I have been a fan of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and River Cottage since I was at university. To avoid university work, I used to watch repeats of the very early series wishing that one day, that kind of life would be my own.  Now, as I have not won the lottery yet and it does not look like it is coming anytime soon, I have decided to set up a monthly blogging challenge that everyone can take part in and hopefully, bring us a little bit closer to living a lovely life in rural Dorset.

I have decided to call this challenge ‘River Cottage Rocks’. All you have to do is blog a River Cottage recipe on a chosen theme for that month, tweet your post if you are on Twitter using the hashtag #rivercottagerocks and send me a picture and a link to your post in an email. Its that simple! I am hoping to do prizes for the best recipe soon but have not got anything sorted for this month. The theme for this month is ‘everyday easy’ which is means you can cook any River Cottage recipe you like as long as it is simple, easy and suitable for midweek cooking. The closing date for this month’s challenge is Sunday 12th February. I will announce February’s theme before this one closes as I have put this post out a bit later than I intended.

I have included a few rules below to make sure it is fair for everyone.

1. You cook any recipe you like related to the theme from any River Cottage book, TV programme or from Hugh’s weekly column in the Guardian.
2. You must not copy the recipes word for word onto your blog posts. Quite a few of the recipes are already online so please link to them if they exist or put the book and the page number on your blog post so other people can find the recipe.
3. If you make a couple or more adaptations to the recipe then please put the new version of the recipe on your blog if you want to, but always link to the original recipe in the same way as described in 2.
4. You can submit the recipe to other blogging challenges as long as the other challenge allows it. 
5. Please link to the post announcing this month’s theme in your blog post or to the ‘River Cottage Rocks’ page on this blog if someone else is hosting the challenge.
6. If you are on Twitter, please tweet about your post using the hashtag #rivercottagerocks and include @Jos_Kitchen in the tweet. I will retweet any that I see.
7. Please email a picture and a link to your post to joskitchen@hotmail.co.uk by the closing date to have your post included in the monthly round up. 
8. Please add your posts to the River Cottage Rocks group on Facebook too and we can get a bit of community spirit going. 

Above all, I hope you all have fun with this challenge. I can’t wait to see what you create.

Happy Cooking!

Happy New Year everyone! Hope you had a great Christmas and New Year. We did. Now the festive season is over, its time to look at resolutions. Here is mine from last year and whether I achieved them or not.

1. Post on my blog at least once a week – managed most of the time except for when being pregnant/having a newborn baby prevented it.
2. Get fellow bloggers to get post on my blog and do some guest posts for people in return – did not really happen.
3. To create a regular series of events for the Midlands Food Bloggers (with help of fellow Midlands based bloggers) – managed one main event with a couple of smaller events. Plans for more in 2012.
4. To set up a blog for the Midlands Food Bloggers with a list of members, people/companies who support us and get people to regularly contribute - was set up in March 2011, looked after by myself and Louise of Comida Y Vida.
5. Make more use of the lots of cookbooks that I already own – did not really happen.
6. Expand my cooking repertoire – I now know how to make pasta so want to start making it regularly and cook more seafood dishes – have cooked a greater variety of dishes, not really seafood dishes though.
7. Get better at food photography – my Dad is making me a food stage with a white background so that I have something to put my dishes on to take a photo of them. Stuart and I have just purchased a second-hand Canon EOS 400D Digital SLR Camera, so with practice I am hoping that the images on the blog will improve. – I am hoping this has happened. I think the images have improved but do you, my readers agree?
8. Meet Sarah and her goats at Brockhall Farm - I met Sarah but not her goats at the Ludlow Food Festival in September.
9. Go to The Wild Garlic Restaurant in Dorset - I went there twice but have only blogged about it once.
10. Take part in more blogging challenges especially Fresh From The Oven and Forever Nigella – managed a few at the start of the year but did not really happen once I got pregnant. Hoping for better in 2012.

Therefore, my resolutions for 2012 are:

1. Clear the large backlog of posts I have including my day learning to make bread at Loaf, my visit to the BBC Good Food Show Winter 2011, my visit to M Kitchen and various review posts.
2. Keep making Midlands Food Bloggers bigger and better and host many more events in and around the Midlands.
3. Start up my own monthly blogging challenge (details to follow as soon as possible) and try and take part in as many others as possible.
4. Keep improving my food photography.
5. Go to Simpson’s Restaurant in Birmingham.
6. Go to BritMum’s Live and get sponsorship to attend.

That is it for my resolutions this year. Not as many as previous years but am hoping they are all achievable. I will be back as soon as possible with details of my new monthly blogging challenge.

Happy Cooking!

It is the season for excess especially in terms of eating lots of sweet things and this year for me as been no exception. I have made two Christmas Cakes. One for myself and my family and one for some friends. I made my first Christmas Cake last year but did not blog about it as I used Delia’s kit from Waitrose. This year I have made and decorated both cakes completely all by myself.  I used Delia’s recipe which is here and used the techniques I learnt at the cake course I went to at the start of the year to cover the cake. The decorations for both cakes and some of the icing/marzipan was kindly supplied by Dr Oetker.

This Christmas, I have also been busy making cupcakes. I made some vanilla and mince pie cupcakes for a family gathering we had this week. To make the mince pie cupcakes, I added some mincemeat and extra spices to the usual cupcake mix and added some brandy into the buttercream. The idea was inspired by my friend and Cupcake Queen of the Cotswold’s, Louise of Cirencester Cupcakes. My family loved them and I will be making them again soon.

That’s it for my Christmas baking. Please let me know in the comments what you have been making and add links if you have done a post about it. I am always looking to try something new for next Christmas.

I will be back soon with my New Year resolutions post, a cookbook review of the year and a new monthly blogging challenge for everyone. Hope you have a great party tonight, whatever you are doing.

Happy New Year!

Happy Christmas

From Jo, Stuart and Thomas x

We all know at least one person who has it all, everything they could ever want or need. They are a pain to buy for at the best of times, but even more so at Christmas when you have so many other people to buy for too. Its even worse when they are foodies. Seriously, what do you get them!

I think Ideas By Net may have come up with the perfect solution, Oil and Vinegar Fire Extinguishers. These may seem a bit of a gimmick, novelty item but they do actually really work. They provide just enough oil and vinegar to dress your salad. The spray they give does depend on what oil and vinegar you use. I achieved quite good results with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. I am quite looking forward to see my friends and family react to these at a party during the Christmas season.

Ideas By Net usually sell promotional items in large quantities for business needs but they are selling these at £19.99 plus p+p without personalisation for Christmas stocking fillers. The perfect last minute novelty gift for the foodie you have no idea what to buy for.

Many thanks to Carla for sending me these to review

English Mum is back with another Big Bakeoff and as it is Christmas and I have not taken part in one for ages, I could not give it a miss really, despite having a 7  week old in the house and the time constraints they provide.

This time, I have decided to make a Christmas tree giant cupcake. I love giant cupcakes as they are really easy to make and look really impressive. I made this one for my local National Childbirth Trust’s (NCT) Children’s Christmas party where Thomas got to see Santa for the first time (see below). I made it originally to be sold on the cake stall but it ended up as a raffle prize. I hope the lady who won it enjoyed eating it as much as I enjoyed making it.

I used Dr Oetker’s Cake Release Spray to ensure that I could get it out of the tin and I was really impressed, the cake came out very easily. The cake was a 6 egg Victoria sponge cake mix and the icing on top was simple buttercream.

You have until midnight tomorrow to enter the Big Christmas Bake Off, so won’t don’t you get your mixers out and have some fun. I did. I will be back with more Christmas baking soon

Many thanks to Yasir for the Dr Oetker products

115 people Linda McCartney Competition Entrants entered the competition which is amazing! Thank you everyone. I wish you all could win. Thank you as ever for your support. I will be back with another post soon

You can win:

• 2 x Vegetarian Roast
• 2 x Cranberry & Camembert Burgers
• 2 x Rosemary & Red Onion Sausages
• 2 x Mini Snack Vegetarian Sausages
• Selection of seasonal vegetables
• Bottle of sherry
• Something for the kids
• A carrot for Rudolph

To enter this competition, all you need to do is leave a comment on this blog post by 6pm on Tuesday 6th December. Its that simple!

This competition is now closed. Thank you to everyone who entered. The winner will be announced as soon as possible.

Good luck and happy cooking!

Terms and Conditions

1. Only 1 entry per person
2. The competition will close at 6pm on Tuesday 6th December GMT
   
3. The winner will be chosen by Random.org and will be contacted via email as soon as possible after the competition has closed.
4. The competition is open to UK residents only
5. The prize will be delivered by Linda McCartney Foods once the winner’s contact details are confirmed
   

For another two opportunities to win a vegetarian feast for Christmas, please visit Maison Cupcake and Fuss Free Living

This competition is being promoted on Loquax Competitions

Hello everyone. I am back. Did you miss me? I missed you all. Thomas is doing fantastically and I am loving motherhood. You can follow my progress as a new mum on my sister blog Jo’s Nursery. I have a backlog of posts to get through so I will do my best to post regularly from now on, however please bear with me if I do not. A 4 week old can be quite demanding!

Today I would like to tell you about an amazing new coffee I have discovered. It is called Kenco Millicano and is the best tasting instant coffee that I have ever found. The reason it is the best tasting instant coffee is because it contains 15% finely milled roast and ground coffee, making it taste like freshly brewed coffee. With a newborn in the house and a distinct lack of sleep happening, a good cup of coffee to get me going in a morning is a must. Since finding Kenco Millicano, I have not looked back and I highly recommend it.

Kenco Millicano have spoken to over a thousand women across the UK to find out what the hottest trends for 2011 were. One of the most interesting trends for foodies is the ‘retro recession’ with people trying to be more cost conscious and frugal with their food purchases.

The report features the biggest upcoming trends for food such as:

• Scandi-Style: There’s a new interest in the clean, fresh tastes of Nordic cuisine, with herring, lingonberry jam and Västerbottensost cheese enjoying a surge in popularity
• Olde worlde recipes will continue to inspire nostalgic cuisine. Heston Blumenthal’s new venture, Dinner, interprets dishes from as far back as the 14th century, likewise at Marcus Wareing’s Gilbert Scott the menu features old school offerings like Mrs Beeton’s snow eggs with Everton toffee. 17th century grog cocktail anyone?
• Inexpensive but tasty food: Jay Rayner’s latest discovery BBQ Shack smokes brisket and pork shoulder over hardwood pits for 18 hours, transforming the taste and texture. While stocks of salmon and cod dwindle, so too does our appetite for them, but coley and pouting will surge in popularity.

As part of the inexpensive but tasty food trend, Kenco sent me a frugal fruit cake recipe to try. I was really impressed with the recipe. It is delicious and you can hardly tell it is frugal at all. It smelled so delicious I would of eaten the cake mix uncooked if I had not of been pregnant when I made it.

Frugal Fruit Cake

Ingredients

•  150 ml (¼ pt water)
• 100 g (4 oz) sultanas
• 125 g (5 oz) caster sugar
• 113 g (¼ lb) butter
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 150 g (6 oz) plain flour
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp baking powder

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4
2. First grease and line a 1 lb loaf tin, then grease the paper.
3. Take a large, thick based saucepan and put in the water, sugar, sultanas, butter and bicarbonate of soda. Place pan on a medium heat, stir ingredients together and bring to the boil, then boil for 10 minutes exactly, but don’t go away – if the temperature isn’t controlled it may boil over.
4. When the 10 minutes is up remove pan from the heat and allow mixture to cool. Then add the beaten egg, and the flour and baking powder, sifted together. Mix well then place in prepared tin and bake on the middle shelf for approx 1½ hours.
5. This dark and sticky cake is a family favourite and gets even better if kept for a few days.

Many thanks to Joanna for sending me the coffee to review and the fruit cake recipe. It is much appreciated

Thomas James

Born Saturday 29th October
11.36pm
Weight 6 lb 11 1\2 ounces
We are both doing well

I will be taking a short break from blogging. See you in a llittle while