It's been very quiet on the blog front over here recently, and I've enjoyed a lovely extended break from it. Other things in my life have taken the place of blogging recently, with one of them being getting back into exercise. I used to love it when I was exercising regularly and it made me feel great, but for the past couple of years a frozen shoulder followed swiftly by an injury to my back meant that exercising was no longer fun. The shoulder is pretty much back to normal now, and the back is as good as it's going to get for a while, and whilst sitting down or standing still for extended periods gives me pain, running and cycling don't seem to have the same effect.
My running shoes have been dusted off, I've nicked my eldest's new bike, I've rejoined my bootcamp buddies, and I'm now on a mission to get fit and lose some excess beef before my holiday season starts in just a few short weeks!
The time has also come to ease myself back into blogging.
A couple of weeks ago I saw one or two recommendations for the new Jamie Oliver 5 Ingredients book, and as I was feeling a little uninspired in the kitchen department following Christmas I thought I would put some of my Christmas Amazon vouchers to good use and buy a copy.
My running shoes have been dusted off, I've nicked my eldest's new bike, I've rejoined my bootcamp buddies, and I'm now on a mission to get fit and lose some excess beef before my holiday season starts in just a few short weeks!
The time has also come to ease myself back into blogging.
A couple of weeks ago I saw one or two recommendations for the new Jamie Oliver 5 Ingredients book, and as I was feeling a little uninspired in the kitchen department following Christmas I thought I would put some of my Christmas Amazon vouchers to good use and buy a copy.
After a quick flick through the book I noted down a few recipes that I really wanted to try, and made a mental note of a few that I wouldn't; namely all of the fish and seafood dishes. What I really like about this book is that every recipe has a photograph of the finished dish. For me this is one of the most important parts of a cook book, because I like to actually see what the dish is going to look like rather than have to imagine it.
Another appeal of this book is that fact that each recipe only needs 5 ingredients (surprising, hey?), and takes under 30 minutes to make. You do need the odd store cupboard ingredient in addition to the 5 main ingredients, but many of us would have these in the cupboard already - Olive oil, red wine vinegar (I use white wine vinegar & you really could improvise with malt vinegar if you were desperate & had no alternative), salt & black pepper.
The first dish that I tried was Carrot & Grain Salad, and although I've not eaten pomegranate since I was a child (and never really liked it) I thought it would be nice to give it another chance to be in my life.
I couldn't get my hands on any colourful carrots, and instead used regular carrots, so my finished dish isn't quite as pretty as it could be. Someone on Twitter also pointed out that I hadn't washed or peeled my carrots (insert eye roll emoji!) so I would like to take this opportunity to say that the carrots were indeed washed, but not peeled, because, well...y'know..I'm lazy when it comes to peeling. I hate peeling. I will do anything to avoid peeling carrots or potatoes, and usually do.
I absolutely loved this salad, and will definitely be making it again, although I won't go to the extra effort of buying a pomegranate as, although Jamie & Nigella make bashing the seeds out of a pomegranate with a wooden spoon look easy, I somehow managed to make my kitchen look like a crime scene. I also can't get over that bitter taste when you crunch into the seeds. The sour flavour of pomegranate seeds are nice though, but I think it could be replicated with the juice of a freshly squeezed lemon.
I'll be sharing my results for some more of the recipes from the book over the next few weeks/months, but I won't be sharing the recipe. If you want to try them for yourself you can find the book on Amazon (affiliate link below). Some of the recipes are also available online.
For the record, I used Merchant Gourmet Glorious Grains in this dish, which I found in Asda.
