One of my favourite inventions has to be the ring pull for cans. It appeared in the late 90s and the can opener is now practically redundant in my house. No more cut fingers or having to rush out to buy a new can opener when you can’t find your old one or it breaks. Sometimes the ring pulls are a bit tough to use but apart from that I think that they are great.

Last week I bought a new product that I first saw on the TV programme Dragons Den – one of my big favourites. The show where inventors and new business start ups are placed in front of a panel of 5 multi-millionaires. They ask for a specified amount of investment for a percentage of their company. After a grilling the contestants are either offered or not offered the investment that they want.

Anyway last year we saw a couple enter the Dragons Den asking for a £200,000 investment in their kitchenware range. One of their products was the Toastabag which they claimed you could use to make toasted sandwiches in your toaster. Multi millionaire James Cain was impressed enough to offer the £200,000 investment for 40% equity in the company.

I was a bit dubious about the Toastabag product, but when I saw them on offer in Poundstretcher at 99p each I decided to give them a tryout. On the way home I read the instructions and saw that they were meant to be used with variable width slot type toasters, or sandwiches would need to be flattened or squashed for normal slot sized toasters.

‘Darnit’ I thought ‘no toasted sandwiches for me’ I was quite disappointed because my oven grill stopped working shortly after the year long guarantee expired and I love cheese on toast.

I was wrong, when I got home I saw that my toaster slots were quite large so my toasted sandwiches were back on. I was a bit worried that the bags would melt with the concentrated heat of my toaster, but reckoned that they wouldn’t be on sale for that purpose if that could happen.

I placed my sliced cheese between 2 slices of bread and as an afterthought added a sliced tomato. Placed the sandwich in the Toastabag and popped it into my toaster. I had increased the toaster cooking time beforehand.

About 3 minutes later I took the bag out of the toaster – ouch! It gets really hot so be careful. As soon as my toastie was cool enough to eat I tried a small biteful quite gingerly. Wow it was nice, just as tasty as cheese and tomato on toast done under my cooker grill when it worked but only a little bag to clean afterwards.

It says on the cover that you can use Toastabags to make a variety of toasties and heat up things like pastry, pizza, chips and chicken nuggets. I heated up a cornish pasty using one, that was quick and easy. I also made my favourite toasted sandwich – ham, cheese, tomato and onion – that was good.

Each bag is supposed to be usable up to 50 times. I don’t know about that claim so far but they are cheap and do the job that they are supposed to. Another good invention I think, certainly a tasty one!

Spaghetti And Cheese On Toast

My scary ex mother in law introduced me to this snack. It’s hard not to think about her when I prepare and eat it but it hits the spot and tastes so good that the memories fade into a delicious oblivion.

Ingredients:

Tin of Spaghetti or Spaghetti Hoops – whatever size or brand you prefer. I use Heinz.
Bread For Toasting – I use wholemeal but any will suit
Cheese – Cheddar is best and I use low fat
Spread – Optional but I use low fat.

Method

Lightly toast your bread and at the same time heat the spaghetti up, but don’t overheat. Grate enough cheese for your needs. Put a thin layer of spread on your toast and then cover with the warm spaghetti. Cover the spaghetti with grated cheese and then pop under the grill until the cheese is melted to your taste. Transfer to a warm plate and eat.

That’s a really quick, filling and easy recipe and you can either make it as a snack with one round of toast or a meal with 2 rounds of toast.

Jacket Potato With Tomatoes, Cheese & Onion

After I got divorced I was broke and needed to add cheap but nutritious meals to the menu, and as I was working 2 jobs the meals had to be quick to prepare and energy giving. This was one of the cheapest meals that I made and it never got boring.

Ingredients:

Large Baking Potato
Tin Of Plum Or Chopped Tomatoes
Small Very Finely Chopped Onion Or Dried Onions
Grated Or Crumbled Cheese – whichever you prefer

Method

Either bake the potato for 50 minutes or microwave for 7 minutes. Slit the cooked potato open and place the onions in the slit. Cover the onions with cheese and pour the tomatoes on top. Place in microwave and cook on full power for 3-4 minutes.

I’ve sometimes added cooked, sliced mushrooms instead of or with the onions, or used low fat cheese slices instead of grated cheese. I also use baked beans instead of tomatoes on occasion.

Really Super Noodles

I experimented and added to a tip in a magazine for this quick meal.

Ingredients:

Pack Of Bachelors Barbeque Beef Super Noodles
Tin Of Plum Or Chopped Tomatoes
2 Cooked Sliced Sausages
Dried Onions

Method

Break up and place the noodles in a pan with the included flavouring. Add a small amount of dried onions and add the tinned tomatoes instead of water. Stir and keep stirring while bringing to the boil. Simmer for 2 minutes and then add the cooked, sliced sausages. Simmer for another couple of minutes and your very quick meal is ready.

The beauty of this recipe is that you can experiment with different ingredients and still get a tasty meal. For instance sometimes I add pre cooked beef strips instead of sausages, or I use chicken flavoured noodles and pre cooked chicken strips and leave out the onions.

Health & Diet

I suppose that it depends how you look at it, or how you prepare the meals whether you think they are healthy or not. The meals have varying amounts of carbohydrates, protein, calcium and iron and we need them all to live.

Are they fattening? Rigid dieters might say yes but I don’t think so as long as you don’t over eat and you swap ingredients for low fat alternatives. In fact I have included these meals when dieting and lost weight while feeling well and healthy.

I hope that you enjoy my favourite savoury snacks or meals and if you want more great Easy Recipes or even a free Yorkshire Pudding Recipe just click on the links.

I’ve got a pretty tasty recipe for Fruit Batter Pudding and I love Toad in the Hole. One of my favourite warming winter meals is a giant Yorkshire Pudding filled with onion gravy and I’ve even had Yorkshire puddings in a Chinese restaurant but that’s another story.

I have had mince and onions in giant Yorkshire puds in cafes but I’ve never been very keen on mince finding it tasteless unless you add flavourings. What I do like is Yorkshires filled with savoury mince and following you will find the recipe that I use, plus a scone topping recipe:

Savoury Mince Recipe

Before you start prepare and place giant Yorkshires in oven unless you are using the frozen kind.

Ingredients: (Serves 4)

3 large carrots

1 large onion or leek

1 lb (½ kg) minced beef

400g can of chopped tomatoes

60z (150g) garden peas

small can sweetcorn drained

4 oz (100g) mushrooms sliced

½ pint beef stock

pinch of mixed herbs (optional)

2 tablespoons Worcester Sauce (optional)

Cooking oil or lard

Method:

Dice the carrots and slice the onions then fry them together in a saucepan until lightly browned. Take out of pan and drain well. Fry the mince until evenly browned and drain the fat out before adding the carrots, onions, tomatoes and juice, peas, sweetcorn, sliced mushrooms, beef stock and herbs if you are using them.

Bring to the boil and then simmer for 20-25 minutes. When cooked I usually stir in a couple of tablespoons of Worcester sauce for added flavour but it still tastes good without.

To Serve:

Ladle savoury mince into Giant Yorkshire Puddings which should have been cooking at the same time as your savoury mince. Or you can use this recipe as a delicious jacket potato filler and grate a little cheese for the topping.

Cooking Alternatives:

I’ve made this recipe in a slow cooker or crockpot, pressure cooker, microwave and in the oven and it’s been delicious every time. For different meal choices I’ve topped this dish with dumplings, scalloped potatoes, mashed potatoes and the following tasty scone topping which can be used for this dish, beef or sausage casseroles.

Scone Topping

Prepare savoury mince, beef or sausage casserole and place in a casserole dish.

Ingredients:

6 oz (175g) plain flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

20z (50g) margarine

Approx 1 tablespoon milk

Optional:

20z (50g) grated cheese

and/or 1 oz (25g) dried onions

Method:

Mix flour with baking powder and rub the margarine in until the mixture is like fine breadcrumbs. If using mix in the grated cheese and/or the dried onions at this point. Add enough milk to make a soft dough and roll out on a lightly floured surface until about ½ inch thick.

Cut into rounds with a pastry cutter and place on top of your prepared dish, brush with a little milk and bake for 15 minutes at 200° C, 400° F or Gas Mark 6.

Alternatively you can cut the scone mix into one large round and use as if it’s a pie topping and scatter the grated cheese on top instead of using it in the scone mix. This way would require adding at least another 10 minutes onto the baking time.

There you have it a delicious savoury mince recipe to go with your Yorkshire Puddings or baked potatoes and a tasty topping as an alternative, enjoy your meal!

If you want more great Easy Recipes or even a free Yorkshire Pudding Recipe just click on the links.

Although mum never measured ingredients everything that she made always turned out delicious and perfect. Her Yorkshires always rose just right, crispy around the edges and leaving a hollow to collect the gravy in and they were always that lovely golden colour that we associate with Yorkshire puddings.

Traditionally Yorkshire puddings were a filler dish served with onion gravy before the main roast course in households that could not afford a lot of meat, but as far back as I can remember Yorkshires have been an integral part of the main course.

Although originating in Yorkshire they are popular all over the country, indeed the world. There are few places that you can go that you will not find the legend ‘Traditional British Sunday Dinner’ or indeed lunch on offer. The traditional British Sunday dinner always includes Yorkshire pudding as an integral part of the meal.

Although I prefer to make my own Yorkshire puddings, frozen cooked or uncooked versions are easily available and they taste almost as good. You can also get powdered batter mix where you just need to add milk or water, not quite as good in my opinion.

I should perhaps have used ready-made versions the first time that I attempted to make Yorkshire puddings. Newly married I was trying to impress my husband with a lovely Sunday lunch complete with Yorkshires. I did not have a recipe and tried to emulate my mother’s non-measuring method. An hour passed and my Yorkshire pudding still was not cooked. We ate the dinner but had to pass on the Yorkshires because I had added twice as much milk as necessary. I made sure that I used a recipe after that!

Yorkshire Pudding Recipe

This is the recipe that I use, a traditional pouring batter recipe that can be used for pancakes as well as Yorkshire pudding.

4oz (100g) Plain Flour
1 medium sized egg
pinch of salt
½ pint (280ml) of milk (or mixture of milk and water)
2oz (50g) lard/fat or 2 tablespoons of oil – as an healthier alternative I use vegetable or sunflower oil, or you can use fat from the meat.

Mix the flour and salt in a basin and make a hollow in middle. Drop the egg into the hollow and stir in with a wooden spoon. Add the milk (milk and water) gradually, stirring all of the time until the flour is worked in. Add rest of liquid and beat well. The end result should have a similar consistency to single cream.

Melt the fat in cooking tin until spitting hot. Can be one large tin square, rectangular, round or small tins or a bun tin. When the fat is hot enough pour in the batter just half filling small tins, patty tins or bun tins. Cook at 450F, 230C or gas mark 8. Large tins for about 30 minutes, small tins or bun tins 15 – 20 minutes.

When cooked they should turn out puffy, golden and crispy on the outside and sunken in the middle. Some people let the fat from the meat drip on to the Yorkshire puddings while cooking.

A popular addition to menus in recent years in restaurants, cafes and bars is a king size or giant Yorkshire pudding filled with onion gravy or different meat, vegetable and gravy concoctions. This dish is served as a separate course emulating the original filler course.

You can even buy delicious smaller Yorkshire puddings filled with steak in one large chain store, rather like traditional steak and kidney puddings but made with batter mix.

Another popular meal made with Yorkshire pudding batter is Toad in the Hole. This is a tasty low cost meal with sausages cooked in the batter. An alternative there is to use lamb chops.

Yorkshire Pudding Facts

The first known Yorkshire Pudding Recipe was published in 1737 in ‘The Whole Duty Of A Woman’ and named ‘A Dripping Pudding’. Eight years later a lady named Hannah Glasse published it in her Art of Cookery as Yorkshire Pudding.

The first British Yorkshire Pudding day was on February 3rd 2008 and in future the celebrations will be on the first Sunday of every February.

On Sunday 11th June 2000 the first Great Yorkshire Pudding Boat Race was held in Brawby in North Yorkshire. The organiser Simon Thackray arranged for 6 3ft in diameter Yorkshire puddings to be baked coated with yacht varnish. Each ‘boat’ used up 50 eggs.

Check out the Yorkshire Pudding Recipe blog where you can get more delicious Yorkshire Pudding Recipes.

To brew a large amount of beer (six gallons) and pay a good price for your beer you better buy a proper beer brewing kit. This will be your biggest investment and will cost you about $100,- to $120,- this also includes the ingredients for your first batch. But this investment will start making you money before you know it.

The beer prices of your own homemade beer depend on the ingredients you will use for the next batches. You can go to your local home brew store and buy everything separate but you can also buy a so called beer kit packages. These kind of packages contain everything you need to make a new batch of beer and they are available in many of your favorite flavors. The price of these beer kit packages for 6 gallons are between $25 to $30. Your per-bottle cost will run around $0.40 inclusive write down cost for the kit.

Cost of ingredients can vary

In 2000 the price of hop was about 2 dollar a pound, in 2007 the price was extreme and went up to 26 dollar a pound, this was because of a bad growing season. So if you can grow your own hop in your area we advise you to do so. This means the beer prices varies also over the years and that also counts for your own beer prices. But still in all those years brewing your own beer has been cheaper than buying it. Although it might be saving you just a little bit of money.

Beer prices do not depend on the equipment

Well of course you need to make much more beer to pay your beer brewing equipment of over $300,- then you do when you buy a kit from around $100,- but the prices of equipment have not increased much over the years, this means that the cost of investment have remained fairly constant. So the best you can do is keep the investment as low as you can.

You can also save money by loosing the cost of bottles and caps and to put your finished beer in a keg. You do need to invest in a couple of kegs and a tap but you can get better beer prices if you divided these cost up among the number of times you can use these kegs and taps. This way you can actually reduce the beer prices per gallon even further. But at a price of less than 0.50 cents per bottle of excellent homemade beer who needs to?

Author Bio: The author of this article, Drew Brown, has one hobby and he loves to share it with the world. On his website BrewingYourOwn. com he tells you all about beer brewing equipment and beer making supplies.

Article Source: http://yorkshirepuddingrecipe.co.uk