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Tuesday 29 July 2014

Mushroom Puff Pasties

Hello! Following on from my 'How To: Origami Pig' post, this post is a 'How To' but a cooking one. My mum and I made these mushroom puff pasties and I just had to share the recipe with you! These are one of my absolute favourites and don't take that much effort to make. This recipe is taken from the cookbook The Ultimate Vegetarian Cookbook by Roz Denny.

Ingredients:
- 1 block of puff pastry (You can make your own, but making your own puff pastry is so tricky!)
- 1 egg beaten
- 1 chopped onion
- 1 grated carrot
- 1 grated medium potato
- 45ml/ 3tbsp sunflower oil
- 225g sliced mushrooms
- 30ml/ 2tbsp soy sauce
- 15ml/ 1tbsp tomato ketchup
- pinch of dried thyme
- salt and ground black pepper

The recipe says to roll out the pastry first, but I made the filling first as it needs to cool before it is put into the pastry.

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Saturday 26 July 2014

#52weeksofhappiness- Week 10

Hello! Have you all had a nice week? I have been very busy at work! Sunday saw even bigger thunderstorms than last Friday night, and again it was so loud. Although we live on a hill the road outside of our house was literally like a river! I felt bad for those who went to Latitude- they didn't have the best weather for it. For my #52weeksofhappiness, this week I was able to catch up with some of my friends for lunch and we had such beautiful weather! We went to a little cafe called Jesters in Bungay which do great paninis. I had a sweet chilli chicken one which came with a side of salad and salted crisps. If you are ever in Suffolk and near Bungay I would recommend going there! It was so nice to catch up with my friends who I don't see as often as I would like because we are all over the country at uni/work! 






















What made you happy this week?

Love Jess xxx
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Tuesday 22 July 2014

A Trip to Leicester

Hello! A couple of weeks ago I went to visit Reesha in her hometown of Leicester. It was so nice travelling there from Sheffield as it was a much shorter train journey than I was used to! I also realised that the trains to London have a lot nicer train carriages than I do when I travel home. I left a sunny Sheffield for a rainy Leicester and it was interesting to see the city that I could have gone to University in had I chosen to go there instead. I had such a lovely day despite the weather; one minute it was bright sunshine, the next minute it was chucking it down with rain! I met Reesha at the train station which was hard to navigate the way out of! Reesha then took me to her house and then she drove me into town. I definitely wouldn't have wanted to drive in the city- well done Reesha! We had a day filled with shopping and eating food, here are a few photos to share with you;





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Saturday 19 July 2014

#52weeksofhappiness- Week 9

Hello! I have had a lovely time at home this week visiting my grandparents, catching up with old friends and returning to the world of work for the summer. There has actually been sun which always makes me smile! However this morning at about 5am there was a terrific thunderstorm that took place right over our house. I have never heard such loud thunder and lightening! For my #52weeksofhappiness this week I have been able to appreciate the wonderful countryside around where I live which I used to take for granted. I know that in Sheffield it is not far out to the peaks, but it is not the same as being able to look out of your window onto flowing fields. It is so quiet and peaceful here and it is lovely being able to take out Tilly again. 

This was taken along the walk between Thomas' house and mine. 

I took this photo when I went to see The Taming of the Shrew at Bungay Castle- the sun was setting and it was just beautiful over the tops of the houses.




































What made you happy this week? 

Love Jess xxx
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Tuesday 15 July 2014

Origami Pig

Hello! Today's post is going to be something a bit different and be a creative one. I have recently got into making Origami after finding a book of instructions and paper that my Nanna used to have. I have had a go at a couple, and after a few attempts they actually resemble what they are supposed to! I have found that you need to have a bit of patience for it to go alright, but the end result is worth it. The book that I am using is The Great Origami Book by Zülal Aytüre-Scheele. It is a really good book for beginners as it takes you through the basic forms step by step, which can then be applied to actual designs. 

For the Pig:

-You will need to start off with a square piece of paper.

-Fold the sides into the middle and place it so the flappy part is at the bottom.


-Fold the top corners over to meet the bottom and repeat for both sides.


-Open up the fold that you just made and flatten it down so it looks like this.

-Repeat on all other folds made. 

-On the left hand side triangle fold inner corner down to meet vertical crease line.

-Flip this over and do it on the right hand side so that you have the two front legs.

-Flip this back over and crease the bottom right corner up to top edge. 

-(This is where it gets a bit tricky) Open up this crease and fold the point in- I found that this was helped if you folded the back legs in rather than leaving them on the outside. Fold in the two parts of the top right hand corner and you will then have something that looks like this.




-Open form slightly and crease and fold the large piece that you folded in previously and pull out a little to resemble the tail.

-Press form together. Crease a little part of the front on both sides.

-Open this slightly and crease part of the way down so that a nose is created.
-Open form slightly to stand it up.

The first time I made this I found it a bit tricky once you had to start creasing and pulling things out, but after the 3rd attempt it worked really well. If you attempt to make this please tweet me a picture or email one to me as I would love to see them!

Have you attempted anything new recently? 

Love Jess xx


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Saturday 12 July 2014

#52weeksofhappiness -Week 8

Hello there! I have to apologise for not uploading a midweek post as usual, but I was really busy with packing all of my things up and moving them into my new house. In the end we had to make three trips from my flat to the house-who knew I had so much stuff?! For my #52weeksofhappiness, although I am sad to leave my flat, I am looking forward to the future and my second year at university. I am back home now for the summer and I look forward to being able to spend some time with my family. I am sure that it will be no time at all before September rolls around again, and I will be complaining about how much work I have to do! So for now, I am going to enjoy my free time!
Saying goodbye to Ranmoor. (Thank you to my dad for taking the photo)
















What made you happy this week?

Love Jess xxx
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Saturday 5 July 2014

#52weeksofhappiness- Week 7

Hello there! This week has gone by so quickly. I cannot believe it has been nearly 3 weeks since I went on holiday-where has the time gone? This week has been spent moving some of my belongings over to the new house (although I'm waiting to use my parent's car for the heavy stuff!). I've really enjoyed having a new space to decorate and it has been really interesting seeing other people's houses as they are all so different, compared to the standard room we all had in Halls. For my #52weeksofhappiness this week I've realised how lucky I am to of had such lovely flatmates. Moving in with people you've never met before can be a real hit and miss, yet I was really lucky. Although we are not living together next year, I'm looking forward to meeting up with them because we actually want to-not just because we live together. We all went out for a meal to Zizzi's on Thursday and then a few of us went for cocktails afterwards. I'm now slowly having to say goodbye to them all which is sad, but I know that I will see them all again in September!
The cocktails that I had- the red one was really nice but I had to give the other to Phoebe and Alice as I didn't like it!

What made you happy this week?

Love Jess xxx
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Tuesday 1 July 2014

Lanzarote

Hello there! Today's post is going to be dedicated to my trip away to Lanzarote. It was interesting travelling to a part of the world that I had never been to before, and it had such a different climate. Although hot, there was a breeze which made it nice to walk about in. Normally when I am abroad I am more of a beach kind of girl, but here the sand was scorching hot (I'm not even exaggerating- you couldn't stand still on it for long) and the sea was really cold as Lanzarote is in the Atlantic! The landscape was really sparse which I found strange as apart from the palm trees, everything was brown. I guess that is because of how hot it is! The east side of the island is where a majority of people live owing to the volcanoes being in the west. We took a half day trip up to the volcanoes which was really interesting to see as I had never experienced anything like that before! I had a lovely time away and it just went so quickly! However it was nice to come home to see some green again. Here are a few snaps of the trip...










I took this photo whilst walking along the seafront of Costa Teguise.



This is within the main city of Arrecife.

This devil is the symbol of the volcanoes. There is a myth that if a couple kisses in front of it they will stay together forever. Looks like Tom is stuck with me then!



As a part of the trip we were driven down to an area that is completely made out of hardened lava from the last volcanic eruption in the 18th century.




 I had to put this last picture in as I couldn't believe how much their flights were delayed by! They would have had to of been there from 06:45 in the morning too, and so were waiting 16 hours for their flight. I had to laugh when we were queuing to go through the boarding gate, as there was a man in front of us complaining about how we were 5 minutes late to go in and how this was 'typical'. I mean, there were people who had been waiting all day for their flight and he was annoyed about a few minutes! He has obviously never tried getting the Sheffield to Norwich train!

Have you been anywhere that's completely different to your surroundings at home?

Love Jess xxx


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