Tortilla Recipe - Using Up Eggs!

We're very on-off when it comes to eggs. We all eat them but sometimes they can be easily forgotten in the fridge and I sometimes find I have eggs that need using up ASAP and I've found the best way to use them up all in one go is to make a really tasty Tortilla. I made one recently and it was so delicious that I decided to share it here:

Ingredients:

It's worth me adding that my quantities are in relation to the size of the frying pan I used and that all my judgements are really done by eye!

6 small Potatoes, cubed
Red onion, sliced
2 Garlic cloves squished and chopped
8 Eggs, beaten
Cheddar Cheese, grated
Olive oil
Seasoning

* Firstly roast cubed potatoes for 30 mins at 200 degrees
* While waiting for the potatoes to cook fry off the onion and garlic in olive oil over a medium heat for 5 minutes
* Once the potatoes are cooked remove them from the oven and add to the pan with the onions, add a bit more oil if necessary
* Spread the potatoes and onions around the pan evenly
* Whisk up the Eggs, season with salt and pepper and pour in the pan
* Heat should be Low - Medium - keep an eye on the eggs that they don't stick and keep running a palette knife round the pan
* Once it seems like the tortilla is cooking through, and becoming one big pancake style thing, sprinkle your cheese over the top and move the pan to the grill so that the top of the tortilla cooks under there
* Keep checking on the tortilla and take out from under the grill once you think the eggs are cooked through and the cheese is nicely browned - slide on to a plate and cut a nice big wedge to eat with salad!

I love this recipe, it's simple and tasty and makes a nice lunch for the family. It can be eaten warm, but is just as delicious cold. I sometimes add a few other ingredients, sliced peppers and courgettes if I've got some that need using up, if you do this then reduce the quantity of potatoes. Enjoy!

This post is an entry for the #eggmainsinminutes Linky on BritMums. For more ideas on what to do with eggs check out Main Meals in Minutes site http://www.eggrecipes.co.uk/mainmealsinminutes

 

Brother Max Carry & Hang Bear Nightlight - Review

Nightlights are great little things I think. They can help to stop fears about the dark, they can help with night time trips to the toilet or to mummy and daddy's bedroom. This one by Brother Max is also particularly cool as it changes colour, from yellow, to orange, red, pink, green and blue (you can also have it on a setting whereby the colour stays the same - whatever floats your boat I guess) . The other thing I love about it and I think is the USP - is that it can hang on the bedroom door handle and it makes it easy for holding and carrying around. I love the design and I love that it just glows - it doesn't emit masses of light - just enough to see in the dark. If fully charged it will give 12 hours of illumination. You needn't worry about the light being warm to touch either - it stays cool. And that is it really, it is a really cool product. Oh and it puts a smile on Isla's face.....

Brother Max sent us this night light to try out and all views are our own.

Cow And Gate - Super Group - Noah Stars!

Viral video by ebuzzing

As you'll know a few weeks ago Noah went to the filming of the new Cow and Gate Advertisement and I wrote about it here. I was so convinced that he wouldn't be in the final cut for the advertisement and so you can imagine how excited I was when I heard that he actually had made it into the ad! So here's the ad in it's glory. With or without Noah in it I think it's a fantastic advert, but knowing that he is there really makes me smile. I've seen it on TV a few times now and I have to watch it every time. He's not one of the main stars - he's more a support artiste I like to think! If you want to spot him he is the little boy with the bright blue jumper on with a teddy bear on the front - he is in a scene where he is sitting down with 2 other babies and also standing up in the background next to a white electric guitar - I don't blame you if you can't spot him, not even his own Grandmother recognised him - slap wrists Mum!! Enjoy!

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Noah at 15 months - "Garden" and other words...

The time since Noah's 1st birthday has flown by and it feels like his development has sped up 100%! He's nearly 15 months and he now says a few words. So far his favourite word is "Garden". He has loved being out in the garden all summer and now I fear that he will be fed up of being cooped up inside during the colder months. The mere mention of the word "Garden" and he's off to pick up his shoes, pointing at the back door repeatedly saying "garden"! So much so that we were outside in the back garden in the rain one Sunday morning. I couldn't say no to him and I love how the rain makes no difference to him. He's not conditioned yet to want to stay in when the skies are grey and wet. Hmm, might not love this so much as the winter kicks in.... 

He has progressed from saying Dadda to Daddee, Mummee, Nanee and he says "Isla" all the time. Other words he says: "ball", "bubble", "cup", "cat" and "up" when he wants to go upstairs. He does so many animal sounds in response to seeing pictures, oinks like a pig, roars like a lion, even bigger roar for Dinosaur etc - he loves the Peekaboo Barn app on my phone and I've found it such a useful tool for getting his nappy changed without wrestling with him. He also says 'Bi, ed, us' - which is his way of singing the song Big Red Bus.

He loves music still. Dances immediately on hearing it. This fits in nicely with Isla's current love of musical chairs and musical bumps! He joins in, not quite understanding why he has to sit down suddenly or why he's getting pushed off a chair. He also enjoys nursery rhymes, particularly 'Row, row, row your boat". To be honest, he dances even if there's no music on if you ask him to.

He LOVES anything Thomas the Tank Engine! He now has so many Thomas t-shirts/ PJ's that I'm worried he might not wear anything else. The minute he saw some Thomas tracksuit bottoms my mum bought him from Sainsburys yesterday he started stripping off the trousers he had on! The Thomas thing even goes so far as yogurt - he loves the pots with the characters and is visibly disappointed if we don't have those ones.

We're still regularly waking in the night (read 'regularly' as EVERY BLOODY NIGHT!).  This does get me and the OH down actually. And he does want a bottle to get back to sleep. It's really tricky as Isla and Noah share a room now, so what the hell are we meant to do when he's screaming the house down other than give in to what he wants? So most nights he has a bedtime bottle and then he will wake anytime between 11.30pm and 3am and need milk. He then goes back to sleep and either sleeps until between 5am and 6.30am depending on the time he has woken up initially and if it's the earlier time then he gets another bottle and gets put back down again - we've manged to get him out of the habit of rising for the day at 5.30am (touching lots of wood while I write this). I can't see the light at the end of the tunnel to be honest with the nightly waking. He eats enough food during the day so it has definitely become a habit and if he was our only child then I think we would leave him to cry himself back to sleep but because Isla gets disturbed we can't do that really.

Back to happier things, he adores Bobcat and is actually really gentle with him when he strokes him. Although his excitement does get the better of him sometimes he does screech a bit when he sees him which freaks Bobby out a bit.

Cars and trains are his current favourite things, he will zoom around the floor with them for ages, making car and train noises as he does it. I can watch him play for ages, he finds it so easy to do it on his own, he doesn't need to be accompanied while he plays. He is also an avid Lego Duplo fan, he can build for ages. We also play hide and seek so often with Isla that when he hears people counting for any other reason he covers his eyes like we're having a game of hide and seek.

I feel so much love for my little boy, I feel such pride when I see him growing and changing but a tiny part of me mourns him not being a baby anymore. Which feels odd to me as I found it quite hard when he was a little baby!

Justin's Funny Faces Sticker Activity Book - Review

As you know we like Justin Fletcher A LOT! If Isla catches 'Something Special' on TV at any time then it's quite tricky to drag her away from it. She loves all Justin's silly characters and so this new book 'Justin's Funny Faces Sticker Activity Book' is perfect as she can make up silly characters of her own!

Isla was really excited when I showed it to her and I did have to stop her from filling in the whole book in one go. The idea is that there are lots of blank faces and lots of stickers to make the faces come alive. There's a face for a pirate, a snowman face, a princess and so on. The funny thing is though that Isla never wants to make the face as it should be, so we have a snowman that looks like a princess and a monster that looks like a snowman. That's the beauty of it though, you can peel off the stickers from the pages and use them on other faces. Here's some of Isla's funny faces!

The Queen had a bit of a temperature....

Isla is 3 and it's perfect for her pre-schooler age group. This book would make a great Christmas Stocking filler as it's quite inexpensive at around £3. While we're touching on the subject of Christmas (i know, i know, we haven't  even done Halloween yet!), there will be a Justin Fletcher Annual coming out soon too that would also be good for little ones stockings. 

If you'd like to keep tabs on Justin then you can follow him on twitter @_JustinFletcher and like him on Facebook

You can pick up Justin's Funny Faces Sticker Activity Book from all good bookshops and from Amazon from the 4th October.

We were sent this book free of charge to review all opinions are our own.

The Big Hour Cake Sale - Rainbow Trust Children's Charity

What is The Big Hour?

The Big Hour is Rainbow Trust Children’s Charity's biggest annual fund raising and awareness event. Between 22-28 October 2012 they are asking people across the country to celebrate the extra hour we all get when the clocks go back to raise vital funds and highlight just how precious time is for the families they support.
In 2012 Rainbow Trust are asking people to bake cakes and sell them on Friday 26th October to raise money. It’s a piece of cake.

This year Rainbow Trust want to raise £50,000 to help families at a time of crisis. Find out how Rainbow Trust helps.

Sign up to hold your own event
You can sign up to host your own Big Hour event. Or if you know someone who you think would make a great Big Hour host, get them to sign up too. Rainbow Trust can then send you The Big Hour Fundraising Pack with everything you need to make your event a fabulous success.

If you’re not able to organise your own event then you can still support The Big Hour by making a donation right now online. You’ll still be making a difference.
Every hour counts.

• £20 is an hour of support for a shattered mother who has been up all night with her sick child
  
• £50 gives a session of support to help families cope with emotional and practical pressures when attending hospital appointments
  
• £100 will give an exhausted parent a day’s visit from a Rainbow Trust Family Support Worker so that there is someone there for them to talk to, to let off steam to and to help them cope with the demands of a sick child

And just to get your taste buds going here's a recipe for a delicious Rainbow cake. A good friend of mine recently made one of these for her son's first birthday party and it was absolutely delicious and the end result was stunning.

John Scott’s (This Morning Fashion Stylist) Rainbow Cake Recipe:

9oz caster sugar

9oz butter (cut into cubes)

9oz self raising flour

4 eggs

6 shades of food colouring (gel not liquid)

Buttercream/frosting 

 

You will need to grease and flour 3 7-8" round tins and line with grease proof paper. 

Preheat the oven to 180/350 gas mark 4. 

Method:

Cream butter (at room temperature) with the sugar until pale and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time if it starts to curdle add a little flour. Sift in the flour a little at a time and fold into the mixture using a wooden spoon. 

Divide the mixture between 6 bowls and add your food colouring to each. 

Then add 3 of your mixtures to your pans. Place in the oven and bake for 20 minutes check they are cooked by pressing down on the sponge lightly if it springs back then it's cooked. 

Take out of pans and leave to cool on a wire rack. Repeat again with the 3 other colours. 

once cooled coat your purple layer with frosting and then place on top with your blue layer, coat with the frosting and then place in the fridge to chill for 1 hr. 

Then repeat with your next green and yellow layers and again with the final orange and red layers. 

I then sprinkled the top with hundreds and thousands and piped shells around the top and bottom. 

John had help from his friend Rachael who owns http://www.ring4roast.co.uk/

Tesco Real Food - How to make an Afternoon Tea

Last week I attended a Tesco Afternoon Tea Baking event at Food at 52, a cooking school in London. I love an afternoon tea and so I was looking forward to making some delicious cakes. I'm not a particularly skilled baker, I don't have a lot of time these days but I can appreciate a good cake and I would love to bake more.

I met up with a lot of other lovely bloggers (they were all of the foodie variety - so I did feel slightly deficient with my cookery skills!) who I know could whip up a Victoria Sponge with their eyes closed. I swooned at the gorgeous mint green Kitchen Aid we used - is it possible to fall in love with a kitchen appliance? I had a couple of glasses of delicious New Zealand sauvignon and finally after all the baking I scoffed what I thought was the most heavenly slice of Victoria Sponge AND a mini bakewell tart! Oh and as a reward for doing the bathing and bedtime routines for the kids I took home 3 different cakey items for the OH.

Me eyeing up the object of desire....

On the night we made: Victoria Sponge, Mini Bakewell Tarts, Salted Caramel shortbread, Black Forest Cupcakes, Fruit tarlets and scones. I decided to recreate the scones this weekend when it rained all day on Sunday. Isla always wants to help with cooking so I knew these would be nice and easy - much to her dismay though they didn't involve icing and sprinkles....

Perfect Scones - Serves 8

350g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
40g caster sugar
75g butter
175ml milk
1 egg beaten, for glazing

To serve: butter, jam, whipped or clotted cream, strawberries

* Preheat oven to 200c (180 fan)
* Mix flour, baking powder, caster sugar and a pinch of salt in a large bowl and then rub in the butter in your fingertips until it's like crumbs
* Add the milk a little at a time, bringing the mixture together until it makes a firm dough. Handle as little as possible but add a bit more milk if it needs
* Lightly flour the surface and put the dough out and shape it into a circle about 1.5cm thick (a finger and a half)
* Cut out the scones using a cutter, pressing firmly through the dough and twisting slightly as you pull it back out
* Put the scones on a non stick baking sheet and brush the tops with beaten egg. Bake in the oven for 12 - 15 minutes until risen and golden
* Leave to cool for a few minutes and then unleash the jam and clotted cream and GET STUCK IN!!!

Isla helping to make 'perfect' scones. They were lush.

The Tesco Real Food Baking Challenge is running for six weeks until 21^stOctober. They are asking customers to upload their best baking recipe to be entered into a weekly prize draw and a grand prize draw, which includes a luxury stay and cooking class at Eckington Manor, a KitchenAid mixer, kitchen utensils, an Eric Lanlard Home Bake cookbook and Persil washing up liquid products.

some of the lovely prizes.....

For more information on the baking challenge, visit the competition page:

http://realfood.tesco.com/recipes/customer-recipes.html


I received a Tesco goodie bag and travel expenses for attending the event.