Wardrobe weekly +

I didn't do a wardrobe weekly last week, because I was having a staycation and didn't get dressed on more than one day or forgot to take pictures when I did! Lazy Parsnip. Anyway, I've included all the outfit pics I have from the last fortnight...

Monday

 Y'all have seen my Cambridge post I'm sure, but the dress is lovedrobe, jacket George.

Tuesday

 I think this is was my 3rd time wearing these boohoo jeans.....

Oh dear. They're fucked already. Have to send them back for a refund as they've now sold out :(

 Top 22 - George

Jeans 24 - Boohoo

Shoes - crocs

There was then lots of eating, drinking, watching t.v /films and sleeping!

 My version of the extremely easy to copy low calorie summer salad from pizza express...

Chicken breast (I used leftovers from a roast chicken)

Goats cheese (a nice salty tart one with soft centre and brie-like skin)

Mixed salad leaves

Fresh mint leaves

Fresh basil leaves

Strawberries

Blueberries

Pizza express light house dressing.

It sounds odd I know, but I could eat this everyday, the balance of flavours is perfection!

I guess this is aimed at the organic 'sugar is poison' folks 'cause otherwise I'm not sure what the point of it is. It's nowhere near as good as normal coke, but it's miles better than diet coke. Kind of similar to coke zero because you know there's something amiss, but it doesn't leave the fake flavour in your mouth that diet coke does. I wouldn't really bother with it again!

Friday

 Again, you've seen this outfit from my London post, but here's a nice out-take - my boyfriend finds it amusing to snap me when I'm in action! Dress from Lovedrobe again, jacket New Look.

Tuesday again

 Blurgh... back to work! Oh the confusion!

 I'm really loving these George tops - I love a bit of draping and ruching!

 Top 24 - George

Jeggings 22 - Dorothy Perkins

Shoes - Dorothy Perkins

Wednesday

 I really love this dress, it's just so damn cute!

 For some reason (although I've worn them many times before) my black loafers gave me the worst blisters. I must remember to wear them with socks in the future!

 Make up matching glasses!

 Glasses - Selecspecs

Dress 24 - Lovedrobe

Cardi 20 - Primark

Leggings 22 - South / very

Shoes - new look

earrings, matt lipstick and nail varnish - Primark

 I got home to find a snowstorm inside my freezer - I had clearly not closed it properly so I had to clear it all up. Nearly missed the bake off!

Thursday

 I decided I had better ear my cute Asos summer dresses this week before the coldness set in for real! I just got this cute bag from Primark, it comes in black and beige too.

 After the blisters I could only wear my crocs 'cause everything else rubbed my feet!

 I felt so lady like in this!

I'm trying to resist another floral midi that's just come onto the asos site (this one!). It's jersey fabric so it bet it's lovely!

 Jacket 22 - New Look

Dress 26 - Asos Curve

Bag - Primark

Shoes - Crocs

Friday

 Oh how I love this dress!

 I managed not to spill anything on it all day!

Dress 24 - Asos Curve

Leggings - South / Very

Shoes - Primark

Saturday

 Yesterday I went out for lunch at Chicken Liquor (previously called Wishbone) in Brixton Village. We had put it off for ages because people are always slagging it off, but I have no idea why... the Thai boneless bites were delicious, as was the side I had... can't remember what it was called, but it was sweetcorn, spring onions, feta, sour cream and mayo mixed up like a potato salad and sprinkled with cayenne pepper. Totally scrummy and I plan to make it at home if I have people over (it's a perfect BBQ side dish!). I then went swimming, bought a drill, came home and did some DIY....

Drilling into our walls is a tricky job because they seem to be made out of diamond. I'm a bit achy today, but I FINALLY put up some hooks and this beautiful drawing by a friend of mine. I also put together the cheapest shoe rack in the world so I have somewhere to put the shoes I can't fit anywhere else! Then I did my mammoth spectacle post. I was wearing my (I'm so glad I bought it 'cause it's excellent') Primark Jumpsuit. I don't know why I didn't think to take a picture while I was taking all those other pictures, but hey, it's too late now!

Sunday

Today has been nice and relaxing. I painted my nails with my new nail polish from poundland of all places! I have been looking for this colour for ages - it looks like coral here, but it's actually pinker in real life. I don't know what you would even call this bright colour, but It's delicious and lovely. I'm wearing my old Asos Curve floral tapestry midi dress. I'm off to watch more of 'The Returned' now, which I can already tell I'm going to be obsessed with!

Yuk Sung a la Parsnips

I've been making Yuk Sung for years now, it's something that's easy to cook, and very very tasty while still being relatively healthy. What I did below isn't authentic (use this recipe for the traditional version!), but I adapted it to my tastes (and my boyfriends too) so this is my recipe....

Ingredients

• 500g minced pork
• 1 Iceberg lettuce
• 4-5 spring onion
• 2 large cloves of garlic
• 5-6 chestnut mushrooms (you can really add as many or as few as you want, I used the whole box!)
• 50g unsalted cashew nuts
• 1 small leek
• 1 tbsp sunflower or vegetable oil
• 3 tbsp  Shaoxing wine or dry sherry
• 3 tbsp oyster sauce
• 1 tbsp honey
• 1 tbsp light soy sauce
• 1 tbsp dark soy sauce
• 1 tsp Chinese 5 spice
• 1 tsp sesame oil

Method

So lets start with the veg. My boyfriend doesn't like water chesnuts (much to my sadness!) so instead I add some cashews.... they're wonderfully rich and go really well with this dish. Garlic and spring onions are a must, and to up the veg quota I often add mushrooms. On this occasion I added a leek too, because I needed to use it up and pork with leek is a match made in heaven (pork and leek Chinese dumplings are to die for!) so it tasted divine! All of the veg go into the food processor and get pulsed until they're finely chopped then the cashews go in at the end to get roughly chopped. Obviously you can do this by hand but it takes ages! I normally add fresh grated ginger too, but I forgot to buy any... still tasted lush!

The veg goes in the wok with a bit of vegetable or sunflower oil and is cooked until soft.... the mushrooms are so full of liquid that they need a while to cook, you need to cook off most of the vegetable liquid!

The all important pork mince! I use fatty pork mince for most Asian recipes because I'm all about flavour, and fatty pork has the best flavour (sausages yeah?!) and it's really cheap. If you're trying to be healthy then obviously use lean minced pork, it's super yummy (I've used lean many times), but I'd up the flavour factor with extra spring onion / ginger / garlic! Add the pork to the veg and cook until the pinkness has gone then add the flavourings...

I never measure my ingredients so try my suggestions and then add more to taste if it's not strong enough for you! One of the big flavours in Yuk Sung is Shaoxing wine, but regular sherry works equally well if you don't want to buy this in specially. About 3 tablespoons of wine go in to the wok. A big slug (3 tablespoons) of oyster sauce is essential (the little sachets of oyster stir fry sauce work really well if you don't wanna buy a whole bottle!). A teaspoon of sesame oil for flavour, a teaspoon of Chinese 5 spice and a tablespoon of honey.

I use dark soy for richness and light soy for saltyness. This really is down to taste so add about a tablespoon of each and then you can add more if needs be!

The mixture will be quite wet by now, so you need to let it cook until the juices have thickened....

the texture should become more mince-like and crumbly with a small amount of thick sauce, then it's ready!

Traditionally Yuk Sung is served in lettuce leaves, Iceberg to be precise and it doesn't wilt when it's mixed with hot food so it's perfect. Mini gem leaves would be very attractive but I don't think the flavour works as well. The fiddly bit is separating the iceberg lettuce into leaves.... particularly with this one because it was DEFORMED! It's not always so hard, honest, but if you can't be arsed you could chop the lettuce and put it in a bowl like a salad with the mince on the top (I've done this many times!).

Spoon the mince into the lettuce leaves as if they were bowls!

Serve them up all juicy and delicious! This is enough for 2 very greedy people for a main evening meal, or 4 not so greedy people as a lunch.

Honestly this is such a lovely combo, but if you need to make the mince go further (or don't like iceberg lettuce; fair enough it's gross 90% of the time!) then add the mince to noodles... rice noodles are better than egg noodles in this case.... and you'll have enough to feed 4 greedy people!

How to make a lush cake when you can't bake!

To my readers who are good cooks or excellent bakers, feel free to completely ignore this post, I'm not trying to teach my grandmother how to suck eggs; this is for the lazy and incompetent bakers like myself!

I'm starting my whole recipes posting with a mega cheat! This is for those of you who want to be able to make yummy cakes, but have no luck with baking (or no time for measurements).... just to clarify, I can bake if I put my mind to it, but I'm much more of a savoury cook, and (with the exception of banana bread) much of my cake making has been disappointing. Sometimes this is because I hate following scientific methods when it comes to cooking (I like to be much more slapdash!) and have messed up the measurements, but on occasion it's because I've followed a recipe to the letter and I don't like the end results (don't even ask about the chocolate mouse made with avocado!).  Frankly there is little in life that makes me sadder than preparing and cooking for hours and not liking what I've made! That is what happened when I made the Nigella Lawson chocolate Guinness cake. The cake itself was okay, but as it turns out, I don't really like frosting made with cream cheese unless it's on a vegetable cake (carrot / courgette / beetroot, that kind of thing), so I didn't really enjoy it!

I'm now going to admit something that may be shameful in the eyes of anyone who bakes.... I love betty crocker. Specifically I love her Devils Food cake mix and her chocolate fudge frosting, but also, for pure sugary filth, devils food cake with VANILLA frosting! It's baking for non-bakers, but the results are yummy and big and taste pretty much like chocolate fudge cakes you get in restaurants and from supermarkets, but considerably better than the frozen devils food cakes that taste like cocoa powder. I figured that I could adapt the mix to create my perfect chocolate cake!

It's so easy that it's truly shameful!

First up I put the oven on to pre-heat, then I grease my two 9 inch cake tins with sunflower or vegetable oil and put a bit of grease proof paper in each (I just tear off a little bit, I don't bother to fill the tin because these come out really easily!).

Put the cake mix into a big bowl. and get your whisk ready (electric whisk is best, but I normally use a hand whisk!)

Add the 3 eggs as instructed on the pack, along with  a big slosh of oil (I always add a bit more than the pack suggests, because I like the sponge to be extremely moist!) now I go off piste. I always add a pinch of salt because I think it balances out the sugaryness, but that's up to you of course!

For the Guinness version I add half a can of Guinness (which is around 220mls) instead of the water, and that is pretty much the ideal consistency! Half of the mix goes in each tin, into the oven, same shelf if you have room at about 180 (you'll know your oven better than me, just use the instructions on the packet!) and cook for 15 minutes. I always check the sponge at this point because I can't stand over cooked chocolate cake.... normally they take under 20 minutes and then the knife in the center of the cake comes out clean.

Leave the cakes to cool, make sure the icing is at room temperature and then SMOTHER the cakes in it! I always try to put 1/2 between the cakes then 1/2 to cover the top and sides. 

That's it, so easy it's laughable, but anyone who eats it (anyone with a sweet tooth anyway!) will think you're a genius!

This went down so well that I made another as soon as this first one was finished (I did have the other half of Guinness in the fridge to use up after all!), it's gooey joy! FYI, this is just as good (and easier to make) if you use a large, deep baking tray and put the whole mixture in at once. Icing on top and cut into squares like brownies... much less fiddly, tastes just as good!

A very English Thanksgiving

I'm not American. Neither is my other half. I have been fascinated by the whole Thanksgiving dinner for years though, and I love love love cooking so I decided to give it a go this year, purely to test my cooking skills. I have to admit that some of the 'sides' that go with the Turkey are just too sweet for my liking (sweet potato and marshmallows anybody?!) so I chose the most palatable combinations for me and set-to cooking a thanksgiving feast!

I made pumpkin pie! I added the marshmallows because my friend told me that when she made one it wasn't sweet enough for her liking, especially when so many other parts of the meal were so sweet!

I cooked my first ever turkey, and I am sorry for bad mouthing it for so long! I cook with minced turkey all the time, but we have never had a turkey at Christmas because we all agree that Chicken is much nicer.... I still think chicken is nicer, but after my (frozen £10 from lidl) turkey had had it's Nigella spiced brine bath, it really did taste fantastic. So much meat too, some is in the freezer, a ton is in our bellies and another ton is about to go in the pie I'm soon to make. Coca cola ham (just cause!) and I added Mac and cheese because I've got my recipe down to a fine art now, and it's so good reheated (and freezes well too!). I wanted to make a green bean casserole but sadly bought everything I needed to make it except for the actual green beans! Oh well, I just chucked the mushrooms into the stuffing (or dressing as some Americans call it!) which is like a meat-free bread-full stuffing made with pretty much whatever you fancy plus some stock. Good for vegetarians I think... it's like savoury bread and butter pudding! I even made giblet stock for the gravy, and then stock for the pie and to freeze from the turkey bones! Never bothered with stock before, it was fun!

I'm not sure if it is because this was my first time cooking a thanksgiving-type meal, or if it really is just like this, but it was so much more complicated than Christmas dinner. So many of the side dishes that are traditionally served are basically main meals in themselves, so each one takes forever to prepare, and I only did a tiny version! Plus as yummy as the turkey was, I sort of think that Chicken or duck doesn't need so much intervention to make it juicy and tasty, so I might just stick to that unless there are loads of people to feed. I'm doing Goose this year and don't plan to do anything more than rub some allspice butter on prior to roasting. I guess it seems easier to do British roast sides because so many of them can just be chucked in to cook with the meat?! Dunno, either way it was really fun to try this out! Belated happy thanksgiving to my American readers, I bet your meals were much more extensive than mine!

 Being highly intelligent creatures we decided to wait until I had put all the food on the table to take outfit pictures so I was a bit on the hot and flustered side!

Bolero - H&M via ebay (I'll show you this properly one day, especially the back which is glorious!)

Dress - Crazy clearance

Leggings & Christmas socks (totally go with the outfit don't you think?!) - Primark