cider Archives - Journeys Are My Diary

As I’m sure you know, Father’s Day is almost upon us and if you haven’t already bought a present for your dad, you may be scouring the internet to find something they’ll love. Qwerkity is a great place to look, offering a wide range of unusual gifts. To celebrate Father’s Day, Qwerkity have kindly gifted me an Apple Cider Home Brew Kit (available on their site) to giveaway to my lovely readers. Sadly it won’t be with you in time for Father’s Day, but once you’ve brewed it perhaps you can share a cider with your dad!

So easy to make!
Just add water and yeast
Ready in 10 days
Makes 10 pints of Apple Cider
For ages 18 years and over
Pale Ale Making Kit also available
As seen on Dragons’ Den

Make your own home brewed Apple Cider simply by adding water and yeast (provided). Just wait 10 days before savouring a pint of delicious golden liquid – brewed by yourself.

The attractively boxed home-brew cider-making kit produces 10 pints of non-carbonated 4.5 – 5% proof Cider. It is great fun, incredibly easy to make and cost effective.

For ages 18 years and over.

Ingredients: Sugar, Water, Apple Juice Concentrate, Malic Acid, Malt Extract, Natural Flavouring. Contains Cereals, Gluten, Added Flavour (Apple), Preservatives (Malic Acid)

If you would like to enter, please use the options below in the Rafflecopter. The winner will be contacted on 1st July, once the giveaway has ended. Please do not enter if you are under 18 as the company will not be able to send you the product. Any questions, please feel free to contact me!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

As I mentioned before, I’ve just started dieting again, using the Rosemary Conley diet books I had from a few years ago. I’m not following her low GI diet exactly, doing more of a calorie counting one, but I’m cooking fresh meals every night, using her recipes.

Boozy Beef with Mushrooms
Serves 4
Per Serving: 230 Calories, 7.1g Fat
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 50 minutes

In my opinion, these recipes only serve 4 if all of you are on a diet. However as I’m often cooking for my partner and/or friends, I feel like they provide 1 correct size portion and then 2 good potions, or 1 good portion and 2 correct size portion (especially given that the normal non diet people are usually guys). Also my logic is – they can always have extra food after, its more important that I just don’t eat more than the correct size portion.

Ingredients:
2 red onion, sliced
2 garlic cloves, crushed
450g lean braising steak, diced
1 beef stock cube, dissolved in 300ml (1/2 pint) boiling water
1 tbsp plain flour
225g mixed mushrooms, sliced
300ml (1/2 pint) beer or cider
2 tbsp chopped fresh mixed herbs
salt and freshly ground black pepper

To begin with you get a large, non-stick pan, add the red onions and dry-fry until brown. You then add the garlic and beef, continuing to cook and seal the beef, seasoning with salt and pepper. Add 2 tbsp of beef stock and sprinkle the flour over.

Mix well and “cook out” for 1 minute, before gradually stirring in the remaining stock. Stir in the sliced mushrooms and the herbs. I didn’t actually have fresh herbs in, or even mixed herbs for that matter, so I just added a tsp of every herb I had in the cupboard, from parsley to thyme, from rosemary to oregano.

Finally add the beer or cider, then stir. Reduce the heat to a gentle simmer and cook for 35-40 minutes, until the beer is tender. It looks a lot of liquid after you’ve added everything, but trust me it simmers down to nothing. In fact it can end up too thick so be sure to keep an eye on that, possibly add a little water.

I haven’t cooked any of the Rosemary Conley recipes in about 4 years and while I remember they are tasty, I had forgotten just how good they were. At the point of typing this up I have actually cooked three of her recipes, and so far this is my favourite. I shared it between 3 in this instance, but making sure my own portion was the smaller. Of course the other thing about Rosemary Conley’s recipes is that she just provides you with the main part of the meal, but not whatever you serve it with. I chose to serve this with basmati (microwave) rice. However I only had one plain and one egg fried version, so I ended up mixing them together before serving them up.

Anyway, it was delicious and both my partner and guest agreed! Its really easy to make, low calories and not really all that expensive (my cider was 99p and my beef was marked down as reduced).

Next time… Turkey and Bacon Hotpot

Giveaway – Apple Cider Home Brew Kit

Recipe – Boozy Beef with Mushrooms