Simple Scrambled Eggs

Cooked well, scrambled eggs can be one of the yummiest and healthiest breakfasts out there.
Over cooked, or made with the wrong ingredients and they can be a hard, watery mess.

My recipe calls for only two main ingredients: Olive oil and eggs. Herbs and salt and pepper can be added to your own taste.

When I make scrambled eggs, I tend to make fairly large quantities as there’s not a whole of fun in having breakfast alone! So you can adjust your recipe accordingly.

Ingredients

8 medium sized, free range eggs
12 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil

Makes enough for 4 people

Now, some scrambled egg purists will insist on whisking your eggs before placing them in the pan.
I’m sure they have perfectly good reasons for doing this. But I’m lazy and hate washing up.
Mine just go straight into the pan and before I turn on any heat at all, I whisk them as furiously as my little wrists will allow me to. Once fluffy, I pour in olive oil, gently whisking as I go.

Once oil and eggs are blended together in perfect harmony, I turn the heat on to a medium flame and begin the tedious process of continuous stirring.
A wooden spoon works best for this.

The trick is to keep stirring, dragging the spoon along the bottom of the pan and around the sides until small lumps of scrambled egg begin to form.

Once the egg begins to scramble, turn to a low heat and continue stirring.

You’ll know that it’s time to remove from the heat as soon as the eggs take on  a thicker consistency and look a little like the ones in the top picture!

Remove from heat and serve immediately. Tomato garnish optional, but delish.

If you tend to suffer from watery scrambled eggs, you’ve probably been adding milk or cream to them. As these dairy products heat, the eggs and the liquid separate, causing the little puddle you may be finding at the bottom of your dish.

This can easily be avoided by substituting olive oil for your milk.

Overcooking can also be the culprit. Ensure you remove the eggs from the heat as they have just become solid again. They’ll continue cooking for a minute or two once taken off the stove stop, so don’t worry too much about them potentially being underdone.

Now you have my full rundown of the perfect scrambled eggs, there’s no excuse…

Get scrambling!

City Insider: London

Born and raised in the heart of England’s capital, Amazon Austin is a Londoner through and through.

She is currently working for King’s College London as a diabetes researcher and lives in the south east with her fiancé. When taking a break from working with one of the world’s leading research programs, she loves heading into town to see what the glittering lights of the centre have to offer.

With 24 years of city experience under her belt, let’s take a look at Amazon’s City Insider: London

How did you end up in London?
I was born here!

Sell me your city in 100 words or less
London has everything you could possibly want from a city. With it being one of the most multicultural hubs in the world, anything you can imagine in terms of food, music and culture is only a tube away. Although it can be pricey for some of the main tourist traps, many of the attractions are free, meaning you can experience a day out for next to nothing in one of the greatest cities in the world!

Favourite places to grab some food and a drink
Camden is amazing for a first timer to London – with bars on the river and a really alternative vibe, there’s plenty of things to do. Lots of cocktail bars, craft beer joints and great food places.
The market is great if you are on a serious budget and they give out plenty of free food samples meaning you can eat for free if you want to! They also do happy hour on food at closing and you get tubs of food for £3. All my friends from foreign parts have said this was one of their London highlights.

Amazon’s #1 hang out
I personally like slightly lesser known hang outs and my favourite is a small piano bar under Charing Cross station called the Players Lounge and Kitchen. Open til 3am at the weekend, reasonably priced drinks and great piano tunes til the early hours. Lots of am-drams and lovelies there – a jolly fun night!

I need a memento of my trip.
What can I pick up to remember your city by?
A trip to Harrod’s or Selfridges may set you back a few quid but they do lovely tea in nice boxes giving you a flavour of London to take home. Covent Garden’s Tea House also has an amazing assortment at a more reasonable price.

If I had 24hrs in your city, what would you recommend I do?
Natural History Museum, National Gallery, Westminster, Buckingham Palace, West End musical, High tea at the Ritz, Camden bargain dinner and a burlesque show at Proud Cabaret – you might not sleep but it would be totally worth it!

And If I wanted to get off the tourist trail?
There aren’t many unknown places left in London to be honest although there are lots of new pop up places every week. Check out Timeout London for alternative things to do the week you are here and you never know what you might find!

At all costs, avoid…
Madame Tussauds – it’s dull and ludicrously expensive.

Finally, any more words of wisdom on your city?
Two things:
Firstly, bring an umbrella and good walking shoes – London is so much better to see on foot!
Secondly, there is stuff to do on any budget here. Once you have your accommodation sorted – which I would book well in advance – you will have one of the best city breaks you can imagine!

 

Thanks, Amazon!

 

Photo credits: London Underground, Proud Cabaret, Tea House and Players Lounge and Kitchen Facebook pages.

Getting Festive: Last Minute Valentine’s Gift

You’re telling me it’s the day before Valentine’s Day and you STILL haven’t got your sweetheart a gift?

Tut tut.

Fear not, In Seat Number 3 reader, this is one of the luckier Friday 13th you’ll be having this year!

You’re gonna have to grab yourself a photo frame (with glass, not plastic to protect the picture), some coloured paper and a dry erase pen and download the attachment below.
Adjust print size according to the size of the frame you have available.

The great thing about this gift is that you can whip it up in a matter of minutes! Not only that, but it’s thoughtful and is the gift that keeps on giving:
Every time you’re bored of the previous message, you merely have to wipe the glass clean and write another adorable reason as to why you love your other half.

Get cracking! There’s not much time left until the big day!

Getting Festive: Valentine’s Heart Animals

If you’ve been searching for a fun Valentine’s craft to do with your kiddies, look no further! In Seat Number 3 has the most adorable way to keep the kids (and yourselves!) entertained for an hour or two this Saturday.

I can’t claim to have come up with this idea myself, the ingenuity is all down to a clever lady I saw somewhere on Pinterest.

However, what I can proudly claim is the breakdown of exactly what shape hearts and how many of them you’ll actually need.

First of all, you’re gonna need to download and print the template (click on the picture below for full sized document). I’ve watermarked the letters on the hearts so if you do print directly onto coloured paper, the letter won’t show through if you flip it over.

Ok, so you’ve now got that? Great!

Grab your cardboard, glue stick and scissors and let’s begin.

For the elephant, you’ll need:
3 x heart b in lilac (one of which you’ll have to draw a trunk on the bottom of)
3 x heart d in pink
two white circles for eyes

For the dog, you’ll need:
1 x heart a in brown
1 x heart a in black (this one you’ll cut in half for ears)
1 x heart d in black
2 x heart d in white
1 x heart b in white

As far as raccoons go, I understand and accept that this isn’t the most raccoony thing you’ve ever seen. The colourings are a little off… but when I did it purely in black and white it just looked like a weird panda thing. You could probably pass it off for a fox if you wanted to. I wouldn’t blame you in the slightest!

So, for the raccoon/fox thing, you’ll need:
1 x heart a in brown
2 x heart c in brown
2 x heart c in black
2 x heart d in black
1 x heart e in black
two white circles for eyes

For the fish, you’ll need:
2 x heart a in pink
1 x heart d in red
an adjoining piece of card to make the body. On this you can draw scales and colour them in.
one white circle for the eye

Finally, for the cat you’ll need:
1 x heart a in pink
2 x heart c in red
1 x heart e in red
two white circles for eyes

Don’t forget to have a black marker pen handy to draw eyes/lashes/whiskers on your animals.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!

Banana Oat Pancakes

I’ve gotta admit it: I’m an oat convert.

I’ve spent the majority of my life reluctantly shovelling porridge (or oatmeal as our friends across the pond call it) into my mouth on winter mornings for the pure fact that I knew it’d keep me full for a good few hours.

It’s only since my recent health kick that I’ve begun to see that oats don’t necessarily spell morning misery for me.

These scrummy oat pancakes are a great way to get a medium GI breakfast in and avoid those yucky refined sugars.
With bananas to sweeten them, they pack you full of energy for the day and are stuffed with protein and fibre from the oats and eggs.

Sounds like the perfect breakfast, don’t you agree?

Ingredients

250g rolled oats
3 ripe, small bananas
3 medium sized, free range eggs
1 teaspoon baking powder
a pinch of salt

Makes enough for 8 pancakes

Chuck all the ingredients in whichever orderly or haphazard fashion you desire into a beaker and blend until mixture is relatively smooth.

In the centre of a hot, greased frying pan, place two tablespoons of pancake mix.

Continually jiggle the pancake until it comes loose and is ready to flip.
Flip and cook until the entire pancake is cooked through.

Be sure to regrease the frying pan with either a touch of butter or olive/vegetable oil between each pancake.

Serve immediately with generous drizzles of maple syrup, honey or agave nectar.

Oatally yummy!

Debbie Does Gibraltar

My aim was simple: Climb the rock. Hug a monkey.

Turns out, that rock is bloody steep, and the monkeys are terrifying. The little bastards swing from your hair, jump on your back and viciously snatch snacks out of the hands of cowering children.

I’m fairly lazy and a total coward. So it took all of two seconds after finding these facts out to cross both those ideas off the agenda.

While posing for photos they could even be mistaken as been cute. However, I did manage to get one shot that truly captured the evil within.

White eyed, soulless and menacing. Sod cuddling up to one of those.

Putting my disappointment and now shortened bucket list aside, I had a little home-from-home sprawled out before me and 48 hours to enjoy it in.

Gibraltar is a strange place. Having been handed over to the United Kingdom in 1713, it’s spent the last 300 being swarmed by British tourists, curious Spaniards and retired Englishmen looking for a piece of Spanish sun without the threat of having to deal with all those foreign property laws.
It’s filled to the brim with small, winding streets with names such as Winston Churchill Avenue and Trafalgar Road – a far cry from Calle Maestro Munoz Molleda just a mile away on the Spanish side of the border.

It’s a place captured between two worlds. Externally it’s incredibly British: It’s littered with small pubs, red phone boxes and Mark & Spencer. Pay close attention though, and you glimpse the inevitable Spanish influence peeking through.

Spanglish, for one, is everywhere. Here in Madrid, I live in an almost exclusively bilingual bubble. The vast majority of my friends are fluent in both Spanish and English, allowing us to slip with ease from one language to another, or jumble them up completely to make one incredibly confusing sentence for any outsiders who happen to be listening in.
But to hear other people doing it? Strangers? Boy, that’s weird.
There was me thinking that Spanglish was just our thing.

Gibraltar has her charms. A small haven for us Brits in Spain who crave a fleeting taste of home. With the winding, cobbled streets and rock whose secret tunnels and military base are whispered about all over town, it’s all very nice.

Was I blown away by the place? Not in the slightest. Would I go back? Perhaps. But I’m in no rush to do so.

 It’s nice to know where my nearest stash of Percy Pigs is, though.

Boozy Brunch: Grand Mimosa

It doesn’t hurt to be a little fancy once in a while.

The brunch trend is only just hitting Madrid and boy oh boy, am I taking full advantage of it!

Having thumbed my way through many cocktail books, I’ve thrown together this lovely little morning cocktail for you all to enjoy.

Ingredients

Grand Marnier
cava, champagne or prosecco
orange juice

I know, I know. I should use fancier orange juice. All the good stuff was sold out at the supermarket I go to!

You’re going to want to start by pouring a single measure of Grand Marnier into the bottom of a champagne flute.
Once that’s in there, fill the glass to half way up with beautifully chilled cava/champagne/prosecco and top with chilled orange juice.

Serve while it’s still happily fizzing away.

Cava for breakfast? Guys, we just got classy!

 

Kitchen Basics: Oven Temperatures

Ever get confused with gas marks, Celsius and Fahrenheit?
Yup, me too.

It seems to depend on age and country of origin as to which you actually understand. Half the time I end up guessing what temperature things should be going in the oven at.
Having grown up in England with an oven that used gas marks and now in Spain where my oven is in Celsius my technique seems to be something along the lines of, “200C? Yeah…. that sounds about right.”

Not exactly scientific.

Today I’ve taken some time away from the kitchen to whip you guys up a handy little conversion chart.
I’ve put it in PDF format ready for you to download and print off, too. It’s designed to be small enough to stick on the kitchen wall or just beside the oven without being too obtrusive.
It will print out at roughly A6 size (quarter of a regular sheet of paper).

Baked Mashed Potatoes

Buttery, creamy and irresistible. Everything good mashed potato should be.
Everything, in fact, that my baked mashed potatoes are.

Follow the recipe below and bask in the carby goodness!

Ingredients

6 average sized potatoes
50g butter
50g cheese
30g chopped chives
2 tablespoons sour cream

makes a side dish enough for 4 people

Baked potatoes area great but they sure do take a long time in the oven!

My secret is popping them in the microwave at full power for anywhere from 3-5mins to soften them slightly before.

Put the potatoes into a preheated oven at gas mark 7/ 220°C/ 425°F and leave for an hour.

Remove potatoes from the oven and cut in half. Scoop out the potato flesh into a saucepan.

Add the sour cream, cheese, butter and chives and mash into the potato.

 

Serve immediately in a warmed bowl.

Steak and baked mashed potatoes?

Don’t mind if I do!

2015

Happy new year, everyone!

It’s certainly been a while since I’ve posted on In Seat Number 3. Almost two months, in fact.
For those of you who know me personally, you will know that my attention was directed away from blogging and my work by the sad and sudden passing of my Grandfather in November.
He was, and still is, a man who I love and admire greatly and who I will think about and will miss continually for a long time to come.

So, this year I have foregone the idea of making a list of resolutions, which I will ultimately either forget or break within the month, and have decided to live this year for my Grandad Ted.

2015 is for working hard, looking out for those around me and trying my darned best to squeeze a beach holiday in somewhere.
(A girl’s gotta have a break, after all!)

To all readers of In Seat Number 3, thanks for your support in 2014 and I can’t wait to share even more things with you this coming year.
As Grandad Ted always used to say:

“Look after yourselves and mind how you go”