Landlocked Mermaid

A few posts ago, I detailed a few things I wanted to get done this year. One of which being, make that weird vegan cheese thing my mum makes . It's this delicious, spreadable cheese-like, urm, thing. I have no idea where she got this recipe from, I have only ever seen hand written versions but my god do I love it! Every party buffet, it is on the table and I swear I eat about three-quarters of it. It cannot be helped, it's just too tasty. Ever since I first tried it, I have been threatening to get the recipe and have a go at it myself. To the point where I did take the recipe a couple times, only for it to get lost in the void that is life. It may have taken years, but I have finally managed to take note of the recipe, buy the ingredients, and actually make it. I think I over cooked the first batch, which clearly means it was high time to make it again And share my mishaps here, too. It's been an age since we were last in the Mermaid Kitchen! Ingredients 75g cashews 4 tbs...

We all know I enjoy having a go in the kitchen. Especially with sweet dishes. However, for the last few months we have been really lazy with our cooking and eating habits. The slightest thing to come up and it's , "Oh let's just do lazy pasta," which is pasta, pesto, spinach, cheese, hot sauce, and Quorn mince. It is something I lived on when I was on my own in the flat. Quick, easy, very little sustenance so if you had more than a single portion it was ok. When I moved in with Human*, we did really well to not have that every night and for a while I was even meal planning. But with the move and the new job, it just became all too easy to be lazy. Plus, with how small our kitchen is now, the slightest bit of washing up on the side and there is just no room to cook. Honestly, my excuses go on for days and I seriously feel like a broken record. Don't have the spoons/time/energy/kitchen space...    However, and this is a sparkly "however", Carole recently s...

We all know that I love to have a go in the kitchen. I don't often shy away from baking projects (gelatine being the obvious moment where I do shy away!) So it surprises me that it has taken me this long to have a go at jam. Especially as the recipe is so simple. What do you need to make jam? Equal parts fruit and sugar. That's it. Well, a thermometre helps too. I recently treated myself to a ThermalPro thermometre as part of a "bulking up a necessary Amazon order to get free P&P" situation. My hope is that having a digital thermometre will revolutionise my hot sugar projects. Accurate readings must mean accurate sweets, right? Eeeeehhhhh. The honeycomb I made the other week did not mix properly and I will get onto what happened with the jam. Thankfully, these happenings seem to be down to human error rather than malfunctioning tools so there is at least that. I decided to make damson jam. Growing up we had a number of damson trees in the garden and one year we ha...

Question: How is it mid-June already?! Time really does fly when you're having fun and I have been having all the fun doing #30DaysWild. This is what I've been up to these last fifteen days. June 1st: Scatter Seeds Of course I coloured this in! As part of the goodie bag I received from Carole , I had some wild flower seeds to scatter. Obviously, they were going straight into the butterfly corridor! I look every morning to see if anything is sprouting up yet! Nothing so far, but the grass is full of seeds which looks awesome. June 2nd: Garden Sewing Session I think it's kraken . The sun was shining. I had a free day. I was feeling crafty and inspired. Hence, sewing in the garden. I made the cushion shared (link) on Friday last and another project which I cannot reveal yet. It is a seeeeeccrrreeettt. June 3rd: Drawing Something Wild All hail the Overlord of the Internet! From what I recall, the third is when everything suddenly got soggy which made my act of wildness a littl...

It was my partner's birthday last month, which is an excuse for cake if I ever did see one. However, as I mentioned in the cannelloni post, I have really been struggling to get flour in! I'm guessing it's a pretty wide spread thing, my news feeds are full of flourless recipes. A friend of mine recently shared a delicious looking cheesecake she had made and was kind enough to pass on the recipe. Here was my thinking: Birthday + cheesecake inspo - flour = Birthday cheesecakes! Birthday cheesecake While I am very grateful to my friend for sharing her recipe, I ended up not using it. It was from the Philedephia cook book and was verging on the more technical side of things for my liking. Namely, it used gelatine. For absolutely no reason at all, I am terrified to make a recipe which calls for gelatine. Not to be deterred, though, I took to the internet to search for a cheesecake recipe which used soft cheese but not gelatine. And the internet provided! I came across this recip...

It's been a while since we ventured into the kitchen. Naturally, I have been baking and making (anyone see the mammoth bake or green icing on my personal insta?). But they were all recipes I have thrown at you before. However, with this lockdown and all the panic buying, a few weeks ago I found that the only pasta Morrisons had was cannelloni. We needed something and have since been experimenting with tubular pasta. My first attempt, not pictured, was made with philly (ahem, saver's soft cheese) rather than ricotta because there was none in stock. It worked well enough but was definitely way too sweet. We made a couple more mistakes too; over reduced the tomato sauce, not enough tubes, and did not chop the spinach. That last one meant we got these massive long slugs of spinach followed by a mouthful of just philly. They did not mix well together. I didn't mind the mouthfuls of philly, the slugs were a little off putting, but my partner is not a big fan of soft ...