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Essential Items to Keep in your Car

Essential Items to Keep in your Car this Winter

Essential Items to Keep in your Car

(and how to organise them)

Extremely cold weather is forecast and it won’t be long before de-icing the car will become part of the morning routine. So now’s the perfect time to ensure that you have all the essentials you need in your car.

It’s important to be prepared for inclement weather but also family outings can be so much easier if you’re prepared.

Rather than packing everything every
time you leave the house, have a think
about what you use on a regular basis
and keep it in the car.

Obviously there’s no point loading the car up with loads of useless clutter that weighs it down and increases your fuel consumption, but some useful bits and bobs can make life much easier!

Here’s what (and how) I pack in my car to make family life run a little more smoothly.

In the glovebox

  • Purse containing coins for car parks
  • Torch
  • Details of breakdown service and insurance (make sure you also have a copy at home)
  • Pen
  • Notebook
  • Glasses/sunglasses
  • Phone charger
  • Lipbalm

In the door/seat pockets

  • Hand sanitiser (essential post-petrol stop)
  • Ice scraper
  • Window cloth
  • Road map (if you’re retro like me and prefer it to satnav)
  • Small activity book per child
  • Ziploc Bags (for storing all sorts of bits and bobs or in case someone feels unwell)
  • Wet wipes
  • Tissues

In the boot

  • Warning triangle
  • Fluorescent vests
  • Spare tyre or equivalent
  • First aid kit
  • Re-usable shopping bags
  • Umbrella
  • Suncream
  • Towel
  • Woolly hat, gloves and pack-a-mac
  • Roll of tin foil (this may seem bizarre but tin foil can be used to wrap leftover picnics, keep you warm in a crisis, and create a temporary blackout-blind at a holiday property)
  • Picnic rug (for picnics – obviously – and also to keep little ones warm)
  • Scissors and tape
  • Hair ties, clips and hairbrush

I have found the best way of storing everything in the boot is in a sturdy basket as it doesn’t fall over or roll around when I’m driving.

I don’t keep any tools or jump leads etc. in my car as I would have no idea how to use them! In the event of a breakdown, I would always ring for roadside assistance.

Stay safe this winter.

 

 

#drivesafe #snow #ice #family

Recipe of the Week: Chocolate, Ginger and Cardamom Tea Bread

Chocolate, Ginger and Cardamom Tea Bread

Chocolate, Ginger and Cardamom Tea Bread

Ingredients

  • Ground cardamom 2 tsp
  • Crystallised stem ginger 250g (9oz)
  • Raisins 110g (4oz)
  • Light muscovado sugar 75g (3oz)
  • Orange 1, zest only
  • Strong Assam tea 200ml (7fl oz)
  • Egg 1, beaten
  • Self-raising flour 200g (7oz)
  • 70% dark chocolate 110g (4oz), chopped into generous chunks

Instructions

  1. Add the cardamom, ginger, raisins, sugar and zest to a large bowl and pour in the hot Assam tea. Cover the bowl with a cloth and leave overnight to soak
  2. When ready to start baking, preheat the oven to 160°C/gas mark 3. Line a loaf tin with baking parchment and set aside
  3. Add the egg to the mix, stir to combine then gradually mix in the flour until smooth and incorporated. Stir in the chocolate chunks then pour the mixture into the lined loaf tin. Bake in the oven for an hour and a half, until a metal skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean
  4. Remove from the oven and leave the cake to cool in the tin. When cool, carefully remove from the tin and wrap in parchment paper, followed by a clean tea towel. Leave the bundle for 24 hours before unwrapping and eating – this will allow the cake to develop a deeper, more rounded flavour.

 

#baking

Gorgeous Bake Club and the most delicious cake ever!

Chocolate, Ginger and Cardamom Tea Bread

My friends and colleagues at Baked & Delicious have recently launched the most fabulous online community called Bake Club.

This stunning site is packed full of the most beautiful recipes and fascinating foodie blogs and vlogs.

While I was having a nose the other day I got very excited about this recipe I stumbled across.

I LOVE tea bread and chocolate,
and ginger – in fact this must be
my perfect cake, so I had to give it a try.

The original recipe actually used ground cardamom but I couldn’t find it so I replaced it with allspice and it was still delicious. Every single member of the family loved it.

 

Chocolate, Ginger and Cardamom Tea Bread

Ingredients

  • Chocolate-&-Ginger-Tea-Bread-AGround cardamom 2 tsp
  • Crystallised stem ginger 250g (9oz)
  • Raisins 110g (4oz)
  • Light muscovado sugar 75g (3oz)
  • Orange 1, zest only
  • Strong Assam tea 200ml (7fl oz)
  • Egg 1, beaten
  • Self-raising flour 200g (7oz)
  • 70% dark chocolate 110g (4oz), chopped into generous chunks

Instructions

  1. Chocolate-&-Ginger-Tea-Bread-BAdd the cardamom, ginger, raisins, sugar and zest to a large bowl and pour in the hot Assam tea. Cover the bowl with a cloth and leave overnight to soak
  2. When ready to start baking, preheat the oven to 160°C/gas mark 3. Line a loaf tin with baking parchment and set aside
  3. Add the egg to the mix, stir to combine then gradually mix in the flour until smooth and incorporated. Stir in the chocolate chunks then pour the mixture into the lined loaf tin. Bake in the oven for an hour and a half, until a metal skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean
  4. Remove from the oven and leave the cake to cool in the tin. When cool, carefully remove from the tin and wrap in parchment paper, followed by a clean tea towel. Leave the bundle for 24 hours before unwrapping and eating – this will allow the cake to develop a deeper, more rounded flavour.

Recipe by Paul A Young for Great British Chefs

 

Bake ClubTake a look at Bake Club for yourself

Bake Club has some absolutely gorgeous recipes.

http://www.baked-and-delicious.com

 

 

 

 

 

#BakeClub #Baked&Delicious #baking

Competition

 

Win a Russell Hobbs Blender

Win a Russell Hobbs 3-in-1 Hand Blender

To celebrate the launch of our new cookbook, Just For One Or Two, we are offering you the chance to whisk, blitz and chop your way to better meals with this super efficient Russell Hobbs 3-in-1 Hand Blender.

A delicious mix of form and function, this stick blender offers a choice of two speed settings for coarser and smoother chopping.

Key features:

  • 400W power at max load
  • Detachable stainless steel shaft with stainless steel blade
  • 0.5L capacity beaker included
  • 0.5L capacity chopping attachment included with stainless steel blade

Enter

 

Look inside the Just For One Or Two cookbook

Click the image to see a selection of pages from Just For One Or Two.

 

#cookbook #recipes #competition

 

 

Brand New Cookbook!

Just For One Or Two cookbook

Tadaa! I’m so excited to reveal our brand new cookbook – Just for One or Two.

If you love good food, cooked simply, and often cook for just one or two people then this cookbook is a must.

According to the Office for National Statistics, almost half of all families in the UK (46%) no longer share an evening meal every day. But that doesn’t mean to say we have to get by on junk food and microwave meals. Just For One or Two contains an array of delicious meals for one or two people. Each carefully crafted recipe uses readily available ingredients, requires little effort and tastes amazing.

As a busy working parent, I appreciate it’s not always possible for families to sit down and eat together, particularly during the week when other commitments can get in the way.

Continue reading →

The Magic of the Water

I consider myself to be very lucky to live two minutes’ walk from a canal.

We get so much pleasure from watching the water-dwelling wildlife, wandering (or doing an embarrassing attempt at jogging in my case) along the towpath as well as watching the boats go by.

In Britain, most of us are never too far from an inland waterway – there are 2,000 miles of canals and navigable rivers that flow through our towns, villages and countryside.

 

Heritage

Man-made structures, essential to keep the waterways working, are well to the fore. Many of them are evidence of an innovative industrial past and represent engineering breakthroughs, including aqueducts, locks, bridges and tunnels. The Standedge tunnel, which takes the Huddersfield Canal beneath the Pennines, is the longest in Britain at 16,499ft (5,029m). You can take a boat trip along it, or, if enclosed spaces are not for you, linger in the pub or visitor centre and hear about it from the rest of the day-outers.

Nowadays, our inland waterways are undergoing a renaissance as a means of leisure and recreation, but their original purpose, in the absence of substantial road and rail networks, was as a means of freight transport.

The Bridgewater Canal is usually regarded as the one that started the rush of canal building in the 18th century. It was the brainchild of the Duke of Bridgewater, inspired by a visit to the Canal du Midi in France. His mines in Worsley supplied coal to Manchester and once the canal was finished, in 1776, the price of coal in that city practically halved. Others took note and more canals were built, especially in the north and midlands where heavy industries were king and goods needed to be transported to cities and ports as cheaply as possible. Interestingly, canals were not financed by the government but by industrialists, mine and mill owners, textile manufacturers and banks, and each one required an Act of Parliament to enable it to go ahead.

 

Dairy Diary 2016For more information on British waterways
see the feature in the 2016 Dairy Diary
and/or visit www.waterways.org.uk.

You can buy the 2016 Dairy Diary
now for just £7.99.

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