Recipe and review #4

Cod Rarebit

Recently we were lucky enough to win some fish from this great company Delish Fish. 

Not Much Left :(

 They sell locally caught sea fish from the port of Peterhead, Scotland. They prepare it, pack it and post it. The box we received was a mixture of Mackerel, Salmon, Hake, Cod and Scallops. All vacuumed packed and ready for freezing. Before writing this blog with Gerry's famous Cod Rarebit recipe. We have tried the Mackerel with Garlic and Mackerel with pepper, which Gerry just heated up in foil parcels. The wild Hake which was just simply pan fried. As we not a lover of Salmon, our daughter took some Salmon fillets to try. Just got to say on everything tried so far, the quality of the fish is un-surpassed. We say that with a bit of authority as we live in Great Yarmouth and have access to fresh fish here on a daily basis. Delish Fish products are superb in all areas of quality, taste and price. Well on to the recipe.....

Ingredients (The quantities here are for fish of about 100g in weight, if you want to make more just add more to each ingredient. Nothing needs to be exact. Just add to it looks right)

• Cod or any white fish in fillets or steaks.Smoked or un-smoked. Skin on or off.
• Red Onion - thinly sliced.
• Tomato - thinly sliced.
• Big tablespoon of Crème Fresh.
• English mustard (Colman's is the best) 3rd teaspoon to start with.
• 20g grated cheese, again to start with.
• Teaspoon of Worcester sauce, again to start with.
• Few twists of black pepper.

All the bits you need.

• Pre-heat your oven at gas 7 or 220C
• If your fish has been defrosted, then dry with paper towels. Then place skin side down (if it has skin) in an oven proof dish. The sauce will run so make sure you got a sided dish.

The lovely fish from Delish Fish

•  Add the sliced onions

Onions added.

• Now add the sliced tomatoes. 

Tomatoes too.

• Now the sauce. Put all the ingredients in a bowl and mix together. That's the Crème Fresh, mustard, cheese, Worcester sauce, pepper.

Whoops forgot something.

That's it Worcester sauce. Now mix it all together.

• Once mixed have a taste, if too 'pale' then add some more mustard and or Worcester sauce. Or not cheesy enough then add more cheese. The taste totally up to you. If it looks like not enough to cover the fish than add more Crème Fresh and more of the other ingredients.
• Now spoon the mixture over the fish and spread out to cover.

All covered with sauce.

•  Now with all that done place in oven, how long it takes depends on thickness and amount of fish. The one in the picture took about 30 minutes in the middle of the oven. Give yours 15 minutes and check. If the fish flakes and looks cooked then it is. It is a matter of a quick taste before you commit to serve.
• At this point you can finish off by putting dish under the grill to crisp the top off. It is up to you. We did not bother this time.

All cooked.

• There it is ready for any 'sides' you want to have. We had boiled new potatoes and a simple salad with ours. A lovely fish supper. 

This dish was lovely and with the quality of the fish it made it so much better. Well hope you like and please do visit Delish Fish and give them a look. We guarantee you won't be disappointed with their products on offer.

 

We would love your feedback on this please.

By Phyllis and Gerry. Not a sponsored post.

Review #3

Maggi

Fresh Idea For..

Sizzling Steak

with Caramelised

Red Onion

 

First off, I am not a great fan of packet mixes, so do not buy them as a rule. But I do like the Maggi brand, mainly because of their, for want of a better description "Worcestershire Sauce". Which my mum and now I have been using for years as a flavouring etc, in much the same way as the Worcestershire Sauce. So we gave this packet a go, because it was on special offer buy one get one free.

So once you bought this packet you need the ingredients, which are in this case.

• 2tbsp oil
• 2 red onions sliced
• 1 bell pepper sliced
• 450g (1lb) beef frying steak, fat off, cut into strips
• Things to serve it with (potatoes or rice, vegetables etc, up to you really)
• 100ml water

 That is basically what it says on the back of the packet. 

So they say follow the instructions, and on this packet, it is precise and to the point. They do make a point of not rushing the onion bit, which as a amateur cook I can understand as you need to caramelise them. But that important information is put in the cooking tips part and not under step one where it should be.

Apart from that if you follow and do as said, the recipe seems to work. The problem I have with these and any packet mix of this sort, is you need to know basic cooking (not for beginners) and really all it is doing is adding the flavouring. Which if you had the time or more importantly the ingredients (I think that is why these sell) you could do it all from scratch. 

Well before a summery and judgment here are some pictures.

Step 1

Spend time to caramelise the onions

Peppers in

 Step 2

Beef and Maggi added

 No step 3 it was just adding water and cooking 'till 'done' 

Ready to eat

Well we had it with, well you can see....

Verdict.

All in all, if you got basic cooking skills, (how to slice onion, peel a pepper, shred and trim a piece of frying steak) then you can do this. Its good for people who don't cook on a regular bases, in other words don't have the ingredients to make up the flavours provided in the packet mix.

Be warned the 'sizzling' in the title means hot as in a quite hot 'chilli' hot. Well it did to me as I am not a fan of spicy food. I ate it, the instructions worked.

This packet will be bought again and put in the cupboard for 'emergency' use in the future.

I will, and have tried the other products in their range on the strength of this. 

So best suggestion to you all that have read this far is give them a go. Wait like us 'till they on special offer.

We bought this product so was not sponsored at all (well that is normal for us)

Written by Gerry Ellett

Review #2

Weetabix Golden Syrup

Around £2.49 for 24 Biscuits

This is an occasional blog post to hopefully give you readers,some ideas on great quality products.

We recently lucky enough to win a 24 biscuit box of the new Golden Syrup variety of Weetabix thanks to @weetabixcereals. So we decided we would tell you all what we thought of them. 


This is a new variant of the good old traditional Weetabix. This time with another old favourite Golden Syrup.

Well when we found out we won, we had a little discussion on how this product might taste. The thought that kept coming up was the words Golden Syrup. To us this brings back childhood memories of the big tin where we were allowed to lick the spoon. Although we have used Golden Syrup loads of times since those long lost childhood days. The image of the taste of this new product was, "Its going to be sweet, and a bit sickly". So we waited with great curiosity.

On receipt of the box, we gave the Weetabix a go, just with milk. Well the perception we had before could not be more further from the truth. It is not tinned Golden Syrup sweet or sickly. It took a little while for us to come to a description of the taste over the taste of the original Weetabix. 

Well the final answer we agreed on was a very slight, pleasant caramel type taste. So pleasant it was moorish. We were and are very impressed with the taste of this new product.

The thing that would have put us off buying this over the original Weetabix, is the sub title Golden Syrup. It does tend to make you think that it is, as we said before that is going to have a sweet sickly taste. Oh how wrong were we. It is now on our monthly shopping list.

So in conclusion, Weetabix Golden Syrup is a very good cereal, we highly recommend you try them.

For more information on Nutrition and Ingredients please visit

Weetabix Cereals

 This is not a sponsored post

Written by Phyllis. v1.0

Grandparents Must Buy #1

Review of Penwizard Personalised Book

We recently were lucky to win a personalised children's book for our Grandaughter Grace from Mummy Alarm and provided by Penwizard.

So with the win voucher code in hand we visited their website.

Our first impressions of their site is good, easy to navigate layout. So we went to choose the book for Grace. This was simple for us as it, in this case has to be Peppa Pig. Its good that they have known characters on their site. We chose our book (Peppa Pig Goes to your Child's Party). Clicked on Create and then were presented with the 'Changing Room' screens. This is where you can personalise your gift to suit the child with name, hair, skin, etc etc and including a personal message from the sender. This process was very easy to do. We double checked all details before continuing, as they say any mistakes at this point is your fault. Which is fair enough.

We then went through the ordering process, and although we did not have to pay, everything else was very simple. Pressed Order Confirm and that was it.

As soon as we confirmed we got an email saying order processing and also an expected dispatch date which was in 3 days after the order day. The next day we got an email telling us it was dispatched and guess what the next day the postman delivered it (1st class) in a sturdy cardboard envelope marked do not bend. 

The reason for the last paragraph is to say that after you paid your money, the electronic contact with a company and the promise of delivery that happens and ties up with the auto generated emails must happen. In this case it did.

Upon opening, first impressions of the book was of such high quality, although its a soft back the covers are glossy and thick. This size of the book is 28cm x 21cm, so not a small book. The inside pages are matt and of thick paper too. Same quality book as you would buy your grandchild in a bookshop with no worries.

The story is great, her name was printed on most pages. Our overall impression that if we were to spend the £17.49 for the book including postage and packing (UK), we would be very pleased at our purchase.

One thing that did come to mind is the book has the Ladybird symbol and trademark on it. We checked back on the website and from what we can see, this is not promoted. Well as Grandparents we grew up with Ladybird books and to us it is a very trusted brand. So if Penwizard is reading this, hopefully you might give the Ladybird logo a bit more prominence on your website.

At this time Grace has yet to see the book. We start our childcare again on Monday 16th. So we know her and she will love it, as with all children this age (3) they love to see their name in print.

Front Cover, with Grace's name and 3 we chose

Sample page, Grace's name is there on most pages.

Grace reading the book again!

In conclusion we would recommend you give this site a look, if you looking for a different present, that would give you Kudos in the Grandparents stakes. 

The quality of the product and the ease of use of the website makes it a highly recommended purchase.

For more information please visit.

Penwizard

This is not a sponsored post

Written by Phyllis and Gerry v1.0 (more photos and Grace's reaction soon)

It Works #1

Stuff That Works.

Tried and Tested.

Not Just Once, but Time and Time Again.

Apicare.

Rescue Me.

All Purpose Soothing Gel.

 This is an occasional blog post to hopefully give you readers a head up on things, as the title says it works and does what it says on the label. 

This product we won about a year back now. The main ingredient is Natural Manuka Honey, it said on the label. As the cynical people we are, we thought, how can a honey from New Zealand do everything it pretended to say? So it then went in the cupboard in the bathroom possible never to be used.

A couple of weeks later Gerry got a small burn on his hand while cooking, so I would thought I would try it. He rubbed a small blob of the cream on his hand and as it says on the label, it was soothing. The thing we did notice a after two or three repeat applications over the next day or so, it did seem to 'heal' or seal the burn quite quickly. Never at that point took much notice of it at that time.

Over the course of the next few months we had occasion to use it a few times. From small cuts, chapped lips and grazes etc on Grace. Every time its soothed straight away and on repeat application it did 'heal' area very quickly. So became for us the product to use in such cases.

To sum up.

This to us is a brilliant product, it works and when this tube is all used will buy it again over anything else that we have ever used before.We really recommend it. It at first seems quite expensive at £12-£14 for a130g tube. Although, the tube is still going and it is a year or so now, so on reflection it is very good value. 

Upon writing this post, I thought I would 'Google' about the product as not read any review etc before. I was not surprised that the reviews I read echo our experiences of the product too.

There is no score etc as this works 100%.

Your can read more about this amazing product and other products they do HERE. We only tried the one product we are talking about but assume the rest of the range is of the same quality.

This is NOT a sponsored post.

Written by Phyllis.

Review #1

Games and Stuff for the Little Ones.

Wooden Animal Dominoes.

Cost £1.99

This is an occasional blog post to hopefully give you readers,some ideas for value for money games and other things that our Grandaughter Grace loves. Hopefully your little ones might like them too.

This a great buy for the amount of play she has had out of it. We bought it not to play as dominoes to start of, just a nice little 'toy' with pictures on. She started off just using them as 'tiles' and lining them up, stacking them and matching the animals. 

Then we introduced our version of the game to her. It is in no way the proper adult rules. Just a simple stripped down version. There are 28 pieces and they are 'dealt' out to each player. Grace now does this, so she has learned to deal. Unlike adult dominoes the pictures are just placed face up, rather than up on edge. This is so it allows Grace to help me when its my turn, she always has suggestions. You then play as with normal until you run out or you can't go any more.

Its a great 'sharing' and talking game where you can chat to Grace about the play and she chats back with stuff. Great fun. 

Game in progress

This sort of value 'toy' is a great addition to the toy box. Hours of fun as we tend to have a couple of games then it is left for a while and then returned too. These dominoes were purchased from our local toy shop Kerrisons. They had two versions the farm animal plus a zoo animal set. 

 Written by Phyllis