warm corn and quorn salad

A weekend of eating cold sandwiches, raw carrots, and oat breakfast biscuits will leave you feeling distinctly hungry for good food. In my case that was anything warm, anything fresh and definitely something that involved a little bit of time in the kitchen.

I settled on a grilled corn and quorn salad with honey and mustard dressing, as that filled the fresh category. The corn and quorn “chicken” pieces keep it warm. I spent an hour dancing around the kitchen with the sister whipping this one up, a great chance to have a catch up while getting some delicious food.

You won’t need an hour to make this though – we were just being slow and enjoy the kitchen time.

First things first go grab your ingredients.

For the salad:

Baby leaves – spinach, lambs’ lettuce, red lettuce, red chard, and rocket

Small sweet peppers

Baby corn

Sugar snap peas

Quorn chicken pieces (obviously you can use regular chicken)

Chilli kidney beans

For the dressing:

Wholegrain mustard

Honey

Olive oil

Cider vinegar

Salt

Pepper

Sugar

First, start by making the dressing. Fill a small jar about a quarter full with the olive oil and vinegar. Add a spoonful of wholegrain mustard and the same of honey. Season with salt, pepper and add a pinch of sugar to help everything combine. Stick the lid on the jar and give it a good shake to mix.

For the salad, begin with the quorn. Heat some oil in a frying pan and add the quorn chicken pieces fry them lightly for around ten minutes. Next add half the jar of chilli kidney beans to the frying pan and leave to warm through.

Place the baby quorn and sugar snap peas under the grill on a low heat so as to just warm them through.

Next, chop the peppers into small pieces and we are ready to plate up.

Into a bowl add the baby leaves, followed by the quorn pieces with chilli beans. Next top with the peppers, grilled corn and sugar snap peas. Drizzle your dressing over the top and you are ready to go.

It’s simple and easy, but filling and just warming enough for a light lunch or summer meal. We couldn’t stop exclaiming about how healthy we were feeling the whole time we were eating – although that could be down to our normal diet of pizza and fajitas. I can see this easily becoming a go to meal when I’m in a rush for something nice and quick to eat this summer.

Have you got a go to summer meal? 

Humpday Confessions

Its been a crazy past few weeks with trips away, more birthdays than a maternity ward and two of our biggest events at work last week. Spending the weekend working a fantastic festival was both a blessing and a curse. Who doesn't love good company, good music and good fun.. but then again after three weeks of hectic I was pleased to be crawling into bed Monday night knowing I had the best part of a week off. 

And like all sensible people, because clearly I am one of those? I am using this week to get back into my blogging groove and today I’m jumping on the hump day confessions band wagon and linking up with Kat over at Vodka and Soda. I’ve loved reading everyone’s confessions each week and, well; it felt like the right time for me to get my confess-on!

This is what my worlds been filled with lately - tubes, plans, screw drivers
and endless cups of tea

I confess… I’ve been struggling to stay on top of blogging the past few weeks; work is just too darn good at getting in the way of fun stuff.

I may have also accidentally blogged twice today… but only because I forgot to post until stupid o’clock last night. #bloggerfail.

I confess… That I’ve spent all day staring at a pile of very muddy washing and eating cake. I’m considering keeping it as a piece of modern art.

Camping - clearly not my strong suit.

I confess… That I spent an hour trying to put up that bright pink, flowery, 2 man tent this weekend. I failed.

A 12 year old girl put it up in 5 minutes. #suchshame.

I confess… there was a fair amount of mold in one corner. Apparently washing/drying tents is a thing people do. Oops!

I am gonna miss this puppy face oh so much!

I confess... I leave for America in 22 days and I’ve not even thought about packing. Or insurance. Or money. Or really any of those grown up stuff.

Oh and I am stumped on the swimwear for camp situation. I mean I understand what modest means, but WHERE ON MOTHER EARTH does one find modest swimwear, shorts, t-shirts that don’t make me look like I’m 900 years olds.

I confess… that this was totally short and sweet, but this girls got to get back to the cake.. and prodding my new artwork to check for spiders.

Czeching it out - Nove Hrady Travel Journal

Wow. My adventures in the Czech Republic feel like a long time ago now. I'm aware that I returned a mere 2 weeks ago, but somehow the last 2 weeks feel more like months and I'm realizing if I don't hurry up and organise my photos and ramblings sometime soon it's going to become forgotten in a blur.

I read somewhere that our generations memory is getting worse and worse. It makes sense though, If we're not sure about something, we have our phones. No need to remember for ourselves.

Does that make my memory redundant? 

I enjoy having memories. Anyway, i'm rambling, speaking of memories. 

Last week I was all excited by Prague, a big, beautiful, bustling city that throws up something new and exciting around every corner. I was so grateful to get that weekend to explore the city, not only was it a total bonus as part of a conference I was attending but it provided the perfect contrast to my time in Nove Hrady the following week.

Nove Hrady, Czech for new castle, was the perfect host for the Newcastles of the World Conference 2014. The conference held every two years allows councillors, businessmen, young people and professionals from cities of Newcastle around the world to meet and share best practices on a range of issues from youth unemployment and opportunities, to culture and tourism.

So without further ado, lets start on Monday morning outside a hotel in the outskirts of Prague. Myself and the other UK delegates were picked up by a bus full of delegates from cities around the world and were driven the 3 hours to Nove Hrady, South Bohemia (one of two in Czech Republic).

We arrived in the quaint town to banners in the street and the most fabulous welcome gala, complete with classical concert, free mimosas, and a room full of new friends.

Tuesday morning was spent getting to know our work groups and the various Newcastles in attendance. We then had the opportunity to explore the town. I say town, we were told it was a town, but with less than 3000 people I found it hard to believe considering I live in a village of over 1000 people at home in England. 

The town is truly beautiful and our evening was spent at the old castle where we were treated to an amazing medieval evening, complete with band, reenactments and a performance tour of the exhibits by students from a local high school.

Sometimes when you're in a castle you just need to pose and pout!

Wednesday saw us getting down to some real work and discussing the issues most important in our areas. Of course we had to then take a few selfies before heading to the Austrian border and the iron curtain museum. Having studied the cold war from a primrily American perspective at college, getting the opportunity to hear about that period from people who grew up just miles from the border was fascinating and a highlight of my trip.

As Nove Hrady was practically walking distance from Austria we spent Thursday afternoon climbing Mandelstein hill. Given the beautiful sunshine we'd had the day before nobody worried too much about coats for the hike despite the day looking a little over cast. BIG MISTAKE - minutes after reaching the summit we were faced with torrential rain and halestones. 7 umbrellas between 80 people does not work well and pretty soon I'd decided to just suck it up and accept the wet walk back to the coach.

The rain kindly stuck around for Friday, but with a full day planned in Cesky Krumlov - a UNESCO world heritage site - I was not going to let it get me down. Despite the over cast sky the town lived up to its reputation as a page straight out of a fairytale. Gorgeous winding streets and a beautiful castle, surrounded by a softly flowing river and filled with hundreds of tiny toy stores selling hand crafted goods. 

On the final day we were taken to the Nove Hrady in Eastern Bohemia on our return to Prague. If I had found our host town for the week small, this village was tiny. Although perhaps, even more beautiful. The majority of the surrounding land belongs to the castle's owners and they aim to maintain it as a site of natural beauty.

And to top it off, the grounds of the castle had the largest bike museum in the Czech Republic. A random but true fact, so... lets leave it here with a few photos of me and some bikes.