If I had a pound for every time I had used the word ‘amazing’ today I would be a rich woman, especially by Ethiopian standards. I actually used it twice in a tweet earlier today, which isn’t very clever, but the people I have met today really are amazing, so I make no excuses for the word.*

Today we went to visit an amazing** food project that has been supported by World Vision. The project is made up of around half a dozen women, all of whom were facing significant challenges when they started the group four years ago, including living with HIV and struggling as single parents to provide for their children on their own. One thing they shared though was ambition – a determination to makes their lives better.

The group were supported by World Vision and by the Ethiopian government to set up a business making the Ethiopian staple, injera. They wanted to do something that would provide an income for their families for years to come, a sustainable business that they could then grow into something much bigger as in turn their confidence and experience grew. View Post

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Did you know that it’s Chinese New Year on Sunday? I didn’t until I googled it just now, but then I am a little lacking in culture sometimes. Never mind, I realised just in time to cook up something delicious! Any excuse for a prawn cracker.

Actually, prawn crackers hold a bit of a special place in my heart. When I was at secondary school, my best (and basically only) friend was Chinese, and her parents owned a takeaway. Quite often I’d go round there after school and help fill bags with prawn crackers. Their house, which joined on to the takeaway, was always full of wonderful cooking smells and boxes of onions in towers against the walls. View Post

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This is a guest post from Mari of Mari’s World fame as I have a small kitchen and a disinclination towards cooking.

It’s not very often you get invited to guest post on somebody’s blog and then get to call them a doughnut, right? But that is what I am about to do and I am so very pleased that Slummy single mummy missed the trick on this one as I am now the very proud and excited owner of a Morphy Richards soup maker.

I have been longing for one since the summer time, dreaming of me quickly whipping up homemade soups for my lunch and being very nutritious and frugal but prices range from around £40.00 to £140.00 so that stopped me.

THEN I met Slummy single mummy at an event, funnily enough it was a cooking event and she is very forward in saying cooking is not one of her passions and she’ll take the easy life every time. She said she’d been offered a soup maker by Morphy Richards and didn’t want it as she didn’t have space and didn’t know how to use a soup maker, and was anyone interested. My hand shot in the air faster than the blenders spinning blades, ‘Me, me, me, I’ll have it… please’

It was a match made in heaven, I got the soup mixer and Slummy single mummy gets a post all about it.

The Morphy Richards soup maker takes up the same amount of space as a kettle on the worktop, it’s made in stainless steel and has a removable lid which contains the blade and heating element. It is so easy to use any fool could work it out and my first trial was to make one of Morphy Richards’ own recipes that intrigued me for the speed to make it, the frozen peas element and of course the delicious ingredients used. I tried

Really quick and easy pea, ham and mint soup

Preparation time : 5 minutes
Cooking time: 21 minutes
Setting: smooth
Serves 4

Ingredients

450g frozen peas
20g fresh mint, leaves only (I didn’t have this)
200g ham – chopped/shredded
800ml hot stock from cube or vegetable
4 tsps olive oil
75ml creme fraiche (I didn’t have any so used Philadelphia instead)

Now get this…

  1. Place the peas, hot stock, mint and ham in the soup maker and select the smooth setting (this will last 21 minutes)
  2. Season with salt and pepper to taste, add the olive oil (I didn’t) and the creme fraiche and using the blend button blend the soup again for 20 seconds
  3. Serve with crusty bread or sliced bread like I did. ;)

How easy is that? Chuck it all in and press a button. That is the moment I fell in love with my soup maker.

I was careful not to immerse the bits in water but it washed up very easily and now sits waiting for today’s trial of French Style Pistou but you’ll have to nip over to Mari’s World to see the outcome of that one and this time I’ll be using the chunky setting…isn’t it exciting?

 

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Last night Belle and I watched Wife Swap USA.

Yes, I know it’s mostly staged and it’s all rubbish, but I don’t care. I love it. So there. I particularly love the last five minutes when they go back to their own families and, despite having spent the swap coming out with lines like “I’d rather be DEAD than spend another day with that DEVIL WOMAN!”, they take home lots of Valuable Lessons, and all become balanced, loving families, living happily ever after. And no, I don’t even love that part in an ironic way, I just like to think it’s true.

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