Saturday Sandwich 16: Baked Bean Toastie

This one seems like a winner. We love baked beans. Probably an unconventional choice for a hot day but nevermind. :D

Ingredients: baked beans, bread, grated cheese.

Heat up the beans and cook to them to your usual consistency preference. I like beans quite thick and stodgy.

Butter up some bread and put it in a frying pan butter side down. Load up the bread with beans.

Add in some grated cheese. We were a bit short on cheese after having a snack of pizza toast yesterday. :( Butter up two more slices of bread and press down onto the beans.

 Fry on both sides until as brown as you like. Cut in half and you've got yourself a toastie.

The book said a baked bean toastie was only second in hotness to the sun so be careful if you make one.

This sandwich was really disappointing. I love baked beans and toasties but together they just don't do it for me. It was a really bland taste for a toastie. Maybe it was our slight lack of cheese that was the problem. Either way, I won't be making one again! It boggles my mind really, baked beans ON toast is delicious and one of my favourite light meals. Introduce a second piece of toast on top and the magic is ruined O_o

Ratings: JD - 2/5 Emma - 1/5

SAT stress - a mild rant!

This week Erin has been doing her SATs (Statutory Assessment Tests). They have these tests in Year 6 to determine a child's level of education so they can place them in the right set when they move up to High School. It also shows local authorities how well the school is performing based on the children's scores.

Her primary school sent home the usual letter about the kids getting enough sleep and having a good breakfast etc etc so they can be in a peak test-performing state. So we made sure Erin got to bed at a reasonable time and got up early to make a big cooked nutritous breakfast each day to set her up for the SATs.

As the week progressed I saw friends on Facebook saying how stressed their kids were about the SATs and Erin would be saying she was worried about the tests because she hadn't done any revising.

SATs don't seem to be anything to get stressed over to us. They're not like GCSEs where you have to reach a certain level to be recognised as proficient in a subject. You can't FAIL these tests. It's just an indication of how much you know.

We've explained to Erin how really SATs should be more stressful for her school/ teachers as they're the ones being tested on their ability to teach these subjects. She should try her best to do well to show what she knows but after that it's not worth worrying how she did or comparing herself to other students.

I don't know how much her school has been pushing her class to work towards SATs but I do know they've been working on practice papers for months now as well as after school sessions to work on certain subjects. I understand that the school wants to do well and wants the children to do well but it does induce a stressful feeling that I feel is a bit unnecessary.

Anyway whinge over! SATs are finished now and Erin seems to have got through them without too much stress. I feel annoyed about GCSEs as well, since Leigh is doing some of those this week, but that's for another post so you've got something to look forward to. ;)

Saturday Sandwich 15: Ice Cream Sandwich & Last Month

The Sandwich book were using has a section of sweet sandwiches (I'm not looking forward to the rose petal sandwich :() so this week we decided to try one of them. Unsurprisingly the kids were interested in trying the Saturday Sandwich this week (part timers!) so it was a family affair. Also, thanks to my wonderful husband I've got a new camera to take the pictures with. ^_^

Ingredients: cookies, ice cream

Sandwich some ice cream between two cookies. The book also says you can add any sauces or sprinkles you like. We used treacle since it's all we had in the cupboard. It's sometimes a bit bleak just before shopping day!

They were really good. I've never had ice cream between cookies before and it was a lot nicer than I expected. We chose soft chewy cookies which made them easy to eat. The ice cream started to get a bit sloppy after the first few sandwiches though and made a drippy mess (especially under Leigh's sandwich). It was a nice treat I can see us having again.

Ratings: JD - 3/5 Emma - 3/5 Leigh - 4/5 Erin - 4.5/5


Last month we tried to work on spending more one-on-one time with the kids. With us moving house it was difficult to keep it up all month due to packing and house-hunting. But towards the start of the month it was great. JD and I took turns setting a 'date' with each of the kids to do something fun. Leigh took advantage of this opportunity to get me to go clothes shopping with her in Harrogate (I'm not a fan of shopping). JD and Erin played video games and visited KFC. Me and Erin had a spa session and gave each other makeovers and pedicures. Also Leigh and I shared music by taking it in turns to choose music videos on Youtube to watch. JD and Leigh went for a walk

Finding time to spend individual time with each of the kids is tricky most of the time (sorry for the overuse of the word 'time' in this sentence). We spend a lot of time as a family but one-on-one time has to be scheduled to make it work. It's something I'd like us to carry on with though as the kids do each have different interests. Having all of our attention seems to be something they enjoy.

Saturday Sandwich 14: Rou Jia Mo

This is another one from the Street Eats section, this time a Chinese sandwich filled with spiced pork. Sounds great!

Ingredients: pork belly, ginger, spring onion, star anise, cassia bark, rice wine, soy sauce, sugar, green pepper, chilli oil and English muffins.

Put all the ingredients in the pan (except the muffins and green pepper). Simmer for 2 hours! Our new kitchen has an electric hob so it took us a while to figure out which number would produce a simmer. Electric isn't quite as responsive as gas. We got it though and it simmered  away smelling delicious.

 When the meat is ready toast the muffins. Pile the meat onto the muffins and add some thinly sliced green pepper.

These sandwiches were great. Toasted muffins are great on their own but filled with delicious aromatic pork they're even better. We simmered ours a bit too vigorously and didn't really have much of a sauce left but apart from that it was easy to make and well worth the effort of hovering about your kitchen checking on the simmering for an hour or two :D

JD enjoyed simmering the tree bark and now I feel like I'll have to keep an eye on him so he doesn't try put random tree bark in all our foods!

Ratings: JD - 3/5 Emma - 4/5

Saturday Sandwich 13: Muffaletta + We're moving!

I'd never heard of this one before but apparently it was invented by a grocer in the French Quarter who saw Sicilian workers buying the ingredients separately for their lunch then created this sandwich to make it easier for them to eat it all. Or to make lots of money from them, one of those! It's basically several different cheeses and meats layered in focaccia bread and topped with an olive salad.


Ingredients: black and green olives, capers, sun-dried tomatoes, red onion, anchovies, olive oil, salami,  mortadella, ham, swiss cheese, provolone and focaccia bread.

Chopping up the ingredients for the olive salad part was interesting. You chop up the olives, onion, capers, anchovies and sun-dried tomatoes to mix together. It felt like I was chopping up all the worst smelling, strong tasting foods I could find to make some kind of poison mixture for my worst enemy. Except the sun-dried tomatoes, they're manna from heaven!

Next you cut open the focaccia and remove some of the bread to make room for the grotesque amount of fillings you're going to put inside. Brush it with some olive oil. Layer the cheeses and meats alternately on the bread. We had to do a bit of substituting with the provolone and mortadella as we couldn't find them.

Spread the olive salad liberally on the top.

Slice in half so you can see the fancy layering effect and then serve. We also added a Lindt egg each, it is Easter after all :D

I didn't know what to expect from the flavour of this sandwich but the last thing I thought was that it'd be good. All the strong flavoured foods seem to be milder when mixed together. The olive salad was a nice texture to go with the smooth cheeses and meats. The most striking thing about this sandwich is how filling it is. The bread is really dense so combined with 6 layers of fillings and a layer of olive salad it's a meal in itself. We made two sandwiches each but only ate one. We still had room for the Lindt egg though!

Ratings: JD - 4/5 Emma - 3/5

WE'RE MOVING!

It's pretty exciting. Especially for the kids as they've never lived anywhere else but here. We've lived on this street since 1996!! We're moving next Saturday so there'll be no Saturday Sandwich next week. Things are going quite smoothly. We've packed up a lot of stuff which is great but now the kids occasionally want a thing we've already packed and the house is full of inconveniently placed boxes (sitting at my computer desk is almost like being in small box fort). The worst thing about moving is having to call round the gas, electric, water etc and tell them we're moving. Most places we've called take the opportunity to gratuitously sell us more of their services. The best thing about it is a feeling of leaving all the worries of this house behind. All the DIY jobs we didn't get done won't matter soon as they'll be someone else's problem.

Hopefully the move goes well, wish us luck :)

Saturday Sandwich 12: Yakisoba Pan

Apparently this is a Japanese equivilent of the kebab. It's eaten late at night on the way home and can be bought in many convenience stores or on street food stalls. Yakisoba means fried noodles in sauce and Pan means bread.

Ingredients: Bacon, hot dog buns, carrot, onion, green pepper, oil and yakisoba sauce (recipe below).

 Cut up the bacon into strips and fry in the oil. Cut up the vegetables and fry them in oil until soft.

 Cook the noodles and fry in oil for a few minutes. Add the vegetables and bacon. You can make yakisoba sauce by mixing oyster sauce, soy sauce, oil and sugar. Mix most of the sauce into the noodles and hold back a bit for drizzling on the finished sandwich. When the noodles are ready put a generous amount inside two hot dog buns.

These rolls were great. the sauce was really delicious and coated the noodles well. The soft bread rolls were perfect for the noodles and made it all easy to eat. JD said he was surprised how good the noodles were on a sandwich because it's an unusual sandwich filling. We were both a bit displeased we hadn't bought huge bread rolls but that was only because we wanted more once we'd finished. Which is always a sign of good food :D

Ratings: JD - 4/5 Emma - 4/5


My daughter Leigh will be walking the Nidderdale Walk 2014 next month for the Cavernoma Alliance UK charity. It's a charity she particularly wants to support because when she was 18 months old we found out she had a cavernoma and had to have brain surgery to have it removed. She's since had 2 more operations and we all feel very lucky that she's so unaffected by such intrusive surgery. I feel really proud that she wants to raise money to help the charity and we'll be doing the walk as a family to support her.

This is our donation page on Just Giving ---> https://www.justgiving.com/EmmaJDLeighErin and it'd be fantastic if anyone feels they want to help out with a donation.

Thanks,

Emma xx

Saturday (Late again, sorry!) Sandwich 11: Mexican Torta

Ooh this one looks like a good one! It might score reasonably high on the hassle scale but what are Sundays for if not making a slightly elaborate sandwich :D

Ingredients: Chorizo, tomatoes, red onion, lime, chilli flakes, coriander, avocado, ciabatta rolls and refried beans.

Chop up the tomatoes, red onion and coriander then add the chilli flakes and lime juice to make a spicy salsa. Leave it to mix together.

 Mash up an avocado and add salt and lime juice.

Fry the sliced chorizo until charred (it's burnt on purpose I'm not a maniac!)

 Slightly toast your ciabatta bread and then dip in the chorizo oil in the pan (aw yeah). Spread the avocado on the bottom half of the bread then add the chorizo slices.

 Top with salsa. Now spread refried beans on the top half of your bread and sandwich together.

 Admire the Mexican work of art you have created for a moment and then devour.

This sandwich was great in many ways. Firstly it's huge. It's a bulky sandwich that's really satisfying to hold. The textures are great too. The crusty bread is covered in smooth refried beans and smooth avocado plus has the chewy chorizo inside. Chorizo is sooo tasty, it's greasy and delicious but in this sandwich it overpowers the other flavours a bit. I would've enjoyed tasting the salsa more but it was difficult to. JD said it would be better with thinner slices of chorizo so we might try that sometime. He also pointed out how great the sandwich looks, the fillings are coloured quite brightly and it makes for an attractive sandwich :)

Ratings: JD - 4/5 Emma - 3/5

I think this has been the sandwich we've enjoyed most so far but our quest for the perfect sandwich is still ongoing!