Rustlers Burger Hacking Challenge

I think the abbreviation TGIF was invented for my family. Schoolday mornings are usually a painful affair. I get up first, plod to the kitchen to prepare breakfast for my guys, then it's time to wake them up, and oh boy, nobody is happy when I open the curtains in bedrooms.
Fridays are typically more cheerful, because there's a weekend ahead, and for Eddie, it's an extra special day as his best friend Peter is coming home with us after school.
The boys play and live Minecraft, so I leave them to it, offering snacks and drinks, and asking them to have a break from playing. They are days when they play chess, or some board games, but recently it's been Minecraft.
On Friday morning when we go to school, I ask Eddie what his friend and he would like to have for dinner. His choices are usually not very varied - pizza or burgers.

Last Friday I offered them a new burger - Rustlers Southern Chicken Burger. These burgers come with sachets of lightly peppered mayo.
Each chopped and shaped chicken burger is coated with a southern fried breadcrumb and comes in a sesame seeded bun.
Calorie wise it is 410kcal per burger.

If you read my blog even occasionally, you know that I enjoy cooking from scratch, but I also love shortcuts which allow me to have a break from cooking. With a special needs child who eats the same food on a daily basis, I tend to cook several different meals every day, to adapt to my family's needs and tastes (Sash and Eddie eats different meals, and now my husband decided to go vegetarian, so often it feels like I'm running a restaurant).
And there are days when I'm pretty knackered to do a restaurant shift.

Recently BritMums got in touch with parenting bloggers, asking to take part in Rustlers Burger Hacking Challenge. All participants received a £20 Tesco gift card to spend on products.

I confess that I haven't tried Rustlers before, I tend to buy fresh burgers which need cooking on grill or in the oven.
I was impressed to discover that Rustlers chicken burgers use only the finest quality chicken, fully traceable to the farm of origin. That is deserving commendation.
Twin packs offer smaller than average burgers (at just 140g each), so they are great for kids - handy to hold and easy to bite into.

Burgers out of packaging, before being cooked

Just pop them into a microwave for 90 seconds and add whichever toppings you fancy.
You don't necessarily need a microwave. We don't have one: I just heated up the burgers in the oven, and toasted the buns. I think buns should be toasted, even if you microwave the burgers.

Since both boys love pickles, I offered them a small dish of gherkins to go with burgers, plus a pink slaw (white and red cabbage, with carrot and red onion in cider vinegar) and a three bean salad with sweet corn and red pepper.
I am not going to take credit for either slaw or salad. The slaw was courtesy Tesco (and it's one of my favourites which I buy often), while the salad is from M&S.
Later they had a mango sorbet (which is Eddie's favourite ice cream).

What did we think of Rustlers?
They are handy to have in the fridge for quick and easy meals, either during the week or at the weekend.
You can be as creative as you like with all kinds of toppings and sides, be it fries, slaw or salad - for a balanced meal. The appeal of burgers, Rustlers or any other, is that you are able to personalise your meal to suit your tastes.
For example, our boys didn't fancy any peppered mayo. In fact, Eddie dislikes mayo with passion. But he loves ketchup, which works perfectly well with the burger.
The burgers disappeared very fast, and got thumbs up from both boys.

Eddie enjoyed his burger so much that we bought another pack on Sunday as a quick pre-cinema meal ( we went to see Early Man).

I used the leftover sachets of mayo to cook small sized Portobellini mushrooms - spread with peppered mayo and later topped with sliced smoked scamorza cheese, and cooked until the cheese melts.

How do you eat burgers? What are your favourite flavour combinations?

If you're looking for ideas on how to serve burgers, check out what some other family bloggers created for the Rustlers Burger Hacking Challenge:
Rustling up a manic midweek fakeaway (Madhouse Family Reviews)
Rustlers Burger Hacking Challenge (Dragons and Fairy Dust)

This post is an entry for BritMums "Rustlers Burger Hacking Challenge", sponsored by Rustlers.

Disclosure: Please do not be confused by the term "sponsored", this was not a paid for post. I received a £20 Tesco voucher to buy the burgers, which I still haven't had a chance to use two months later.

Photo diary: week 5 (project 365)

I'm glad to say Good bye to January, it always seems to be a never-ending month, and a total let down after the Christmas festivities which rarely live up to the expectations. Last Sunday I spotted a competition online from Virago publishers. They wanted you to take a photo of one of their books to try to win one of their latest releases. 

We have zillions of books in the house, and I started looking through some of the shelves, hoping to find at least some of Virago books.

I managed to locate three, but none of them were recent editions. Two were old-ish books by Sarah Waters. Affinity had the most mesmerising cover in blue and purple. 

I didn't see any entries for the competition, and wonder if they will honor the competition if there are no other participants except me. 

I love blood oranges, and was thrilled to find them in Waitrose on Monday. I'm happy to eat them raw, but they are also wonderful for making marmalade.

On Tuesday I had to walk across town to the Royal Mail depot, as I've missed a postie by 3 minutes the day before. They never bother to leave anything with the neighbours, so annoying. It was a parcel with wooden toys for reviewing.
The morning was frosty but sunny, and I loved the pattern of the tree shadows on the grass.

I had to pick up something from the summerhouse, and spotted this suicidal thyme which has grown in the middle of the path's flagstones. I'll need to carefully remove it and plant it somewhere else, so that nobody could step on it and break it.



On Thursday morning I had a quick coffee with my husband at UE Roasters cafe in town, just after I dropped kids in school. We don't often have time to discuss things in the evenings, so morning coffee feels like a grown-up time. They had some beautiful cakes on display, not that I fancied any first thing in the morning. Just a dose of caffeine for me please.

Fridays are Eddie's favourite days, as we come home from school with his best friend. They play Minecraft and discuss things that matter only when you are 7+. I offered them chicken burgers for an early dinner, and they gobbled them up with gusto.

Today I stayed in bed almost until 10am, which is a very rare occasion for me, but I felt very tired yesterday night, and I obviously needed all that long sleep. Thankfully, my men managed to survive without me in the morning, while I was asleep.
A fine drizzle is on all day today. I tried to entice Eddie to go out with me to do some grocery shopping, but he wasn't very enthusiastic. When I told him to get dressed, I found him in the lounge, sprawled on the sofa. I did convince him that we should go out together, and we popped into The Works and bought yet another Minecraft book. I have spotted some ghost stories and crime books that I would love to read, and will go next week for a good browsing session.
I also took seven books to the charity shop today, and feeling virtuous.

How was your week?

LEGO Minecraft The Nether Fight

Eddie has been begging me for over a year to buy an XBox for him so that he could play Minecraft. Apparently all his friends were into Minecraft. I kept saying No until the Black Friday last year, when I saw a good price on an XBox Minecraft package at Sainsbury's, and I failed to resist the pressure.
I tell myself it was a moment of madness, and I do regret buying it.

This was the one and only Christmas gift for Eddie, and I told him he should not expect anything else. He was deliriously happy with the gift.
The problem is, of course, that he doesn't get tired of playing Minecraft, so I have to limit his gaming time. He also enjoys watching his favourite Youtubers who do nothing but play Minecraft. You'd have to pay me big money to watch any of their videos, I find them excruciatingly boring and irritating. But it appears, I'm totally behind the times because that's what he wants to be, when he grows up. A Youtuber. Sigh.

LEGO is another passion of my son. Combine LEGO with Minecraft, and he's on cloud nine.
Last week I bought him a LEGO Minecraft The Nether Fight set.
He has been good, practicing playing on his guitar, and I wanted to reward him.

There are three minifigures in the set: Alex, a zombie pigman and a wither skeleton, plus there is a small magma cube. I don't know its significance, but if I ask Eddie, I'm sure he'd be giving me a long lecture on the merits of it.
I did ask him recently a question on Minecraft, he went into such detail, that my eyes started to glaze over.

This set could be easily combined with any other LEGO Minecraft sets, or admired on its own.
You build a Minecraft Nether setting with buildable mushrooms and flames, and a TNT blasting action.

The TNT function is meant to blast out the netherrack and magma blocks. Does it mean anything to me? Neh, to me neither.

The set includes over 80 pieces, and is suitable for ages 6-14 and older.

This set would be a great gift for any LEGO or Minecraft fan.

In a cottage in a wood by Cass Green

It's doesn't happen often these days that I read a book in two days, but In a cottage in a wood by Cass Green was quite unputdownable.
It was another of the three for a fiver books I picked in The Works recently.
It is a creepy narrative, moody and suspenseful, and the mystery is part-set in Cornwall. There are lots of twists that will keep you on tenterhooks.

The main protagonist is Neve, a receptionist who hates her job and tries to recover from a breakup with her boyfriend. She has recently lost her Dad. Her bestie is heavily pregnant. Her priggish sister and her unbearable husband can't wait for Neve to leave (she stays with them), "helpfully" circling the ads for shared accommodation in the newspapers.

It's hard to relate to an emotionally immature Neve. She is one of these women who likes to get pissed, then every male looks as attractive as Alain Delon in his heyday.
In fact the book starts with her waking up from a drunken stupor in bed with some bloke whose name she cannot recollect. He is not a catch (and he says "pacific" instead of "specific", now that is a crime!), and when she's leaving, he checks his trousers, worried that she might have taken his wallet. Classy encounter.

Humiliated and disgusted with herself, Neve hurries home across a cold London, when accidentally she comes across a woman on Waterloo Bridge. The woman is called Isabelle. While Neve tries to convince Isabelle that perhaps she should get on a bus and away from the cold, she forces an envelope into Neve's hands and then jumps off the bridge into the icy Thames.

Two weeks later Neve receives a letter from solicitors acting on behalf of Isabelle. It happens so that Isabelle left her a cottage in Cornwall as a parting gift. Well, yes, that is a very implausible twist, but keep on reading.

Neve travels to Cornwall, with a hope of sorting out her problems. The cottage is in the sticks, it is dark, gloomy and menacing. There is a dead magpie in the kitchen and lots of rubbish on the floors. And there are bars across all windows.
A dream home happens to be not better than a dark prison, with hidden secrets.
Neve has nowhere to go, she cannot afford to rent anything in London and cannot go back to her sister's place, so she stays in the unwelcoming cottage, hoping to sell it. But before she does that she wants to discover the mystery around the cottage. What was Isabelle scared of? What has moved her to commit suicide? And why, just why did she leave her cottage to Neve?

Piecing together the clues, Neve tries to unravel Isabelle's secrets.

This is an easy read, gripping and entertaining, and thankfully without supernatural elements.

Family Concerns (An Eccentric in Lucca Book 3) by Stuart Fifield

Family Concerns (An Eccentric in Lucca Book 3) by Stuart Fifield was one of the books I've won on Goodreads last year.
Though it is a third book in the series, it reads perfectly well as a standalone.

The main protagonist is La Contessa di Capezzani-Batelli, who lives in Lucca with her short-tempered and spoilt dog and dyspeptic maid Elizabeth. All three can be called characters in equal measure. Elizabeth is a veritable harridan, and it's not quite clear why she is still keeping her job, when she is as lovable as a bubonic plague. She might have been with a family for half a century, but she is rather obnoxious.

The Contessa - the eponymous eccentric - is well known among the Lucchesi as a benefactor for many a charitable project.
In Family Concerns she is organising her next big fund-raiser together with Arthur Crowe who is a conductor of Banda Inghiltalia.
With her son Luigi's support, they embark on a project of extending the local hospice premises. They buy a house next door to redevelop it as part of hospice. The story of the house and the family who lived there is touching and immensely sad. It reminded me of The Garden of the Finzi-Continis which chronicles the lives of the Italian Jews.

You will meet all the members of the Contessa's Chamber Opera Group of Lucca, whom she calls her angels. They are far from being angels, however, and their private lives are complicated and definitely not angelic.
There are lots of individual stories, and at some point I felt rather confused, going back to the beginning to figure out who is who.
The Italian setting is enjoyable, you will soak up all the sights and smells.

Years ago I was a guest at a British-Italian wedding held in a small Tuscan village, outside Pienza. The food and scenery were spectacular, the wedding guests were like characters in an opera. I was an outsider, as I hardly knew anyone but it was an interesting anthropological experience. A pity, the marriage didn't last a year. But the setting was marvellous.
The book brought back memories of those few days in the Tuscan countryside. I think we travelled through Lucca, but had no time to explore this historic town.

There are also murders and a mafia business subplots, a newly opened fish and chips shop which proves to be a total disaster, love affairs and a love child, and a glorious concert to attend.

Spoiler alert:
I found the end of the book a bit rushed. The murder mysteries are not solved satisfactorily. And I was rather shocked that one of the characters goes scot free for the brutal violence against his wife.

If you enjoy books set in Italy, Family Concerns is an entertaining read. I am definitely going to find the first two books in the series.

Chocolate polenta cake

Typically I belong to a school of thought that there's never enough chocolate, but actually on rare occasions I look at my stash, and think, oh well, is anyone going to help me with that?!

I've opened a tasting set from Divine the other day only to discover that some of the mini bars had expiry dates from before Christmas, while the others were still fine until June.
I also had a big box of Seasonal Selection from Thorntons, which nobody wanted to finish, as the chocolates were way too sweet, and tasted more of sugar than anything else. Not the best chocolate box.
Baking a chocolate cake is always a good way of using any chocolate leftovers. I fancied a cake with polenta for extra texture, but not a totally gluten free cake, as I find a pure polenta-based cake a bit too gritty and grainy. A little bit though adds a lovely crunch and crumb.

I have googled for chocolate polenta cake recipes, and came across Raspberry Chocolate Polenta cake on Tin and Thyme blog (from the days when it was called Chocolate Log Blog). Choclette's beautiful cake is gluten free, and is made with a mix of polenta and ground almonds.

I adapted the recipe to suit our tastes, but overall it is Choclette's cake recipe. I couldn't find any ground almonds, looks like I need to buy some more.

Chocolate polenta cake
Ingredients:
115g mixed chocolate (dark, milk and assorted)
150g butter (I used a mix of butter and margarine)
150g demerara sugar
50g dry polenta (for example, Polenta Valsugana)
2tbsp whisky (like Bell's)
20g cocoa powder
110g plain flour
1tsp baking powder
2 medium eggs

Melt all the chocolate in a deep bowl over hot simmering water, add the butter to the chocolate and let it melt too. Take off the heat. Mix in the sugar and polenta. Sift in the flour, cocoa and baking powder, and add whisky (or brandy). Finally beat in 2 eggs.
Line a spring cake tin with a cut out parchment paper circle, and oil the paper and the sides of the tin. Pour in the cake batter.
Place the cake tin in the oven preheated to 180C. Bake for about 40 minutes. Check if it's ready, using a wooden toothpick, if it comes clean, the cake is ready.

The aroma of chocolate wafting around the house was amazing.

Sprinkle it with icing sugar before serving.
I baked the cake yesterday afternoon, and today there's hardly anything left. Looks like we all loved it.

I have a variation of a chocolate polenta cake recipe on my blog, which is gluten free.

Adding this recipe to #KitchenClearout linky hosted by Cheryl at Madhouse Family Reviews, as I managed to use a good amount of chocolate in this recipe.

Also joining in with Choclette's We Should Cocoa linky at Tin and Thyme with great thanks for reminding me just how good a chocolate polenta cake can be.

Photo diary: week 4 (project 365)

On Sunday morning I was still in bed, when super excited Eddie ran into my bedroom: "Mummy, snow! snow!" Ever an optimist, he was hoping for more snow and no school the next day. Alas, the snow melted by late afternoon, being all wiped off clean like a slate by an incessant drizzle.

On Monday I was returning home from the school run, and realised that our street was almost void of all traffic or parked cars, which basically never happens. It makes you think just how it must have looked like centuries ago (minus antennae and asphalt). Most of the houses in our street are 200-300 years old.

Our garden is starting to awaken a little bit, and I can see snowdrops poking their spiky green tops everywhere. I also spotted a few primroses and even a couple of crocuses.

The river Windrush has been put on a flood alert last week. A few days ago it even spilled out of its banks in the flood fields. On Wednesday it was raining almost non-stop. I snapped the river on the run home from school. These are raindrops on the camera.

The next day it felt very much like spring in the air, fresh and clean.

Friday is Eddie's favourite day of the week, as it's the beginning of a weekend, and also he has his best friend over after school, and the guys talk Minecraft and other important business. They asked me to buy a Cheese feast pizza for them, to which I added some ham, and they demolished it quickly. For dessert, they had a mango sorbet (Eddie's favourite ice cream).

After a quick grocery shopping and a visit to Gregg's for Eddie's weekly treat of a sausage roll, we came home, and I baked a chocolate polenta cake. The smell of chocolate was drawing people in the kitchen like a magnet, Sasha couldn't wait until the cake was ready. He kept poking into the kitchen, and I kept telling him to wait a bit. He was the first one to get a big slice of cake, when the cake was still warm.

Toy Wonderama 500-pc jigsaw puzzle from Ravensburger

Years ago, when I was a young teacher, I accompanied a group of school kids on a visit to a private collector of toys. Their apartment was an astonishing museum of dolls and toys from all over the world. All walls were hidden behind the shelves with exhibits. It was a fascinating place. The collector knew so much about the history of toys, and children were very excited.
Why am I suddenly reminiscing about it?

Toy Wonderama 500-piece jigsaw puzzle from Ravensburger reminded me of that private museum.
This colourful puzzle will keep you entertained and engrossed for hours.

I started it, once my children were back in school after the winter holidays.

This is the latest design from popular American artist Aimee Stewart.
The main image shows shelves, packed with vintage toys and games.

You will find old-fashioned dolls there, vintage trains and airplanes, all kinds of vehicles and moving toys. Space age transport like rockets are crammed together with robots and fairground attractions as well as clockwork characters.

Like all Ravensburger jigsaw puzzles, Toy Wonderama is made of high quality cardboard, with linen finish to minimise glare on puzzle image.

It is suitable for 10+ years, but my 7-year-old was happy to help me with finding pieces.
The finished puzzle measures 49x36cm when complete.

This puzzle will make a lovely gift to any jigsaw puzzles fan.
Toy Wonderama was my first puzzle of 2018, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. But then, I always enjoy Ravensburger puzzles, they are my way of relaxing.

Disclosure: I received the puzzle for the purposes of reviewing. All opinions are my own.

Photo diary: week 3 (project 365)

Last week was mostly spent in bed, as both Sash and I were having a pretty bad cold or maybe a mild flu. Sasha seems to have recovered, I'm still convalescing.

Eddie is very partial to Gregg's sausage rolls, so as a Sunday treat I sometimes take him to the local Gregg's cafe. He deems their sausage rolls to be the best (alas, mine are apparently not as good).

We go across the bridge over the Windrush river every day on the way to school and back home. I love looking at the colourful houses, but always wonder if it's too damp to live there, with the river rushing just underneath the windows.

Many buildings in our town are related to the history of blanket making. Several houses in our street belonged to the Early family which owned the famous business including many mills in town. The Captain's Mill is now a block of flats. Every time I look at it in the evening, it reminds me of the paintings by Magritte (like Empire of Light, or Light and Dark).

This year Eddie takes guitar lessons at school. My husband has bought him a guitar of the wrong size (don't ask), and the teacher has kindly offered a guitar on loan for Eddie to practice at home. Here he is, playing the Minecraft theme.

I was feeling rotten all day, and didn't take any photos on Thursday, so here is the 2nd photo from the previous day.
Sash has been hardly eating at all, and to tempt him to have something, I baked a pine nut and chocolate chip honey cake.

Still quite unwell, I spend all the day at home. In the morning my husband took Eddie to school, and after school he went to stay at his friend's place and even had dinner there, which was a big relief for me, as I could hardly lift my head off the pillow.
This is one of the orchids in our kitchen.

My Mum told me I should cook some chicken soup to help fight the cold. Yes, Mum!
I've been cooking it and reciting to myself Maurice Sendak's classic "Chicken soup with rice":
In January
It's so nice
While slipping
On the sliding ice
To sip hot chicken soup
With rice.
Sipping once,
Sipping twice,
Sipping chicken soup
With rice.