Recipe: Endo-Friendly Moroccan Chicken & Lemon Cous-Cous

As some of you will know each week we make a meal plan so that we can keep our food costs down and also get everything in one shop rather than going to and fro all week for things we need.
Monday is meal plan & shopping day, so I usually spend the better part of the morning doing a quick inventory of the freezer and cupboards to see what we've got, then coming up with meals for the week. Mondays, Fridays and Saturdays tend to be my favourite days to cook something new as those are my days off and I can generally spend more time preparing an exciting meal.

Since starting the Endo Diet food has lost some of its appeal to us, which is a little depressing. As much as I enjoyed being inventive at first, trying to come up with exciting new ways to present what is essentially chicken or turkey and veg has become a bit of a chore. So yesterday I made an extra effort to come up with meals that sounded full of flavour and was really quite pleased with myself when I fell upon a recipe for Moroccan Chicken & Lemon Cous-Cous! Not only did it sound delicious, it was also an opportunity to attempt cooking with bone-in chicken thighs. For those who don't know me that well, I have never even eaten food with bones in before unless it was a surprise and in all occassions I stopped eating as soon as I found out. Something about it freaks me out. But in the name of money saving and on a quest for flavourful foods, I took a deep breath and jumped right in to this new experiment.

I had a little waver upon seeing them at the shop and another upon seeing the bones at first at home, but after seeing the price I pushed through. £4 got us 1.1kg of chicken thighs! To put that into context; the packets of 450g of chicken breast are also £4, so we got almost 3 times the meat for the same price. So on the back of last nights' success, I've been convinced to try AFC (Ami Fried Chicken!) using chicken wings or drumsticks in future. I'm a bone-in convert...for chicken at least!

And so on to the recipe...

Serves: 2-4

Ingredients:

4-8 Bone-in Chicken Thighs

2-4tsp Turmeric

1-2tbsp Garam Masala

Pinch of Salt

Sunflower Oil

1 Onion, finely sliced

1-2 Garlic Cloves, finely sliced

500ml Chicken Stock

Juice from 1 Lemon

125-250g Gluten Free Cous Cous

Parsley to garnish

Method:

1. Heat some oil in a large pan, coat the chicken thighs in half the spices and place skin-down in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn and cook for another 2 minutes before removing them from the pan.

2. Add the onion and garlic to the pan and fry until golden.

3. Add in the remaining spices and cook for another minute. (I forgot to do this bit and it still turned out yummy!)

4. Add the chicken stock and bring to the boil, before placing the chicken back in the pan skin side up.

5. Cover the pan with a lid and simmer for 35-40 minutes. (I didn't cover it and the stock concentrated down nicely, but I did have to add more water in later for the cous cous to cook.)

6. Remove the chicken and take the pan off the heat.

7. Stir in the lemon juice a cous-cous, topping up water if necessary, then leave to stand for 5 minutes/until the cous cous is cooked through.

8. Fluff through the cous cous and place the chicken back on top.

9. Garnish with parsley and serve!

I forgot to take a picture of our meal last night so this picture is taken from the recipe!

Post Twelve: How-To Make A Jar of Hearts

How To Make A Jar Of Hearts

If you've been following my blog for the last few days you'll know that I've been working on a secret project for Mother's Day. Since yesterday was the big day, I can now let you all know what the present was. :) I made the card myself and all the hearts in the jar (obviously I didn't make the jar!).

I should've got a smaller jar if I'm honest, as I wasn't able to make enough hearts to fill it in time. But now I have present ideas for the next few years - I plan to get some really nice fabrics and add to mum's collection each birthday, christmas and mother's day. Along with other presents of course!
To give you an idea of what the hearts look like here are a few of them:

So here's the how-to guide. There are a lot of pictures to give you a good idea of how to do each step, so don't be put off by the length of the post - it's actually very simple! Each heart takes about 30-45 minutes to make depending on how good you are with a needle and thread and how big each heart is. I'm sure the experts out there could do one in about 15-20 minutes even.

You Will Need:
Fabric - I used old clothes I didn't want anymore.
Rice (or some other form of filling - why not scraps from cutting out the hearts?)
Needle & Thread

Optional
A sewing machine (way easier than stitching by hand!)
A funnel (makes filling with rice easier)

Method:

1. Draw your design on the WRONG SIDE of the fabric, with a border around to allow for a seam.

2. Cut it out and draw around it on the RIGHT SIDE of the fabric (this is so your shapes match up - if your heart is identical both sides you can draw it on the wrong side).

3. Cut out the second heart and sew the two together RIGHT SIDES facing inwards, leaving about an inch gap along one side.

 



4. Turn it inside out so that the RIGHT SIDE is now on the outside.

5. Fill the heart with rice (or your other filling).

6. Finally, use invisible stitch to close the small gap you left. If you don't know invisible stitch, just use whatever stitch you know - remember it doesn't have to be perfect!

And that's it! Just repeat and make as many hearts as it takes to fill your jar. One thing you can do is add a few drops of essential oil into the rice on just ONE heart. The scent will be really strong so don't do it to all of them! I used lemon and it gave the jar a lovely smell when it was opened. :)

As for the card I made, I keep a lot of the nice birthday/christmas cards I get each year and I have some plain black card for making my own. I just chopped up old cards, ribbon and added glitter to make my own unique card. Plus some metallic gel pens for the writing. Simples!

Post Seven: Monday Blues

Good afternoon lovely readers!

I'm suffering a little case of the Monday Blues so I thought a little progress check might cheer me up! Starting with a look at my efforts this weekend.

My weekend was very chilled out - I started making some shorts as per my last post (although I forgot to take before pictures, oops!), did a lot of reading and made Chicken & Lemon soup which was yum! I also tried the Superscrimpers cleaning tricks I saw on the programme last week, which worked a treat.

Tom had made a start on cleaning the oven, but we didn't have any proper oven cleaner so it hadn't worked too well. I'd seen a simple method to clean the oven on Superscrimpers and decided to put it to the test. All you need is Bicarbonate Soda (88p in Asda) and a teeny bit of water - mix the two into a paste, rub it into the glass door of the oven and leave it to work its magic for at least 15 minutes. I left it for about an hour. Then you take your scourer and just scrub it all off. If you need a little help cutting through the grease you can make up a solution of white vinegar, water and lemon in a ration of 1:2:0.5 which should cost you less than £1! Remember the lemons are only for cleaning, so grab the cheapest ones you can lay your hands on. :) The oven door went from pretty gross to completely spotless in just over an hour - magic!

I've also started to notice the difference in my fuel consumption since emptying my car down to the bare essentials. On average I've been getting about 70 miles to 1/4 of a tank since using the driving tips I outlined in this post which has really helped cut back the petrol spend. My car wasn't really that cluttered, but I did manage to throw out some random bits & bobs, rubbish that had built up and take out some Aquarium Filters that Tom had forgotten to put in the garage. Since then I haven't had a huge increase in efficiency, but I'd guess I'm getting about 75 miles to 1/4 of a tank now which isn't bad going for just a little less weight. At an increase of 20 miles per tank, I'll be saving a 1/4 tank of petrol every 4 times I fill up - not bad. :)

To add to my driving efforts, I'm going to be planning my daily trips a lot better to cut down the number of times I have to drive in a day. For example today I need to pop to Asda for a few things on my way home from work, so I'm planning our meals for the next few days to get anything we need for them too. On average I can be in Asda between 2 and 4 times a week, so if I can cut it down a little that'd be great! I'm hoping to do just a weekend and mid-week shop.

What did you do with your weekend? Have you picked up any new tips that you'd like to share, or got some questions you'd like me to answer? I'd love your feedback. :)