feel so much better now and the best part was that it was delicious. I don’t get cravings like this very often and even if I do, I do not act on them most of the time, but I must admit this small self indulgence felt really good and put me in a brilliant happy mood!

Oh, and I also bought a bathroom light for our on-suite so we will finally be able to finish it… unless of course someone tells us yet again that that is the wrong type of light. I have already bought a light but according to an electrician it is not suitable for this small bathroom, which will get really steamy once the power-shower is on. So keep your fingers crossed for me and hope that the second time round I will have made a good choice.

Now let’s get back to the important part… mystery picture from last week… hmmm as it ended up it wasn’t such a mystery after all… I blame the Kiwi Fruit for being so boring looking 🙂

Well done to everyone who guessed kiwi.

Kiwi fruit is actually a really amazing little fruit. It is rich in magnesium, it is a great source of folic acid, it contains a lot of vitamin C and fiber (apparently its amount is as high as in many whole grain cereals) and to add to this it is rich in potassium, which is great for lowering a blood pressure. *

That’s it for all things kiwi related…

This weeks’ shot is greener, actually it is very green, full stop. And no, it is not the inside of a kiwi fruit ;-), or is it?

Have a great weekend everyone and if you get a chance to do something nice for yourself – do it! It feels amazing.

Alphabet Project | K is for Kiwi

The kiwifruit or Chinese gooseberry (often shortened to kiwi)

is the edible berry of a woody vine in the genus Actinidia.*

Alphabet Project is hosted by PODcast

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Alphabet Project | G is for Giving

“We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.”
Winston Churchill

Alphabet Project is hosted by PODcast

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Alphabet Project | F is for Fruit

A fruit is a part of a flowering plant.

In common language usage,

“fruit” normally means the fleshy seed-associated structures of a plant

that are sweet or sour and edible in the raw state.

Alphabet Project is hosted by PODcast

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Review – Yu! Healthy Snacks

Most of us when asked “Do you like fruit?” will answer “Yes, sure I do” and it will be the truth, but how often do we really eat them?

We buy a lot of fruit on a regular basis and eat it but as weird as it sounds we often forget about them and they just sit there in a huge fruit bowl or in the fridge… sad but true… sometimes you just don’t fancy an apple.

Yu! Healthy Snacks found a great way to bring fruit back into our lives in the way that might encourage us to eat more of them – they turned ordinary fruit into a healthy yet tasty snack. Mark often moans that the taste of something is inversely proportional to how healthy it is, a cream cake is divine but unhealthy, all bran taste like cardboard on its own but is healthy. Yu! seem to have cracked it and even Mark thinks they are good.

At this moment they offer a selection of:

• Yu! Fruit & Yogurt – fruit pieces covered in yogurt
• Yu! Jus Fruit – 100% delicious fruit pieces
• Yu! Bar – fruit bars
• Yu! Granola – granola clusters & fruits

Our Yu! Healthy Snacks selection

We were sent a selection to try out and we loved them! Why?

First of all they taste great! They taste like concentrated fruit, tiny little morsels that explode with flavour when you bite one. The only downside we spotted was that they are very moreish and the packs can sometimes appear not big enough when you reach for “just one more”.

Secondly they are good for you – they are made with real fruits and real yogurt and they have no artificial colours so you can sit there all smug in the warm glow that you are treating your body like a temple.

 Third they come in small packs, which are perfect one person snack size – ideal to put into lunch boxes, handbag or even your pocket!

And did I mention that they taste great…

Yu! Fruit & Yogurt – raspberry pieces in yogurt coating

With different types of Yu! snacks and different flavours everyone can pick their favourite. My favourite so far is the raspberry pieces in yogurt coating – they have a perfect balance between sweet coating and fruit itself. Perfect if you need a quick energy boost.

Yu! Jus Fruit – fruit chews blueberry

Yu! Jus Fruit are great for all the fussy eaters out there, if one of the kids is putting up a roadblock in the search for enjoyable fruit consumption give them ago they may do the trick. They contain 100% real fruits and can be counted as 1 of your 5 a day (on the downside you have to eat the entire packet all to yourself with absolutely no sharing, life can be so hard at times)! We think it’s a great way to put some healthy food back into our diet!

* Product was provided by Yu! free of charge for review purposes. The opinions expressed in this review are honest and my own .