First blogging challenge...

Here's a picture of some bread to give you a clue as to what I came up with...

It gets kinda lonely around here (not that I want to guilt-trip you into leaving comments. Much). So I decided I would dip a toe in the blogging community pool, so to speak, in order to try and make some connections. How? I hear you ask. Why, by participating in a food blogging challenge, of course.

There are tons of these out there in Blog Land. They seem to consist of various bloggers getting together and coming up with a theme for a monthly (or one-off) recipe-related challenge in which they invite fellow bloggers to participate. Other bloggers create a recipe to fulfil the brief and submit their entries to the challenger (or 'host', as I believe they're called) for them to collate so we can all compare notes as to who has the worst photography skillz (erm... that would be me).  Not really. I mean, so we can see what recipes everybody came up with and hopefully get some new ideas for our own cooking along the way.

I came across this one via Dom at the Belleau Kitchen (thank you! You're an inspiration!):

and decided to try and come up with an idea. This is a monthly blogging challenge on the subject of ... you guessed it... breakfast. Check it out here. It's being hosted this month by Susan at A Little Bit of Heaven on a Plate. (Hello, Susan! I hope you like my entry!)

The tyranny of chicken

Everybody loves chicken, right? Because it's mild-tasting? Can be subjected to myriad different treatments and cooking methods? Takes on the flavour of the ingredients it's paired with really well?

Whatever the reason, it has become one of the things my children will generally eat fairly reliably (oh, I wish I hadn't just written that...) so we eat it at least once a week and I'm always keen to try something new to do with it. This idea came from the marvellous Epicurious, which I've been a huge fan of for years (I have printouts in my moth-eaten, sticky, mouldering ideas folders that date back to 2001! That's like the Jurassic!) and I'm sharing it with you because a) everybody loved it and b) it's the kind of amazingly quick, easy recipe that can be whipped up in about 15 minutes, the time it takes to set the table and steam some cous cous. And re-heat some roast potatoes for the cous cous-hater.

Bonfire toffee

You wait six months for a festival, then two come along in one week (much like Mealtime Meltdown blog posts… ahem…). Hot on the heels of Hallowe’en* comes Bonfire Night** at the weekend, so you’ll be needing a treacle toffee recipe, won’t you?