Grand Designs - From Barbie to Binthouse

Although we're both atheist, we enjoy the family aspect of this time of year and look forward to the Winter Solstice. We put up a small tree with some twinkly lights, we're collecting baubles over the years - little ornaments that mean a lot, and we eat an awful lot of food. (More on the food in the cooking blog soon ;) )

However, my husband and I don't like spending money on 'stuff'. We're a single income household who like to live as well as possible, so there generally isn't a lot spare or extra. Most of our xmas presents for others this year have been covered by making hampers of our home-made produce. Our children aren't that huge a fan of my chilli chutney yet though ;)

So this year, we've done the ubiquitous 3 for 2 from Boots using up points obtained from baby items over the last year, recycled some of Abigails toys from the last year for Toby, and scoured Ebay for something special for Abi.

This was the result of my bargain hunting.

Lovingly painted by it's previous owner in barbie pink emulsion.

It comes with lots of furniture and some dolls :)

.......

More to come

Salsa Recipe- Spicy and Not so Spicy :)

Salsa Recipe -

Makes 5 Litres - (I like to cook in bulk ;) )

6 large red onions roughly chopped

6 bell peppers - variable colours good, roughly chopped

A lot of tomatoes - I used about 1.5kg, ish - diced roughly.

5 peri peri chillies

A handful of coriander chopped roughly

A large splash of lime juice

Wine vinegar - I used a mixture to finish some bottles off, was probably about 100ml red, 150ml white.

Fry onion gently till soft in some olive oil, chuck in the peppers and give them a few mins, chuck in the tomatoes and cook down for 10 mins.

Add coriander, lime and vinegar. Give it a good stir, pop the lid on and leave for a while. Mine cooked down for about 4 hours. I think anything with tomatoes in, does well with an elongated cooking time to break the texture down a bit.

Take out about a third of the mixture and puree it using a blender or processer, mix most of it (keep a 100ml or so out) back in with the original mixture to thicken it all up.

At this point, I took a third out from the salsa to keep as non spicy stuff.

Top and tail the peri peris, and pop them in the 100ml of puree - whack them back in the processer or blender and reblend it.

Add this to the remaining salsa, stir well and tub up.

The spicy stuff will mature while it's stored as the peri peri's do their thing.

Any chillies should work just as well, next time I might pop some sliced jalapenos in as well.

Nom with tortillas, cheese and lots of sour cream