A Delicious Casserole Recipe the whole Family will enjoy

My Delicious Red Wine Casserole Recipe is a winner for the whole family to enjoy. And it’s got plenty of vegetables in it too, with a rich red wine gravy sauce.

You can have a tasty dinner in 3 hours, with a 30 minutes preparation time and a 2.5 hour cooking time. Easy to do and leave in the oven while you do something else! It is a very handy recipe to have when you have to help your children with homework this Autumn.

I will do my ingredients list as if you were serving 4 people. I do this meal for my son and I, and it then reheats well the next day when stored in a fridge once it has cooled from the original cooking. I do it in a Pyrex Casserole Dish with a lid, and it can then be cooked and stored easily.

Ingredients

Vegetables
4 Carrots (1 Medium Carrot per person) – finely diced is best.
2 or 3 Large White Onions (at least half a large onion per person) – finely diced or small pieces.
1 Tin of Chopped Tomatoes 400g (Make sure to add some warm water to the tin, add this in to the dish in order to create your liquid for your stock).
(Optional) Mushrooms – Small Washed Button Mushrooms are best.

Accompaniment / Side

Long Grain Rice prepared per person.
1 Tin of New Potatoes 600g (serves 4 people) This can be added to the Casserole and they will cook during the time frame.
500g Mashed Potato prepared during the final half an hour of cooking.

Meat / Vegetarian Alternative

300g – 500g of Casserole Meat of your Choice – I use Beef or Chicken or Quorn – all of which go really well with the Red Wine Sauce.
Plain Flour for Coating the Meat (Contains: Wheat)

Sauce
Tesco Red Wine Stock Pot – 1 for a 4 person Casserole. (Contains: Sulphites)

Tesco Stock Pot Red Wine Packaging 4 x 28g

Method

1. Start by preparing your meat, it will require 2 hours or up to 2.5 hours of cooking time. Mix your cut up raw meat with some plain flour in a bowl. You want bite size pieces and all coated in flour. Then you want to fry these off in a tiny bit of oil until sealed but not overcooked, you don’t want the meat to go dry.

2. Next you need to prepare your vegetables. Dice and Fry your Onions after you finish with the Meat/Veg Option. Dice with a knife or throw them all into a food processor to chop them up, it won’t matter to the end result, but you don’t want too big pieces. Don’t cook the Carrots, there is so need, you just want to chop and add them to the casserole dish, they will cook in the stock.

3. Speaking of Stock, that is your next thing, pop your chopped tomatoes in the dish, add water to the tin, and then add that to your dish. You need to add the stock pot, mix thoroughly.

4. Add the rest of whatever you have, vegetables, fried onions, sealed meat, mix together in the stock and then pop the lid on. Preheat your oven and cook at 160 degrees (fan oven) for 2 hours. Check and stir the casserole at that point and then pop it back in the oven for another 30 minutes. (You can do your mashed potato or rice during this half an hour if you didn’t add potatoes to the dish).

5. Be careful when you remove it from the oven as it will be very hot. Serve in bowls with your chosen accompaniment, and enjoy!

Thank you for reading this Recipe post today, I hope you will give this one a go if you can find the stock pots. I love Tesco own products and I love to shout about something if it’s an excellent product, and these most definitely are! They are affordable and allow you to make something that is both delicious and healthy. Please let me know in the comments below if you do this recipe and how it turns out! I hope you like it!

Have a wonderful day!

✩ Sabrina ✩

7 Ways You Can Really Help a Pregnant Friend

Sabrina’s Honest Posts: 7 Ways That You Can Really Help a Pregnant Friend

We all get to that age where we all know of someone who is pregnant. Sometimes several friends will be pregnant together and lean on one another for support. If you’ve been there or been through pregnancy and birth it’s very easy to put our opinions across, and they won’t always be welcome. So try to avoid offending and start by helping with these 7 tips of mine, how you can be a better friend and really help that pregnant pal!

  • 1. Be honest about the birth and what she can expect about the feelings of the experience, it can be overwhelming but positively tell her about the first time you held baby. Certainly don’t rub it in if you had an easy time in labour, just include the facts. Remind your friend about the miracle of life and encourage her to be positive and listen to the health professionals when the time comes.
  • 2. Don’t be honest about everything, steer clear of horror stories so as not to frighten or make her anxious. Don’t go into a negative story either, if you had a traumatic time you can be honest about what went wrong, but perhaps outline to her the reasons why it happened. You could be completely different people, as in medically, plus every baby, mother and birth is different.
  • 3. Give her a maternity bag list to help, there is nothing worse than when baby brain kicks in and you forget something vitally important on the run up to the big event! So help a pregnant friend out by giving her a list of what you took, and even add on anything that you wished you had had when it was you! All hospitals vary so tell her to find out what her local one allows.
  • 4. Tell her to go somewhere or treat herself to something before her baby comes, it may be to have a haircut or to get her nails done. Go together if you can! Or throw her a baby shower or a Mummy-Moon (a day out for just mums-to-be!). Something to distress and give her a day out of her house because soon she’ll be in there a lot.
  • 5. Give her a list of the baby essentials that you found most useful… this is tricky and depends on the person, but I know I was grateful for friends input on what they bought and used versus never needed. For example we bought a baby bath and our son loved it. Other parents don’t bother with them. Each to their own but it’s good to hear people’s opinions.
  • 6. Be a shoulder to lean on and an ear to listen to all her concerns, you don’t always need to have an opinion, she may just want to vent, so don’t make it about you and yours, listen and respond only if she asks you. Hormones can spin your head around sometimes.
  • 7. Don’t be condescending about this new chapter of her life. It’s a hard transition even for the best prepared of people. For example, avoid saying clichés like “Oh you think you’re tired now wait until…” and instead give her positives about those first few (albeit) difficult weeks! You can start with the sweet and funny things like “Think of all those cuddles” and “Is it wind or their first smile?” things like that.

Thank you for reading this post today, I hope I have given you some food for thought and you may consider helping one of your pregnant friends out.

 Sabrina 

Six Tips for New Parents – the things that everyone forgets to mention!

These are my Six Tips for New Parents – but they are the things that everyone forgets to mention!

So despite being post birth and genuinely exhausted, most mum’s will admit to that feeling of pride that comes with the arrival of a child. Be it your first or fifth baby, they are all special and all little miracles. Just look what you have achieved!

However there are things people forget to mention to you and I thought I would share some of my tips in this blog post for getting passed these… we will call them the six newborn phases!

When you become a mum you look at your bundle of joy and you feel incredible, that rush of emotions and pride… you just grew and birthed (in whichever way you did) a small human being. Go you! Own it!

But, while trapped in a chair under said small human, (in fear of waking them up if you were to even clear your throat!), you can’t help but wonder why your amazing body didn’t also develop the ability of telekinesis while it was doing this awe shattering feat! How amazing and useful would that be?! So here are my six phases… I guarantee you’ll laugh before the end of this article…

Phase 1. The “I Can’t Put The Baby Down Because We Are Bonding Or Cluster Feeding” Phase.

Always keep the essentials close by, as in within an arms stretch! This goes for the TV remote, your phone, at least one snack, your phone charger or a charging device, iPad or a book, and definitely a glass of water. If you have a little one who won’t sleep very much then life saving materials can be what get you through those afternoons, as you cradle your small bundle who is finally napping but you dare not put them down. Instead you settle in to an afternoon of Netflix binge watching and you have a whole packet of biscuits with your name on.

Personally I had a lunch bag size cool bag next to where I sat with my son. Inside it were snacks, a reusable bottle of water and piece of fruit. I kept a table to one side of me with the remotes and my phone on, and a box of tissues. On the other side within a stretch away was the cool bag, my iPad and a portable USB charger. Life savers for me on several afternoons!

Phase 2. The “Where’s The Flipping Muslin Cloth” Phase.

Buy Extra Cloths! So cloths for a newborn are a given, but have you considered you may need to wipe all sorts of things off your baby and multiple times in one day. I couldn’t believe how many cloths I went through a day at first. The tip for this is to keep a folded clean pile of muslin’s somewhere in every main room of your home. Also buy similar colours of cloth so that you can just throw them all in the wash together. Because Muslin cloths are thin they don’t take a lot to wash and also dry, but you won’t want to wait a few hours when you’re down to your last one and baby is due for a feed…

Phase 3. The “What Time Is It? Oh My Days, I Forgot To Stop For Lunch, Again” Phase.

Nobody tells you how fast the time goes. This isn’t a lie, time actually goes faster and you will forget what time of day it is and then realise you haven’t had a drink for hours! Make sure you always get nourished every time you journey into the kitchen, keep snacks and fruit handy, things you can eat one handed, and keep a reusable water bottle by your favourite seat. Keeping hydrated is most important especially if you’re breastfeeding and recovering from birth too. If baby is having something to drink then you should be too!

Phase 4. The “I’m Too Tired To Cook, Let’s Open Up The Fast Food App” Phase.

Every parent will admit to ordering fast food in those first few weeks with a newborn baby. But if you can organise yourselves in the weeks running up to their arrival, you’ll feel better for it, both stomach and bank balance!

The answer is this, Bulk Cook your favourite Foods! Keep some of those previous takeaway Tupperware tubs, check how many you can stack in a drawer in your freezer. Then bulk cook a few of your favourite dishes using fresh ingredients. Then you can freeze them in tubs and in portions. Throw in Veg too if you like, at least then you’re getting healthy food inside you. Chicken Curry with added Veg or Spaghetti Bolognese made with a few Veg to bulk it out are both easy to reheat.

Phase 5. “I Managed To Put The Baby Down, Shall I Pop On That New Series On Netflix Or Go To Sleep?”

It’s really tough when Social Media blows up with the latest Netflix series, and you’re surviving on maybe 4 hours of sleep and only scrolling on your phone in order to stay awake during the 5am feed… But there will come a day when things get easier, your baby won’t need feeding every two hours forever. And then you’ll sleep a little more… (does 6 hours or less sound good to you?). Plus you’ll get used to the lack of sleep and gradually be able to do more, like managing to watch half an episode of something… once a week… then forget what happened and watch it again… and so it goes on…

Phase 6. “We haven’t had any us time for a long time…”

This phase is a serious one and more to do with you as parents, it’s brand new, it’s exhilarating and exhausting but remember you have become two different people. You are still you, and what time you spend together is still important. You might not get a date night in weeks, if not months after baby is born. But if you have the support of family and you trust them, then there will come a time where you can leave your baby with that person and get back to being you “both” again.
People don’t tell you how hard it is, not being able to go out just the pair of you, you won’t get to watch television or a film without interruption or pausing it every now and then. This is the new normal and it’s okay to find it a difficult transition. Especially if you’re used to going out for a meal once a week or pop off to the cinema at an hours notice…
My tip to get through this phase is this, plan, plan and plan some more. Make timetables and plan ahead with a calendar and try your best to stick to it. Change the usual cinema outings to a Netflix movie and a meal at home, with a big bag of popcorn and sweets from the supermarket as a great and cheaper alternative to the cinema treats…



Thank you for visiting Severn Wishes today, I hope that I see you here again soon for more parenting posts.

✩ Sabrina ✩