I was contacted and asked if I'd like to review the Global Gourmet Hot Dog Make. I of course said yes and was so excited to give it a try! The kids love hot dogs and this machine sounded perfect! It didn't fail to disappoint.


The Global Gourmet Hot Dog Maker is machine that cooks hotdogs. You can add up to four frankfurt style hot dogs either fresh or frozen as well as other regular sausages. I chose to use fresh hot dogs from a jar as a nice treat for the kids!


At the top of the machine are four stainless steel rollers (with a heater inside) which you can place to the hot dogs on. The rollers rotate slowly which ensures that the hot dogs are cooked thoroughly. The lid on the top of the hot dog maker is to be left open whilst the sausages are cooking. Two stays also provided which is also handy as the tray that slots underneath the rollers collects the fat whilst the sausages are cooking. When the machine is in use the lights light up to let me know that the machine is indeed in use, which is also handy.


I also used the timer on the hotdog maker, setting it at fifteen minutes. When the time is up, it simply makes a loud ping noise The hotdog maker also has a mini oven which I used to heat up the fresh french stick, I turned the rolls over after a few minutes so that they didn't burn and so that they heated up evenly on each side.
Another tray is also provided for the rolls to rest on whilst in the oven, my rolls where a little bit long though. I'll use smaller rolls next time, hehe.


As always though, I was cautious when handling hot food and machinery as the hotdog maker does get quite hot!

Overall I found the Global Gourmet Hot Dog Maker really easy to use. It's very convenient for busy households and who doesn't like hot dogs?! I really like the fact you can use regular hotdogs or sausages and the timer is a lovely touch! You can purchase this hot dog maker on amazon and is currently on sale priced at £16.95. 

THE GIVEAWAY!!! 

I've kindly been given a hotdog maker to giveaway to one of my lucky readers. You can enter here: Win an American Hot Dog Maker
 
The giveaway can be entered via the above link which will direct to the gleam app and is open to UK residents only. Entrants must be aged 18 and over. The giveaway ends on 23rd February and the winner will be picked at random via the gleam app. 


Sarah xXx


I received the product for the purpose of this review. All opinions are my own, honest, personal opinions, I was not paid for this post.

Go Ahead! Sent us a lovely box of snacks to review.
Go Ahead! Have a wide range of delicious and satisfying snacks that are carefully portioned so you can snack the smart way! Go Ahead! snacks are have a wide range of healthy snacks. We were sent the Yogurt Breaks, Crispy Slices.Fruity Breaks and Cookie Bites.


First of all we tried the yogurt breaks which are light and crispy biscuits with a fruit flavoured filling and are topped with a yummy yogurty topping. The banana yogurt breaks have a banana falvour filling, they're ever so light and so delicious, as are the cherry ones! The cherry yogurt breaks we found tasted really fruity! Each box contains 5 individual packs and each pack contains two slices. They're a really good size and make the perfect healthier snack!



Ellie was all "I really love the cherry yogurt snacks best but they're all so yummy"
The yogurt breaks come in five flavours. The flavours include - Raspberry, Cherry, Tropical, Banana and Forest fruit. Each yogurt break contains only 73 calories! That's pretty impressive for such a yummy snack! I personally really like the banana flavour but they're all very tasty. Charlie said that he thought the top tasted perfectly like yogurt and is quite creamy. Yum!


The kids couldn't wait to try the crispy slices! The crispy slices are light,thin and very crispy biscuits that contain a fruit flavoured filling. They are very crispy indeed and quite sweet. I really enjoyed the orange flavour but the apple ones are yummy, too! All three kids really liked them but I think these were probably Harry's favourite! Each slice contains: 57 calories, 1.0g of fat, 0.1g of saturated fat and 5.3g of sugar, they're very low in salt (0.1g). The crispy slice range contain 7 flavours - forest fruits, orange, apple, red cherry, raspberry , blueberry & strawberry! The crispy slices come in packs 5 and each pack contains 3 slices. Priced at just £1.65, I'd say they're the perfect healthy snack and are well worth the money!


The fruity bakes are golden baked bars, filled with a tasty fruit flavoured filling. They come in two flavours - Sassy Strawberry and a-peeling! apple. We tried the strawberry flavoured ones. The kids absolutely loved them. The bar itself is soft with a slight crisp and a soft fruit filling. "They're perfect for snack time at school" Charlie told me and he's right, they are. They're quite sweet and very delicious. I really like these and so do the kids! They're actually pretty filling.
The strawberry fruity bakes contain 133 calories per bar and the apple flavour contained 129 calories per bar. Each box of Go Ahead! fruity bakes contain 6 individual bars. RRP £1.99.



Next we tried the cookie bites. The new crunchy mini cookies with chocolate chip and bursts of fruity flavour. These are perfect for when you're craving something sweet as they're a healthy option. (As are all the snacks mentioned in this post!)


The mini cookies are perfect bite size. They come in individual packets. Each bag contains 6 packets of mini cookies. The 'cheeky chocolate and orange' ones are quite chocolatey but not too much and they have a scrumptious orange flavour to them, too. They contain chocolate chips. Of course these are the kids favourite of all the snacks we tried! The white chocolate & raspberry biscuits are also the perfect bite size. They have a slight raspberry taste but taste very much like white chocolate. "I LOVE the raspberry flavour" Ellie declared rather loudly, haha.
The white chocolate and raspberry cookies contain 99 calories and the chocolate and orange cookies contain 98 calories!



All the snacks mentioned above would be perfect for lunch boxes too (depends on schools individual policies). They're all very reasonably priced and much lower in calories and healthier than other sweet snacks. All three of my children absolutely love them all. They are a huge hit with the kids and myself. I'll certainly purchase these snacks in the future.
You can find out more information about Go Ahead! snacks over on there website! You can also follow Go Ahead! over on Twitter. 

What's your favourite healthy snack?

Sarah xXx







(We were sent these products for the purpose of this review, all opinions are my own, honest, personal opinion. I was not paid for this post)

I haven't shared a meal plan on my blog for a while. I actually haven't even been meal planning properly. Not like I use to anyway. Meal planning is really helpful and helps me stay organised and not over spend on the weekly grocery shop. I need to save every penny I can, especially this time of year and I also need to stay organised. Meal planning helps with both of those things. This is our meal plan for this week.


Monday - Chicken nuggets, oven chips and spaghetti hoops.

Tuesday - Chicken salad wraps - Selection of salad and sauces etc.

Wednesday - Cheese and potato pie with sausages.
(If anyone would like "my" recipe for cheese and potato pie do let me know! - And by my I mean my mums and I have no idea where she got it from...) 

Thursday - Spaghetti bolognase with garlic bread

Friday - PIZZA DAY!

Saturday - Chicken Tikka Masala with pilau rice and naan bread.

Sunday - Sunday roast dinner (not sure what meat yet, I can't remember what I have in the freezer!)

I really need to invest in a new slow cooker as I truly do miss that! I dropped my last one just before I moved house and was devastated. Any recommendations? It needs to be quite a big one as I have three children plus myself :)

What's on your menu this week? 

Sarah xXx

Gosh, I haven't meal planned for weeks but this week I really, really need to! I have bits in the freezer and cupboard to use up and I really can not afford to over spend on shopping this week. So meal planning will help me with using up the bits and bobs and also stop me from over spending.

Monday - Chicken nuggets with fries and baked beans.

Tuesday - Chicken and bacon pasta bake with sweet corn and french stick.

Wednesday - Spaghetti bolognase with garlic bread. (see, I am really trying to use up those bits!)

Thursday - Jacket potato with tuna or cheese and salad.

Friday - Pizza day!

Saturday - Pork curry (I have diced pork left from new year!!!) with pilau rice (brown rice for me)

Sunday - Sunday roast dinner.

What's on your menu this week?

Sarah xXx

We also sprayed them with edible silver shimmer spray (left over from Christmas!) which gave them a metallic look.We're really pleased with how they turned out! And just by using (mostly) things that were left over from other baking projects!

Here's our weekly meal plan. Mine will be tweaked a little as I am trying to loose weight so this is mainly for the kids. (I've switched from potatoes to sweet potato, brown rice and brown pasta instead of white rice/pasta and so on.. small changes make all the difference!). I've also got lots of Christmas food that needs using up, I think I over bought on meat, haha but it was on offer/reduced and it certainly will get eaten. Meal planning will help with that, too.

Monday - Gammon with salad, coleslaw and new potatoes.

Tuesday - Spaghetti bolognase with garlic bread.

Wednesday - Tuna and pasta with salad

Thursday - Chicken breast with home made oven baked chips and veggies

Friday - Pizza day!

Saturday - Chicken Tikka with rice and naan bread

Sunday - Turkey Sunday roast with, roast potatoes, carrots, peas, roast parsnips, yorkshire puddings served with gravy.

What's on your meal plan this week?

Sarah xXx

 It's that time of year again, time to plan for Christmas and the meal plan is no exception. Here's our Family Christmas meal plan for this year.

Christmas Eve.

Lunch will be cold beef sandwiches with salad. There will also be some festive snacks out, too.

For dinner we will have all day breakfast including: 

Sausages, bacon, scrambled egg, toast, baked beans and hash browns. 
And again, some snacks in the evening. 

Christmas Day. 

Breakfast we'll have French Vanilla Toast. The kids LOVE this! It's really quick and easy to make (recipe coming this week!) 

Christmas dinner - 

Turkey, roast potatoes, stuffing, creamy mashed potato, yorksire puddings parsnips, carrots, peas and sweede, served with gravy. A selection of cranberry sauce and mint sauce, too. 

For desert will be chocolate gateau and ice cream as that's our favourite.

Cold turkey sandwiches in the evening if anyone fancies them, along with snacks which will be out during the afternoon. 

Boxing day. 

Toast or cereal for breakfast. 

In the afternoon we'll have a buffet (family will probably pop in) - mini sausage rolls, pork pies, scotch eggs, cold pasta salad, salad, chicken, tuna and cucumber sandwiches and cold turkey sandwiches, pickles etc.
Also a selection of cakes and sweet food, too! Yum!  

What's on your Christmas meal plan this year? 

Sarah xXx 

The kids asked if we could make some cupcakes, I said of course we could! I had Christmas cakes in mind, however, they had other ideas, haha. Ellie wanted to make Frozen cupcakes and the boys just wanted to decorate there cakes with whatever was on offer - a bit of everything! So that's what we did. I already had a cupboard full of cake decorations and ingredients which were left over from Ellie's birthday. We made Frozen inspired cupcakes and the boys just decorated there in any which way suited them. I think I'll make some Christmas cakes on my own this week and surprise the kids with them, hehe.



To make the frozen inspired cakes me used:

120g of self-raising flour
120g caster sugar
120g of butter (or margarine) at room temperature.
2 medium size eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract.

For the icing I used:
Icing sugar
Water.
Food colouring

Decorations: 
Snowflake decorations(I got mine from Asda)
Silver ball cake decorations (or decorations to suit.)
Silver shimmer spray (optional)

- Makes twelve cakes.

We preheated our oven. I put ours on gas mark 4 and left that to heat up while we prepared the cake mixture.

1) After we'd measured out all of our ingredients using the ozeri kitchen scales, I creamed together the sugar and butter until it went a pale yellow colour.
2) I folded in the flour to the butter and sugar. Adding a little flour each time.
3) I stirred in the vanilla extract. (Ellie poured in the vanilla extract while I stirred)
4) Next up the kids gave the mixture a little whisk (they took it in turns)
5) We poured the mixture into the cupcake cases - half filling each one.
6) We popped them in the oven for 15 minutes.

After 15 minutes I popped in my thermapen (you can use a skewer but I didn't have any) to make sure the cakes were cooked. They were because no mixture was left on the probe of the thermapen.
I transferred the cakes to a cooling rack and while they cooled we made the icing.

A photo posted by Sara ♡ (@sassyserrz) on Dec 20, 2015 at 11:10am PST

I used normal icing sugar and water. I didn't measure it, I simply just poured in some icing sugar into a mixing bowl and kept adding water until the icing was the consistency I wanted. I made ours quite thick. I left some white and made some blue icing too, using the same method but adding a drop of blue food colouring.



The kids had fun decoration these! We did also make some random ones, too! The boys didn't want to make frozen ones. I sprayed them with the silver shimmer spray after, which left them with a shimmery, sparkly finish. I feel like the photos do the cakes no justice.

A photo posted by Sara ♡ (@sassyserrz) on Dec 20, 2015 at 11:57am PST

And some random ones the boys decorated. Oh and Ellie made a cat one also. She's crazy about cats, just as I am, haha.


What are your favourite festive snacks to bake? LEt me know in the comments, I'm always on the lookout for new festive recipes. :)

Sarah xXx

The Eat Happy Project is a project Tesco have put together to help children learn to cook and get them involved in cooking! My children love helping me cook dinner and I think it's great to get the kids involved. When I was contacted and asked if me and my children would like to take part, I of course said we would love to! I find that when the children help me to cook, they're more than likely to try new foods and eat more of a variety because they have helped.

We choose the Chicken Rogan Josh and Pilau rice recipe to make. This recipe serves four and takes around thirty minutes to prepare and cook.
We followed along with the video on youtube, which the kids thought was great fun! I think following a video, encouraged them even more. The video also tells us when to pause it, giving us time to complete the method. There is also a printable recipe card for the Rogan Josh and Pilau Rice recipe.


The ingredients you will need are:

4 chicken breasts or
boned thighs (skin
removed)
1 tablespoon
vegetable oil
1 medium onion
1 red pepper
1 clove garlic
3cm piece root ginger
2 teaspoons curry
powder
2 teaspoons paprika
2 teaspoons ground
cinnamon
Pinch chilli powder
100ml cold water
400g tin chopped
tomatoes
1 tablespoon tomato
puree
150ml natural yoghurt
(optional)
For pilau rice
25g polyunsaturated
margarine or butter
1 cup basmati rice
1 teaspoon ground
turmeric
1 dried bay leaf
4 green cardamom
pods
4 cloves
½ tsp fennel seeds1½ cups of boiling water.



Method:
First of all we washed our hands and then washed the peppers.



We then cut the peppers and peeled the onions and garlic using our hands. Peeling the ginder was easy as we used the back of the spoon. The peel on the ginger is really soft and the children had no problem peeling this themselves.

Charlie peeled the onion.

Now it was time to chop the garlic. We did this by securing the garlic with a folk as it made it easier to chop and stopped the garlic slipping. "This is a really good way to do it" Charlie told me. I supervised him while he chopped. And a very good job he did, too.

While Charlie was chopping the garlic, Ellie grated the ginger. Which she really enjoyed and chatted away to me, telling me how much she was enjoying helping prepare the meal.

Ellie grating the ginger.

In the mean time, I chopped the chicken breast into strips. Don't forget to wash hands after handling raw meat.
We then measured out a tablespoon of oil using our measuring spoons. We poured the oil into the frying pan on a low heat, before adding in the onion. We left the onion to cook on a low heat for a couple of minutes before adding the pepper, garlic and ginger. We fried the vegetables for another 2-3 minutes until they were soft.

Adding the onions, garlic, peppers and ginger to the frying pan.

Next up we measured our spices using the measuring the spoons. Two tea spoons on curry powder and two teaspoons of paprika and ground cinnamon, we then added that to the pan. Using a teaspoon we added a pinch of mild chill powder to the pan, too. We fried that for another two minutes.

Adding spices to the veggies.

"I can really smell the spices now" Ellie told me. Charlie said it smelled delicious!


It was time to add the chicken. The kids then took it in turns to stir the chicken (with my supervision), making sure the spices covered the chicken. We turned the heat up to a medium heat and left to cook for five minutes, stirring occasionally.

We added one tablespoon of tomato puree to the chicken and spices. We also added the tin of chopped tomatoes and gave it a good stir.

We then turned up the heat on the hob to medium, to bring the mixture to a boil, when it was bubbling we turned down the heat to low and left it to simmer.

Time to get started on the rice.

We then measure out 25g of butter and added that to a clean saucepan on a low heat and stirred until it was melted.
We measured one cup of rice and then Ellie added that to the saucepan.


Charlie and Harry then measured out the spices 1 teaspoon of turmeric and half a teaspoon of fennel seeds. Charlie added those to the rice while Harry added 1 dried bay leaf, 4 green cardamom pods and 4 cloves. We took it in turns to give that a stir.
"The smell of the spices really hits me now, it smells yummy" Charlie said.

I then boiled the kettle, measured out 1 cup of boiling hot water which I then added to the rice. I feel this part of best for an adult to complete. I gave it a good stir and left to simmer for 15 minutes.
The kids were amazed how the rice changed from white in colour, to yellow! "It looks and smells amazing" Harry said.

After 15 minutes the rice was cooked. I then drained that using a colander. The rogan josh is also ready now. I did add a tablespoon of natural yogurt to make it a little creamier. I let that simmer for another 2 minutes or so.


 We then gently fluffed the rice using a folk and it was ready to serve. The kids helped me dish the meal up onto plates. First we put the rice on and then the rogan josh on top.

"I can't wait to tuck in" Charlie told me and Harry was excited to taste the rogan josh and pilau rice, too! Ellie tried a little bit but wasn't keen because she's not a fan of spicy food. She did like the rice though! Which I was surprised about. That's one new food Ellie can now enjoy! Charlie's opinion was "I can't wait to have this again, it's really yummy" And Harry told me that he enjoyed it very much, he would eat it again and it's perfect for winter evening because "It warmed me up" Is what Harry said! 


Personally I thought it tasted amazing. I think next time I'll add a little more natural yogurt. The spices blended and complimented each other perfectly and wasn't too garlicy. I would deffently recommend this recipe and will be making it again very soon.

The Eat Happy Project has certainly inspired me to cook with the kids more often and get them involved. It was great fun and I feel that the kids learned a lot. I think there favourite part was cooking the rice, they were amazed at how the rice changed colour and how tasty it turned out.
We will certainly, without a doubt, be making rogan josh and pilau rice again in the very near future. It's a really quick and easy recipe to make with kids, too.

You can also follow the Eat Happy Project over on twitter.

What have you cooked with your children recently?

Sarah xXx

I was sent the ingredients for the above recipe for the purpose of this post. All opinions are my own, honest, personal opinions.