Easy Festive Food

… for a Relaxing Christmas

I’ve just published this eBooklet on Amazon.  As I say in the intro, Christmas catering can be time consuming, tiring and a bit stressy, so I thought I’d offer some suggestions to make it quicker, easier, more relaxed and perhaps more impressive! This eBooklet contains a collection of quick ideas and recipesI have used over the years to impress guests and customers without knackering myself!

The booklet contains over 20 (it’s 24 actually but it seems people always say over something!) recipes which can either be made well in advance or are almost instant.  They are …

~   Mulled Wine Syrup – really useful!

~   Moose Milk

~   Simple Cook from Frozen Cheese Straws

~   Lemon & Spice Marinated Shrimp

~   Smoked Trout Rillettes

~   The Quickest, Easiest, Smoothest and Richest Chicken Liver Pâté I know

~   Roasted Garlic with a Creamy Goat Cheese Concoction

~   Fruity Red Cabbage

~   Carrot & Parsnip Purée
~   Roast Butternut Wedges

~   Luxurious Bread Sauce

~   Simple Homemade Stuffing Recipe

~   Chunky Homemade Cranberry Sauce

~   Rather Special Mulled Cranberry Sauce

~   Little Pots of Chocky Ganache 

~   Caramel Cream

~   Affogato

~   Stock with a bonus!

~   Turkey Soup – inevitably!
~   Brandy Butter

~   Christmas Pud Pudding

~   The Best Christmas Pudding Ice Cream

~   Sticky Stollen Thing

~   Christmas Tiffin

In addition are guidelines for the turkey, roast potatoes etc. and lots of ideas and suggestions that don’t quite qualify as recipes but are worth knowing.

The book is sub-divided into two sections; food for the “Big Dinner” and “Boxing Day and Thereafter” (ie. what to do with the leftovers; my favourite ingredients.)

It’s only 75p and you can have a Look Inside first here.

Yule be glad you read it!

Paper.li ~ useful-ish and fun!

As you may or may not know I "publish" or "host" or whatever it is a couple of Paper.li newsletters;

Click here

Click here

Now that you have clicked on the above two links I trust you will click "share" or "subscribe" or, ideally, both! 

The reason I started these two papers was, of course, in an attempt to promote my writing and my blogs but they do seem rather random and even reading my own issues I have learned a lot!  In fact in one of my earliest editions of Lush Ice Cream News was this headline ...

Cat Snores Into Glass Of Orange Juice For No Apparent Reason 

... and it doesn't get much better than that, does it?

If you are unfamiliar with Paper.li then, briefly, what happens is you set up a newspaper thingy concerning your area of interest and then you designate various websites, twits and facebook pages plus some appropriate keywords and every day or week, your decision, Paper.li collect together relevant items into a new edition of your paper, email it to subscribers and mention it on Twitter.

This method means that unless you are very stringent with sources and keywords some interesting stuff crops up.  I subscribe to a number of Paper.li papers:

~   The @FoodMeditations Daily 

~   The Food Stuff Extra Daily   This recently linked to a version of Van Morrison's "Into the Mystic".  Well what a treat! I love Mr. Morrison and, I kid you not, I once had dinner with him, just him and me, at his invitation!  Anyhoo my point is - what has this to do with food? 

~   The British Cheese Daily  Often very interesting but frequently not about cheese.

~   The FoodiesSW Daily - don't tell Olive Magazine, "foodie" is one of their banned words!  They recently linked to a story about this rather attractive older gentleman who at 50 still gets asked if he's old enough to buy booze.  Weak link but pleasant!

~   On #writing 

~   The Click Cornwall Daily  - because I live here.

~   The Caribbean Travel Daily - because I used to live there

You get the picture, I'm often tempted to sign up for more but reading them takes up so much time every day; they can be fascinating.

And why am I telling you this?  Well 3 reasons ...

1.   Another attempt to promote myself, I have no shame.

2.   In case you have not heard of this way of getting your work out there.

3.   So that you too can waste hours reading all sorts useful info, plus irrelevant but interesting stuff.

If you fancy having a go click here. 

I have a favour to ask of you!  

FOOD - the South Wests favourite food magazine have just launched their third Food Reader awards. Please go to my foodie blog Sudden Lunch and click this logo in the sidebar to nominate your favourite chefs, restaurant, retailers and more in the South West. May I suggest Sudden Lunch as the Best Food Blogger?  

After that browse their site, you won't be disappointed.

Thank you,

Suzy 

Jamie Oliver vs Me!

I have cooked imaginatively with leftovers both personally and in my role as a professional chef, my entire, and now fairly lengthy, adult life.  I have not only cooked this way to save money (although it really, really helps!) and because in some places I have worked food supplies have been tricky but also because that's just the way I am.  I like nothing more than to be confronted with a mix of foodie bits and pieces and make something cohesive and delicious from them.  To be fair I do not claim, as Jamie does, to "shop smart" although I am a bugger for the bargains but, as I say in the intro to my book ...

"The Leftovers Handbook is about getting the utmost pleasure out of every single scrap of food available to you.  The waste it tackles is not so much about money or resources but of good eating opportunities.  As a bonus, of course, this will save you money and may even help the planet."

And it is my book that I want to have a bit of a moan about today!  I worked long and hard on this and I am very proud of it.  The recipes and ideas are my own, often cooked by me in less than perfect conditions (in a small and crappy caravan and on boats both at sea and at anchor for instance) so I am pretty sure they will work in bedsits and other cramped conditions. 

I have been very excited to see how my book is doing (rather hampered by some problems with BT - see here) and now I feel I might be upstaged by someone with less aptitude for this particular task, offering less useful information (but lots of pretty pictures) just because he is a "name".  I am not trying to diss the guy in any way but surely frugality is not his area of expertise. 

Below are some quick comparisons I have cobbled together, if I think of any more I'm sure I'll mention them later! As I say I do keep an eye on how things are going Amazon-wise and see that today my book is ranking at # 7,897 with 13 five star reviews and no others and Jamie's is at # 1 with 15 five stars, 3 four stars, 3 three stars and 4 rather cross 1 stars.  

So if it's not price or amount of info or qualifications or customer satisfaction that makes celebrity chefs' books so popular then it must be ...?  What is a girl to do?

o              120 Recipes o              The book covers 5 main groups; Vegetables, Chicken, Fish, Beef, Pork and Lamb but seemingly no desserts, salads, breakfast dishes etc.  o              Written by a wealthy TV chef (although I do realise he may have started out poor!  I know I certainly did.) o              Cover price £26.00 - reduced to £19.00 on Amazon o              Lots of photos

o              Over 500 Recipes + tips, ideas, cooks treats, handy hints, (jokes, quotes and other interesting stuff) and including 30+ flexible Basic Recipes. o              My book deals with over 450 possible leftovers from something as normal as bread (18+ ideas and recipes) through all the different fruits, veggies, meats, fish, nuts, seeds, beans, rice, cheese etc. to obscure bits and pieces such as chicken fat and pineapple cores and even things as unlikely as chocolate and booze - I've tried to cover the lot.   o              Written by a widely travelled real chef who is, incidentally nowhere near flush with money (might be all that travelling!)  o              Cover price £12.99 reduced to £7.16  on Amazon and £6.80 for the Kindle version  o              No photos!!  This is because the publishers felt that there is so much information in the book there is not room for pictures without putting the price up considerably. In a way, however, I am pleased about this.  Pictures of food arranged by a stylist and photographed by a professional can be more daunting than useful!   My photos, however, of food cooked by me, arranged by me, photographed by me and then eaten by me can be seen on Pinterest Leftovers ~ my favourite Ingredients!

I never realised how important Twitter etc. are!

I first started using Facebook when a friend of mine got married in Perth, Australia and posted her wedding pics on FB (hello Telly Tubby x) and since then it has been a very useful way to keep in touch with far away friends that we miss in the Caribbean .

When Twitter first started at first it sounded a bit silly to me and you know it, or some of the Tweople who use it, are Very Silly Indeed or worse.  Nevertheless I joined up, started tweeting and have a little over 1,000 followers.  Sometimes it is quite fun and sometimes useful and informative. 

I find Pinterest a great way to store photos, both mine and other people's, in the cloud - a kind of online scrapbook and also a way to publicise my work. My book "The Leftovers Handbook", the publishers felt, is so full of information there is no room for photos so I put them on Pinterest just in case anyone is interested.

Stumble upon can be a great timewaster and I used to get stuck on it for hours, in fact one day a very spooky thing happened to me on Stumble Upon see here LINK

Blogging has become a regular and enjoyable habit for me and I am trying to keep it going during this troublesome time

I did not realise, however, until my recent (and continuing)BT Fiasco quite how useful a marketing tool networking is.

Since publication sales of my book The Leftovers Handbook have generally hovered in Amazon's rank at about 30,000 (the lower the number the better the sales) give or take a few thousand until BT disconnected our phone line.  See how sales immediately dropped soon after I stopped networking and then how they shot up again after I spent a day online at my friend's house.

I thought this might just be a fluke but it happened again the following week rather more spectacularly ...

... and I fully expect the same thing to happen in the next few days (fingers etc. crossed).

Of course when I am fully operational I don't just promote my own books and blogs I comment on other people's thoughts and ideas, make suggestions, joke, retweet things I find interesting, have conversations and generally post things I think funny haha or funny peculiar.  This is all very well but sometimes I've been doing it for hours and have to remind myself to get on with "important" things and stop playing!

Hopefully I shall be back online on or around or just after the weekend, perhaps, and can get back to my tweeting and in the meantime here is a bit of heartfelt networking I saw from the bus recently ...

No. 1 Best Seller?

This is a question that I have often pondered even before the days of ebooks, Amazon and self publishing.  Often I would see books advertised at "The No. 1 Bestseller" even though I who read avidly and spent far too long in bookshops and libraries had never heard of it.  How, I pondered, was best seller status established?

Now, with a couple of ebooks and a "real" book published this question is no longer purely academic for me - what does No. 1 Bestseller mean?  Does anyone know?  In reading and talking to people in the publishing and self publishing industry I understand that choosing one's category is a good way to reach the top of certain piles.  Incidentally and oddly the categories my books are actually listed under on Amazon are not quite what I selected but close enough. 

A couple of days ago my ice cream book was rated on Amazon thus ... 

#1 in Kindle Store > Books > Nonfiction > Food & Drink > Cooking by Ingredient > Cheese & Dairy

#38 in Kindle Store > Books > Nonfiction > Food & Drink > Desserts

#69 in Books > Food & Drink > Meals & Menus > Cheese & Dairy

And what I want to know is - in accordance with the first line above can I now advertise it as a best seller?  It would feel a bit cheeky but if that's way things are done I don't want to miss out!  What do you think?

In other news ...

Here's a picture of Rum Roasted Banana Ice Cream from the aforementioned book ...

... and rumour has it that my real book, "The Leftovers Handbook" has been favourably mentioned in Great British Food Magazine, if I find it I'll report back. 

I've just realised, I don't think the recipe for the crispy bananas in this picture is in Lush Ice Cream without a Machine but no worries - here it is.

Banana Brittle

30g butter

½ tbsp vegetable oil

3 tbsp caster sugar

1 possibly leftover banana

~   Preheat the oven to 350ºF/180ºC/160°C fan/gas 4.

~   Melt together the butter and oil and brush evenly onto a baking tray.

~   Sprinkle with half of the sugar.

~   Thinly slice the banana and arrange on the tray in a single layer.

~   Sprinkle with the rest of the sugar.

~   Pop in the oven and keep an eye on them.  Every time a slice is golden and looks crisp (it won't actually be crisp till it cools) remove it from the oven and set aside.

~   Keep cooking till the plate is full and the tray is empty which takes about half an hour.

~   Cool the brittle till crisp - it will keep in an airtight container for up to 5 days but you will probably have eaten it by then.

Summer Special Offer ~ "Lush Ice Cream without a Machine"

I didn't make a big thing of this in my last post so I'd just like to mention it again.  As the weather was so good for a couple of days last week (and rumour has it the sun will be out next Friday - yippee!) I have reduced the price of my ebook "Lush Ice Cream without a Machine" to £1.98 which is about the same price as a carton of ice cream and much, much cheaper than an ice cream machine. You'd better see here and get a copy so you'll be ready next Friday!

This method makes rich creamy dairy ice cream quickly and easily, I promise you, and the reason I wrote the book is that it's so simple and foolproof that I felt it would be a shame not to pass it on. 

Here is easy peasy Clotted Cream Ice Cream, one of the first recipes in the book, as part of a twist on traditional Cornish Cream Tea. 

Incidentally and regardless of the above photo I hope everyone now realises that the Cornish have always been right - it is jam on first, topped with cream.  See here for the maths!  

Showing off a bit - sorry!

Look what I saw in Wadebridge.

I know for most people this is not very exciting but this is the first time I have seen my book in a real, live book shop and, not only that, in the window and, not only that, above Rick Stein!!!

Tomorrow I am giving a talk to a local craft group on getting published.  This is the first time I'll have done this too but presume that if I just chat along giving useful info I've picked up together with some jokes and anecdotes I should be OK and they have promised coffee and biscuits.

One of the things I am going to stress is how much work the publicity is, I feel I could sit here on my computer till the end of time pitching magazines, blogging, tweeting, commenting on Linkedin, posting on Facebook, emailing and so on and so forth. I don't mind at all, in fact I enjoy it but at the same time it is a) frustrating (magazines take ages to reply if at all) and b) there is so much to do I keep forgetting what I am doing.  Serves me right for being so old, I suppose.

And for visitors to Cornwall ... 

My Neverending List!

I have always been prone to list making, I even enjoy it - especially the crossing off bit when a thing is done. I like that bit so much that if I do something not on the list I add it and then cross it off.  Sad or what!

Now, with my "writing career" "taking off" I have so many things to do I have a running list which despite all my delicious crossing off never seems to get any shorter.  I use iDailyDiary a very simple and free program which means I can copy and paste my unaccomplished tasks to the next day.

 

I do highlight urgent stuff in red and that usually gets done but some things just get transferred over and over again and then when I do look down the list I can no longer remember what I was talking about, eg.

·         "Twang it into a tree" - this is a little catch phrase we use at home but why did I add it to my list?  Twang what?

·         "Wombles - I mean it this time" (I did eventually remember what this was and wrote this blog post as a result but I'm still not sure why I put "I mean it this time"!)  

·         "Laupahoehoe Position" - after some stroky chin pondering this too resulted in a blog post. 

·         "Senegalese" - no idea.

Click here!

For a while I have had "Update Lush Description" in red on the list, waiting to be accomplished and yesterday I got round to it.  This is as a direct result of reading an excellent little eBook on my Kindle; "Unlimited Books Sales Machine" which makes some really good points and from which I realised that I could probably do better than just repeating the start of the book when describing my "Lush Ice Cream without a Machine" on Amazon, it does after all have a Look Inside option.  Have a look and see what you think of the new improved description here. 

Whilst I was making changes and also, as the sun was out (note the past tense!) I decided to do a Summer Special and reduced the price by 12%!  I put at the end of the description "get it whilst the sun's out!" which I wrote in a burst of enthusiasm but there's nothing like being prepared and anyway ice cream is good at any time.  Here's one I made earlier ...

Maple Syrup Ice Cream with Sugared Walnuts

Book Reviews and Naked Men!

Yesterday I excitedly bought The Sun because The Leftovers Handbook was recommended in it; here is the write up - rather good, I feel. 

Having photographed it and grinned and shown it to people I flicked through the rest of the newspaper and lo and behold another nice surprise! 

Anyway, back to the book ...

I have received other good reviews too from The Independent, Saga and more - to see them click on The Leftovers Handbook tab at the top of the page. I'm adding more reviews as they occur.

3 Pieces of News

1.  219 Cooking Tips & Techniques you might find useful!

Today, tomorrow and Friday my little eBooklet is free on Amazon - so go here if you are in the UK or here in the US and get it.  If you are a dab hand in the kitchen it may not be much of an eye opener but it might have a few ideas you haven't thought of and if you are just starting out in the kitchen I think it might be helpful.

2.  Paper.li

I have, much to my own surprise, suddenly created a paper.li newspaper which I have entitled Leftovers.li.  This means that once a week (at the moment - I might up the frequency) friendly twits will receive via Twitter an invitation to read said "newspaper" which will comprise any articles pertaining to the subject of food in general and leftovers in particular.  I shall be reading myself because in addition to articles I add myself having set certain parameters paper.li gather more stuff from around the net. .If you fancy reading it follow me on Twitter @suddenlunch.

(If it works I think I'll do another one about ice cream soon!)

3.  The Leftovers Handbook

In my last post I apologised on behalf of Amazon and myself for the delay in delivery of this book; it was published on 21^st March but the first copies were not received until 19^th or so April. Apparently there was a hold up at the distributor which has now been sorted so I hope if you ordered a copy you've got it now.  If you didn't Amazon have a deal on at the moment offering it for £8.31 instead of the cover price of £12.99 so now might be the time to go for it!

Apologies from me and from Amazon

There's seems to have been a fair bit of confusion about my Leftovers Handbook - Amazon say the publication date was 21st March and yet anyone who has ordered a copy still hasn't received it.  I am so sorry about this - please bear with me, or rather with Amazon.  They have, however, also apologised thus ...

We regret to inform you that the following items have been delayed as we are still awaiting stock from our suppliers : 
Suzy Bowler "The Leftovers Handbook: A-Z of Every Ingredient In Your Kitchen with Inspirational Ideas For Using Them" Estimated arrival date: April 22 2013 - April 23 2013
One of Amazon's aims is to provide a convenient and efficient service; in this case, we have fallen short. Please accept our sincere apologies.
You haven't been charged for this item yet as we don't debit money from your payment card until just before your items are dispatched. We'll send you a confirmation e-mail when your items are dispatched to confirm the date, contents and method of delivery.

Anyhoo, there you have it - sorry again.

Suzy Bowler

PS. At least I've got mine and as you can see I'm playing with the filters on my photo programme!

A bit surprised by the Writer and Artists Yearbook

I have been eagerly awaiting my 2013 Artists and Writers' Yearbook so that I could research magazines I'd like to pitch now I have the strength of a published book behind me.  I have already written several articles for Vegetarian Living but was surprised to see they are not mentioned in the yearbook. 

Soon after that I was surprised to see that Cook Vegetarian was not in there.  My third surprise came when I decided to try Great British Food - not there!  These are surely 3 of the leading UK foodie mags (after Delicious, of course, and some of the Beeb's magazines).  Eat In? - no.  Easy Food - no. Good to Know Recipes? - um, no. 

That's about it for food magazines, I haven't fully researched other subject matters but I would have thought the above magazines would all have been bigger sellers than, say, Picture Postcard Monthly or Music Teacher.  Not that I in any way mean to disparage these two magazine, rather I wish to parage the food magazine mentioned above, if paraging is something one can do.

I'm still glad to get the Yearbook and there's lots of useful info in it (I found my lovely agent Jen Christie of Graham Mae Christie through an earlier edition) but does anyone know how they select which publications to include?  

Thank you,

Suzy Bowler

Published ~ now I'm a real grown up writer!

Today, 29^th March, is quite important to me because I am now a published writer!  My first book (yes, I have another one planned!) "The Leftovers Handbook" is now available in all good bookshops, I hope, I can't wait to meet it.

I have been looking forward to this day in particular for several months and in general, ie. the day I would have a book published, probably since I was a child.  And guess what!  It's the same as every other day. 

I should have been forewarned; in the excellent "Writers and Artists' Yearbook  Guide to Getting Published" by Harry Bingham

it says ...

"When your book is published ~ nothing happens."

Still - exciting times!  I am now pondering the best way to promote said book and a bit iffy about peaking too early it being  Good Friday when everyone is on holiday enjoying the spring weather (hahaha).  I have noticed, incidentally, that I get most hits on my blogs on weekdays during working hours - what a lot of cheeky buggers people are!

So this is a little, tentative self congratulation and I thought I'd take this opportunity to tell you a bit about my book.

As the title says - the book is an "A-Z of every conceivable ingredient in your kitchen with inspirational ideas and recipes for using them" but I can tell you more than that.  Leftovers have always been my favourite ingredient; I am much happier and more creative confronted with a seemingly random collection of ingredients than I ever am when I can choose from pretty well all the food in the World!  It is for this reason that I started my blog Sudden Lunch! which led to my huge friend Ian (he's 6'6") saying "If you know so much about leftovers why don't you write a book".

Each of the ingredients in the A-Z starts with some ideas on food pairing which are useful to see what other leftovers you might be able to use at the same time.  There are some ideas on storage and freezing, the occasional Handy Hint, a list of short suggestions and ideas, some complete recipes and any jokes, anecdotes or quotes I have thought relevant.  Towards the end of the book I give a chapter of basic recipes which can be useful for all sorts of leftovers and the whole book is cross referenced.  I am very proud of it!

Because the book is so stuffed with info there are no photos, just a few basic line drawings at the start of each letter.  I have, however, taken lots and lots of pics as I've cooked and tested ideas and these I will now start publishing on my new Pinterest Board which goes live today.

Soon I hope to install a widget so that my books and other that I recommend can be purchased from Amazon via my sidebar but do fee free to go ahead and get a copy any way you can eg. Amazon in the UK or W. H.Smiths or Amazon in the States.

I do so hope you find my suggestions and recipes useful and, if you do read the book, please can I ask you to give it a review on Amazon - its such as help.

Thank you,

Suzy Bowler

Facebook ~ mostly good but a bit irritating!

I first joined Facebook as a friend of mine had married in Perth, Australia and put her photos on FB, since then it has been a very valuable took to me in two important ways.

1.   I now live some 4,000 miles from many close friends and we can keep in easy contact this way.  Even with friends closer to home this is helpful (the girl next door and I often chat with each other rather than having to go to all that faff of standing up, going outside, going to her house, going in etc!)

2.   Through FB I have found and 'met' some interesting people, had a laugh and learnt a lot.  In fact I would go so far as to thoroughly recommend it both generally speaking and as a way to get yourself 'out there' so to speak.  I am in touch with a number of food bloggers and enjoy swapping ideas and stories with them.

I also like the way a missing person's photo can be shared to help find them, petitions signed to stop cruelty and the way warnings about scams, health problems, travel hitches, etc. are posted. I'm all for things that amuse me, info about my old homes (Tortola and Trebarwith), competitions, lovely photos, interesting events, special offers, Rummikub (within reason ie. not paying for it), long rambling conversations with my friend Debs and keeping an eye on my family's doings!  I like knowing when a man I have never met but is a friend of a friend is doing a happy dance, he especially does these on Friday.

Having said that ...

There are several things that really irritate me, not about the application itself but about some of the stuff that floats about being shared etc.  They are, in no particular order  ...

~   The way cats, and to a lesser extent dogs, 'talk' with such strange accents or speech impediments.  I have lived with and been very friendly with many chaps of both species and never have I found any that talked in that ridiculous fashion.

~   The recent plethora of things saying "Bet you can't think of a film without the letter A in it" (ET?) or "..... a word that starts and ends with N" (nun, noon, nation, noun, neuron and I don't think I've even got started).  What is the point of these?

~   Even worse, the things that show a photo and say "Press Like and you will be amazed at what happens", and nothing ever does".  I know what the point of these is but surely people must have caught on by now.

~   Those things about serious illnesses that you are supposed to share and which say something like "I know one person who will but 78% (or some such number - very scientific) won't.  What is the point of them?  I am not heartless but these surely don't to anything for anyone.  If I am wrong and they do somehow help please let me know and I'll go for it.  

~   I can't think of the word for it but all those sayings that tell you how to think and live.  I'm a great one, me, for the old positive thinking, spiritual beliefs and all that and also am very keen on equality, respect for all life etc. and so on but I don't need to be reminded every few minutes (yes - I know that's quite a high frequency rate for checking into FB!)  Just thought - I think maybe proselytising is the word.

Perhaps I am being more irritable than usual due to still being heavily under the weather, hopefully when I don't have so much time for FB, soon,  I'll be a lot calmer about it.  Sorry!

The Leftovers Handbook

The good news is that my book is still on schedule to be published on 29^th March - just two weeks and one day.  I hope I'll have my strength back enough to jump up and down in excitement.

All the best,

Suzy Bowler