Bean balls and spagetti in chilli tomato sauce

<-What you need

1. Chop an onion and three gloves of garlic, and gently fry

2. When fried, remove half and put in a blender, leave the remaining half in the pan

3. Add to the pan chilli powder, tinned tomatoes, tomato puree, a stock cube and a little water, and simmer

4. Add to the blender parsely, kidney beans, cumin, corriander, salt and pepper. Blend, and then add 50g of oats

5. Mix together and roll into balls (see second picture)

6. Fry the balls untill browned all over, and then tip over the tomato sauce, and let it simmer (third picture)

     7. Serve over spagetti! 

Since this recipe didn't photograph well I've kept the pictures small... but it was delicious all the same!  

Vanilla Extract - REALLY easy, saves a fortune!

I saw other people doing this and I couldn't resist, it sounded too good to be true! A bottle of cheap vodka, a pack of vanilla beans, and a 3month wait... and I could have a massive bottles worth of vanilla extract at a fraction of the super-market cost?

So I bought a £6ish bottle of vodka (1/2 a litre), £5 worth of vanilla beans (and I only used a third) and I put the beans in the vodka and waited... and here it is! It tastes delicious and rich, and at about £7.50 for 500ml of vanilla extract vs £5.51 for 118ml of the extract I used to buy... I think I've saved about £16? 

The right hand bottle is finished product, and the left hand one I topped up. By pouring out 80% and topping up the remaining 20% you can use the same beans for, according to some websites, up to a year. I topped it up with gin, as it was all I had, so who knows how it will taste in the end but hopefully the vanilla will overpower it anyway.

You can also use bourbon, or any other spirit, I believe. I want to try brandy.... yum!

Kung Pao Broccoli, Cashews and Noodles

I've got a sort of before and after going on here (the red pot is sugar)! I based this meal on this recipe from the BBC, but I left out the tofu due to my tofuphobic boyfriend, missed out the added greens because I was in a rush, added noodles because noodles are yummy (ready for wok ones, I used Sharwoods and I really like them - much nicer than dried noodles!). I also ran out of ginger, and cheated with chilli powder rather than crushed. Nonetheless, even all this recipe-butchery later, it was really tasty!

It was also  super quick (about 25mins start to finish), and only one pan, a knife and a bowl to mix the sauce for washing up... brilliant lazy day cookery!

Five miniute projects

Hello all, I am updating with some quick and easy five miniute projects and I promise I will update more often!

Striped Nails: You need: 2 colours of nail varnish, 1 of clear, and some sellotape cut as thin as you can manage!

 First paint them one colour, then let them dry and put on little lines of selotape over the nail (must be bone dry!) and paint over it with the second colour. Try to use as many strips as you can to get an even stripe-age. 

Peal off the tape when damp, let them dry, and paint a clear layer to make it last and look tidy! Voila!

This was my first go and unfortunatly my colour choices were both limited and dull... but with some bright colours it looks much funkier.

I use Barry M nail varnish http://www.barrym.com/nail-paints which are cheap, vegan and not tested on animals. They usually cover the nail in one paint, except for the light colours.

 Hair-band! Okay this is super simple. My hair is a bit fine for such things really, but I was bored!  There are lots of tutorials online, I picked a gathered one to stop me looking bald, but the straight ones are even easier!