BAKING FOR THE BRAVE

Recipe: Banana Bites

Time Taken: Half an hour max

Ingredients: A banana, a big handful of fruit n nut & shitloads of oats

 

Hi readers,

If you’re reading this, that means you must have survived the first Monday of 2015. Did you realise? I literally salute you for your efforts! We’re all Trojans today! And we are survivors.

 

So, I’m Hayley and I survived the first Monday of the year. But parts of today I did not like! Today’s been a tough one! I’ve had a bad exam… I’ve been subject to extortion once more from Specsavers (the swindling bastards)… and I’ve not been feeling superb. And it’s been COLD.

 

However, my Monday hasn’t been the worst. I wasn’t the guy who tried to take a ladder up the escalator with him in Wilko and ripped a hole in the ceiling with it. I wasn’t the Chinese student who was hit by a car on Percy Street. I wasn’t the person who let rip reeeally loudly in pilates (just for the record!). And I bet your Monday hasn’t been the worst on Earth either. Truly, someone will have had a worse day than you. They will!

 

Try to be grateful for something good that came of your Monday. Like, for meeee… Well, firstly, I had pancakes for breakfast this morning and they tasted awesome. I reheated ones from the batch I made yesterday (see my last blog post!) and served em up with banana and honey. This was a TOP shout.

 

Secondly, I walked to uni and both a dog walker and a cyclist smiled at me on the way. I smiled back.

 

Thirdly, my Pilates instructor chatted to me today and said that she liked my leggings. I have been taking her classes at the gym for two years now, along with having been in several of her geography lectures (this woman is a living Wonderwoman), and never thought that she noticed me. I really look up to her. And today she chatted to me. I was dancing inside.

 

Fourthly, I came in this evening from my dreadful exam, to find that my Forever 21 order had arrived… AND EVERYTHING FIT. This never happens. New sales clothes for me!

 

And fifthly, finally, I baked some terrific Banana Bites last night that I munched on for lunch at the library. And they brought sunshine to my tum. One of my best friends (for the blog I’ll call her Floss as I feel this is her true name) gave me the recipe last night and when I got home I literally made some straight away. Saddo I am. And now you have to go bake some so that they can be one of the good things about your day tomorrow!

 

But, before that just have a think, what’s been good about your day today? Have a proper think and I hope you can come up with at least 5 things like I did, even though parts of today were horrendous for me. Always remember to be grateful for each day!

 

Soooo, without further ado, here’s how to bake Banana Bites in ten easy steps...

1. Heat your oven to 200˚C.

2. Use a fork to mash a banana in a bowl.

 

3. Add a big handful of raisins and peanuts.

 

4. Chuck in some oats.

 

5. Stir it up!

 

6. Keep adding oats and stirring until your mix has a consistency like porridge.

7. Grease a baking tray.

8. Spoon your mix onto the tray in 4 biscuit-sized rounds.

 

9. Safely transport your tray into the oven to bake for 20 minutes.

10. When your Banana Bites are golden brown lift em out of the oven and leave to cool on the tray.

ChefBeHere Top Tip: You might want to turn one of the Bites over to check it’s baked underneath and not gooey still. Otherwise, your Bites might go soggy. Not good.

And that’s it! Here’s my Banana Bites fresh out of the oven :)

 

Aren’t these incredible? There’s nothing bad in them! Aaaaaall the ingredients are healthy. So these are a totally guilt-free munch. But it feels like you’re having a massive treat! Banana Bites are chewy and they’re filling and they’re so moreish. And somehow they taste like childhood.

I can’t believe this recipe works. That it’s possible to make something healthy with so small and so healthy a bunch of ingredients. You barely use any dishes. You barely lift a finger, really. Gah. WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME ABOUT THESE BEFORE. Thank you endlessly Floss for letting me in on the secret.

Readers, go bake. And know that tomorrow will be a better day.

Munch safely,

Hayley

TONSIL-TAMING SOUPERSTAR

Recipe: Pumpkin Soup

Time Taken: 1 hour

Ingredients: Oil, 2 onions, 1 kilogram of pumpkin or squash, 700ml of vegetable stock, a 142ml pot of double cream, bread for serving.

Hello lovely readers,

Remember how I was really down and miserable yesterday? It turns out it was my tonsils that were the cause of it all! They’re really unwell – I have tonsillitis for the first time ever.

Tonsils are like these strange things at the back of your throat. Look, you can see Miley’s here…

So this morning was awful. My throat was epically sore. I couldn’t get through to the doctors for ages. Finally did and they had no appointments. Cried on the phone. Walked to the pharmacy but they just gave me painkillers and Tyrozets. My flatmate shone a torch in my mouth and my tonsils had white spots. Got the Metro to the hospital. Had to spell my surname (don’t ask) multiple times, which hurt my throat. Cried again. Saw a nurse who advised hot drinks and refused all pleas for antibiotics. Not when I’m “young and fit”. Back home.

And then I pulled my shit together! Literally, I’m not going behind on my work schedule for this. No way. So this afternoon’s been better. Constant hot drinks have done my throat some good. I’m still QUITE ILL and bloody contagious (fun), but powering on.

And managing to eat! I microwaved some Weetabix into pulp for breakfast and stirred in a killer amount of sugar. It hit lunchtime and I thought: I’m ill so… soup? And, you know what, I had homemade soup in the freezer. I’m not joking. Homemade soup.  A cure!

Basically, at Halloween I bought A LOT of pumpkin intending to try loads of pumpkin recipes out. But then I didn’t. And I had all this pumpkin and wanted something easy to use it up in just to get rid of it all without being wasteful. I made soup and it tasted MIGHTY.

Here’s how to whip up your own pumpkin soup in ten easy steps:

1. Cut your pumpkin in half. Hollow out all the seeds and goo from its centre. Throw that away. Cut the pumpkin’s flesh into chunks, slicing off the orange skin. Throw the skin away. Weight out 1kg of pumpkin cubes and keep these for soup-making. If you have extra, save them for another recipe??

2. Cut the tops off your two onions, peel away their skin and then finely chop them.

3. Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a big saucepan. Gently cook your onion for 5 minutes until it’s soft but not coloured.

ChefBeHere Top Tip: When choosing a pan, look at how much pumpkin you have. This all has to fit in the pan. You need a BIG PAN.

4. Add your pumpkin to the pan and carry on cooking for ten minutes, stirring/prodding/shaking up until your pumpkin starts to soften and turn golden.

5. Make up 700ml of vegetable stock. You might need multiple stock cubes or stock pots in order to make this much stock. The packet of whichever you have should advise you of how many cubes/pots you will need if you’re mixing them with 700ml of boiling water.

6. Pour your vegetable stock into the pan and season everything with salt and pepper. Bring the contents of the pan to the boil. Then simmer it for 10 minutes until your pumpkin is very soft.

7. Pour your pot of double cream into the pan and stir this into the soup mix.

8. Now, either use a hand blender to puree the soup, or (if you don’t have one of these like me) put your soup mix into a proper blender and whizz it up! It took me several runs to do this as the blender we have is quite small, so afterwards I collected it all back into one pan and stirred the soup together again over a low heat for a few minutes.

9. Divide your soup into three. I poured one portion into a warmed bowl for me to eat immediately, and then poured the other two portions into plastic tupperwares that I froze to eat another time. Leave these to cool for a little while before placing them in the freezer. Try to eat them within the next two months or they might not taste so good after that much time.

10. Serve your pumpkin soup with warm, crusty bread!

Like this…

What do you think to pumpkin soup? I think it’s really tasty! As a veggie, I used to like chicken soup and so I think because this is very creamy and savoury, and a similar colour to chicken soup, that it reminds me of that. But it tastes different!

I don’t really KNOW exactly what pumpkin tastes like. To be honest. But I like the taste of this soup. I do and it’s low-calorie and counts towards your 5-a-day and it’s a top warmer on a winter day. So I rate pumpkin soup! In my opinion, it’s worth a shot.

And the feeling of tucking into soup that YOU MADE YOURSELF is the bomb. You’re like, somebody, pat me on the back. Right now.

So, c’mon readers, soup it up! I challenge you. I know pumpkins are hard to find after Halloween, but you can use squash instead and they’re always around. Don’t like pumpkin or squash? Make any frigging soup you like, just give it a go. For me.

Soup safely my souperstars,

Hayley