Mild Chicken Curry recipe

Today I'm going to be posting about a really cheap, quick, easy, and yummy recipe for a mildly spicy chicken curry:

This was really cheap, served two very hungry people, and took about an hour and a half to cook. I got this recipe from my Mum, who made it for me last week for the first time. I loved it so much, I had to make my own!

I got all of my ingredients cheaply from Asda. Here's what you'll need:

• A 2litre pyrex container with a lid (or any container, with a lid, that you can use in the oven)
• Mild curry sauce (I used Asda smart price sauce)
• Sliced chicken (I used Asda-brand frozen chicken slices)
• Frozen peas
• An onion
• Basmati rice (I used a microwave packet which was enough for two)
• Naan bread (again, I used Asda's own)
• and, dough balls with garlic and herb spread

All of this cost around £6.65. Usually, buying better quality food is worth it, but this was really nice with all these cheap things. The sauce itself was only 39p!

To make:

Defrost the chicken slices for an hour or two. They don't have to be completely defrosted, but it just makes it easier if they are.

Preheat the oven to around 200°C (or 180°C if you have a fan oven).

Throw in the chicken, half a bag of peas, and half a finely chopped onion.

Now, add the sauce to the dish. Depending on the sauce you buy, might mean you have to do something different - for example, with the brand I used, it says to pour in the sauce, then half-fill the jar with water, and pour that in too. Some brands may be different.

Mix it all up, making sure all the chicken, peas and onion are covered, add the lid, and put it in the oven.

This curry should be left in the oven for over an hour. Stir every 20-30mins. Make sure the chicken is hot, and the onion is soft.

Just before getting ready to serve, the naan bread should be heated in the oven for ten minutes - don't forget to sprinkle both sides of each piece of bread before you put them in. Also, cook the dough balls (or garlic bread) for however long the packet says.

The rice that I used took two minutes in the microwave. I put that on as soon as I took everything out the oven, ready to dish up.

And there you have it! If you're cooking for more than two, simply use more rice, naan bread and dough balls.

It was such a yummy dinner. Upon finishing, my partner said it was the best curry he'd ever had, even compared to restaurants. I think someone is maybe exaggerating here, but I'll take it as a compliment. Also, thanks to my Mum for this lovely easy recipe. ♥

Until next time!

Eat That Frog! How to get organised

Hey guys, I'm posting about being organised today - another big part of my life! Recently I bought a book called 'Eat That Frog', and the idea behind the title is this: all your tasks that you have to do are 'frogs', and a phrase that's mentioned in this book is: "if you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest one first". Basically, this means, if you have more than one important task that you must get done, do the hardest, most difficult one first. Then, when it comes to the next task, the worst is over and you can feel good about your accomplishment. Great, right?

I won't give too much away about this book, because I'm sure I'll get into trouble about giving away ideas from a book you have to pay for. What I will say, is that certain things inspired me to create a way of getting organised: making specific lists!

I printed out some of these free printables from Organised Home and used them to make my lists. What I have done is make four lists: my Master list, my Monthly list, my Weekly list, and my Daily list. I used the lined blank pages for these lists. You can just use scrap paper if you like, but I already had these printed out, so I thought I'd use them.

I start off by writing everything done on the Master and Monthly lists. This is things like "sort out what career I want to do after uni", "sort out my dissertation topic" (I'm a uni student). On my Monthly list I have things like my exam dates, and the essay deadlines, as well as any things that I can think of that need to be done in that month. (I don't include things such as bills to pay, as that is ongoing and repeated every month, so I have a separate calendar printable for that). I then turn to the Weekly list, and add some things from the Master and Monthly - so, you get a bit of an overlap on the lists of certain tasks - which are tasks such as any appointments I have that week, or that I need to pick up my new glasses. Finally I created a Daily list, the day before it is needed by - so, on Tuesday I write my list for Wednesday, and so on. The Daily list has all the trivial things on it, such as "do the laundry", "post X's birthday card" and so on. 

Here's a photo of my papers. I purposefully took the photo from far away so you can't be nosey and read what I've written on my lists!

These lists really help, and as you can see, my daily one is pretty crossed-out! One other thing: don't ever feel bad if there are things on your list at the end of the day. You can always write it on your next Daily list. And don't forget, you can always add things on during the day, you don't have to panic and think that you have to remember everything you need to do tomorrow when writing your Daily list.

So now, if you incorporate these lists with what I learnt from one of the chapters in the book - eat that frog! Look at your Daily list, and see which task is the biggest, meanest, most horrible task, and do it! Obviously, if you have time contraints, like you have to call your bank before it shuts, do so, but in general, do the hardest task first. For me, that's usually my uni work. I will take doing housework over uni reading any day! So, applying this rule, I sat down and wrote an essay plan and got it finished. I felt really good about it, and then carried on my evening by doing all my other tasks. Usually, I do every other task possible before I get to my least favourite, with the thought that "but I've been doing a lot of things today, I can do that one later" - but then later gets too late, and I have to transfer that task over to the next day, where the same thing repeats. That way, I end up leaving an important task until really late, and then rushing it, stressing, and not have it done properly. If I do things this way, my essays will be done on time relatively stress-free.

This method can be applied to any person: whether you're a businessperson and you have a lot of important paperwork and deadlines, whether you're a housewife and have lots of housework, appointments, and children to deal with, or whether you're a student like me, and you have essays and reading to do. This method works really well for me, and I hope it works well for others. I have my papers sat on my desk (purposefully in the way) so I remember to consult them throughout the day to remind myself of what tasks I have to do.

Also, two other pointers:

I use this application called Stay Focused. It's an add-on for Google Chrome, and you can change all the settings so that it blocks you from certain websites for certain times. You can set it so that you can't go on Blogger or Facebook during work hours, or set it so that you can only go on it for 20minutes a day. It's up to you. It works great - during the day, when I'm supposed to be 'eating my frog', I tend to procrastinate and go on Facebook, or check my email about a dozen times. With this, I can stop myself from doing that all day, so I have more of a chance of staying focused.

And finally, my last tip. When I have to settle down and do my work, I find other things to do such as tidy my room until it is immaculate, or find something, such as my magazines, that need to be alphabetised right then, and the task seems so important I forget about my essays. What I've started to do, is to open up YouTube, and pick a song that I really like at the minute, and tell myself that I only have that much time to tidy up. That way I run around my room for around 4mins30, tidying up only the most important things, so that a) I have the 'tidying up' urge out of my system, b) my room is relatively tidy so I have space at my desk to sit down and do my work, and c) I don't spend an hour looking through my CDs.

This way, I manage to keep my procrastination down to a minimum (because I usually put the 'pro' into 'procrastination'), and manage to get around to doing most of my work without feeling stressed!

So there you have it. My organising tips. Quite a lot in one post. I felt that this was more of a pressing post than my knitting, because the only knitting that I have been doing recently is a scarf for Mother's Day, so it would have been a very short post, just like my scarf!

Until next time.

Knitted teddy and crocheted blanket

(I never know what to title my posts with!)

Today is Wednesday, and I decided that I need to post an update of everything that's been happening! I've been knitting a teddy for my Grandma's birthday - which is tomorrow - and got it finished over the weekend. I took a couple of pictures along the way, but completely forgot to take a picture of the final product. These are the latest pictures that I took: 

So, this is the teddy without the face, the arms and the sewn-up head.

...and this is the teddy with the face (white features and black safety eyes), picking up stitches at the side to attach the arms.

I will eventually like to post the pattern for this teddy, but I'd like to post a picture-guided pattern. I need to make a teddy for my Mum soon for Mother's Day, so I can do the pattern/pictures for that one. So stay tuned!

So, I had that teddy sat on my desk for about four days, and I completely forgot to take pictures of it completed. Yesterday, I wrapped it up to send off in the post to my Grandma - only then did I remember that I hadn't taken any pictures of it! Damn. Oh well. Like I said, I'll do a picture-guided pattern once I make the next teddy for my Mum.

The next project that I started, was my crochet Granny Stripe Blanket. Last week I posted a picture of the blanket sample that I made. I was planning on waiting until I had money to buy lots and lots of yarn for it, but I got too excited so I started with one of the balls of yarn that I already have. Naughty me. I took the yarn and my crochet hook to London for the weekend (I was visiting my boyfriend), and started the first few rows. The pattern requires you to chain 240 stitches. Every 20 stitches, I would place a marker, in order to make it easier to count the stitches at the end. Each set of 20 that I chained, I would count and count again, to make sure I had dead on 240. The pattern says that if you are out by one stitch, it can mess up the pattern (as it requires it to be a certain amount due to the repeat). Luckily, I had the right amount of stitches, so went along, chaining the next few rows. It took me a while to realise that the pattern said to chain the foundation chain loosely, and I later realised why. I had gotten to my second stripe when I noticed that my work would not lay flat, and that it was curving/bunching to one side - damn too-tight foundation chain.

So, unfortunately, I had to rip back the five rows that I had done, and start over again, with a bigger sized hook for the foundation chain (and then switched to the regular hook once I'd done the foundation) and start that dreaded Count all over again, checking and re-checking my stitch count, placing markers at every 20 stitch interval, making sure that the chain wasn't too tight. Nightmare. But, I am now on the 3rd or 4th row, and all is right in the world:

The next colour in my stripe sequence is this lime green colour. It looks lovely next to the purple. This blanket is going to be really brightly coloured. There will be 60 stripes in total, so depending on how many different colours of yarn that I will use, will depend on how many stripes of each colour I need. I'm undecided as to whether to do a random pattern, or to have a sequence of colours and an order to follow. Random would be good, but I'm quite OCD so I'm not sure if I can *do* random!

That's all for this week. Looking at my blanket makes me want to crochet more of it, but I have an essay to write with a deadline on Sunday, so I really ought to get cracking on that! I'm enjoying crochet so much at the moment (this is my first project) that I want to crochet at every possible opportunity, rather than studying. I have to restrict myself and 'reward' myself at the end of the day by crocheting before bed. Oh what an exciting life I lead!

Until next time - where I will have hopefully done more to my blanket, or have something new to report on this teddy for my Mum.