'Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon.'

- Doug Larson

Very true. Who doesn't love bacon? I've known bacon to turn vegetarians to the most insatiable carnivores (it even happened to myself!).

And who are bacon's best friends? Cheese and eggs.

And we can't forget about bacon's fiesty Spanish cousin, chorizo.

These are ingredients that I've decided to get creative with this week. If I have gained any followers thus far, I'd like to apologise for not updating as of late! I've been a little distracted.

My first foodie photo was is egg and cheddar baked in a lip-smackingly good bacon cup. Bacon cup, oh yes, a cup made of bacon. I thought I'd surprise the boyfriend with a special breakfast on his day off and I'd been meaning to try this for a while!

This is ridiculously simple to do and it produces amazing results.

• Fry up some bacon until it is just cooked, not crispy. I used smoked back bacon because it's my favourite but I'm fairly sure any bacon would be perfect. (Bacon is perfect.)
• Grease and line a muffin tin with the bacon.
• Crack in an egg per cup, and season with whatever you fancy. Take it easy on the salt though, as bacon tends to be a bit salty.
• Sprinkle with a cheese of your choice. A mature cheddar is my favourite.
• And bake it on gas mark 6 (200 degrees) for 15 minutes.
• Let it cool down a little bit so you can coax them out of the tin. I would love to see these come out of a silicone muffin tin, but they'd just pop out and you wouldn't have to faff about like I did! I also crisped up a lil' bit more bacon and made some tasty pork-sprinkles.
• Enjoy!

I tried it again this week, but substituted the bacon for chorizo. The presentation was slightly off-key but it was still tasty. Same recipe, just use chorizo and not bacon.

This is love.

Breakfast for dinner.

Baked eggs are your friend. 5 minutes prep, stick them in the oven and do your thing for 15 minutes. If you have a speedy morning routine, this could be a great way to start the day and get some protein to help you feel fuller until lunch time.

Quick and easy is definitely what is needed right now, I've been studying, working, cooking and cleaning for the world's biggest 5 year old (Just kidding, love you, Sam) and volunteering (where I made my first ever brownies, from scratch. I impressed myself!)

Asian inspired prawns and noodles definitely ticked both the quick and easy boxes.

• 1 cup of water
• 1/2 cup of soy sauce
• 1/4 cup of brown sugar
• small piece of ginger
• pinch of red chilli flakes
• pinch of granulated garlic

Put these in a saucepan and bring to the boil, let simmer for as long as you want/need. Of course, it will thicken over time to play this to your liking and change the consistency how you please.

Fry up some frozen stir fry veg, for around 8 minutes on a low heat, chuck in some straight to wok noodles and increase the heat for 2 minutes, add some prawns until warmed through and stir in your Asian-style sauce. Freezer/store cupboard ingredients might be cheating but fresh vegetables are completely impractical and well I don't think I'll ever attempt to make noodles in my life.

So much better than those sauce pouches from your local supermarket, a lot cheaper and you get the satisfaction from doing it yourself!

Serve and eat. Top marks if you use chopsticks!

Food, Friends and Frantic Essay Writing

If you want to spend some quality time with a friend, then cook for them. Wow them. Talk about your skills, your recipes and then any gossip you've missed.
I'd invited a friend and her husband (husband, how grown up does that sound?) for dinner with me and Sam and served up a simple red pepper and roasted tomato soup with ciabatta loaves, pork and chorizo sausages and a side salad.
My partner in crime and assistant chef, Sam, tackled the sausages and if I'm perfectly honest (with absolutely zero bias) they were the best part of the meal. The chorizo gave the pork mince a whole new dimension and turned sausage meat into a slightly spicy experience which warmed up the meal and seemed to waltz in your mouth (as oppose to mosh in your mouth, which sometimes happens when you attempt to heat things up a little too much!)
Ciabatta soaked up a simple soup that hit the spot. I firmly believe that most of the time, simplicity is key.
It was so easy, all I did was roast some red peppers in the oven with a splash of olive oil for an hour. When they were finished, I popped the kettle on, sweated an onion, 3 garlic cloves and chopped up my red peppers and threw those in there too. Then, I poured my boiling water on the veg just until it was covered and (asked Sam) sprinkled a vegetable stock cube in to the pan. I brought it to the boil, let it simmer for 15 minutes and then whizzed it with my stick blender.
Red peppers are naturally very sweet which married perfectly with the acid tomato and warm chorizo. Altogether, it was a bit more of a rave on my mouth, buzzin'.
I made sure that I made more than what was needed so I could throw some in the freezer for when I was feeling lazy/pressed for time. Which I anticipate will be quite often as uni is back in full swing. It's going to be a tough term so it was lovely to just chill out over a bowl of soup before all the hard work begins.
It's not all doom and gloom though, Sam had last weekend off which somehow turned into some form of Asian-fusion weekend. Starting off with another great Wagamamas lunch on Saturday and then making our very own katsu curry and sushi rolls on the Sunday, once again, Sam shined and made some pretty perfect looking sushi rolls. Asian food is tasty and pretty damn healthy, I should attempt it more often but I think I'll stick to simple salad and soup for a while.