Stuffed Mini Peppers 3 Ways - Bakemas Day 9

I've been meaning to make stuffed peppers for a while now and what better time to shrink them and fill them with some ridiculously easy comfort food style fillings.

10 Minute Jacket Sweet Potatoes with Curried Tuna and Feta

Lazy food is something I’ve been loving recently. I’m very good at putting off eating a meal because I’m so indecisive eventually I just end up hangry and need to eat. Even if you don’t do that I’m sure you’ve been in that situation where you’re too lazy to cook but you want to eat something relatively healthy. At the moment my answer is jacket sweet potatoes, they’re so simple and I can guarantee if you’re making for one you can have this on the table in 10 minutes, or on your lap on the sofa, whatever floats your boat.

Tuna, Cheese & Vegetable Stuffed Sweet Potatoes - Bakemas Day 2

Healthy comfort food is the ultimate goal when it comes to winter, no one wants to eat salad when it's 5 degrees out unless you're the type of person who uses their heating to make it feel like a sauna. I think I hit the nail on the head, all the comfort and every good intention of being healthy, so maybe the cheese is questionable but everybody deserves a little cheese in their life, especially at Christmas. I’m definitely enjoying that I can prepare this for about 10 minutes then bung it in the oven while I do something else because I seem to have accumulated a lot of things to do again, not to mention I haven’t even started sorting out Christmas presents yet. Okay so being unorganised isn’t rare for me but I think I’m getting slightly better, at least I’m feeling the need to be organised even if I’m not accomplishing it. I spent a lot of the first day of December making Christmassy bags for my granddad to give the kiddos (or just spent time thinking about making them), yes it’s getting festive all up in here, although, I say making I’m still only at the painting stage. The painting stage is the best part though; it gives me an excuse to watch Christmas films while I do it which I’m more than happy to do. Seeing as I stayed up till 3am painting I didn’t find time to put up my tree yet which fingers crossed I can get done today if I get to the end of my to do list, which let’s be honest is highly unlikely. I did help my mum put the tree up outside though, well, I lifted it, then stood there feeding her the lights while she put them on, so all around I was really helpful. If you’re lacking time like I am at the moment this is a really simple and incredibly yummy dinner, like I said, 10 minutes of prep and you can bung it in the oven and come back half an hour later. I put the leftover pepper and onions in the dish but you could even add more veggies in the dish to roast so you don’t have to prepare side vegetables.

Macaroni Cheese with Salmon & Cheesy Breadcrumb Topping

Do you want to play spot the difference? Because one of these is made with almond milk. I think my distaste for cow’s milk severely impeded my ability to enjoy macaroni cheese while growing up. A couple of months ago while a friend was staying over she persuaded me to have mac and cheese for dinner, we’d made cheese sauce with almond milk for lasagne before but never for just macaroni cheese. We spent about 20 minutes adding this and that and trying it over and over but I’d say it was a hit because we ended up making it twice in three days. A couple of months later and I think I’ve perfected the art of almond milk mac and cheese and it’s all about the seasoning, do not skip the mustard powder. Okay, you can use any milk for this recipe, it’s not just a recipe for almond milk cheese sauce, I’ve made it for my parents with cow’s milk and I imagine it would work just as well with soy, hazelnut, rice, or whatever other milk you’re into. I would just say that if your milk is sweet you may have to add a little more salt. Salmon macaroni cheese was something my mum made for us as kids and it’s kind of the only time I specifically remember enjoying it at a young age so although this was sort of an excuse for me to eat it, it’s definitely share worthy. So when my macaroni-cheese-obsessed-salmon-hating friend decides to get her butt back in the country I will convert her.

Quinoa, Pea & Cress Salad with Honey, Soy & Mustard Glazed Salmon

This is one of those recipes that sort of came out of nowhere, I didn’t really think about it and the ingredients were determined by things I was craving at the time i.e. glazed salmon and cress and laziness, yes I did just say laziness.
Let me explain; I was in John Lewis with my mum having our free cake and coffee for the month and the only other food I’d eaten that day was muffin pie (that’s a whole other story that maybe I’ll tell one day), I was drinking my coffee and eating a scone, how English of me, and just started craving a “salad with salmon” which is a little ambiguous to say the least. After trips around two different supermarkets due to the fact that I FORGOT TO BUY SALMON, what an idiot, although maybe it was worth it because the lovely guy at the fish counter gave me half a side of salmon half price so I ended up making this salad twice because it was just so tasty. By the time we got home is was about 6, knowing I had to cook quinoa and salmon I didn’t want to cook or prep anything else. Peas replaced pulses and the rest was mostly dressing and seasoning, the most work I had to do was chop up a spring onion and go out in the garden to cut the herbs. I can’t tell you how amazing this tastes though, all the flavours combine perfectly, at the time I was going through one of those phases where even the tastiest food seemed a little bland to me and it got me out of my food funk so this is definitely a winner and will probably become my go to healthy nutritious salad.