Beach, Salad and Bread Pudding YAY!

I don't wish to gloat but it has been a glorious day here on the Costa Blanca - the whiff of Spring is most certainly in the air and I feel my nerves a-twitching to do some much needed Spring cleaning and airing out of nooks and crannies. But rather than do that, I went for a walk along the beach instead. HURRAH!

Sea and fresh air always gives me an appetite and I enjoyed a delicious dinner of Tuna Friendly Tuna, Baby Leaf Salad, Avocado and Cauliflower Salad. It was gorgeous and I could eat it all over again. Everything except the Chickpeas in the Tuna Friendly Tuna was raw too!

Yummah!

But onto the Bread Pudding recipe 'cos I know I promised you all and I've been keeping you waiting long enough. This is a childhood favourite of mine and the fact it uses up old Bread just appeals to my thrifty nature even more than the fact it's delicious - well maybe not more but it's pretty darn close! My mum always made Bread Pudding by using Tea and though I've not tried this recipe with Fruit or Herb Teas - I'm sure keen on doing some experimenting with them 'cos I reckon that would be a winner too. Bread Pudding makes 8 slices Ingredients 8 slices stale white Bread (crusts or a mix of half and half) 1 1/2 cups (300ml) of cold English Tea Handful crushed Almonds 12 Dried Prunes, roughly chopped 12 Dried Apricots, roughly chopped 80 grams/half a cup Sultanas 1/2 teaspoon Mixed Spice 1 Tablespoon Maple Syrup 60ml/1 third of a cup Soya Milk Method Tear the Bread up into chunks and place in a big bowl. Pour over the cold Tea and stir round. Leave for an hour stirring every so often to make sure all the Bread soaks up the Tea. Beat out any lumps. Add the Almonds and Fruit and give a good stir. Add the Mixed Spice, stir. Add the Maple Syrup and Milk and give everything a really good stir. Grease a 7 by 10 inch pan with Marg and spoon the mixture in, making sure to even it out with the back of the spoon. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 200 degrees for and hour and a half. Keep an eye on it and if the top goes really brown then cover with aluminium foil for the remaining baking time. Use a spatula to loosen the edges when it comes out of the oven but leave it to cool before removing from the pan. Sprinkle with white Sugar and cut into 8 equal slices.

Nom Nom Nom

Thrifty Living Soup and Bread Pudding

It's no secret that I am a complete Soup addict. I will gladly and happily eat Soup for breakfast, lunch and tea (and I often do). It has to be my most favourite food in the whole world and the fact that it is cheap, easy and healthy, not to mention extremely versatile, are all added bonuses.

I am always looking out for new Soup recipes to try and Felicity over at Thrifty Living totally tempted me with her Black Bean and Sweetcorn creation. The best bit about making this Soup (apart from eating it of course) was toasting and grinding the Cumin Seeds. The aroma that those bad boys gave off when being ground was just out of this world. I can see toasting and grinding Cumin Seeds is going to be a regular occurrence in the treehugger household. I pretty much stuck to the recipe as well except I didn't have Black Beans so I subbed them for half of Kidney Beans and half of Pinto. Also, I added extra Lentils and used the whole tin of Tomatoes because I'm planning on eating this Soup for the next two days so a HUGE pot of the stuff was in order. Because I used extra Lentils I also had to add more vegetable stock otherwise I would have had a more stew like consistency, which wouldn't have been a problem but by adding more stock I got more Soup!! Genius! And just to tempt you with a little teaser, here's some Bread Pudding I made but which you'll have to wait for the recipe for as it needs me to be a better recipe creator and actually write down exact measurements of things. And that's not just an excuse to make it again......or is it??!!

Go on, bite me!