Super quick beef stew - slow cooker recipe

I think slow cooker 101 is a hearty beef stew and that is what I have cooking in mine tonight. I am still not 100% comfortable with the idea of leaving the cooker on while I'm at work so I tend to cook my meals overnight and wake up to the smell of yummy food.

For tomorrow's dinner I decided to make a quick stew, typically I only realized that I didn't have any potatoes once I started so I think I'll drain out most of the water and serve it with rice. Here are the ingredients:

Yes, you may have spotted a sneaky plate of profiteroles in the background, those were swiftly eaten and definitely didn't end up in my stew! 

First off I browned the meat with the chopped onion, salt, pepper, tobasco and Worcestershire sauce. I don't always brown the meat, if I'm in a rush I won't bother and there isn't much of a taste difference in my opinion but it does mean the meat looks a bit anaemic instead of nice and brown.

I then added a pint of boiling water with a beef oxo cube dissolved in, chopped carrots, chopped leek and have put it on low. I'll keep it on low all night, turn it off in the morning and then maybe whack it on low when I get home until my OH makes it home from work at about 8ish. It doesn't need that long but I like my meat to almost melt when you bite into it.

That is about it for this super quick and easy stew. Can't wait for tomorrow's dinner already! 

I do apologise for the rubbish photos but I don't have a decent camera so these were taken with my phone and it's the best I could manage. 

I shall report back tomorrow on how well dinner went down. 

Until tomorrow,

Claudia

x

  

Slow cooker adventures

Earlier this month I convicted the OH to let me spend £14 on a slow cooker from Asda. I'm gonna admit that I didn't even know what one was until a couple of months ago and as soon as I started reading up on them I knew I had to get one.

Since my last post so long ago life has changed a lot. I became engaged and will be getting married on the 12th of January 2015 (less than a month away, yeek!) and I am currently 25 weeks pregnant with a baby girl. So the appeal of minimal food preparation and washing up combined with coming home to a cooked meal was far too great for me to resist!

So now I have my cooker and will be posting my adventures as well as generally being more active.

Looking forward to reading your comments and please feel free to send recepies for me to try!

Claudia
x

Self Saucing Chocolate Cake - Slow cooker style

Ingredients:

* 100g butter, melted
* 1/2 cup of milk
* 1 egg
* 1 cup of SF flour
* 2tbsp cocoa
*1/2 cup caster sugar

For the sauce:

* 2 tbsp. cocoa
* 1 cup of brown sugar
* 2 cups boiling water

Method:

1. Combine butter, milk and egg
2. Sift flour in separate bowl and mix in sugar
3. Add wet ingredients to flour and sugar mixture and place in slow cooker
4. Combine cocoa and brown sugar together and sprinkle over the top of the mix
5. Pour boiling water over the top and cook in high for 3 1/2 hours.

Busy, busy

There are lots os super exciting things happening at work and that is why I've been rubbish at blogging. We have to weeks to drain an entire tank, re build a wall, re theme it, fill it back up again and stock it.

Eventhough the timing is really tight I'm quite looking forward to it. The shark tank has been bugging me ever seen I started working here and it's finally being done up! Hurray! We've got five species of shark ready to go in and will be getting a couple more soon. I'm going to take daily pictures of the progress and will post them in chronological order... Let's hope it goes well...

Five things to create this week

Why I love my job

I consider myself really lucky to have found a job and career I love at the age of 14. I've been considering writing this post for a while but there's just so much stuff I could say that I kept putting it off. So I've decided to just write this with minimal planning. Probably a bad idea...Anyway here we go. It is probably a good idea to tell you that I started off as an aquarist in the SeaLife centre in Bray then moved onto to working as a host in the education team at the National Marine Aquarium and now I'm back as an aquarist in the Blue Reef aquarium in Portsmouth.

1. Variety 

Just chilling on the barbican in Plymouth with a stuffed turtle. This is while working for the National Marine Aquarium

One of the best things about working in an aquarium is all the different jobs involved. When people ask me what being an aquarist actually is I tend to say I just feed fish but in reality there is so much more to do. Not only do we have to keep the animals healthy and happy but we also have to cater to the visitors, get involved in various projects, keep the aquarium sparkley and up to date and deal with any emergencies that may occur.

This happened while I worked for SeaLife. Some sharks eggs hatched in the tank and off I went into a very cold pool to retrieve tiny tiny babies!



2. Lots of learning

Before I started at Blue Reef I didn't know anything about frogs apart from the fact that their legs are tasty...

There are 226000 marine species named in the World Registry of Marine Animals and counting. It is also estimated that there are between 0.7 and 2.2 million marine species and we have only discovered one third of what we think lies underneath the waves. The biodiversity in our planet is staggering. Obviously we are not expected to be able to identify every species of fish, reptile, amphibian and marine mammal but we are expected to have a good understanding on all of these and be able to make educated guesses. So we are forever learning and we all have our specialties and favorites. 

Not only have I learned lots and lots about life in our planet through my job but I have also learned lots of hand-on skills. I've been taught how to control audiences, how to teach snorkeling, how to provide the best customer service possible and how to administer treatments and carry out post mortems. 

Looking good in our wet suits. Snorkel instructor training with the National Marine Aquarium

3. Room to specialize 

A baby tub gunard - a native species of fish

Because there is so much variety in the sea there are lots of areas an aquarist can specialize in and every single one of us has got our favorites. Since working in Plymouth I have been really interested in native species. It is amazing how weird and wonderful the animals that live around our rockpools, marinas and beaches as well as the open water actually are.

Recently I have been concentrating my energy on breeding jellyfish. This can be quite a fiddly and difficult process and nothing makes you feel better about yourself than being able to create a whole set up and get the result you wanted.

Baby moon jellyfish from my first batch of babies



4. Lots of excitement

When you work in an aquarium you get excited at just about anything. It could be something as big as a delivery of livestock or as small as finding a new screwdriver or a coulored cable tie. The good thing is that everyday you are guaranteed to find something that will make you happy.

A sea urchin that appears to be smoking...

And if you don't find something that makes you happy you will most definitely find something that will scare you... 

This guy was just on the floor in a back of house area...



5. We all get along

You have to be a special kind of person to work in an aquarium. I know it sound cheesy but every where I've worked we all just get along. We all understand each other and get excited about the same things. We are still very different people with different opinions and age ranges but ultimately we all understand and accept each other.

I think that for now five reasons is more than enough. Don't get me wrong, there are also negative things about my job. We all have to be able to deal with death, complaints, lots of work and to be honest it's not the highest paid job in the industry...there are days where I wish I had a Monday - Friday, 9-5 job but then I remember all of the above and remind myself that even though I'm only 20, I can't imagine myself working anywhere else.

So I'm going to stop with all my soppiness but I hope you've liked having a read of what I think of my job. As a reward for reading this far here's a picture of a cute otter.

*As for the statistics mentioned above I do understand that there are various figures out there regarding numbers. I just used the ones I normally tell visitors.

P.S I apologize for the bad formatting but blogger won't let me fix the damn thing...I'm going to read up on HTML formatting and start doing it that way. Until then I apologize!

Food love

I tend to complain quite a lot about the way British people cook and how different it is from the food I grew up eating. However I recently have become obsessed with baked potatoes. Weird I know, but they are my new favourite food. Yesterday I found the best baked potato in the world.

On commercial road in Portsmouth you'll find a stall with a massive oven manned by a really friendly lady. This lady is a goddess when it comes to baked potatoes. For £3.50 you can either get a giant baked potatoe rammed full of your choice of topping or half full with two different toppings. I can't quite remember what all the topping were but I got a tuna and sweet corn jacket and Dnny got a veggie chili and cheese one.

These were by far the best baked potatoes I've ever had. I'm quite glad I don't work anywhere near commercial road otherwise I would probably be having these for lunch everyday. We had a little chat with the owner of the stall. Turn out she has been doing this for over 20 years. Explains how she has perfected the art of the baked potato. 

So if you are ever around this are do stop by and have a little taste. You won't be disappointed...