Life of a foodie

Hello!

Today I will be blogging about one of my favourite things, food! It has taken me a little while longer than planned to put this post up as I am still trying to find the balance of uni work, life, and finding the time to blog.

I am, by no means, a highly skilled chef but rather a on-a-budget student who likes to eat healthily (most of the time) and is also a very fussy eater! I’ve been trying to broaden my horizons a little bit and I’d love to hear suggestions from fellow bloggers of meal ideas to try.

I’m not a vegetarian, but I am not a big meat eater, only really eating chicken or turkey, no red meat and I eat a lot of Quorn/meat alternatives. If I have a bad day, my go to food will be mash potato with a side of Yorkshire puddings! Don’t ask, but it makes me feel better. I’m also really loving mange tout and all its green vegetable-y goodness at the moment.

Whilst perhaps not the healthiest of options, I have found my new best friend in the kitchen in the Schwartz packet mixes – their range is enormous and whilst you’re not making your meals from scratch entirely, it allows me to cook a little better quality meals and not spend a huge fortune at the supermarket. Check out their website which displays all their products as well as some yummy looking recipes for meal inspiration: http://www.schwartz.co.uk/

My favourites are:

This is an all time favourite meal at home which my mum always makes in a slow cooker so I tried to recreate it in my kitchen at uni. I use this mix with baked beans, chopped tomatoes, an onion, and Quorn sausages served with rice. It’s a perfect Sunday meal, which I’ve made numerous times for me and my flat mates.

This is a new dish I tried recently, following the instructions on the back of the packet and cheating a little. You can add bacon to this too, but I had it without. Leeks are one of my favourite flavours at the moment, and the lovely creamy sauce is perfect with mashed potato – my favourite!

I used this a little differently then perhaps how it was intended, but my taste buds were very satisfied with the result. I cut up chunks of butternut squash and sweet potato and brushed them in oil before rubbing this mix into them and roasting them in the oven for about 35 minutes. They made these healthier versions of wedges and were so yummy, and something I’ll definitely make again! My photo didn’t do them justice so I decided to not put it in; note to self-  I definitely need to work on photo taking skills for my blog!

I really like pizza but only once in a blue moon do I let myself buy one to have for dinner. So instead I decided to try making my own. I bought the base from Asda, which you just roll out and it already has greaseproof paper underneath which is so convenient and easy to clean up. I used a tomato base, with mozzarella and spinach as a topping.

Pre-cooking photo!

It was really good, and I could kind of trick myself into believing it was a guilt-free dinner. Next time I’m going to add red pepper and sweetcorn for more colour and flavours. As you can see, it is also huuuuge so lasted for lunch the next day too!

So, a bit of a random post today but this blog is pretty much anything and everything, including the boring stuff, which goes on in my life, and I’ve been an aspiring Nigella recently and wanted to share my foodie accomplishments. I’d love to hear from fellow bloggers who have any suggestions for meal I could try or who have written similar posts about the meals they make!

Definitely a more interesting blog coming up next; reminiscing on something very exciting I did this time last year which still has a very important place in my heart!

Jasmine x