Becca Jane St Clair

I took my Life in the UK test today and passed! The test honestly took 5 minutes and that included going back over a few questions I was unsure of and reviewing all my answers….and I only started studying about three days ago. This post will NOT tell you what questions will be on the test (it’s randomized anyway), but it could help you prepare for it.

For those of you unfamiliar with it, the Life in the UK test (LiUK) is the test everyone must pass before they can obtain permanent residency/citizenship. The test is in English, so if English isn’t your first language you will be certified as part of an English course. I have no idea if you get given the same test or not, but I’ll assume if you’re reading this that you speak English!

Before you can book a test, you will need to register on the Life in the UK test website. After you register, you will have the option of booking your test. You put in your postcode, and the site will tell you where the closest testing centre is. If you click on the centre you want to take your test at, it will take you to a calendar page and show you the available dates and times for that centre. If you don’t like the dates on offer, you can go back and pick a different centre. This is how I wound up taking my test at Nottingham since the Lincoln centre only does tests every other Friday.

The test costs £50, which you will need to pay when you book it. You also will need to enter details from your identification. It is very important that you bring that same piece of identification with you when you take the test. If your ID does not match exactly, you will automatically fail the test. The computer system allows three tries to match an ID before it locks someone out of taking the test. If you get disqualified from taking the test, you will not be refunded and you will need to re-book a test.

As far as studying goes, your best bet is to purchase the official guidebooks published by the UKBA. That book has everything you need to know in it (link to be posted later), including some additional information about Britain’s history, ILR, and citizenship. The important chapters are chapters 2-6. You can also purchase other guides, but make sure they contain chapters 2-6 of the official guide or you might not learn the correct information. The official books will be the most accurate and the most up-to-date, as the test is not updated annually. Purchasing a book that says it has been “updated for the 2011 census” will not help you since the test was last updated in 2007 or so.

If you do not want to purchase the books, you can borrow the official books from your local library. Now that I’ve passed my test, I can offer the first person to comment on this entry directly on my blog (http://blog.beccajanestclair.com) the copies of the book I used, which I received second hand from my friend Jessy after she passed her test last year. I have both the official Journey to Citizenship book and the practice question book. I also purchased a non-official study guide that has quizzes for each chapter I will pass along. I do not want any money for them, but I will only send them within the UK.

I also wound up downloading a non-official study guide for my Kindle, too. I found it much easier for me as I could read the Kindle version anytime and anywhere. There also are websites to help you and Tim and I even saw a computer program for it, so there are loads of options out there.

The practice tests I took really helped, even if I did blitz about 10 of them the night before. I even had 2 questions on my test nearly word-for-word out of one of the practice tests!

Taking the Test

The test is pass/fail, but you need to get at least 18 out of 24 questions right. The test will be a combination of multiple choice and true/false. There are no open-ended questions, and no room to add any comments.

Navigating the test is pretty easy. There will be a row of 24 boxes at the top for the questions. If you have selected an answer, the box will be coloured in (blue). If you have looked at the question but not answered it, the box will have a blue outline. A plain box indicates that you have not yet looked at the question or answered it. Opposite the boxes will be your timer. You have 45 minutes to take the test, and the test is set up to give you warnings at the halfway mark, 10 and 2 minutes remaining. The middle section is where the questions and answers are. The bottom left has buttons to move between the previous and next question, and the bottom right has the “finish test” button. DO NOT CLICK “FINISH TEST” UNTIL YOU ARE SURE YOU ARE DONE. If you accidentally click it, there will be a second screen asking you if you are sure, but if you exit the test you cannot get back into it and if you did not complete the test, you risk failing it.

You will not be allowed to have anything with you on the desk other than your ID, but you can ask for paper and a pencil. I was the only one who asked for it, but I found it helpful when I was asked a statistic question and I was able to write down all the numbers I could remember from the book. I also used my paper to keep track of which questions I wanted to make sure I went back and looked at again. I had four questions I wasn’t positive of the answer, but since you only need 18 correct to pass, I was confident when I walked out.

You are not allowed to talk or look at someone else’s computer while taking the test. Both will result in an automatic fail. The testing centre I was at allowed you to bring in personal items (handbags, phones, etc), but you had to turn OFF the phones and leave everything under your desk. We were told that if they even heard a phone vibrating while you were taking the test that you would be disqualified.

Like I said, you will have 45 minutes to complete your test in, but in my honest opinion, you only need at the most 20. Most of my friends who have taken it before me have said it took them 5-10 minutes. I was done in about 5, including double-checking my answers. The test is not a race though, so take as much of the 45 minutes that you need!

This may be specific to the testing centre in Nottingham only, but when I was done with my test, I was able to leave the room and join Tim in the waiting room by raising my hand. Tim and I talked about the test, and I talked with another person who had taken the test. We were then called in individually to get our score, but we were called in while people were still taking the test. I understand at some centres, you need to wait until everyone has finished before getting results. I was walking out the door well before the 45 minutes would have passed. Your result will not tell you how many questions you got right or wrong, only if you passed or failed. Your pass certificate will get stamped and signed, and you need to keep this safe as you cannot get a second copy. If you lose it, you will have to take the test all over again.

To those of you taking the test in the future, good luck!

[Please note that any information about the Life in the UK test or ILR and citizenship requirements are valid as of 10 November 2011. If you are reading this for advice in the future, please double check the information against the official UKBA website.]

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No time for a real entry today, it’s time to cram, cram, cram.

I have my Life in the UK test tomorrow in Nottingham. I have to pass this test in order to be eligible to apply for my ILR (Indefinite Leave to Remain) also known as permanent residency. It’s a short test, but there’s a lot riding on it. I’ve been studying like mad for the past few weeks and it will all come to head tomorrow morning.

I’m taking my test in Nottingham because the testing centre in Lincoln only does tests every other Friday and when I went to book a test, the first date wasn’t until the 25th. Fortunately, the testing centre in Nottingham is only about a mile from the railway station.

Wish me luck!!

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I started participating in a writing competition on Livejournal called LJ Idol. A friend of mine had participated in past years, and it looked like fun. Our first week’s topic was “When you pray, move your feet”. Below is my entry for LJ Idol. I landed about 11th in my tribe overall in terms of voting. If you’re interested in voting, you can check the LJ Idol page each week.

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We crossed the border into Mexico and were greeted by dirty, sweaty men. The road we were driving on was not paved, there were no lines on the road, no rest stops, and no conveniences. The first night, we slept on the floor of a church. I can still remember the girls not wanting to be separated from the boys, so the girls slept on the stage and the boys in the orchestra pit below us. My friend Alison and I woke up screaming at 3 in the morning because a cockroach was crawling near us. Alison’s boyfriend woke up and smashed the roach inches away from my sleeping boyfriend’s head. The next morning we continued on to our “dormitory”. There were two long rooms set up for us – one for boys, and one for girls. The mattresses were worn and dirty and we were all glad we had brought sleeping bags to sleep in so we wouldn’t have to lay directly on the mattresses. We couldn’t drink the water out of the tap, instead we had to purchase 5 gallon drums of water from the grocery store. This water also had to be used for washing, brushing our teeth, and cooking. Some of us braved using the water from the outside tap to wash ourselves, but most of us relied on a baby wipe wipe down each morning and evening. The toilets flushed, but you couldn’t put any toilet paper down them, so each stall had a large black bin for it that we were responsible for emptying daily. When we turned out the lights at night, all the bugs would come out and crawl all over the floor, walls, and ceilings. You soon learned to sleep wearing your sneakers in case you needed a nighttime trip to the bathroom. This was to be our home while we were there.

Our job while we were there was to provide bible school to some of the local children, and to assist with building houses. On our first morning teaching we met our children for the week – girls barely older than 8 taking care of babies, boys with dirty clothes on, babies who looked like they were in desperate need of a bath or a clean diaper. None of the children wore shoes. There was an old, hard, leather ball outside that served as a football, basketball, soccer ball, volleyball, and kickball. Pregnant teenagers younger than ourselves sat at tables inside the classroom waiting for us. The one thought running through my head was how on earth are we going to teach them?.

My Spanish was non-existent. I studied German, a language which was helpful when I travelled in Europe the previous Spring, but completely useless South of the border. The children did not speak English. I had a piece of paper my boyfriend had made me with some Spanish phrases on it and I had him translate some of the songs I was to teach into Spanish for me so at least the children would know what they were singing about.

It was a mess. The children didn’t understand me, and even though I had a paper full of helpful phrases, nothing prepared me for being left alone in a room with 20 children. I tried teaching them a song I had translated into Spanish with very little luck, so I started singing “Jesus Loves Me” instead. To my surprise, the children knew the tune and they taught me the Spanish words – Jesu, Mi Amo. I tried again with another translated song, this one with movements. I soon had the group all singing and dancing. I gave up on my translated songs and started singing to them in English, and some of the older children taught me some of the songs they knew in Spanish.

My friends outside weren’t having any luck, either. The worn ball that the church had barely had any air in it, and it was so hard it was too heavy to kick. One of the boys finally returned to our dormitories and came back with a ball he had brought with him for our own leisure. The faces of the children lit up at the sight of the black and white ball and were soon showing off their skills. At the end of the week, we left the new ball behind.

The group sent out to work on construction sites met similar problems. Even the people in our group who claimed fluency in Spanish and passed their AP exams with flying colours were having problems following along as they didn’t learn those kinds of words in their lessons. Armed with a battered dictionary and lots of hand gestures, they soon figured out what the foreman wanted them to do.

That evening we headed back to our dorms, exhausted from our day of teaching and building. We still managed to sit around outside in the small courtyard between the dorms to talk about our day. Someone got out a guitar, and we built a campfire and all sang and danced in the warm glow. Despite a horrible beginning to our week, we were sure we would be able to make a difference by the end of the week. That week, we learned that being a Christian was more than just praying on your knees to God each Sunday. It was the work you did with your hands, voice, and feet that also counted.
—
[This has been an entry for The Real LJ Idol.]

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It’s that time of year again. Fortunately, I did a lot of our Christmas shopping in October and Tim and I are just buying each other Kindles, but we were totally stumped on something to give his mum this year.

I ordered our Christmas cards (super early) from VistaPrint and inside the box with the order was an offer for a FREE wall calendar…our problems were solved, as his mum has been really concentrating on decorating her house with family photos.

If you’d like your free calendar, just go to http://www.vistaprint.biz/special2011. VistaPrint has tons of other inexpensive and free deals, such as 10 free Christmas cards, 250 free business cards, and even free photo mugs and mousemats.

Order early though. If you want to opt for the inexpensive shipping, it can take up to 21 working days for your items to get to you, but when I ordered my stuff, it only took about 2 weeks.

[I am not being compensated by VistaPrint for this post.]

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Tim and I were shopping at the co-op a few weeks ago, when he spotted some pre-made potato skins in the refrigerated items section. The container had 6 potato skins in it, and the co-op wanted over £3 for it. I told Tim not to buy it and that I knew I could make this at home quite easily.

Homemade Potato Skins

You will need:
-Potatoes (I used 3 and Tim and I each had 3 skins)
-1 slice of cooked bacon for every potato
-grated cheese

Preheat your oven to 200C. Slice each potato in half horizontally and place skin side up on a lined baking tray (or spray it with oil). Brush olive oil on the skins. Bake for 30 minutes.

Remove from oven. Wearing an oven mit, pick up each potato half and using a large spoon, scoop out most of the inside. You won’t need it for this recipe, but you can save the insides for mashed potato at a later time. You should be left with a mostly hollow shell. If you scooped too much out, you can put a little of the potato back inside the skin.

Crumble the bacon and sprinkle it over the skins. Top with grated cheese.

Put the potato skins back into the oven for 10-15 minutes, or until the cheese is melted and bubbly.

Just as good as store bought or restaurant made for pennies!

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I married my best friend.

Happy Anniversary Tim!

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So sorry to do this to you guys two days in a row, but I had skin tags frozen off my armpits today and it’s too painful to do much of anything.

If I’m feeling better later, I will do a different entry for NaBloPoMo!

Just a short post to say I’ve blogged daily.

I’m off to see John Barrowman tonight!

Yesterday I did something I never would have done living in America. Tim and I were out on an exploration. Armed with Ordinance Survey maps of the county that Tim had drawn blue and red lines on, we were off in search of our fictitious railway. We had a good time. I’ll write more about the search for our railway in another entry and post some of the photos later.

We were stopped somewhere along a narrow, winding back country road between farmer’s fields. We were stopped to take pictures of where a level crossing would have been and I was walking back towards the car when I spotted something round a red growing on one of the trees alongside the road. I paused and discovered that I had found a wild apple tree. Curious, I picked an apple and bit into it. It was the tastiest apple I have ever tried! The apples were redish pink at the top fading down to a yellow shade of green. We don’t know what kind of apples they were, but we sure didn’t waste any time in picking as many as we could fit into a bag!

Now all I have to do is figure out how to store them…these are too good to cut up and freeze!

We often go foraging for blackberries – brambles, as they get referred to here. Brambles seem to grow everywhere in this country. We find them growing alongside the many public footpaths we frequent, branches dipping into canals, and we even find them growing alongside railway tracks. This year, we ate most of the blackberries right away, but last year I had a bagful in my freezer that lasted through the winter.

I love free food. I won’t go dumpster diving or anything crazy like that, but if mother nature wants to give it to us, we’ll take it!

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It’s that time of the year again, time for NaBloPoMo! This year, NaBoPoMo has moved over to the Blog Her network. I have no idea what that means. I don’t know if I should be posting my blogs over there or what’s going on, but it doesn’t matter since I’m not in this for any kind of competition, I’m just in it for myself! 30 days straight of blogging — can I do it?

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I was on BBC Lincolnshire last week talking about Halloween with William Wright. He asked me to come on as an American to talk about Halloween, since it’s not celebrated all that much in the UK.

Here are a few guidelines for having an authentic Halloween:

-Wear a costume. If your child is going to go trick or treating, they need a costume. You don’t have to go out and spend a lot of money on this, either. One of my favourite costumes was made on Halloween out of things we had in the house. I became an Absent-minded professor with a button down shirt open over a t-shirt, an untied tie looped around my neck, a pair of boxers (I wore tights under for warmth), and one slipper and one shoe.

-Trick or Treating is for kids. The general cut off IMHO should be the lower teens, unless you have a younger sibling or babysitting charge to take around. Groups of 19-20-yr-olds begging for sweets just isn’t cool.

-If you are escorting a younger child, don’t expect candy for yourself. Some people will only give candy to the little ones, but it helps your case for candy if you put on a costume.

-If someone doesn’t have candy, that isn’t an excuse to throw eggs or do other vandalism. Some people just don’t like Halloween or forgot to plan for it. Be gracious and thank them for their time before leaving their property.

-If the light is out, don’t knock. A common undocumented rule in the US is to leave your front light on if you want trick or treaters and to turn it off if you don’t.

-Trick or Treat only on Halloween or your town’s designated night. Trick or Treating is one night. Some towns designate a different day for Trick or Treating other than Halloween, but it is always just one night. If your town is doing Trick or Treating on the 30th, don’t go out on the 31st, too!

-Be polite and say thank you. Loads of kids would come to my door in the US and some wouldn’t even say “Trick or Treat” let alone thank me for the candy. A little manners goes a long way!

-If you’re giving out candy, remember to only give out wrapped candy. Unwrapped candy isn’t safe, and neither are home baked goods. Save the home baked goods for the people you know directly and not the strangers. Small coins are also sometimes given out in the US by people who either don’t want to give candy, or have run out. When I was younger we also occasionally would receive a small bag of pretzels, crisps, or even a pencil.

-Likewise, parents please go through your children’s candy before they start eating it. Check to make sure things are still in date and that wrappers are secure. Throw away unwrapped candies or home baked goods, unless you know the person who gave it to your child.

-Halloween does not have to be scary, and in fact, can be fun and even silly! The producer at BBC Lincolnshire told me her child was terrified of the skulls and spiders decorating the nursery he goes to. You don’t need scary skulls and spiders to decorate for Halloween. Witches, black cats, mummies unravelling, even just plain pumpkins and coloured leaves can be a nice Halloween decoration.

-Please remember that just because you see something OTT on an American TV programme, that doesn’t mean it’s something done by middle-class America. This note applies to Proms as well! When in doubt, do some internet research or find an American friend to ask.

Have a safe and happy Halloween!!

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It’s been a while, hasn’t it?

Have you ever had a week where your cooking was just off? That was me week before last. I ruined three meals and I still don’t know how I pulled it off. The first meal was a root vegetable soup. I had it going in the crock pot and about 2 hours before we were going to eat, I could smell this awful smell coming from the kitchen. I headed in, thinking I’d find something left out on the counter or something like that, but there was nothing except for the crock full of soup. I lifted the lid and was horrified at the smell.

This isn’t the first time I had a problem with the Tesco pre-made bags of cubed root vegetables, so perhaps they just aren’t made for real cooking and should only be used as mash. They wound up in the bin, and we ordered Chinese food.

A few days later, I attempted to make Pesto Chicken Parmesean. The recipe looked super easy, so I blindly made it and pulled it out of the oven after the alloted 20 minutes. I neglected to cut into the chicken though, and when we went to eat it were met with undercooked meat. Not willing to make us sick, it got thrown out and we wound up at Asda that evening and picked up some hot dogs and buns for Tea.

The last messed-up meal was on the Sunday. I was trying to make sausage and sauerkraut in the crock pot with some of our favourite pork and apple sausages. This meal wound up in the bin because the sausage just disintegrated into the sauerkraut and we’d have each been eating a plateful of sausage flavoured sauerkraut. We had pizza that night.

So I took it gentle the next week, and I feel ready to share another week of meals with you.

Monday – Traditional Fish Pie
Tuesday – Vegetable Soup
Wednesday – Chicken, Potato, and Veg Bake (Combining 2 recipes from two different Good Food magazines)
Thursday – Mint, Peas, and Pasta
Friday – Chicken stir-fry
Saturday – Full English Breakfast
Sunday – Meatball soup

Saturday is our wedding anniversary, but Tim has to work 2-10 (plus be on call all night) and I have a chorus workshop from 9-4, so we are having a nice breakfast together in the morning. We’ll celebrate with a meal out while we’re in Edinburgh the following week.

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I got an update from my tech contact at O2, Tony, and I thought I would pass it along…

I still cannot receive international text messages on my phone. They are unsure when the problem will be fixed, but they know what the problem is, and really, that’s half the battle right there.

Basically, when I rang up to complain, this was the FIRST time they started looking deeper into the issue. It helped that Tim is also an O2 customer (personal AND business) and they were able to see that he was getting international texts. It also helped that I’ve been so patient with them throughout this.

The problem has been traced to affecting all numbers recently ported over from Orange.

When a text message is sent from the US to the UK, it goes to a central hub for distribution over the UK networks. There is more than one hub available to use. Vodaphone and O2 use one of the hubs, and Orange/T-mobile use the other (I’m not sure who 3 or any of the other smaller companies use). While my phone number was ported over to O2 and uses the O2 network for everything domestically, international messages were still going to the hub Orange uses, and then not being delivered since O2 doesn’t connect to that hub.

The issue has been escalated as high as it can go within O2 and they are currently in negotiations to get it resolved. He couldn’t give me a timeline, but told me he would keep me updated as he could. I also told Tony I’d be willing to switch to an O2 number if it came down to that, but for now I’ll be patient and wait. Not being able to get international messages is an inconvenience, but everyone who texts me can reach me via email.

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I bought my Blackberry (affectionately nicknamed Bramble) in mid-September after months years of debating on a new phone. I love it. I feel like I’ve finally caught up on modern technology, and I LOVE using Four Square to check into the obscure locations around my town.

But then last week, all the Blackberry phones in Europe stopped working in their smartphone capacity, and I was taken back to three weeks ago when I still had a StupidPhone. No Email, no internet, no Messenger! Oh no, what would people do?!

People took to the internet. People who had never owned a Blackberry phone in their life started posting about how bad they were and how they had an iPhone that was better, etc. etc. A lot of people immediately got new phones and turned their backs on Blackberry and RIM.

As a personal user, not having access to email or messenger (I have two contacts on it. If you want to be a “friend”, let me know) wasn’t a big deal for me. Instead of emailing Tim’s work phone when I needed to tell him something, I texted or rang him. Both texting and calling were still working on the Blackberry during this outage.

But my phone has a more serious issue. My phone isn’t receiving international text messages. I probably wouldn’t have noticed for quite some time, but Miss M was having her surgery, and her partner was going to text me with updates to let me know she was okay. The day of her surgery arrived and I waited, and waited, and waited and finally sent him a text…no response. I panicked. I really did. The following day, I texted both M and her partner, and again, got no response, so I finally sent M a message on Twitter. She told me her partner had texted me twice while she was in and she texted me once. Hmm, that’s a little odd, isn’t it? So I asked my mom to try to text me, and her message never arrived, either.

I rang O2 (and yes, I spoke with a British person. All the O2 call centres are located within the UK) and the woman I was speaking with thought it was odd, and tried a few things, but the messages didn’t show up. She determined that I needed a SIM swap and advised me to go into the O2 shop in town as it would be faster, and they also could test my SIM in a different phone to try to determine if the problem was my phone or my SIM.

I went into the Lincoln shop around lunchtime that Friday and had a wonderful woman (I can’t remember her name!). She put my SIM into a tester phone and we waited, but nothing showed up. Assuming it meant this was a simple SIM issue, she arranged for a SIM swap and told me to finish my shopping and come back when my phone read “invalid SIM”. Well, I had only gotten down to the escalator when my phone started displaying it, so I went back. She swapped in the new SIM, and I rang Mom to ask her to text me. She did…and nothing. So, time to start exploring other options.

The O2 person took me over to a desk and rang up tech support. They were of no help, so she escalated it further, and then again. We were getting some really ridiculous suggestions like “delete the contact from your phone and re-add them” (what?) or that it was the US provider’s problem, not ours (it wasn’t. Mom and M are on different networks and Mom had been able to text Tim with no problems). Several hours later, and we decided the best thing to do was for me to go home and try to let things reset themselves over the weekend and if it still wasn’t working on Monday, ring or come in.

The following Tuesday I wound up ringing O2 again because it still wasn’t working. I spoke with Emma (I think?) and she was fantastic. When a first tech guy wasn’t helpful, she got someone else. Tony was fantastic. He gave a few suggestions for getting it to work/testing it out. The first idea was to stick my SIM in Tim’s phone and try for an int’l text. That was a no-go and nothing came through, even though Tim had previously been receiving international messages. Second suggestion was to use the Blackberry desktop software, back up my phone, and then update the software. Again, this didn’t help. Tony told me he would look into the issue some more and get back to me on Friday.

In between Tuesday and Friday, I received a call back from Emma, who wanted to check in and wanted to let me know that she would flag my account and keep checking it and would ring me if she found out anything else. I loved that. Really, it’s a shame you can’t ask for people directly when you ring, or I’d ask for her every time.

When Tony rang me on Friday, it was to tell me that he unfortunately didn’t have much news for me — BUT, he was talking to some of the other techs and apparently this isn’t an issue isolated to me. Several people had been ringing up with the same issue (on top of the existing BBM issues everyone was having). So the issue has now been escalated AGAIN to an investigation team, and Tony is going to keep me up to date on anything new that comes of it (and hopes it gets resolved soon, obviously). He also didn’t have a direct phone number, but he gave me his email address so I could email him if anything else happened with my phone.

My problem isn’t fixed yet, but I have faith in O2 and in the techs I was speaking to. This experience makes me glad I switched over from Orange. Anytime I had a problem with Orange, I used to get bounced around from call centres in India to the UK, and people who said they would ring you back never did. This was not the case with O2. O2 has ALL their call centres in the UK, and their employees actually ring you back when they tell you they will!

I just hope my problem gets solved soon. It’s a little annoying to know that if an emergency pops up I’d have to borrow Tim’s phone to communicate with my mom.

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Yep, more recipes. This one was inspired by a recipe in the September issue of Good Food.

As the frost approaches, you might be left wondering what to do with all those tomatoes you need to bring inside. Here’s a recipe for roasted tomatoes, followed by tomato soup in the crock pot.

You will need:
12 vine ripe tomatoes (if you have to, get them from the shops, but make sure they are vine ripened)
4 Tablespoons malt vinegar
3 Tablespoons olive oil
Dried Basil
Salt & Pepper

Pre-heat oven to 175C
Line a baking dish or a deep cookie sheet with baking paper or give it a few sprays of olive oil. Cut each tomato in half and arrange tomatoes skin-down in dish. Sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper.
Combine oil and vinegar and brush mixture onto tomatoes. Sprinkle with Basil.
Bake for 45 minutes.

You can use them as a side dish, or create tomato soup with them.

Roasted Tomato Soup

You will need:
Roasted tomatoes
1 can crushed tomatoes
1 potato, halved
water, tomato juice, vegetable stock, or chicken broth
Basil

Combine roasted tomatoes, potato, and tin of crushed tomatoes in crock pot. Pour liquid into crock pot until tomatoes are covered, Sprinkle with basil. Cook on low for 6-8 hours. Fish out the potato (it was in to absorb the salt from the roasted tomatoes). Use an immersion blender or regular blender and blend until smooth.

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Apologies for the bombardment of recipe posts recently, but I’ve been getting creative in the kitchen lately and want to share. As I was taking a photo today of my latest creation, I commented to my husband that I “really take a lot of photos of food”. He replied that since food seems to be my latest creative outlet, why not? Of course, this does mean you have to read post after post about food, when you probably want to read other things by me. Sorry! Maybe I should start up a cooking blog after all!

Anyway.

When I was younger, I remember my mom making Pizza Meatloaf, probably because I had seen it in a kid’s cookbook or on TV or something like that. I couldn’t find her recipe, so I created one of my own.

You will need:
500g Turkey Mince
150ml Passata
1 Tablespoon Oregano
125g Bread Crumbs
1 Egg
Mozzarella Cheese (a small block will work best)

Pre-heat the oven to 225C.
First, chop about half the Mozzarella into small cubes and the other half into slices. You also could use shredded cheese if this is easier and divide it in half.
Combine meat, the cubed cheese, HALF the passata, the bread crumbs, egg, and Oregano and mix together well.
Shape into a loaf shape on a lined cookie sheet.
Cook 45 minutes to an hour, or until meat is no longer pink.
Remove from oven and pour over remaining half of passata and top with remaining Mozzarella.
Put back into the oven for 15-20 minutes, or until cheese is melted.

This was really tasty the following day cold in a sandwich with some ketchup!
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I posted this photo to Facebook yesterday, and my friend’s husband said “That’s not a hoagie, that’s a sub”. He may be right, but for being 3,000 miles away from Philadelphia, it’s not too bad.

Serious Eats posted this top 10 list of Philadelphia hoagies in September and my only comment about it was that it made me hungry for a hoagie…but the closest we really get here in the UK is Subway.

I knew what basically went into a hoagie, so I started looking around Sainsbury’s for appropriate substitutions. The batons sold fresh in the bakery section are about a foot long and soft, making a great base for my hoagie. I haven’t yet found Provaolne cheese, but I picked a mild Edam instead. For meats, I went with ham and German salami. I wanted a third meat, but I couldn’t decide what would work well, so I kept it with the two.

For me, what makes a hoagie is the dressing and the oregano. I sliced my tomatoes thinly and shredded the lettuce, putting both in a sealable container. I then tossed on top of the tomatoes and lettuce 6 tablespoons olive oil, 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar, and one tablespoon Oregano, sealed up the container, and gave it a good shake.

I went against tradition and put a little bit of mayonnaise on the roll, topped it with the cheese and meat and then the coated lettuce and tomato.

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I was going to hold off on this post for a few weeks and get some older (well, a few weeks old) recipes posted, but Michelle’s post on The American Resident about homesickness and making comfort food prompted me to post this sooner.

I think most of us who grew up middle class in America know about Chef Boyardee. Those red cans (I swear, it used to be spelled Boy-R-De) were a familiar food growing up. My favourite was the ravioli, and I detested beefaroni. In addition to tins of pasta, Boyardee also made pizza kits, which became a household staple because it was easy to make, and we could put whatever toppings on it we wanted.

Even as an adult, I continued to buy the Boyardee pizza kits because they were inexpensive, and had everything I needed – crust mix, tomato sauce, and cheese. Of course, we started adding shredded cheese to the grated Parmesean by this point.

I love pizza and I love homemade pizza. Moving to the UK, I’ve struggled a bit in finding a crust mix that I like – a lot of the pre-made mixes don’t cook well or taste too sweet and I just don’t have the patience for making it from scratch. Originally, this recipe was just going to be “Easy Pizza”, but when I bit into it I was instantly reminded of the good old Chef Boyardee pizza mixes. I hope this can comfort another ex-pat the same way it comforted me!

You Will Need:
300g Bisquick mix (in the UK it’s called Bisquick Multi-Purpose Baking Mix and comes in the same size box as a cake mix)
200ml very hot water (I used water from the kettle)
Olive oil (or vegetable oil)
tomato sauce (plain passata)
Parmesean cheese
Oregano*
Basil*
Mozzarella cheese*
Toppings of your choice*

*optional ingredients. The main ingredients are essentially the items you need for a Chef Boyardee kit. Any direction involving optional ingredients will have an * in front of it.

Pre-heat the oven to 225C.
Grease or line a cookie sheet (or pizza tray).
Combine water and Bisquick and mix until it resembles dough. If there is still a lot of powdered mix, add a little more water.
Press dough onto cookie sheet and lightly cover with olive oil (a spray bottle is ideal).
Bake for 5 minutes.
Remove from oven and top pizza with sauce and *sprinkle oregano and basil on sauce.
Sprinkle Parmesean cheese over sauce.
*Top with Mozzarella cheese and your chosen toppings
Return to oven and bake for an additional 10-15 minutes or until cheese is melted and crust is crisp (it took 12 in my oven).

Enjoy!

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, or the RSS feed(s), please notify me.

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Are you ready for Winter?

If you live in the UK, there are some claims that parts of the country could see snow in mid-October. It’s a bit of an ambiguous comment considering the UK includes Scotland, and it’s quite likely for it to snow there early in the season, and oh look, it did. But with last week’s record-breaking highs followed by this week’s bitterly cold wind, you never know what will happen with the weather.

So it’s time to get out the wool caps and start preparing yourself and your home for Winter.

As most of you know, Tim and I live in half of a farmhouse built in the 1800s. While we have nice thick walls for insulating purposes, it also can get quite draughty. We don’t have central heating and rely on a fireplace in the living room for heat, and electric oil-filled radiators in the other rooms, along with a halogen heater (which I use a lot in the living room when the fire isn’t lit) and a gas heater in the bathroom. Last year, Tim and I picked up some Stormguard Secondary Glazing from B&Q and it really made a difference in the living room, bathroom, and spare room. This year, we purchased two kits so we can hopefully get all the windows (except for the kitchen) sealed. The reason we won’t seal the kitchen is because it acts as a vent for the hob, and the kitchen will get warm enough from cooking.

When it got cold last year, we started shoving old towels and dressing gowns (US: robes) around the bottom of the front door and the living room door. It really helped to keep the warm air in the house. I even shoved a mitten inside the letter slot overnight because I could feel a draft coming through it! This year, I plan to make some draught excluders from last year’s winter tights (checking carefully to make sure there are no holes first) and some sand. I will post a tutorial within the next few weeks.

We also will be closing off rooms in our house to keep the warmth where we need it. This year, we aren’t having a guest at Christmastime (I’m very sad about this, but there’s nothing we can do about it), so we plan on leaving the door to the spare room shut. The cat will be mad at losing her favourite sleeping spot, but she’ll get over it. We also will be keeping our bedroom door shut during the day to try to keep as much of the heat in as possible.

Years ago, Tim purchased an all-seasons duvet from Debenhams. It is a two-part duvet with a thin duvet for Summer use, a thicker duvet for Autumn/Early Spring use, and you snap the two together to make a thick, warm, Winter duvet. It sure is nice and cozy to snuggle down under the thick duvet with our heated mattress pad.

Obviously, I’ll also be bringing out the thermal undergarments, and I’ve actually been wearing some of the tops this week already. Last year I couldn’t find tops in my size, so I just wore regular camisoles. I was in Marks and Spencers a few weeks ago and I discovered they sell ladies thermal tops up to a size 22, so I now have 2 camisole/sleeveless tops, and 2 long sleeved tops to go along with my 2 pairs of thermal pants I bought last year. I also wore tights under my trousers nearly every day last Winter, so I’ve already stocked up on a few pairs of weather sensor tights. They claim to “keep your body temperature regulated”. I’m not really sure if they work or not, but they were soft and comfortable. I’ll also soon start shopping for some thick slipper socks to wear around the house, as I’m not an indoor shoe-wearer. My mom sent me a pair of bootie-style slippers, so that will help, too. Last year, Primark sold mock uggs for a fiver. The boots were pretty useless when we had loads of snow, but they also doubled up as slipper-boots for the house. I bought a pair of boots at New Look towards the end of the season on a recommendation from my SIL, but I’ll keep a pair of Primark boots in reserve just in case I get soaked.

Other than getting the house and my wardrobe ready, I also have to think about the kitchen and cooking. Last year, we had a snow storm that had our car stuck in the driveway and the only shops we were able to get to were the corner Spar or the Cost Cutters – both of which ran out of bread and milk faster than they could get it delivered. Tesco also cancelled one of my deliveries due to the snow, so we started to run out of food options until my MIL’s friend took her to Tesco in their 4×4 (US: SUV) and she was able to pick us up a few items. This year, I’m going to try to be more prepared.

I have a bread machine, so when the Spar ran out of bread last year, out came the machine. It’s not brilliant bread for toasting, but it will do. Milk was the bigger issue, and at one point we had to resort to powdered skim milk for our tea (gross) for a half day while we waited for the Spar to get in a milk delivery. We are going to fix this problem this year by keeping a few boxes of UHT milk in the pantry. We take UHT milk with us when we go camping, and while it’s not something we would sit and drink a glass of, it’s fine for tea or a bowl of cereal, and it’s shelf-stable, so it doesn’t need refrigeration until it’s opened.

We don’t usually eat processed food, but I started a small “stockpile” within the past few weeks as a “just in case”. My mini stockpile includes cooking ingredients like pasta, passata, and canned tomatoes as well as tins of hoops, ravioli, and macaroni cheese. If we run into a situation where there isn’t anything to eat in the fridge, we will have a few meals we can make from the tinned food, and it doubles as “emergency food” for those times when we have been out all day and I’m too tired to cook or days I’m not feeling well and should save us from ordering pizza or going down to the chippy. I also have a few containers of “just add hot water” soups and noodles. It’s not brilliant, but it will see us through a snow storm. All I have been doing is adding an extra few tins to my weekly grocery shop, particularly if something was on offer.

I also have to consider the possibility of the electricity going out, as ours went out several times last Winter. Assuming we can get it up and running, this won’t be a problem for us as we will have the coal-fired Esse stove working. If we don’t get the Esse working, then we will have a combination of whatever can be cooked over/in the fireplace and the use of our single burner gas camping stove. Last year I also purchased toasting forks for the fireplace for cooking sausages or toasting crumpets.

Lighting-wise, we have loads of torches (US: Flashlights) and some strings of battery-operated fairy lights we purchased at IKEA last year for a railway project. I grabbed two strands last year while my mom was visiting and the electricity went out and strung one around the bannister to see for going up the steps, and it worked wonders. I even took the strands camping and used one as a night light so when I got up in the middle of the night I didn’t have to fumble for a torch. I also tend to load up on candles – both the tall tapers and tea lights. A tea light in a jar can provide enough light to use the loo, and a group of them can be used to read by. The extra plus of a candle is that the flame will help to raise the temperature in the room, too. When I ran out of candle holders for the tapers last year, I pulled empty bottles out of the recycling bin. The mouth was just the perfect size for a candle, just melt some wax around the lip first to secure the candle. We also keep a battery operated radio under the sink, and I’ve used it to have some noise around if Tim was away at work, but it also works for leaving on a local radio station to get updates. We have an inverter in our camping supplies that will convert a car cigarette lighter to a regular plug just in case we need to charge a phone.

Because our electricity tends to go out at random moments, we keep torches accessible everywhere and I started collecting wind-up torches from the places we visited to cut down on needing batteries. When I was staying in a static caravan last summer (2010), I used two wind-up torches to read by in my bedroom so I didn’t need to use the overhead lighting, so they are pretty bright!

The single-burner camping stove means we can still heat up the small tins of food, too. I can get very creative when I need to, and if you get a large enough pot, you can peel the label off a few cans, put the opened cans in the pot, fill the pot with water, and cook two cans at once.

I know a lot of this sounds crazy, but I like to be prepared. I don’t want to wind up in a situation where we’re freezing and hungry and I don’t think anything I’m doing is too extreme.

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I watched Extreme Couponing a few nights ago via my friend’s Slingbox. And I just had to share the moment that made me laugh.

The first woman was shopping at a store that “prices matches” with fliers from other stores. A lot of places do this, and even the shops here in the UK will do it, too. But this woman truly went to the extreme. She had a flier that marked down cereal to less than $2, when her store charges over $5 for the boxes. That’s awesome. But what really made me laugh is the woman drove over 30 miles to get the flier. Uhm, hello? That 30 miles of driving probably cost you more than you’ll save on that box of cereal!

Tim and I worked out that we can go approximately 4 miles for each pound (£) of diesel we put in the car. A 30-mile trip would cost us about £7.50. £1 = around $1.50 currently, so if she could go 4 miles for every $1.50, that means she would have spent over $11 on fuel to pick up this flier. With the price difference being around $4, she had to buy 3 boxes before she even began to break even on the deal. Of course, she probably bought something like 10 or more boxes, I really didn’t pay attention to the number of boxes. BUT, she also didn’t include the $11 in petrol in her savings.

I still think the extreme way of couponing isn’t as glamorous as it looks. Looking at some of the stockpiling you have to wonder how much money do these people spend maintaining their stock? If they have multiple freezers, surely the cost of running them has to be calculated into their total savings? Or the shelving units they purchase to store it all on, the extra rooms they have built onto their homes. What about the wear and tear on their $30k vehicle because it has to sit in the driveway through all weather since the garage is full of their shopping? Or the sheer amount of TIME it takes for them to go through the coupons? Some people on the show boast that they spend 40+ hours/week clipping coupons and looking for deals. Do they calculate into their savings when they purchase coupons on eBay? How about the paper, ink, and electricity they use to print off on-line coupons? What about the time lost with their family because they are too busy searching for coupons and deals? Several episodes back there was someone who drove 100+ miles for something cheap, yet they didn’t calculate their travelling into their savings. One woman boasted that she couponed while on a family vacation because there were different stores than the ones she shopped at at home!

I know that pre-packaged food tends to have long expiration dates, but I also worry that the food will go bad before they use it – Sometimes when my mom or I would clean out the kitchen cabinet (our “stockpile”), we often found things way at the back that had expired without us realizing it. I couldn’t imagine keeping track of expiration dates on some of the huge stockpiles we see on that show. I have a hard enough time keeping track of the food in my small fridge, let alone if I had three refrigerators full of food.

And I’ll say it again… a lot of what they buy is JUNK. Candy, sugar cereals, soda, ramen noodles (sodium), etc. Even tinned vegetables still aren’t as healthy as fresh. And tinned fruit tends to be in sugary syrup. How can you stay healthy and eat that stuff? What do you need 200 bottles of laundry soap for? A bottle probably lasts at least a month or two, so you have enough detergent for how many YEARS of laundry? What happens if you move? Will you pay a moving company to shift your stockpile? What about insurance on it in case your basement floods, your house catches fire, or someone breaks in and steals things? would you even know if someone had stolen something from your stockpile? If you don’t own pets, why do you have 100 packets of cat treats? You’re past the age of having babies, and your own children are in primary school, so why do you have all those jars of baby food, diapers, and wipes? What’s the use in having a 20 years supply of feminine products if you are male and don’t have a female partner or family member to use it? Sometimes, I even wonder if the people actually eat and use the things they buy or if they just like looking at their “collection”, because they seem to do these huge shops weekly!

I’m still quite satisfied to see myself saving £10 off a £50 order. Some weeks I fail at saving money (this week, I’ve only saved about £2). Other weeks, I go for gold and can save over £10. It all evens out for me and I would never purchase something purely based on the fact that it was on special offer or if I had a coupon for it. Everything I purchase gets used within a reasonable amount of time, unless it’s part of our “Winter Kit” (which I’ll explain in a later post)

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, or the RSS feed(s), please notify me.

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