A happy breakfast and lunch wrapped up

Every year, when it's the children's birthdays, we allow the birthday boy or girl to choose what they want for a special breakfast, especially now that the children are at school. We've had some interesting responses which have been quite sweet, like their usual stuff, but then we ask them to pick something special and it's normally something chocolatey or has some chocolate in it somewhere. Of course!

For Monkey's birthday this Friday, he has requested toast and chocolate spread. It made me smile because Warburtons had just sent me some products to try. Along with those, they also sent through details of a survey they commissioned that found that eating bakery products for breakfast made you happier than eating cereals (and even bacon butties). Top of the list for happiness was brioche, closely followed by white toast and crumpets, and in celebration of this, they sent us chocolate chip brioche to try. I'd normally insert a picture here but honestly, it didn't last long enough. Oops. 

Something else they sent was a pack of their Squareish Wraps so we could try out one of their recipes. These are thicker than normal wraps, so you can not only roll them, but also top them or fold them. Actually, I do have to say that I don't find them as good for rolling as usual wraps because of the thickness. Also, I like the way you fold in the edge to keep the filling in - you can't do that with these so the filling just falls out of the ends. 

We did however try them out as pizza bases and made two pizzas for lunch one day. With thanks to Warburton, here is the official recipe.

Chicken & peppers or Cheese, tomato and Rocket Pizza

Serves 2

Ingredients
· 2 Warburtons Square-ish Wraps
· Tomato puree
· Cooked torn chicken
· Char grilled Aubergines, Red and Yellow peppers
· Cherry Tomatoes
· Mozzarella Cheese
· Mixed Herbs
· Rocket Leaves

Method 

1. Spread a thin layer of tomato puree on both wraps.

2. Top one with chicken and vegetables and the other with cheese, tomato and herbs.

3. Cook in a hot oven (200C/400F/Gas 6)

4. Garnish with Rocket leaves.

Now, we took a few liberties with this. We had chicken and a jar of piquillo peppers, which I sliced, but not cherry tomatoes or mozzarella. The rest are not huge fans of rocket so I didn't buy any of that. Monkey helped me "cook" and we just put everything we had on both wraps. I grated cheddar instead of using mozzarella. Monkey enjoyed sprinkling on the cheese, although he did decide at one stage just to dump a load of cheese on the baking sheet "because it was funny". 

I thought that the pizza would come out too flimsy but although they did come thin, cooking made them firmer. I cooked them in the oven for about 15 minutes - I noticed the time is not mentioned in the recipe so I just made sure the cheese was melted. It was very tasty - and quite light for a lunch; a thick pizza would have been way too stodgy for lunchtime. I always want to sleep the afternoon if I have pizza for lunch but this was nice. I am not sure that I would have liked the pizza without cheese - it just doesn't seem right to me.

And there you have it - lunch all wrapped up. (Stop groaning at the back there).

(Warburton's sent me some bakery products to try. I have not received any further compensation. I have not been told what to write. I was sent some recipes to try and include but not obliged to include them on my blog.)

Car insurance - how I save money

This post is sponsored - please see below for more details

It’s the time of year for me that I have a very important job to do – compare car insurance. I’m on a budget, so every penny counts, more so than it ever has before. My renewal notice comes around now and even if it hasn’t changed much, the cost always goes up and never down, doesn’t it? I thought I’d share my tips for ensuring you get the best deal.

Photo credit - blary54

It is however worth doing a comparison, because you are pretty much guaranteed to save something. Insurance companies want to win your business, so the prices you’re offered as a new customer will be lower than a loyal one. Madness I know, but that’s how it seems to work.

When you are comparing, make sure you check that you will save by whichever method you prefer to pay. Paying in one lump sum is always cheaper but if you can’t do that, then be wary of the varying finance charges as you might not save paying by instalments. Also, be sure to declare EVERYTHING before getting those comparisons – every accident, any recent or pending convictions, everything about your car, how you intend to use your car. Don’t skimp on your cover in that respect, because you could have any claim refused for missing something out, and that’s a false economy.

Even if you’re not intending to change insurers, it’s worth comparing prices then ring up your current insurance company and telling them that you can get it cheaper elsewhere. They will often reduce the price on the spot if they think they are going to lose you. They are depending on your inertia, but a quick check and a brief phone call should help you save money.

My final tip would be to investigate if the insurers you find are on the usual cashback sites. If they are, check those deals out as they will further reduce the final cost of your insurance, although you may have to wait a while for the money to come through. It’s worth doing though, as it can bring down the cost of some policies with better cover levels and lower excesses.

One thing is for sure – do not just accept the price you’re first quoted on your renewal notice. Put a little effort in, and you will save yourself money. Go forth and compare! 

I was paid a fee to write a post and include a featured link. All words and opinions are my own and are from my own personal experience. 

Cake of the Week - a chocolatey Jaffa drizzle cake!

Randomly, I decided to bake at the weekend with Missy Woo and this cake jumped out at me from a booklet with this month's Good Food magazine as I had everything I needed to hand, and it celebrated two things she loves foodwise - chocolate and citrus. This is the little girl that will literally lick the cut edge of lemons and enjoy it.

The original recipe is for a loaf cake but I thought I would share my unique method of preparation with you. As I didn't have a large enough loaf tin (it specified a 1.2 litre loaf tin), I used a 7 or 8 inch round deep baking tin which really requires adjustments of cooking time, which I have given here. Also, I wasn't sure the cake would be orangey enough so I took inspiration from Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries, which has an orange drizzle loaf cake recipe using marmalade, so I bunged that in too.

Jaffa Drizzle Cake 

Ingredients
(Cuts into 10-12)

For the cake:
140g/5oz butter, softened
200g/7oz self-raising flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
200g/7oz caster sugar
3 large eggs
6 tbsp milk
75g any marmalade - shredless is best
1 large orange

For the syrup:
3 tbsp orange juice (from the orange)
50g/2oz caster sugar

To top the cake:
75g/3oz dark chocolate (the darker, the better - 70% cocoa solids is good)

This is how I actually did it.

1. Heat your oven to 180C/160C fan/Gas 4. Butter and line the base of either a 20cm/8" deep round tin or a 1.2l loaf tin with baking parchment.

2. Measure your butter, and place in microwave ready to soften.

3. Place all the cake ingredients into a mixing bowl and start to beat with hand whisk. Realise you haven't grated in the zest of the orange, so stop and finely grate the zest into the bowl.

4. Recommence beating with hand whisk for 3-5 mins and wonder why it's not gone light and fluffy as expected, but more like a cake batter. Realise baking powder has not been added, add that in and mix again.

5. Realise your cake mixture is not going to go light and fluffy. Shrug. Pour cake batter into tin and go to place cake in oven. Turn towards microwave and ..... OH MY GOD! The butter. It's STILL in the microwave. Turn microwave on to soften butter.

6. Wrestle cake bowl that children were about to start licking from small hands, pour cake batter into bowl. Quickly wash out tin, discarding cake parchment. Re-butter and re-line the base of the tin.

7. Add now softened butter. Mix again, and realise that butter was indeed the missing ingredient and the mixture finally becomes light and fluffy. Place in the tin, level the top.

8. Bake in the oven until risen and firm to the touch, should be about 50-55 mins if you use a round tin, 40-50 mins if you are using the loaf tin. In the last few mins of cooking, place the orange juice and sugar in a pan  over a gentle heat, and stir until all the sugar dissolved. Try to keep warm, but don't allow to bubble too much or the liquid will evaporate and dry too hard. (Ahem.)

9. Remove cake from the oven and spoon over the syrup. Leave to cool in the tin. Remove from the tin, using ingenuity and some force to ease the solidified syrup from the top of the cake. Leave to cool completely.

10. Break the chocolate into small pieces and either melt in a bowl over a pan of simmering water, ensuring the water does not touch the bowl or microwave in 30 second bursts and stirring vigorously between. Drizzle over the cake and leave to set.

Thankfully, this is a fairly forgiving cake. It's an all-in-one sponge, so all you do is place ingredients in the bowl and just mix them together. Missing the butter out initially didn't mean the final cake suffered - it was actually light and fluffy, even though it sank back quite some distance after removing from the oven, although the syrup might be the culprit there. It smells gorgeous, even cold. I wondered if you could add some cocoa powder to the sponge to make it fully chocolate and orange flavoured; that might be a step too far but it may be an experiment for another day.

Linking this up with Helen's Cake of the Week feature once again, just because I love her cakes!

Meal Planning Monday - the Monkey birthday edition

As the title suggests, it's Monkey's birthday this week. Friday to be precise, when he turns seven and obviously, this week's meal plan reflects the change to usual routine that this will provide. We're having a party at home, which I have not done in years for him and so, Saturday is a bit of a write off. He's asked to go out to Pizza Hut for tea on the Friday so we're going to be very pizza-ed out! That leaves us only 4 meals to plan this week as Thursday is always a riot of after-school activity so we just tend to have sandwiches for simplicity and speed.

Here, in meals, is our week. The recipes I'm using are from the latest edition of Good Food, which landed on my doorstep just as I was doing an online shop. None of the recipes are currently on their site, so I can't link to them but they will be there in a week or two.

Monday - Cod (well, white fish) with bacon, lettuce and peas
Tuesday - Smoky bean, bacon and eggy bread bake
Wednesday - Singapore noodles
Thursday - Sandwiches
Friday - Pizza Hut
Saturday - party so leaving free - probably leftover pizza but we'll see.
Sunday - Potato frittata with pesto and goats cheese

I also have some ideas in my locker for next week already, but you'll have to wait until next week for those. In the meantime, let me know what's on your menu and don't forget to check out Mrs M for MPM entries.

LifeCircle 2012 - Some time for me

Firstly, sincere apologies this is  so late. Yeah, I have a life! I was going to blog during Saturday but spent it doing other things and when I finally sat down, totally forgot I was supposed to be blogging. I remembered far too late to get something out on Saturday, so Sunday it will have to be. Oops.

The next task I'm setting is rather apt really. Because this is going to be a two week task - you won't need to link up this Thursday, nor will there be a new task next Saturday. This task will therefore have a linky open on Thursday 15th March. 


Why? Because it's Monkey's birthday next Friday and he has a party next Saturday. I am going to be busy with birthday and party preparations and I also need something else that is important in my life - time for me.

On my birthday meme - a challenge for all bloggers!

Yes, yes, my birthday was a while back but I've had this idea in my head for a while for a meme. It was something that we did for fun when I used to post on the Handbag forums, when Wikipedia was first becoming popular and vaguely useful.

I'm kind of reviving it for the blog but I'm going to try and be ambitious for this one. I'm going to set up a linky and attempt to get at least one post for all 366 days of the year. If you add your post to it, please try to mention the date of your birthday in the link title if you can. That way, I can check through the list quickly to check how we're doing. It won't matter if we get more than one post for the same date, the aim will be at least one post for each day on the calendar.

What you will have to do is answer questions about your birthday. If you don't know where to look, the best way is to go to Wikpedia, type in your birthday in the search box and it will tell you all you ever want to know (and more) about your special day. Obviously, you can take what is said with a pinch of salt but it's mostly correct. There is also a site called On This Day which you can use but it's not as user-friendly and the lists are not as extensive.

I'm always fascinated with people and things that happened on my birthday. I'm nosey enough to want to know about all your birthdays too, and what you find fascinating about your own birthday. I'm going to tag a few people at the end of this post but don't wait to be tagged if you want to join in - blog and link up, but I would be grateful if you could tag others for me so we can spread it around a bit.

Better get on with the questions then.

When is your birthday? 6th January

Pick three people who share your birthday and share what you know about them.
My three are:
- Kahil Gibran, whose book The Prophet is an absolute favourite of mine, and I've read quite a lot of his work. He even has the same initials as me before I was married. He died before my parents were born, let alone me, so I couldn't really tell you what he was like but I bet he was interesting.
- Nigella Lawson; can you see the similarity? Whaddya mean no?!
- Andy Carroll. Oh dear.

That would make for an interesting dinner party, wouldn't it?

When I was growing up, the only famous person it was ever mentioned shared my birthday with me was Sylvia Syms. Yeah, who? Now, there seems to be a sprinkling of ageing comedian/TV presenter (Angus Deayton, Rowan Atkinson), a dodgy but loveable national football manager (Terry Venables) and a saint (Joan of Arc, allegedly). All very interesting.

Is anyone listed as being born on the same day as you (ie the same year)? If so, what do you know about them?
Erm, well, Wikipedia lists three people - an American Muslim writer, a Cuban wrestler and a Danish political scientist. Again, an eclectic mix but I've never heard of any of them ever before. I know not a sausage. I could tell you from their Wikipedia entries but I suspect you'd drop off.

List three people who died on your birthday and tell us what you know about them. 
Looking down the list, a name leapt out at me - Theodore Roosevelt, the former US president, who died in 1919. And then, in 1993, both Dizzy Gillespie the jazz trumpeter, and Rudolf Nureyev, the ballet dancer, died on the same day. Which was a surprise to me - I remembered Nureyev dying of an AIDS related illness as it was the talk of the newspapers but I don't remember Dizzy Gillespie dying at the same time.

List three notable events that took place on your birthday.
At the top of the list, it mentions that King Harold (or Harold Godwinson) was crowned on 6 January 1066. Err, yes. That ended well and was a long reign. Not. Then, a little more recently in 1947, Pan-Am became the first airline to schedule a flight around the world - yes, around the whole world! Finally, 6 January 1994 will become forever notorious as the day when the American figure skater Nancy Kerrigan got clubbed on the knee by someone paid by her rival's husband. Do you remember that? I certainly do!

Tell us about a holiday that falls on your birthday.
Well, my birthday is Epiphany and is a public holiday in many parts of the world (I live in the wrong country - I could guaranteee my birthday off every year if I moved abroad!) but it's also Pathet Lao Day in Laos and Armed Forces Day in Iraq. Also, I didn't know that it also marks the start of Carnival period which ends on Shrove Tuesday. Why did no-one tell me that another party season starts in January? We're mostly partied out once New Year has been and gone but Carnival appears to be a tradition that has passed this country by. But it would be a great excuse to start yet another party!

Finally, please tag some people who will hate you some lovely people to carry on this meme, then link back to this post so they can find the badge and link up their post once published.


I am tagging:

Ruth at Geekmummy
Nickie at Typecast
Fay at Glass Half Full
Heidi at Him, Me & Three
Angela at This is Life
Claire at CJ's Palace

Badge code is here:

  
<a href="http://thefivefsblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/on-my-birthday-meme-challenge-for-all.html" target="_blank"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjyxhv5_GZx0xYaehuzzmOFCOrmVrFNEQS5lzsKt-yqDwCMV4Cpixo-5YmVtW_3ZpU6sPfngsyZNRb5vIIbMGi4wgKTqA7FlN_ZrVFy2sIIyxPNZ_j3NKM9aXf7SbVysJHBma9ONNAFHHw/s1600/birthdaybadge.jpg" border="0" alt="On my birthday" /></a>

And linky is here. I will leave it open for over a year, but I should be able to reopen it if necessary. Get entering, people! I'm counting on you.

LifeCircle 2012 - that's a negatory right there

Well, I was going to write a post about how it's worked for me but I have come across a bit of a hitch - no-one has asked me to do anything I didn't want to do this week! I could make up a story but you wouldn't believe it so I'll be honest with you. Obviously, that means I've been great at saying no in the past as no-one now dare ask me! I think, actually, that it has more to do with the fact that I work from home and don't come into contact with many people in the course of an average week.

So, it's over to you. What's happened to you with this task? How did it feel saying no, both before and after? Did you learn anything new about yourself this week? I'd love to know.