Hello and welcome back again.
This post is about a few of my favourite recipes we have made over the last month.
First up we decided to buy less chicken fillets and instead buy whole chickens or chicken drumsticks as they are so much better value for money, and we find they are more tasty. Only drawback is they take longer to cook.
This roast chicken was a recipe from Kirstie’s Real Kitchen.
I really love lemon with a roast chicken.
We had boiled carrots, mashed potatoes and some steamed broccoli to accompany this juicy chicken.
Now this was a good recipe! A pot roasted chicken from Annabel Karmel’s latest book.
We were going to a birthday party on a Sunday afternoon, we only had an hour from getting in from church to when we needed to leave again.
This did not take long to prep, and then went into the oven and was waiting for us when we arrived home. Everything is in the pot so no need to start boiling potatoes either. 
Above is a chicken tray bake from the Hairy Dieters book which I bought a few years ago. It tasted lovely, there is paprika and oregano on the meat, but the potatoes were NOT cooked at the end of the cooking time. Paul fried his off in a pan, I just ate them anyway! But we put the rest of it back into the oven… and then found it again 4 days later! Oops!
The over on the right is a chicken stir fry with satay sauce, the recipe for which is from Fearne Cotton’s first recipe book. Its very quick to make, and is great as a dipping sauce and used for chicken or prawns.
I like to marinate the chicken breast in soy sauce, garlic, ginger, fish sauce, chilli and lemongrass before I cook it. I used a bag of stir fry mix and added a red pepper and some egg noodles. The satay sauce I then heated and added over the top for anyone who wanted.
So this was the main event on Christmas Day! Mrs Turkey, she was delicious. We had 5 adults, 3 children and a baby to feed. My Mam bought this turkey breast joint from her local butcher. Then it was my job to cook it. I did this on Christmas Eve as I didn’t want to be really stressed on Christmas Day with everything else. My sister in law gave me her stuffing recipe which is pork sausage, breadcrumbs, oatmeal, onions and dried apricots. I sliced into the breast, put in the stuffing and then used these cocktail sticks to hold it back together. Covered the top in bacon and tied with string – note: I need to buy proper kitchen string! I seasoned it and then basted it regularly during cooking.
Not to blow my own trumpet too much, but it tasted so good and stayed moist for the rest of the time we used it as left overs.
Is it even really Christmas if you didn’t have turkey curry?
This one was garlic, ginger and onions fried, stir in curry powder. Then I added a tin of tomatoes and seasoned. I would have added chilli too but I wanted the children to eat it without moaning!
A table spoon of mango chutney and handful of chopped dried apricots, add the turkey and heat through. I then added natural yogurt. Served with some rice and naan breads (which I did not make myself!)
The week before the Christmas holidays were due to start, a horrible sickness bug struck down a few communities around us. We decided to keep our children off school for the last few days. I wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do but the night before we kept them off one of them was up and down all night with a horrible cough too. We enjoyed our three extra days of Christmas holidays and watched films, baked ginger bread men and made a chocolate Santa’s sleigh using lots of chocolate biscuits!
I hope these ideas have been a bit of inspiration for you.
Thank you again for reading!
Hazel Ann Xx
ThisCroftingLife 