Cream Cheese Stuffed Chicken

Hey everyone, how you all doing?

Today’s recipe is one of my favourites to make, cream cheese stuffed chicken wrapped in prosciutto ham with mashed potatoes and some winter veg. The winter veg was a mix from Aldi, so we’re just going to ignore that for the meantime…plus, I burnt them so, yeaaah.

ignore the veggies…I forgot they were in the oven

ANYWAY!

 

What do we need?

4 chicken thighs

garlic and herb cream cheese

chilli cream cheese

4 slice prosciutto ham

POTAYTOHS! – I used charlotte potatoes, use your own favourite

3 spring onion (scallions to you crazy Americans)

small amount of frozen leek (already chopped)

What do we do?

First of all I halved the potatoes  and put them into a pot of water to boil with the small amount of leek and I also thinly chopped the spring onions and threw that in the pot as well.

I then put the oven on to preheat – 200 Celsius, while the oven was heating, I opened up the chicken thighs ( which were already deboned and skinned) and dropped a teaspoon (or 2) on to each thigh before closing them back up.

Each thigh was then wrapped in a slice of prosciutto to ensure the cheese would stay in the chicken pocket.

Pop that food in the oven! keep it in there for 35-40 mins.

Once the potatoes are softened you want to drain it and place it back into the pot. I poured a little garlic oil into the potato/leek/onion and also put a tablespoon of the garlic and herb cheese to the mix. (I didn’t have any butter or margarine) MASH THAT STUFF!

Once ready, dish it up, should serve 4 average people or 2 extremely hungry people 🙂

 

Ok, so that’s it. I hope you enjoyed today’s recipe and I am deffo going to try and update much more often than I have been as I’ve started thinking about going back to the WoW food options.

Healthier Eating: Week One

I started the “healthier eating” plan last Monday, an attempt to try and lose at least a stone in weight and feel a bit better about myself and maybe…just maybe…have the confidence to try and cosplay for the first time at EGX at the end of September. I have the costumes chosen, I just need to try to look good in them.

It started off pretty well, I actually managed to have a breakfast on at least 4 of the days…stocked up on a fair amount of salad items as well as some fruit. I love my bananas. They are the tastiest of fruit 🙂 But it all unravelled pretty rapid as well. The husband decided that he wanted chinese takeaway, so we got some, and I ordered noodles and salt chilli chicken strips. They were tasty, but by no means healthy…I stuck at it for the next few days and then yesterday, Saturday, I went to my sisters house.

The day started off so well too…breakfast was half pot of vanilla yogurt with pomegranate and blackcurrent muesli, very tasty and pre-portioned. We were originally supposed to be going out for lunch and I knew what I was going to order so that it would be healthy…but then that plan changed and we ended up having pasta salad and potato wedges at her house. We were supposed to go to Braehead shopping centre for a wander but it was too busy, so went to IKEA instead. After walking around the showroom, mum decided that she wanted a cup of tea…which then turned into everyone having a lunch, my sister and I went for the small meatball meal with peas, mash, gravy and lingonberry sauce…that sauce is the absolute best. We also shared a slice of swedish apple pie, which I ended up giving most to her and the kids as the cinnamon taste was too strong for my liking.

After we wandered around the bottom floor of aisles and I bought my two book shelves, the kids were then told that they could have an ice cream….so everyone ended up with one…

I eventually got home and my husband had made a pastabake for dinner, pasta, homemade sauce (that was a first) with chorizo and pepperoni through it topped with Gouda cheese. I helped myself to a small bowl and then started planning or at least tried to plan the next few days meals.

My mother had been doing or at least was trying to do the herbalife dietary thing, but it wasn’t working because in her words “he keeps feeding me” so I’ve acquired the mixes and things for doing it. I believe its essentially the same as the slim-fast diet, so I’m going to give it a try for the next few days, or at least until the powder runs out and see how that goes.

Today (Sunday) was my first day using the herbalife, I made up a shake with the strawberry flavouring to the dosage on the box and drank that as a breakfast/lunch as we were up quite late this morning thanks to me waiting for the husband to get home from work and not getting to sleep until after 2.30am.

I have to say, I was quite surprised at just how filling and tasty the mix was. I didn’t really feel too hungry until it was time to make dinner, which was about 7pm or after I completed Wolfenstein: New Order…man that final boss was an absolute…sorry, distracted.

We had stir fried sausages with red and yellow peppers and red onion and boiled rice, which I mixed in with the sausage, peppers and onions with some oyster sauce and soy sauce (all ingredients gluten free)….I did cheat a little bit here and for my drink, I had a glass of shandy. It’s not a drink that I have very often but I did enjoy it. The meal was delicious and mostly healthy.

For my “supper” I made up another of the mixes, this time going for the vanilla flavour, it was nice, but not as tasty as the strawberry. I also had a banana with this one.

Exercise wise, I’ve not really been more active yet. I did get the husband to come meet me from work on Friday night with the dogs so we walked with them, I suppose the walk around IKEA could kind of count and then of course there was more walking of the dogs.

I did buy a “running” app, but I’m not much of a runner so I’ll be using it while walking at a slightly brisk pace. This app is called “Zombie, Run!” Basically you’re part of a zombie outbreak in it and have to survive by collecting in-app items while running (or walking in my case). There have been some really great reviews of this so I’m hoping it helps me and it sound much more interesting than the usual just running while listening to music kind of thing.

So yeah, that’s my first week. Some ups, some downs….mostly downs, but we’ll see how the herbalife goes. If I feel it works for me then once it’s finished I’ll probably move back to the slimfast or other equivalent.

Will try to update this on a more daily basis rather than weekly…I’m pretty sure this has been a boring read for everyone. Sorry 🙂

SimplyCook.com: Pork Cassoulet

Well hello there!

Today I decided to make the pork cassoulet from the SimplyCook.com box. I was a little dubious of this recipe as the husband (being the fussy git that he is) doesn’t like the texture of beans. He also doesn’t like carrots or celery, so we left those out, but added extra chorizo to the recipe to try and give it the extra flavours.

I was supposed to be making a video for this series, as explained in my past videos about it, but I’m not a well lamb today, so you’ll just need to make do with me typing it instead.

things needed

Ok so we started off with the recipe mixes, 2 pork chops, 2 cooking chorizos, one red onion a tin of haricot beans and 200g of pasatta. From the mixes, we coated each chop in the chipotle rub on both sides and left aside.

I then diced the onion as finely as I could, sliced the sausages and put them into a frying pan with a little oil. to be honest the oil could have been left out as the sausages are quite oily when cooking. I also mixed in the garlic paste and let them all mix in for about 5 minutes. After that we added in the drained in of beans and pasatta as well as the chorizo paste from the mix and let it simmer for the next 10 minutes.

sausage and beans

While the bean mix was simmering, I put the pork shops into the griddle for four minutes on each side on a high heat. The recipe calls for the grill for this part, but I feel the griddle works just as well.

pork chops, yum yum

 

Once the chops are ready, dish the bean mix on to a bowl or plate and place the chop on top. Over all we were both really pleased with how the food came out. So far its 2 out of 3 for the simplycook boxes. unfortunately the risotto, while tasty, just didn’t seem to want to work properly for us.

I really enjoyed this pork cassoulet, it was tasty, little bit of spicy in it, but not enough to make me complain. Will definitely make this recipe again, maybe with a few more adjustments of my own.

Healthier Eating

A couple of days ago I made the terrible mistake of asking my friends on Facebook what everyone thought about herbalife, or even any juicing diet in general. I knew it was a mistake, I even said so in my status about it before everyone started responding, but nonetheless, everyone started giving their opinion on what I should be doing.

Some comments were all good and well meaning, but there were a couple that actually really irked me. They were trying to tell me how to lose weight by doing what they do, even though I know that even with the work outs they do, they still eat a hell of a lot of junk food.

Anyway, this is my new plan. As of Monday, 2nd June 2014, I am on a healthy eating plan given to me by an NHS dietician with the hope to lose 1-1.5 stone by September. Not only will I be following the guide she has given me, but I will also be attempting to be a bit more active as well. Making sure I’m actually walking to and from work regardless of weather, getting the dogs on more frequent walks….even if it means I need to walk them separately.

I will still be continuing with the Simply Cook series that I’m in the process of, as well as trying to make people more informed of gluten free foods and why my husband and I are avoiding them as much as humanly possible. He needs to as is Ceoliac. I just want to as it would be unfair for me to sit down with a diy pizza from asda while he has a pokey dry attempt at a pizza base.

I will try to keep the blog updated every couple of days with how the “diet” is going as I understand that a lot of people do keep blogs to help them stay motivated in their quest for healthy bodies.

 

So yeah, thats the plan. Lets see how well it pans out.

Malay Laksa

Moogles Munchies: Malay Laksa: http://youtu.be/AxF2N1TwxD4

I’ve been making the recipes found within the simplycook.com kits, today’s was Malay Laksa and it turned out absolutely gorgeous!

If you’d like to try a box for only £5, go to http://www.simplycook.com and make your selections, in the voucher code part enter FRIEND343.

Let me know what you think of the recipe, any changes you would make or what recipe kit you got to start you off 🙂

SimplyCook Unboxing

Hi guys, been a while! I’m sorry, life has been incredibly insane otherwise I would have posted before now.

I’ve been working on my youtube channel and over the course of the next few days I am planning on doing a “series” of videos with me cooking from the recipe cards that I received with my SimplyCook box.

If you are unsure what SimplyCook is, it’s a monthly subscription box where you get 4 recipe cards as well as recipe blends to make cooking the meals in the cards that bit quicker and easier. It comes in at £10 a month but if you want to try it out, you can get £5 off your first box by entering a special code.

That code is my gift to you today: FRIEND343

So here is the first video in the series to start us off. It is a brief unboxing and getting to see what is inside the box. Let me know which of the 4 recipes you’d like to see me make first.

 

Moogle out 🙂

Sweet Potato Crisps – the Unhealthy version!

Hey guys, apologies for the extreme lack of content, but today I made a quick instruction video on how to make sweet potato crisps, the unhealthy way. I’ll be posting more videos soon, so please…like rate and subscribe to my new channel.

Thanks!

Teriyaki Chicken Wings with Egg Fried Rice

Two days ago I decided that I needed to make teriyaki chicken as I hadn’t made it in ages and absolutely love it. Normally I would make it in the grill to make it even stickier and blacker, but as I was working , I decided to use the slow cooker, so had to change my method slightly.

Not that it made too much difference, it was still lovely, just a shame I forgot to take pictures of the process…I swear I will start taking more photo’s when cooking/baking so that I can show the full process.

but yeah, teriyaki chicken wings with egg fried rice – moogles way. 🙂

What do you need?

(serves 4 hungry people)

1 kilo of chicken wings (I was hungry)

2 tablespoons of soy sauce

2 tablespoons of fish sauce (or nam pla – its the same thing, but nam-pla sounds nicer)

2 tablespoons honey (runny honey is better, but I used set honey, just takes more stirring time)

2 tablespoons of lemon juice

1 cup of long grain rice – dried

2 bell peppers (any colour) – chopped

2 eggs – beaten and scrambled (explanation coming)

1 onion – chopped

What to do?

First of all, you want to mix the soy sauce, fish sauce, lemon juice and honey together in a large bowl and either transfer it to a ziplock bag, or keep it in the bowl. Then add in the chicken wings. I like to get my hands dirty at this point and mix the wings into the sauce mixture. If its in a zip lock bag, seal the bag and shake it about, you really want to make sure that each wing is coated with the sauce.

I then put the bowl into the fridge and left it to marinade over night. In the morning, about half an hour before leaving for work, I dropped the wings and sauce mix into the slow cooker and left it on low for the next 5 hours.

For the fried rice, you should follow the instructions on how to cook rice according to the packet, while the rice is boiling as normal, use this time to chop up the veg thats going into the rice. I also used this as a good time to make up the egg mixture for the fried rice.

The eggs simply get broken into a bowl, beaten together and then scrambled in a frying pan. I used a chopstick for this as it broke the eggs up really well, once the eggs are cooked/scrambled, place them into a clean bowl or cup and wait for the next step.

Once the chicken was cooked, I transferred it from the slow cooker into a dish to keep hot in the oven, it also takes this time to get it nice and black from the sauce, its not burnt, its the sauce doing its thing. Its very awesome thing.

The rice, once boiled, drained and rinsed was then put into a wok to start the frying process, I added the excess sauce mix from the bottom of the slow cooker to add to the flavour and gave it a good stir, the rice should go a lovely brown colour from the sauces. I then added the chopped veg and scrambled eggs and kept stirring to make sure everything cooked through and was piping hot.

Serve the chicken wings on a bed of egg fried rice and enjoy!

Don’t forget to take a photo of your results….I seriously regret not taking photo’s of mine…

Turkey Chinese Curry

Hello there! I didn’t forget about the blog, I’ve just been busy in a new job. It’s going great so far, a little overwhelming at times, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it.

Anyway, today’s recipe is a Chinese turkey curry. I made this as the fiancé is a huge fan of all food spicy and loves a good curry as often as he can get them. I don’t make enough for him. He absolutely loved it and ate everything on his plate and then went in for seconds.

Always a good sign. Onto the recipe!

What Do You Need?

One cup of long grain rice (dried)

1 bell pepper -chopped (any colour)

2 small onions – chopped

a small tin of garden peas (drained)

1 packet of curry powder (any brand)

300g turkey breast steaks – chopped.

What to do?

First of all, rinse that cup of rice out, being careful not to lose any down the sink. We dont want the rice to cause any blockages. While the rice is rinsing, stick a pot of water on to boil, once boiled, add the rice and stir it once before letting it boil and then reduce to a simmer.

While the rice is simmering, take the chopped turkey and brown it in another pan, or even in a wok. Wish I’d thought to use a wok, would’ve looked a bit better. Once the turkey is fully coloured, add in the peas, onion and pepper. Don’t drain the juices from the turkey out of the pan, it stops the veg and meat from sticking to the bottom of it.

While everything is simmering, make up the curry powder. I used about 4 tablespoons of the powder and mixed it with 400ml of boiling water to create the sauce. Best thing to do is to make it into a paste first with just a small amount of water and then add the rest in slowly while stirring continuously. Once ready, add it to the pan/wok.

Once the rice is ready, take it from the pot and drain it using a sieve or a colander. Then you’re going to want to get a full kettle of boiling water and pour it over the rice to get rid of all the starchy clumpiness. After that, give it another stir with a fork to make it fluffy.

Serve the curry on a plate or bowl on a bed of rice. Might want to serve some naan bread or prawn crackers with it, just to help get rid of some excess sauce.

 

Enjoy!

A taste of things to come

Sorry for the lack of posts over the last few days, life has got a little busy again but hopefully I’ll be able to update with some recipes I’ve tried out over the last few days including;

Turkey Curry
Chocolate popcorn
Chilli con carne
Cottage pie

And maybe, just maybe…I’ll throw in my lemon curd recipe, I’ve got the need to make it and lemon meringue pie soon so I may try and recreate it over the weekend.