As the nights draw in and the days become increasingly hectic with Christmas preparations, simple warming meals are what is required. Here are 4 Easy Comfort Food Recipes – perfect for this time of year! Plus find the linky for #CookBlogShare Week 48.
Can you believe it’s just 4 weeks until Christmas??? I am already like a small child – suuuuper excited! I love this time of year: it’s that sense of anticipation, coupled with pretty lights and sparkly things, warm and cosy evenings in and, of course, THE FOOD!!
If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you know I go BIG when it comes to Christmas food. It’s traditional at this time of year for me to go a bit crazy with new recipes – simplifying Christmas classics (like my Easy Peasy Cranberry Sauce or my Stress Free Roast Turkey) and coming up with inventive new dishes (Sprout SlawandChristmas Turkey Burgers, anyone?).
How to cook perfect roast turkey – the stress free way!
This year I have been a little more restrained than in previous years (mostly because I’ve spent a lot of time updating old Christmas recipes!), but I’ve still found time to create a few new Christmas recipes! My favourites this year are my Chestnut and Cranberry Stuffing Balls and my Stuffed Rolled Turkey Breast – an easy, stress free and CHEAP way to create a delicious Christmas centrepiece.
Rolled Stuffed Turkey Breast wrapped in Prosciutto
Over on Productive Blogging, I’ve not been very Christmassy at all! But instead I’ve been sharing tips on How to set up the Yoast SEO plugin (properly!), How to automate your social media and How to send an automated blog newsletter with MailChimp.
I’ve also written a really comprehensive Beginner’s Guide to SEO, which covers topics such as: What is SEO? How to do keyword research and How site structure can affect your SEO. It’s well worth a read if you want to get a really solid grounding in what SEO is (and what it isn’t) and how to actually ‘do’ SEO effectively.
4 Easy Comfort Food Recipes
Brrr – it’s getting chilly now isn’t it? We even had SNOW in my little corner of the South East of England – which is almost UNHEARD OF at this time of year! As the weather is getting worse and the nights are drawing in, I’m now in full on comfort food mode (who are you kidding, Eb? You are ALWAYS in comfort food mode!!).
So it’s not surprising that it was comfort food that caught my eye among all the dishes linked up in last weeks linky over on Casa Costello! The thing I really love about the dishes I’ve chosen to feature this week is not just that they are wonderfully comforting dishes, but also that they are all EASY PEASY! This is important to me at any time of the year, but especially now – I don’t know about you but my calendar is looking a little bit CRAY-ZEEE for the next month and a bit. Mostly good stuff, but still – I need REALLY REALLY need easy peasy meals this month!!
Creamy Roasted Butternut Squash Soup
First up is this delicious sounding Creamy Roasted Butternut Squash Soup from Monika at Everyday Health Recipes. I am a BIG fan of roasted butternut squash in all forms but especially in soup! I particularly love how healthy and nutritious this soup is – packed with veggies, lentils and spices. And I also love how creamy this soup is, even though Monika doesn’t use any cream!
Brussels Sprouts, Bacon & Chestnuts Macaroni Cheese
Given how into Christmas food I am – and especially sprouts! I couldn’t not include this delicious sounding (and very Christmassy) Brussels Sprouts, Bacon & Chestnuts Macaroni Cheese recipe from Jo at Jo’s Kitchen Larder! It’s basically exactly as the recipe suggests: classic Macaroni Cheese, Christmasified (that’s totally a word!) with Brussels sprouts, bacon and chestnuts. What a great way to sneak Brussels sprouts into sprout-refuseniks (i.e. most small children). I love how this recipe can be made ahead of time too – and even cooked from frozen! Perfect for those unexpected guests who arrive at Christmas time.
Easy Sausage Stroganoff
I am always looking for ways to make midweek cooking easier and so I simply had to include this rather genius recipe, from Jacqui over at Recipes Made Easy, for Easy Sausage Stroganoff. Definitely one of those, ‘Now why didn’t I think of that?’ recipes. All the delicious flavour of stroganoff made simpler and cheaper by using sausages! I can see this recipe going down very well in the Gargano household this winter.
Chicken Balti Pies
Pies and curry are two of my favourite winter comfort foods, so the two combined is like some kind of ultimate comfort food nirvana! And this is exactly what Cat from Curly’s Cooking has done with these rather awesome looking Chicken Balti Pies! Basically, she has made a quick and easy chicken balti and encased it inside two sheets of ready-made puff pastry. The result is these rather awesome little pies – I can imagine how they would make a delicious dinner one night – maybe served with some veg on the side – and a brilliant quick and easy lunch the next day from the leftovers!
#CookBlogShare Week 48
And so we come to this week’s linky. You can link up any foodie post that you have – both old and new posts are welcome. All you need to do is:
- Link up a recipe or foodie post by clicking the blue ‘add your link’ button below and following the instructions (maximum of 4, please).
- Add a link from your post back to this post (so everyone else can find it and link up too!) and / or add the #CookBlogShare badge to your post (you can find the code below).
- Comment on one of the host’s posts and a minimum of 2 other postslinked up here, and generally share the love with a bit of social media action!
If you wish, you can tweet a link to your recipe to me@easypeasyfoodieand also (if you have room on the tweet!) my co-hosts Jacqui @jacdotbee and Monika @MonikasRecipes, usingthe #CookBlogSharehashtag and we will retweet them. You can also post your recipe on theCook Blog Share Facebook Page.
Need some help on Instagram? You and me both…so let’s help each other! Whenever you post to Instagram, use the #CookBlogShare hashtag, then quickly hop over to the #CookBlogShare feed, liking as many as you can and commenting on any that particularly catch your eye. Not a big job at all, but if we all do it, it would make a BIG difference!!
I will comment on a selection of my favourite posts this week and pin them to theCook Blog Share Pinterest Board. I can’t wait to see what you’ve all been making!
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Just to remind you, by joining in, you are giving the #CookBlogShare hosts permission to use your pictures in a round up and on social media, if your recipe is selected as one of our favourites!
Next week #CookBlogShare will be hosted by Jacqui at Recipes Made Easy 🙂
