Apple Slice

ingredients

2 cups self raising flour
1 cup sugar
3 apples, peeled, cored and diced (1cm)
125g butter or margarine
1 egg

directions

Toss apples with self raising flour and sugar in a medium mixing bowl.

Melt butter in a small saucepan on the stovetop or in a small bowl in the microwave. Stir in egg.

Pour butter and egg into the apple mixture and mix until combined.

Spoon into a greased and lined slice tin.

Bake at 180 C for 35 to 40 minutes or until the top is golden brown and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Keeps for about 3 days.

Price comparison - strawberries

This is the first of a number of posts for a new project in which I'll compare prices between the supermarket and the high street greengrocer.

I have always assumed that the economies of scale would mean that supermarket prices would be the best.

On Tuesday I bought similar punnets of strawberries from the the local greengrocer and Ashby Co op.

At first glance, they appear to be similar punnets, the first at one pound, the second at two pounds, allegedly half price. Both were on special display near the front door.

I would love to hear from the Co operative exactly where and when these strawberries were on sale at four pounds per punnet.

price

The difference is even greater than it would appear. The supermarket ones weighed in at 419g, the greengrocer ones at 497g making the supermarket ones around two and a quarter times the price of the greengrocer ones.

taste

I have bought two punnets from each of the shops on different days. They do vary, some sharp and some very sweet, even within the same punnet, but it's impossible to say which generally taste best.

millionnaire shortbread

It's so good when your work turns out looking very much like the photo on the recipe. (The one above is mine, the recipe below is a slightly-adapted version of the one that appeared in a recent magazine)

Ingredients

For the base:

175g butter

60g caster sugar

225g flour

ginger to taste, chopped

For the caramel:

140g butter

1 tin condensed milk

4 tbsp golden syrup

20g sugar

For the top:

200g -ish bar of cocoa-rich chocolate

For the base, rub the ingredients together to resemble breadcrumbs as for pastry. Press the mixture into a square flat tin.

Bake at 150 C until lightly golden and leave to cool

For the caramel, melt all of the ingredients together in a pan and bring to a gentle boil while stirring. Continue to stir and simmer for 10-15 minutes. It should thicken and darken in colour. pour over the base and leave to cool. It'll take some time to set.

When it has, melt the chocolate in a bowl set in boiling water, and pour over the caramel.

When set, cut into squares. Enjoy.

Sore bridge of the nose

I've recently had a sore bridge of the nose as if I'd been hit there, along with a headache for the first couple of days.

Out of curiosity I tried Googling the symptoms and some things fascinated me.

1. there are an enormous number of Google hits for 'sore bridge of nose', most are medical forums

2. the vast majority of these are unanswered, other than from other forum users describing their own similar ailment

3. where a doctor does comment, the answer is accompanied by a disclaimer that he hasn't examined the patient and has little to go on

4. scarily, the few answers that there are look like unqualified guesses but are sometimes accompanied by suggestions of medication.

5. Almost all those laypeople who reply describing their own ailment mention a trip to the doctors, a failure to get a proper diagnosis, a prescription of antibiotics and clearing up after around 5 days

6. I haven't taken antibiotics or seen a doctor and I'm feeling much better after around 5 days.

How much added salt?!

I've been incredibly thirsty this evening. Thinking back I realised that I used a chicken stock cube in my dinner today for the first time in years. Mentioning no names but it has an X in the middle.

I heard a programme on the radio recently and believed that the cubes contained boiled-down animal left-overs plus some dry ingredients. I had a lot of confidence in the name.

I don't have to work it out from 'sodium' content and 'salt equivalent' (whatever that is) because the pack helpfully goes on to tell me that each cube contains 1.59g of salt. The picture above shows that amount.

Even if I added a little salt to my cooking I'd consider that amount ridiculous. Come on, cube people, your pack says "for flavoursome cooking". Let that come from the food itself, not from an unbelievable amount of flavour enhancer.

pancake mix? Really?

Which would you rather your pancakes were made of - egg, milk & flour or salt, dextrose, vegetabe fat and powdered ingredients (plus the carbon footprint of a plastic bottle thrown in)?
Is adding water to one of these and shaking it up really any easier than putting milk, flour and an egg into a container and mixing it with a fork?

To be fair, the small supermarket in the photo did have real lemons and eggs alongside, but I do object to this. It's not as green, I don't believe it's as healthy and there's no need.

Cherry Almond slices

Ingredients

Pastry:

• 8oz s/r flour
• 2oz lard
• 2oz margarine

Topping:

• 2oz margarine
• 2oz sugar
• 2oz ground almonds
• 1 egg
• 2oz flour
• glace cherries

Also:

• Raspberry Jam
• Chopped almonds

Method

• Make pastry in the usual way (rub fat into flour, add a little water and knead into a dough)
• Roll out and line a tray with it
• Spread thinly with jam
• cream together the margerine and sugar
• add the egg, ground almonds, flour, chopped up cherries and mix together
• Spread the mixture onto the pastry base
• Bake at moderate heat 190/375 for 20-25 mins