Sharabelle bakes

Voodoo doll pin cushion hand knitted by Sharabelle What do a voodoo doll pin cushion and the UK government work program have to do with each other? Quite a lot actually, since one inspired me to do the other.  Or I should say the sub contracted supplier of the work program inspired me to knit one, after one of my twice monthly meetings with them.   As Julia Andrews sang in Sound of Music - Lets start at the very beginning it's a very good place to start. I haven't been able to work for a few years due to my mental health problems. Iv also had medical problems linked to my IBS and food intolerance's.  Iv had a single goal to improve both my physical and mental health.  .  I have over a 10 year history of mental health problems.  Putting a sticky plaster on, and ignoring the problem doesn't help.  Not working allows me the time to work at making myself better Forget the usual story's of benefits cheats that you...

Breadtastic morning Not all my baking is a total success, just like every one else I have my hits and misses.   Total Miss Chapatti flat bread Tried to make Chapatti's this morning, Try being the operative word.  Iv made them before by cooking them on the hob in a frying pan. They were OK but not great.   Unfortunately I only have non stick pots and pans, to make chapatti's you really need one with a heavy base.  So this time I decided to try cooking them on a baking sheet in my oven.  They were only in for 10 Min's, I flipped them over half way through the cooking time.  They Turned out a bit on the crispy side.  A lot more like a baked tortilla, than an Indian Chapatti.   Still edible but not really what I was going for.  Next time I'm going to try cooking them under my grill instead. Hit -Whole meal Soda bread Also made some whole meal Soda Bread  this morning.  Hadn't plann...

Sweet Potato Chips  I'm from the UK, so too me Chips and French fries are the same things.  Only difference is that French fries are thin cut, while chips are thicker.  Either way they both taste great.  There also one of my biggest temptations. I love traditional fish and chips but they give me horrible heart burn. The oil is also not too great for my IBS.  Rather than cut them out of my diet totally, I switched to baking chips at home.   Which was okay for a while, but some of them are still half cooked in oil before there packaged.  So I started to make my own. There cheaper, simple to make and take very little cooking expertise. They also don't need to just be make from Potatoe's, any root vegetable will do.  Potatoe, sweet potatoe, parsnip, carrots, turnip Buying pre-made fresh or frozen food is almost a habit now,  I know it was for me.     You also buy into the adverts messages,...

 Sweet Potato Scones Why did I name my blog Sharabelle bakes..... There were 2 reasons. 1. I like cooking and especially I love to bake.  I find it really relaxing.  Which is good for my mental health problems. 2. IBS - Because of my food triggers and intolerance's, I make my own baked goodies.  I found it's a lot less stressful, than shopping for them. (Reading ingredient lists gets really depressing after a while)  It's also a lot cheaper, than buying specialised FREE FROM alternatives. No idea what this says about me!!!  After cooking for other people at the Pantry this week, I really wanted to cook something I could eat.  My idea for Sweet potato scones has been on my To Do List for a while.  So after making sweet potato curry I still had one left and I really wanted to use it in a  sweet recipe.  As always I researched similar recipes on line to get the basic technique. I discovered that baking the ...

This blog isn't just my own baking diary, noting my edible successes and disaster.   I started it because I wanted to be totally honest about my IBS and especially my mental health problems.  For me the 2 are linked, problems with one usually set off problems with the other.  My aim was to help reduce the stigma attached to having a mental health problem.  If I want to be totally open and honest, I really need to talk about my bad days. Bad Days       I didn't blog yesterday because it was one of my bad days.  A bad day for me means.... - Disconnected from what's going on around me. - Mentally and physically tired - Poor short term memory - The feeling that I'm about to burst out in tears any minute - Clumsy, accident prone Basically really low and depressed.  I like to joke that it's like a Dementor from Harry Potter, has sucked all my joy and happiness.  Leaving nothing but de...

Sweet potato curry Iv spent the last 2 days doing work experience at the Pantry I'm back there tomorrow, so today I planned to relax.  It's one of the anxiety management techniques I had to learn.  Bit embarrassing to admit but I had to attend relaxation classes as part of my therapy.   What can I say trying to relax is really hard work!!!  I know Iv spent the last 2 days working in a kitchen, but one of my favourite ways to relax is cooking or baking.   Only difference is this time I can eat what I make.  I still had some full dairy ingredients left from my christmas baking, so decided to bake scones for my mum to use them up. Once I get on a roll it's kind of hard to stop, so I made some sweet potato curry for lunch.   It's totally dairy free, using lentils to thicken the stock.  I would have prefered to give it a bigger kick with the chilli, but my IBS isn...

Had a great day at the Pantry today.  I made mac and cheese for the main, as well as chocolate chip sponge for dessert.  Which am extra chuffed about, as it was my idea to make.  We had a look at the store cupboard last week and found some random ingredients left.  The mission to find some way to use them up. Were always looking for ways to reduce food waste.  So chocolate chip sponge with custard appeared on the menu for the first time.  I love cooking for other people. It's even better when at least one of those people takes the time to say they enjoyed it. The mac and cheese was also a crowd pleaser.  I'd asked if we could make it, lol.  I love Mac and cheese or I should say loved it.  Since am lactose intolerant all dairy is off the menu, and since I'm also yeast intolerant vegan versions are also off the menu.  Yeast extract and nutritional yeast are used to give vegan food the same cheesy taste....

I know I have a mental health problem, but I promise you i'm not mad!!!  My IBS is really bad at the moment and all I seem to be craving at night for my Tea is cereal because it's easy to digest. Which led me to wonder, what other ways i could serve you porridge to stop it getting boring.   Imagine a bowl of porridge that tastes just like Carrot cake mmmm.  Surprisingly it works!!!!  Who would thunk it.  I really made it out of pure curiosity but it tastes great.  Single portion Carrot spice porridge 1/2 cup porridge oats 1 cup water for thick porridge, 1 1/2 cups for a creamy porridge 1/2 tsp mixed spice 1 tsp Sugar (sweeten to taste) 1/2 a carrot grated. Handful of raisins A sprinkle of sliced almonds Add every thing except the almonds to your porridge pot, or jug if you cook in the microwave. Then cook as normal.  I finished mine off with a sprinkling of sliced almonds and a swirl of syrup.  Further surfing of...

Just got to say, Iv got a great local library.  The staff are brilliant and really helpful.   When I asked if they could request some vegan cookbooks for me, they checked there database and ordered a few different books in for me.   Healing foods cookbook - The vegan way to wellness is not really what I was looking for.  The blurb looks great, especially for someone with my type of IBS, but the content doesn't really match up.  Maybe iv just  been really lucky too find some great recipes on the Internet but the recipes where a bit simple and not really inspiring.  The book would be perfect for beginner cooks though. Check out amazon  for more reviews.  I did find one recipe that I wanted to give a try - Currant and Raisin Squares. If you've read my blog before you won't be surprised I changed a couple of things.  I think you should always gear a recipe toward your own taste buds. I lo...

Indian food is well know for it's great vegetarian food.  I started to wonder if other cultures had a similar history, so did a little Internet surfing yesterday.  I found a great site called  International Vegetarian Union , which has a large database of recipes. Over the past 6 months of eating meat free, iv re-discovered recipes i used to enjoy.  Iv also gone through a phase of making veggie food replacement's to meat, like bean burgers.   Iv found great food doesn't need to have meat as a protein.  I can still eat fish and eggs, but I only have these occasionally.  There's a tendency when you have IBS to eat one type of food regularly because you know it's safe.  What can happen is you end up building up an intolerance to it instead.  I excluded milk products form my diet for 6 months, after I was diagnosed with IBS.  I was able to eat it occasionally in small amounts with out setting off my symptoms for ...

Dried cranberry & macadamia nut dark chocolate bark Every time I find a product that's dairy free, I tend to impulsively buy it.  Especially if it's something I can bake with.  It's a habit I'm trying to break, usually my mum's voice pop's into my head saying " Do you really need that, and if so what are you going to do with it!!!.   Which always makes me think twice, doesn't always work though.  As I seem to have accumulated several bars of chocolate over the past few months.   After giving up chocolate years ago because it was an IBS trigger Iv kind of lost my taste for it.  I couldn't eat a whole chocolate bar now, I do however occasionally crave a nibble.  I think I like the idea of being able to eat chocolate more than actually eating it.    So in my reducing food waste quest, I decided to do something with it.  I'd never heard of Chocolate bark before, until I watched the Barefoot Contess...

I have a new favourite ingredient, diced frozen onions.   My New Years resolution was to shop smart and avoid wasting food.  I have to watch how many onions I eat due to the windy pop factor, which triggers my IBS.  Using frozen means, I can use a little at time and not worry about the onion going off before I use it again.  Which makes diced frozen onions perfect for me.  No lady like way to say this, but increased flatulance was one of the first signs that I had IBS.  Along with bloating after eating and stomach cramps.  All I knew was something wasn't right, which is all I could tell the Doctor.  I prefer to use fresh vegetables as much as possible, but lets be realistic it's unlikely to have just been picked. Frozen vegetables can be just as nutritious, so why not use them along with fresh.  Some veg like Pea's are often frozen within hours of being picked.  One of my favourite q...

Necessity is the mother of invention I'm still attempting to use up the baking/cooking ingredients I bought to use at Christmas.  I avoid wasting food as much as possible.  One of my favourite ways of doing this, is to turn them into something else.   Hence the invention of my Chocolate Chip, Banana & Peanut butter Flapjacks.  It wasn't till last year that I discovered dairy free Chocolate, which was great.  However it's been so long since I had any other chocolate apart from the drinkable variety, that Iv kind of lost my taste for it.  I'd originally bought them to bake cookies for my Niece who is also lactose intolerant.  So I was looking for a recipe to use them up. They work great in this recipe because they compliment the other flavours, instead of overshadowing them.  I love both Banana's and peanut butter, so what could be better than putting the two of them together. The recipe title might be a mouthful to sa...

Why is it you never really crave certain foods, until you find out you shouldn't eat them?   My stomach is currently full to bursting point, just eaten way to much for lunch.  It did tastes good though......  The kind of meal you really want to take a nap after.  Just had dairy free Yorkshire pudding with mushroom gravy mmmm. Doesn't sound a lot I know, but the Yorkshire pud was the size of a dinner plate. (I use yeast free gravy granule's)   It's essentially my meat free version  of toad in the hole. Or as I like to call it No Toad in the hole . Iv yet to find a meat free sausage that doesn't have yeast extract added for flavouring (IBS trigger)   Who needs them anyway, my favourite part was always the Yorkshire pudding covered in thick gravy.   Next time I'll half  the recipe for my batter, best to avoid too much temptation.  It got me thinking though, it's not till your told you can't have so...

Baked Vegan Stovies I made the  Healthy start vegetarian Stovies  recipe yesterday.  Traditionally stovies are boiled potato's mixed with onions and leftover cooked meat.  In reality it's more often browned mince or cubed tinned Corned beef, that is mixed through the boiled mashed potato's.   Making a vegetarian version is kind of difficult.  Mixing various veggies through mashed potato's just isn't the same.  So I can understand why they came up with this method,  however It reminds me more of a vegetable gratin rather than Stovies.  Either way it's easy to make and tasty, so I can't really complain. The healthy start recipe cooks the veggies on the stove top, I decided to bake mine in the oven instead.  I used chopped onion and thinly sliced parsnip,  carrots and  turnip, which I layered in the casserole dish.  I seasoned the middle with black pe...

Orange marmalade and cranberry cookies Continuing with yesterdays Blog about food waste, thought Id better post a recipe along the same theme.  I had Orange marmalade in my fridge and some dried cranberry's left over from my Christmas baking.  The marmalade had been in the fridge for a while so really needed used up.  Iv just finished eating the orange and cranberry soda bread scones and bread I'd made, so didn't really want to eat any more so soon.  So that just left cookies......... One of the worst things about IBS is sometimes you can get stuck in a rut, eating the same foods.  Mainly because you know they won't trigger your symptoms.  Some one I know commented not that long ago that my food was always interesting.  Just because I have food intolerance's doesn't mean my meals have to be boring. I like to freeze all my food into portions, that way I'm not eating the same meals for the rest of the week.  My homemade...

 Wasted food    Half of all food goes to waste I don't normally buy a newspaper, however I won't turn my nose up at a copy of the Free Metro.  Forget that it's free, it's also very well written.  Yesterdays headline was pretty shocking, globally 2 bn tonnes of food goes to waste!!!!  Problems of starvation, poverty and the credit crunch are all great reasons to avoid wasting food.  When you put food in the bin, your really throwing away money.  One of my pet hates is wasted food.   If I accidently buy something I can't eat because of my food intolerances, I give it to someone that can.   Living on a budget means I  watch the pennies, so I avoid wasting food when ever possible.  Here are some of the Tricks and tips I use to save money and avoid food waste.  First way to avoid food waste - Check the label I always check the label when  I buy something,  for the - use by o...

STOVIES Today's menu at the Pantry Turkey and rice soup Corn beef Stovies  Apple crumble or Jam sponge pudding with custard I never really know what am going to blog about until I turn on my computer.  I like the randomness of it, makes things more interesting that way.  I mean this morning I could never have imagined I'd be blogging about Stovies!!! Stovies is one of the Great Scottish comfort foods, however the versions change depending on the region you live in.  In Aberdeen we made it from tatties and beef mince. When I moved down to Fife I found there recipe was more wet with gravy, which I loved. At the Pantry it's made with cubed corn beef, onions and mashed potato's.  Then served with gravy on the side. Traditional Stovie recipe  Stovies is one of those foods that reminds me of being a kid again.  In our house it was always made at Hogmanny to see in the bells.  It was always on hand to serve...

 Baked vegetable rice I'm totally useless at cooking savoury rice dishes, regardless of the type of rice.  I no longer have a microwave so quick nuke em rice is no longer an option. The only rice dish I can do  well is a traditional baked rice pudding.  Sharabelle personal philosophy Mistakes or failure are just ways of discovering how things don't work. And Iv found lots of ways of how not to cook rice...... I spent yesterday night looking for some inspiration on the net and found this Oven baked rice recipe   It's a good basic recipe that can be changed up depending on your mood and personal taste.  I couldn't wait to test the recipe, so I made it for today's lunch (Trying to be healthy and eat my main meal during the day, instead of at night)  I'll definitely be using this base recipe again, tasted great.  To suit my mood.....  I used my yeast free vegetable bouillon granules to flavour t...

Looking for Food's that can be made dairy free or are dairy free is kind of like going on a treasure hunt. The ones you thought were safe aren't... and the ones you thought you couldn't eat are OK. Like a treasure hunt your never really sure what your going to find..... Every so often on my shopping trips round the local supermarket I have a look at the ingredients on a few products that look interesting.  One of my favourite desserts of all time is creme carmelle, I havn't found any dairy free alternatives so I wondered if i could make my own.  Apparently I can with Green's, just by substituting dairy free milk.   So when I saw the pack for the Lemon Meringue pie filling at the Pantry today, I had a look.  Again from looking at the ingredient list and instructions to make, it's definetly dairy free.  It's not Egg free though, they havn't invented a vegan meringue yet.   You could still use the sa...

How to accidentally loose weight 1. Become lactose intolerant. Weight just dropped off me this time last year.  This month marks my first year totally dairy free.  I get my calcium & Vit D from  tablets now. Also soya milk and cereals are fortified with it. 2. Get a  metal dental brace Wearing metal on your teeth limits what you can eat.  Also your stuck with soft food for a week after every visit to the dental hospital.  Eg tightening of wires on brace, and the ever popular game of how many metal dental tools can they fit into your mouth at the same time...... 3. Maxillofacial surgery  (Jaw surgery) 2 weeks of eating through a straw really helps you loose weight. Bonus - my stomach shrunk so I was less hungry when I could finally eat.  4. E-coli or food poisoning (Not really recommended!!!) I personally lost a stone in a week.  Mostly because I could only hold down water and didn't eat the whole week.  ...

Sun dried tomato & basil soda bread The festive season is finally over and life is slowly getting back to normal thankfully.  I've also finally worked my way through the stock of baked goods that were in my freezer.   I admit it, I went a bit OTT with the baking and cooking before Christmas!!!!!  I'd defrosted homemade soup for lunch, all I needed was some soda bread to go with it.  What I bake or cook depends on my moods, and today the mood was for sun dried tomato & basil. Soda bread is one  of the easiest breads you can make since it's yeast free.  The bicarbonate of soda acts as the raising agent instead.  I'm a big believer in great base recipes, so here's mine for soda bread.  The recipe makes one small loaf, double the ingredients if you want to make a large one. Base Soda Bread 8 oz Plain Flour 1 tsp Caster Sugar 1 tsp Bicarbonate of Soda 1/2 tsp Salt 200 ml milk or 1/2 milk ...

Whenever someone finds out I have food intolerance's, am always asked the same question. What do you eat????? Living with IBS and food intolerance's doesn't mean food has to be boring.  So every so often I like to prove it by listing the food Iv been eating.......   Breakfast - Porridge served with 1 tbsp of fruit and 1 tbsp soya yogurt I'm a true Scot, so I make my porridge with water and a pinch of salt.  Then I go totally non traditional and top it with yogurt and fruit.   Today I had stewed apples with my porridge, reminds me of eating an Apple crumble.  It's like having a dessert for breakfast.   Snacks - Banana, Apple, Cranberry and orange soda scone,  cornflakes (kind of addicted to these), hot chocolate, homemade cookies.  Cranberry & orange Zest Scones  Not all on the same day of course!!!  I eat little and often so my main meals aren't really big.   Little and often is a way of pr...