Awesome Oatmeal Pancake Recipe

So.....I made oatmeal pancakes for the first time today (and I also tried them for the first time) and they tasted really, REALLY good! You see, ever since I was a kid, I have pretty much hated oatmeal and, well, I tried some oatmeal again a few days ago and I still hated it. Fortunately, I made a very, very little bowl of it so I didn't feel too bad about tossing it in the bin after having less than a teaspoon of it. So, yeah, I was slightly sceptical about trying oatmeal pancakes, but I still gave it a shot (using a little bowl to make the batter so I don't waste tonnes of food if I don't like it).
After making my batter, without following a recipe, I made one oatmeal pancake, tasted it, and then I like totally scoffed it down. Like I don't scoff anything down like that apart from fruits. And I scoffed it down using my fingers. And I don't scoff anything down using my fingers apart from ripe persimmons. So, yeah, it was that good.
Anyways, here's my recipe!

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Ingredients
8 tbsp Oatmeal (I used Simple.... Porridge Oatmeal (Not quite sure where it was bought))
1.5 tbsp Plain Flour
Milk
Hot water
Sugar
Salt
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Sunflower Oil

Preparation

• In a bowl, pour out your oatmeal then add about 4 tablespoons of almost-boiling water to it and mix it up thoroughly to soften the oatmeal (add a little more water if desired).
• Add the flour to the oatmeal in the bowl following by a splash of milk and combine the ingredients using a fork, adding more milk (and a pinch of oatmeal once or twice during the process (no hot water added to soften this addition)) and mixing till you have reached your desired consistency (which shouldn't be too light or as light as the mixture for regular pancakes).
• Add about a tablespoon of sugar to your mixture followed by 1/5 of a teaspoon of salt and 1/2 a teaspoon of extra virgin olive oil. Mix the ingredients in thoroughly.
• In a hot pan, pour in no more than a teaspoon of sunflower oil (I used less than this because my pan was already hot from making regular pancakes), move the pan around to spread out the oil and then pour in your desired amount of oatmeal (I don't really like my pancakes thick like most oatmeal pancakes are so, I don't add that much "batter" at a time to my pan) moving the pan around to get it to your desired shape.
• Within seconds, the side of the mixture touching the pan will be brown/golden and that means that it's time to flip the pancakes! Please use a spatula thingy (very kitchen-y, technical term, aye?) and don't try to flip these pancakes by just giving the pan a jolt or whatever and please be patient. The new side facing the pan will not get as brown before the pancakes are done.

Bon appétit!

(I hope this tastes as good as the pancakes I made because I pretty much eyeballed the ingredients when I made it and I'm hoping that the measurements I think my eyeballing was equivalent to are right)

College Pasta

I do not own this picture

So.... I know I haven't uploaded anything on here in a while. Anyways, what I'm about to post is a pasta recipe. I call it 'College Pasta' because I'm a college student, while school's in session, I live in school (it's hours away from home) and when I need to cook something quickly, I make pasta and it tastes good!
So, this is basically a quick and easy recipe. Here are the ingredients:


Ingredients

Organic Italian Spaghetti (or any pasta of your choice)
Water
Dolmio Tomato Sauce (Spicy)
Shallots
Spinach (optional)
Salt
Nigerian Pepper (courtesy of my mum ;))*
Olive Oil or Sunflower Oil

*Wanna get your hands on some Nigerian Pepper? You can find it in some Indian shacks or Indian Supermarkets in England


Method

• Put some pasta into a pot or pan
• Boil some water and pour it over the pasta, salt the water and turn the heat up to max. 
• While the pasta is cooking
• In a pan, heat up a few sprays of extra virgin olive oil or about a teaspoon-tablespoon of sunflower oil.
• One the oil is hot, stir in the shallots, salt them and let them cook till their colour starts to change.
• If you choose to cook with spinach, cut it irregularly, stir it into the onions and let it wilt a bit
• Stir in he tomato sauce and cook until it starts to reduce.
• Season with salt and African pepper and stir well.
• In small bits, add the pasta to the pan tossing or stirring after each portion added.
• Cook for about a minute seasoning a little more.
• Add about a tablespoon of the Dolmio tomato sauce, stir, turn off the heat
• Serve

Yum!! :)

The Real Orange Juice

I call this 'The Real Orange Juice' because it is some really ORANGE juice. It's super healthy (loads of health benefits) and also super yummy. Back in Somerset, I used to walk down to a little store that we called 'Mozzies' (not its real name, though) and I bought some orange and carrot juice there that I loved. Since I got back to Southampton, I have kind of craved this juice for a while so today, I decided to try making it. It was a messy job (the juicer needs a guard or something at the tap area), but this juice tastes really good!

So, here's my recipe:

Ingredients

6 carrots
2 oranges


Method

In a juicer, juice 6 relatively long carrots. When done, place a sieve over the container (I used a jug) you juiced the carrots into. Place the oranges on a hard flat surface (I used the kitchen counter) and press down on it with either your palm or the side of your hand and roll the orange on the surface till it feels soft all over. Then cut it in half and hand squeeze it into the container with the carrot juice making sure the orange juice goes through the sieve (to prevent seeds from getting into the drink).
Et voila! That's all!

Ensure you shake or stir the juice before drinking it each time as the carrot juice will separate over time.

I promise you, this juice tastes really good!

Let me know what you think if you try it. :)

An Amazing and Healthy Wrap

I made wraps yesterday for my cousins and I and they tasted WAY better than I expected so I decided to tell you guys about it and give you my recipe.

So, the wraps were healthy and I know people that that word (healthy) makes them cringe. Guess which word in this almost makes them stop breathing: it's vegetarian too.

I'm vegetarian so it is expected that when I cook, there's a 99% chance that I'm going to make something vegetarian and a 95% chance I'm going to make something vegan.

Okay! So here are the ingredients:

• Cut and frozen bell peppers (red, green, yellow and orange)
• Sunflower Oil
• Frozen plum tomatoes
• Frozen onions
• Eggs
• Salt
• Wraps (bought from ASDA)
• Peri-peri sauce

Here's how this delicious wrap was made (oh! and I made this for 5 people):

• I got out as much of the peppers, onions and tomatoes as I thought was needed and put the rest back in the freezer (you shouldn't let them defrost if you're not going to use them immediately)
• In a sauce pan, I heated up about a tablespoon of sunflower oil then tossed the onions in and sprinkled some salt on them. I let them cook for a while before adding the tomatoes and stirring.
• After about 2 minutes, I added the peppers, stirred it and left it to cook stirring occasionally.
• I broke 11 eggs and beat them till they were fluffy, added a pinch of salt and beat them again.
• In a large frying pan, I heated a little of sunflower oil then moved the pan around to make sure the oil got everywhere I thought the eggs would then I poured in the eggs.
• As the eggs were heating up and the sides starting to solidify, I used the frying spatula to move those solidifying parts to the middle for a while (the liquid part of the eggs will run to where the solidifying parts were over from).
• After doing that for a bit, I let the egg be and fry then I turned it over so the other side could fry. Once done, the eggs where cut up into much smaller bits and then put in a large bowl.
• Still stirring the contents of the sauce pan occasionally, I added a bit more of the sunflower oil (because the water content from the frozen veggies had reduced till it was practically all gone). 
• I stirred the contents up a bit more and let them cook then took the sauce pan off the heat once I thought the veggies were done.
• The wraps were heated in the grill part of an oven (they had been kept in the freezer to preserve them between when they were bought (in October) and now).
• Once the wraps were warm enough, they were placed on individual plate and one 1/3 of each wrap, the veggies where put in a vertical line then then the eggs put on on top of them. A few drops of peri-peri sauce was added then the wraps were rolled into a perfect cylinder with the veggies and eggs (with the peri-peri sauce on them, of course) in the middle of it. One end was folded up and that was it!

This wrap filled me up quickly (and 3 of the wraps filled up one of my cousins :) ). We all loved it and it was great that it was healthy.

Let me know if you try it out some time, okay?

Ciao,

~Sammy

Healthy Little Sauce

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Hello, everyone,

When it comes to sauces, I prefer to work with only natural resources. This means that I prefer not to cook with things with synthetic ingredients. Therefore, I avoid tomato purées (I know some are said to be fully natural, but I still avoid all of them).

I just had a late dinner and I made a little sauce with it. With this sauce, my aim was to preserve as much of the nutrients in the ingredients as possible and to keep the sauce simple. So, I didn't cook the sauce for a long time. I'll put my recipe below:

Ingredients

A quarter of a red bell pepper

A little bit (less than the pepper) of an onion

A little sprinkle of black pepper

4 fresh tarragon leaves (picked from my garden)

Preparation

Slice the red pepper into not-so-thin strips and chop the onions and the tarragon.

Heat a little oil in a pan turning off the heat when the oil's hot.

Pour the ingredients together into the pan and stir for approximately 8 seconds.

Take the ingredients out of the pan and onto the dish you plan on serving it in.

And.....that's all.

With this process, a smaller amount of the nutrients in the ingredients are destroyed due to the heat used in cooking.

I am done eating and I can tell you that that little sauce was good!

Here's another healthy sauce recipe:

Ingredients

Fresh vine tomatoes sliced into quarters or sixths depending on the size of the tomato

Half of a medium sized onion, chopped

A pinch of black pepper

Herbs of your choice in your desired quantity

A tiny bit of ginger (and garlic if desired)

Bell peppers of your choice

A bit of olive oil

Preparation

Toss all the ingredients in a bowl till they are well mixed.

Cover the bowl with cling film making just one hole in the middle.

Keep the bowl in a warm, dry place for about 2-4 hours.

And....that's it! 

The second recipe doesn't require any cooking so, I guess it's even healthier. Okay! I don't guess. I KNOW it's healthier.

Let me know if you try out these recipes and what you think about them.

Enjoy! :)

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