Stepped Out and Survived

Well the weather outside is frightful, but my kitchen is so delightful, since I have nowhere to go, let us bake, lets us cook, let us steam!

So I managed to use the steamer I bought at IKEA to make steamed dumplings.

I have never made them before and definitely had a back up plan of fish and chips if they didn’t work out. 😂

I made two types of filling the first was aubergine and mushroom from a recipe from @berriesandlime and then a prawn one which I just made up by chopping cooked prawns into tiny pieces and mixing them with finely chopped spring onions and garlic, ginger puree and oyster sauce.

Well let’s just say they went down a storm and tasted amazing. I will definitely be trying variations on the fillings.

I made extra dough as was not sure I would have enough but hey presto the recipe allowed me to make enough for both fillings. Therefore I had to decide what to do with the other dough, I left it proving over night and then checked out Pinterest for ideas, if you don’t know me I LOVE Pinterest, it’s like having an encyclopedia of wonderful ideas at your fingertips 😂

I went with adding some melted butter and an egg yolk to make it more like brioche dough then created a plaited cinnamon loaf. It worked really well.

My downstairs cloakroom needs a little TLC but last year I spent a fortune on having all the other bathrooms done so it’s going to be a make over with minimal outlay. I have decided because it’s such a small area I’m going to see if I can lay vinyl tiles and if it all goes pear shaped I can then get someone in to do. If it goes right then I may look at doing the hallway! I have measured the area and have order, so hopefully will be able to do this next week.

The other thing I did to step out of my comfort zone this week was to drive in and around Exeter to pick up various things my daughter needed before she went back to Uni. General driving is ok but finding my way around a city that I don’t really know well definitely makes me a little nervous. What if I go down a one way street, the wrong way! Google maps is great but even then I can find myself taking a wrong turning. Obviously I am writing this blog so as you can tell I survived the trip, although I may have a few more grey hairs 😜

Now I did all of that stepping in the first part of the week. The rest of the week I have been holed up deep inside my comfort zone as have a horrid head cold which has left me with inflamed sinuses, so I am off to steam again and not the dumplings type of steaming!

Look forward to seeing you on the other side of this cold, with floor tiles and paint samples.

Chris x