Strawberry & Chocolate Dip

Are your strawberries ready yet? If not a well known supermarket in the UK are selling them for £1 for 227g. The strawberries are also grown in the UK so you will be eating our wonderful produce and keeping our farmers and growers in business. I won’t name the supermarket but the first letter is A. The name is also very short, 4 letters to be exact!!!

Strawberry’s and chocolate are the food of love so why not mix both and create a lovely dip to dip the strawberry’s in?

Ingredients

100g bar of chocolate like Dairy Milk or other quality chocolate

500g home-grown strawberries

1 carton of double cream

Method

1. Break the chocolate into smallish pieces.

2. Heat a pan of water on the cooker. As the water is heating up get a Pyrex or other ovenproof dish and place on top of the water.

3. Break the chocolate into small pieces and put into the ovenproof dish and allow to melt. As the chocolate is almost melted add the cream and gently stir the ingredients together.

4. Stir both ingredients together until creamy. Don’t let the mixture boil or go lumpy.

5. Remove from the cooker and allow to cool for 15 minutes. Don’t let the chocolate set!

6. Serve in a bowl with strawberry’s on the side to dip in.

Another way to use this recipe is if you have kids round and you want to give them something different. Or at the end of a dinner party strawberry’s and chocolate are a great way of finishing off the evening with friends. How about after a romantic meal for two? Now that would give you a few good points, need I say more chaps?!

Mixed Fruit Cake

Ingredients

• 225g Butter
• 300g Sugar
• 3 Eggs
• 400g Plain flour
• 120ml Hot water (from kettle)
• 120ml semi skimmed milk
• 220g mixed fruit (or you can use raisins, sultanas or currants)
• 1tbsp Baking powder

Method

1. Heat the oven up to 180C or gas mark 4.
2. Put butter and sugar in a bowl then pour over the hot water.
3. When the mixture softens up whisk until creamy then slowly add the eggs.
4. Mix in the flour, mixed fruit, milk and baking powder. Continue to mix until everything mixed thouroughly.
5. Grease a large cake tin then pour mixture into it. (I have a silicon one so it doesn’t need greasing first)
6. Cook in the oven for 30 minutes then reduce the heat to 150C or gas mark 2 for a further 40 minutes.
7. Remove and check with a skewer to make sure it’s done inside. Times may vary too especially if you have a fan assisted oven so check the cake often.
8. Leave to cool on a wire rack then serve with a great tasting coffee or tea!

Related articles

• Victoria sponge (fairycakemother.com)
• Coffee Cake with Pear and Walnuts…….perfect for getaways. (chanteusedesigns.wordpress.com)
• Dundee cake recipe (telegraph.co.uk)

Frugal Gardening: Make your own Organic Plant Food, it will Save You Money

Making your own organic plant food is a great and inexpensive way of keeping your plants, shrubs and vegetables fed. They are simple to make as you usually have the ingredients already to hand whether in the garden or kitchen.

Want to know more? Follow this LINK.

Frugal Gardening: Make your own Organic Bug Spray, it will Save You Money

At this time of year many people are looking towards their gardens and wondering how on earth they are going to afford to get it looking great for the summer ahead. Many people have little or no money to spend so the garden will be on most peoples list of things to leave.

But what if I told you there’s a way in which you can still fix the garden and it will cost you little or no money?

Want to read more? Follow this LINK.

The Easter Book

The Easter Book is a look at some of the foods we eat around Easter. Meals like lamb, Hot Cross Buns and Simnel cake are all covered and include simple to make recipes for you to try.

Not only that we take a look at some of the many traditions and foods that Germany and Sweden practice and eat at Easter, from the Easter Bread, Gravlax, Jansson’s temptation and others. All the recipes in this book are simple to follow with outstanding results you and the family will love to eat this Easter.

Included within each chapter is information on such things as why we eat lamb and how the idea of eating lamb for Easter came into being.

Why we have the German’s to thank for some of today’s popular traditions.

Did you know that the Easter bunny came from the Germans?

What other traditions do the Germans have today and are any of them from days gone by?

1. Easter is a time to burn the Christmas trees in Germany!

2. A tradition started in Germany was the boiling and painting of eggs which were then used to decorate bushes and trees to represent the “Easter Tree.” The boiled and painted eggs represented new life, sunlight and growth for the oncoming spring.

Want to know the connection between birch, witches and Sweden?

1. The whole Easter affair in Sweden starts on Thursday when witches flew off to Mount Blåkulla or Blue Mountain to meet with the devil.
2. People painted crosses on their doors to ward off these evil spirits that were supposed to be around and also hid broomsticks.

Read the book to find out why they hid broomsticks in Sweden and more!

The Easter Book

The Easter Book- Amazon Kindle Version

The Easter Book- Other E-reader formats including Epub, Palm Doc and more

How to Transform your Garden into One of Stunning Beauty Without Spending a Fortune

Now that spring is around the corner many of you will be thinking about the garden. Looking outside at your garden now, all you see is a mess and you wonder how on earth you can change your garden into one of stunning beauty without spending a fortune doing it.

It is possible to create a garden to die for, to have everyone who sees the finished outcome stop and admire your wonderful, flower filled garden, it is possible without having to re-mortgage the house. Frugal gardening is the way forward, it’s easy to do with no shame involved and is really fun too.

Frugal Gardening

Frugal gardening isn’t hard to do especially if you follow a few simple ideas. Some are listed below for you to try, then purchase my book The Frugal Gardener which is packed full of more frugal hints, tips and ideas on how to have a garden the neighbor’s will be jealous off and it won’t cost you much.

Frugal Gardening: Start by Looking Around the House

So how can you be frugal in the garden? Well for starters have a look around the house. What you are looking for is any containers that you could use. Plastic containers that once contained food from supermarkets are great for this and can be used as seed trays. If they have lids then you have a simple propagator which will help the young tender shoots grow big and strong.

Glass jars are great for storing things in. maybe you have markers, pens, bits of string or other small items scattered over the greenhouse or house. Well using glass jars to store them in are wonderful and just look in the kitchen cupboard. In there you are bound to find some whether it contains coffee, sauces or jams.

If you are stuck for plant pots and want to start off some seeds there is another alternative and that is the metal can you get things like peas, carrots and other foods. You will have to give them a good clean out then put holes in the bottom, but they are great for emergency plant pots when you have none and stuck for money.

If you have lots of plants, seeds or herbs in pots but don’t have any identifiers so you know what’s what then this method works. Take a plastic margarine tub and after cleaning cut the plant identity markers out of the tub and lid. Ok so there will be writing on one side but the inside is white and perfect for you to write that plant name. Just remember to use a permanent marker!

These are just a few of the frugal gardening tips you can use in the garden but even there’s more inside my book The Frugal Gardener. The book is packed full of gardening tips including tips on vegetable gardening, herbs, and many other topics every gardener should know if he is to become a frugal gardener.

Why not purchase it now and see what frugal gardening will do for you and your garden this year? One thing is certain, you will have a garden that’s full of blooming flowers, shrubs, herbs and vegetables which will be the envy of everyone.

The Frugal Gardener

The Frugal Cookbook- Amazon Kindle version

The Easter Book- Amazon Kindle version

The Frugal Cookbook

One of the things I love to do is cook. There’s nothing better than getting in the kitchen and trying out new and old recipes then share them to all either online or to the family. Recently I have written a small eBook called The Frugal Cookbook. It’s packed with lots of frugal recipes just waiting to be tried and tested, you don’t need to spend alot of money on the ingredients either. Instead use some simple techniques which I describe in the book and you will be well on your way to frugal cooking.

Go ahead and click the book covers, they will take you to the main page where you can buy my latest book The Frugal Cookbook. 

Click on the images to BUY NOW

Help the Fish Fight

Support the Fish Fight

 

Half of all fish caught

in the North Sea

are thrown

back overboard

dead.

Click the picture above and do your bit by signing up to stop this waste.

It’s Been a While

Well it’s been a while. 4 months to be exact and almost to the day. What am I talking about? Well it has been 4 months since I left Sweden and came back to the UK, why? Well I had a few underlying medical needs which had to be taken care of and I had to find help in starting up in business. Sweden is a great place to be and live but I wanted to sort that out with people from the UK and abide by our laws in so far as taxes etc. came into it.

So I am back in Blighty, for the time being that is. I haven’t sat on my laurels either. Most of the medical things have been sorted out and the 1’s that haven’t are at a stage where they will be soon. As for the business well I have a business advisor who is helping me setup and I have a business account with my local bank. When I came back I needed a place to stay and stayed at a friends until I was fortunate enough to be given a small apartment. I have been living there since December now and love it. It’s nice and quiet, warm and cosy and best of all it’s mine. Well rented but you get my drift.

So yes it has been a while since I last posted something but as you can see I have been a little busy.

As for Sweden well I hope I will be going back sometime soon. I do love that part of Sweden as it’s peaceful and beautiful although a little cold right now!

Related articles

• Travel Sweden (ask.metafilter.com)
• Sweden Trip! – Stockholm, Sweden (travelpod.com)

I will Write for you in Return for a Link Back

As I love to write and in particular articles and blog posts I thought I would offer everyone something.

I will write for you an article, blog post or anything else you want and in return you place a link back to my website and I will do the same. I can write about most things including cooking, environmental, gardening, technology being a few topics I have written about. I will write a minimum of 400 words on most subjects with each piece of writing keyword rich and informative with no fluff or filler. This is a definite win, win for you!

If you are looking for samples of my writing then follow this link HERE. It will take you to my profile on Ezine Articles for which I am a Platinum Expert Author having written on many different topics.

Other samples are on my website wayne-anthony.com, click HERE to go there. You will notice I have written for a few websites on different topics.

Why not get in touch and tell me what you want me to write? If I can write about it then I will and as you can see you and your website wins 2 fold. You get an article AND a link back while I just get a link back.

How’s that for fairness!!

Related articles

• How To Submit Your WordPress Posts with EzineArticles (wpjedi.com)
• Internet Marketing 101 – 5 Simple Things You Need To Do (tlmarketing.net)