easy

How To Prepare a Mango

by

Mango is the “King of Fruits” and definitely brings a taste of the exotic to the table.

It’s not the easiest fruit to prepare, being so juicy it tends to slip and jump out of your hands. There is a better way.

I will show you how to prepare a mango with the minimum of fuss and mess. This method will help you extract the most flesh from your ready to eat ripe mango and keep the juice from escaping all over you and the kitchen!

Follow these easy steps and you’ll look like a professional mango connoisseur.

  • Wash your Mango
  • Leave the skin intact
  • Hold the Mango so the pointed lower part of the mango is facing you and the top pointed upper part is facing away from you
  • With a sharp knife slice the right hand side of the mango.
  • Repeat on the other side. You should now have three separate bits of mango. Set the middle core section aside for now but do not discard.
  • With the same sharp knife, score vertically across the flesh of one segment, but do not cut through the skin.
  • Using the same segment, score horizontally across the flesh. Again, do not cut through the skin.
  • Turn the mango over so the skin is facing you and turn the mango inside out – pushing with all your fingers (see image below)

You should now have something that looks like this

Follow my steps to easily prepare your mango
Follow my steps to easily prepare your mango
  • Using your knife, cut off the raised segments into a bowl. Discard skin.
  • Repeat above on the second half of mango segment

To remove the flesh from the core

  • Using your knife, slice either side of the main core so you have two thin strips. Carefully remove the skin from these strips and chop into chunks.
  • Discard the skin and main core
Minimal mess and lots of sweet mango pieces to enjoy.
No mess and lots of sweet mango pieces to enjoy.

Easy Hummus Recipe

by

First of all lets tackle that big question – what is the correct spelling?

You may know it already but I have spotted so many different ones on manufacturer’s packaging, restaurant menus and even in the supermarket that it’s hard to know for sure.

Apparently this is the correct spelling

hum·mus
ˈho͝oməs,ˈhəməs/
noun

a thick paste or spread made from ground chickpeas and sesame seeds, olive oil, lemon, and garlic, made originally in the Middle East.

Now we have that cleared up…lets make some Homemade Hummus to tantalize your tastebuds and play with that blender again 🙂

Play around with your own ingredients to get different tastes

Once you have the basic recipe you can add or remove ingredients to suit your taste. Just add a bit of olive oil or water if the mixture is too thick. Have fun.

There are lots of ways to serve Hummus – warm pita bread, carrot sticks, veg – how do you serve yours?

Easy Chicken Broth

by

Chicken Broth is one of the tastiest, filling meals or stock base you can make yourself. There’s no need to buy those too salty off the shelf, tin, cube or boxed broths when you can probably make one today with what you have in the fridge. How? Let me show you…

Unless you are a vegetarian or vegan this article is probably not for you but for the rest of us who like chicken, chicken soup and broths here’s my tip to stretch that chicken dinner a little further.

What You Need?

One whole cooked chicken
Two Stalks of Celery (chopped)
Two Large Carrots (chopped)
Half a large onion or one medium onion (roughly chopped)
Pepper, Salt, Herbs (for taste)

Preparation

Use what you need and then save the rest to make an easy and tasty broth.
Use what you need and then save the rest to make an easy and tasty chicken broth.

Take your leftover chicken carcass, which may include some of the meat, all the bones and some or all of the skin and place in a large saucepan.

Add the chopped celery, onions and carrots to the pot. Season with salt, pepper and your choice of herbs. You can add other vegetables for flavor but these are the ones I would recommend.

Remember, keep it simple at this stage as the vegetables you add now will be discarded along with the chicken bones, carcass and skin and any meat, as once cooked you will only be interested in the leftover broth.

Cover with cold water and bring to the boil.

Simmer on low for 1 hour. Stir occasionally. You can pretty much leave it to it’s own devices once the simmering has settled down nicely and you know it’s not going to boil but keep an eye on it.

Remove from heat and stir well.

Pour the liquid through a strainer into a separate container. Leave to cool.

Discard what is leftover.

Add your own ingredients to make a chicken vegetable noodle soup
Add your own ingredients to make a chicken vegetable noodle soup

If you do not wish to use straight away, place in fridge.

You now have Chicken Broth. You can drink this as it is or take it one step further and make Chicken Soup using the liquid you just made as the base. Don’t forget the meat you pulled off as you can then add that back into the soup. You can also use the broth to flavor rice. Do you have any other tips for using homemade broth?

Why not check out my easy
Chicken and Vegetable Soup
using the Slow Cooker.

WordPress Fun and Foibles

by

I have tried many times to create a website and have used WordPressQuestion-Mark-Dice-Blue-1500x1500 consistently…at least the choice was consistent…the actual content production, not so much. The reason, I have discovered, has been a number of factors.

WordPress itself – it has always been reputed as being easy to use, easy to set up and you’ll be up and running in no time. Yes that is true, for the most part, and I like a lot of their features, but sometimes it can be rather frustrating and you can’t always find the solution to what seems a simple question!

Let’s try adding a video to a post for example. There’s a lovely button that says Add Media and this is where you will find a much streamlined and fast way to upload your images and videos. It works like a dream for photos and with the new drag and drop feature it’s very smooth and extremely quick.

Add Media

So armed with the new Twenty Fifteen theme from WordPress I gaily attempted to add a video to a post I had written about the World Cup 2014. Just as images are really easy to add to your post I thought it would be the same with videos. Can you guess what happened next? Not a lot of content uploading or writing but lots of frustration, a stiff neck and a headache…so I gave up.

Not to be defeated, I returned the next day having consulted various videos and information on the wonderful web of wisdom and no-one seemed to be having any trouble with embedding a video as long as you were using YouTube, Vimeo and any other social media third-party that allows you to copy their link or use their pre-made embed code. But WordPress make it possible to upload my video without having to get an account anywhere else. I don’t have a YouTube account, I have a WordPress website and that’s where I would like my content to sit so I don’t have to login anywhere else.

Video Embed & Thumbnail Generator
Video Embed & Thumbnail Generator

So the proof is in the pudding and now that I have found a wonderful plugin (which, even though good, I really should not have to use) it now works. So thank you Kyle Gilman for your Video Embed & Thumbnail Generator which can be found on WordPress.Org Plugins

The now fully embedded World Cup 2014 video can finally be viewed here