easy recipe

Store Cupboard Iced Tea

Posted on by BeckyJC

It’s bank holiday weekend in the UK this weekend and fingers crossed it looks set to be a rain free one for most! With the prospect of good weather and a three day weekend ahead, I decided to make something summery to drink, iced tea.

I love iced tea and have been making different versions of it for years. This time I’ve made a really simple recipe. This is mostly because my kitchen cupboards and the fridge are looking rather bare, we’re due a trip to the market to stock up this weekend.

So, craving iced tea I searched around the kitchen for something to jazz it up. Lurking at the back of a cupboard was a rather sorry looking little tin. Tinned peaches in juice. Now I’m not a lover of these at all usually, and they have been sat in the cupboard for months, a leftover from when my sister stayed with us, she loves them, as does my mum. I do love peach iced tea though… you can see where this is going!

Peach iced tea ingredients

Here it is, a recipe for peach iced tea, buy some tinned peaches, fill your freezer with ice, the bank holiday weekend is here…

Ingredients…

1 litre of water

2 teabags, I used lady grey ones but normal everyday tea will work well too

1 small tin of peach slices in juice

Sweetener, this is optional, but if you taste it and want it sweeter add agave, honey or sugar to taste

You’ll need a jug or teapot that holds a litre of water to steep the tea in.

Put the litre of water in the kettle to boil. Add the teabags to the jug, once the kettle has boiled leave it for a few minutes so as not to scold the tea. After a few minutes, pour the water over the tea as if you’re making a giant cup of tea. Strain the juice from the peaches into the tea too and stir. Leave for a few minutes to brew and remove the teabags. Give it a taste, if you want to sweeten it, then do that now.

Next you want to leave it to cool, it is ICED tea after all! Pop it in the fridge to get really cold. Put the peaches in the fridge too, you can use these to serve in the glass with your tea.

That’s it, when it’s chilled serve it with ice and the peach slices. You can add slices of lemon or mint too. You could even try adding a shot of rum or bourbon if you like.

Enjoy the weekend folks!

Also thanks to my sister for leaving behind a tin of peaches!

Peach iced tea

Peach iced tea in the sunshine

Homemade spaghetti alla puttanesca

Spaghetti alla puttanesca

Posted on by BeckyJC

Last Friday night I was home alone for tea, this is usually the time when I reach for the arborio rice and make risotto. No risotto this time though, mostly because I didn’t have the ingredients and didn’t want to venture out to get them! This time I raided the fridge and cupboards and created a version of spaghetti alla puttanesca.

This Italian recipe translates into English as, whore’s spaghetti. Yep, that’s what I made on Friday night after a busy day at work… I work in marketing don’t get any ideas! There’s loads of suggestions as to how the dish came about and got it’s name but it’s essentially a quick, tasty dish to throw together without many ingredients, most of which you probably have in the back of a cupboard in your kitchen. Quick and easy!

Recipes vary and there’s no exact science to it, which makes it my kind of dish, one I can tamper with! Here’s my version…

It serves two people, generously. I wasn’t greedy and ate the whole lot, there were leftovers!

Ingredients…

200g spaghetti
2 cloves garlic
1 tin of plum or chopped tomatoes
1 tsp dried chilli flakes
1 handful of olives, whatever you have (the ones I used this time were marinated in garlic and paprika which worked beautifully!)
Olive oil
Fresh basil or parsley, if you have it

Start by getting a pan of water on to cook the pasta. While that’s getting going finely slice the garlic and roughly chop the olives. When the water has come to the boil add salt and the spaghetti and cook as per the instructions on the packet. Heat a frying pan on a medium heat to make the sauce, add a little oil, then add the garlic. Gently fry for a minute, then add the olives and the chilli flakes. Leave these for a minute, then add in the tomatoes, and if you’re using plum ones, crush them with the back of a spoon. Leave the sauce to simmer until the pasta is cooked and then drain the pasta and add it to the sauce.

Simple as that. Drizzle with olive oil and fresh herbs if you have them.

Homemade spaghetti alla puttanesca