What's in my bag?

Writing about food is great and all that, but let's not kid ourselves... I don't cook elaborately every day... (except for the last 5 days, but that's an exception, lasagna recipe coming your way soon!). In those cases you need some other things to write about.

Then I got this great inspiration from a fellow blogger and friend: perlenmama. She is a mommy blogger who writes in German about her daily life with her just-turned-2-year-old daughter, if you know how to read in German or if you know how to work google-translate you should check out her blog! A couple of days ago she wrote a post about the contents of her bag, and since I always get surprised every time I open my bag I thought it would make a fun post for my blog as well!

So this is my bag for winter. It is very practical. Hi, I'm Dutch, did I tell you that already? :P It rains a fair bit here, so you want at least one bag that'll prevent your phone from drowning and this one does the trick. It is a bag from Fossil, which is one of my favorite brands! I've been wearing watches from that brand since I was seventeen ( I bought it in New York ), and when I discovered there was also a shop in my neighborhood I've been buying their bags as well. It looks kind of compact, but it can fit quite a lot! 

This is a list of what you can find in my bag: 

• A Rimmel lasting finish by Kate in the color 'rossetto - 07'
• A Labello Repair & Beauty lipbalm (which I don't love... why do I keep it in my bag?)
• Two of my L'Occitane handcream trio in the knitted pouch
• A spectacle-cleaning-towlette-thingee
• A Maalox tablet
• A hairpin from Oysho
• Four pens (why do I carry around so many pens... I told you I get surprised every time I look in my bag)
• My iPhone 4
• My week planner from Flow Magazine
• My Tommy Hilfiger wallet I've had since I was 17, I might need a new one haha
• Peppermint with licorice flavor
• Mint and Strawberry gum
• A lollypop I got in Barcelona at a restaurant haha

That, minus a couple of receipts that I threw away when I found them hiding in my bag! Hm my bag is even more practical than I already thought! 

Sooo, now a little update on my week. i've been writing papers again, what a surprise! I did manage to plan in some fun stuff as well, gotta keep things balanced, right?! Last thursday me and Joost made an insane amount of sushi and we washed it down with some really good gin and tonics, on friday I heated up a portion of home made lasagna of earlier that week, which is even more awesome than eating it the first time you make it because you have to put in no effort and still you are enjoying an incredible home made meal! On saturday I had a team-building activity with my committee, we went glow-in-the-dark mini-golfing (yes that exists...) and in the evening me and another committee-member cooked up a nice meal (chicken wrapped up in bacon with oven-baked potatoes and a lot of salad and a tiny apple-pie dessert). Yesterday me and a friend went cycling on the country side and we ate pancakes, had an awesome time and when I got home I made couscous with sausages and ratatouille. Okay that was my week in food haha. Oh and I bought flowers! They are orange and look very cute! 

 

And now life continues, and I'm writing another paper! 2 down, 1 to go... I'm almost there, almost there!

That was all! I hope you enjoyed this post, I'd love it if you left me a comment if you did ;). Also check out my facebook page over here: https://www.facebook.com/FloorOneSmileaDay

Lots of love,
Floor

Millionaire's Shortbread

Hey there! Happy Tuesday!

What's that? You've got a craving for chocolate, caramel AND cookies? 

You can't choose? Why would you, when there is such a wonderful thing as millionaire's shortbread?

A famous writer once wrote: 

"Everything in moderation, including moderation"- Oscar Wilde. 

And that is exactly what you should keep in mind when making and eating these delicious treats. You will have bowls that are covered with sticky caramel and melted chocolate that are impossible to get out, so you will feel the strong urge to clean everything with your finger and your tongue. I wouldn't discourage that, but do it in moderation, because you will be to nauseous to even try the shortbread when it's done! 

I made this last thursday with the 'Boyfriend', and he had a jar full of good quality salted caramel from a foody type of birchbox. We just baked the shortbread, spread the caramel on top when it was cooled down and added the chocolate. The recipe does not call for this but I did have some gluten-free flour lying around and we thought it would make the shortbread more crisp and flaky while at the same time we would limit the amount of gluten in the cookie, which for some people is a good thing! 

The result looks like this, and the ingredient list and recipe you can find below! 

Tiny treats, great for sharing (or not)

Millionaire's Shortbread

1 tin of condensed milk

150g of flour

100g of gluten-free flour

75g of white muscavado sugar 

300 g of flour

125g of sugar

200g of pure chocolate

Start with the caramel, I didn't make this myself but this recipe for caramel is fairly widespread so I think we can assume it will lead to the same kind of result! Of course if you can find a good quality caramel in your shop, you can totally go for that instead.

If you're making the caramel, put the tin of condensed milk covered in a pan with boiling water with a lid on top and boil it on low heat for three hours. Check every now and then whether the water level is still high enough, the tin should be totally covered! After three hours take it out of the pan and let it cool down for 30 minutes. Then melt 125g of the butter in a pan and add the sugar and let everything melt together. Add the caramelized condensed milk and let it warm up for 5 minutes. You can also add some sea salt to make it a salted caramel, the jar I used did have salt and the result was awesome!

Heat up the oven to 180 degrees C. Crumb the two types of flour and the rest of the butter (175g) together and add the white muscavado sugar. Kneed the crumbs together to a dough and press it down in your square baking pan lined with baking paper. With a fork make some little holes in the dough and bake it for 30 minutes in the middle of the oven until it's nice and brown and done. Let the shortbread cool down completely. 

On top of the cooled down shortbread spread your caramel and let it set for a little while. I put it in the freezer so it would set a bit faster and if you do that it only takes 10 minutes to set. While it's in the freezer, melt your chocolate au-bain-marie, and then spread the chocolate on top of the caramel. We also added some sea-salt flakes on top of the chocolate to give it an extra kick! Put it back in the freezer for 10 minutes and then you can take it out. 

Take the Millionaire's Shortbread out of the baking tin and cut it into small pieces. Again, everything in moderation, including moderation. That goes best if you cut it into small pieces, so you don't end up eating half the thing in half an hour and getting completely sick with all of that chocolate and caramel. 

So... good luck with that. I can't stop eating those things, it was a good thing I wasn't at home this weekend otherwise I would have eaten even more... But then again, I had more than enough treats this weekend, I was at my parents place I had so much good food once again! At least now I have some more little treats to get myself through the week haha! 

I'd love to hear your comments, whether you've tried to make them or any other recipe's for me to try! So do let me know how you get on! You can contact me through facebook, twitter, instagram or in the old fashioned way, through the comments below this post! 

Lots of love,

Floor

Healthy Breakfast Favourites

Once again, it has been too long!

I hope you haven't been missing my blogs too much, as time dragged on I was getting more and more ashamed of not writing yet another day, which of course did not help my creative process... So before I get on with the main topic of this blog, a little update on what I have been up to!

I think it is about 2,5 weeks ago since I wrote my last blogpost, since then I have been to The Hague (twice), Breda, Utrecht, Maastricht, Amsterdam and Rotterdam. (As I'm writing this down I can hardly believe it actually... I didn't know I've been all over the Netherlands so much haha). I've been on excursions with ESN twice (to Amsterdam and the Hague), celebrated carnaval in Breda, spent some time in the sun in Maastricht, interview consultants in Rotterdam and went about with my daily life in Utrecht.

With some of my best friends in The Hague

Celebrating Carnaval with Joost <3

exploding fields of crocuses in The Hague

Ahhh the daily life, you probably will recognize this, the good times and the bad. Last week was one of those 'bad' times. I like some routine in my days and suddenly I was thrown out of my routine because of a lack of classes and other things. I was so grumpy all week long... So what I've been trying to do to improve my own mood is go for a run two times a week. Having these anchor points in my week (and in my days) help me so much to stay motivated. I push myself to go faster and further every time I run, and I know that when I get back I take a nice shower, have a proper lunch and then have more energy to get Uni-stuff done. It has improved my mood a lot!

Something else that improves my mood is my breakfasts. Going for a run twice a week has motivated me to have healthier breakfasts as well. The typical Dutch breakfast is a cheese sandwich or a sandwich with chocolate sprinkles or peanut butter and a glass of milk or coffee/tea. But as you can imagine, this is not the best breakfast you can give yourself to stay nourished and full all morning. I started putting more effort in my breakfast and taking a bit more time to prepare something healthy, so here I have two healthy options for you to try if you are looking for some new breakfast ideas!

My first option is best for the colder days: Oatmeal!
I don't think I've ever had this as a child... But I love it now and I think it would be very suitable for children as well. I started making this half a year ago with milk, but these large quantities of milk started to give me stomach aches and made me very nauseous, so I steered away from that for a while. I always thought that making it with milk would lead me to a tasteless, disgusting porridge but actually it is not that bad at all! So now I make it with mostly water and a splash of milk to add a bit of creaminess.

1 portion Oatmeal:

Yummy oatmeal with in-season blueberries

175 ml water

4 heaped tablespoons of steal-cut oats

a splash of milk 

a pinch of salt

Toppings:

Toasted almonds, cinnamon, raisins (and a sprinkle of sugar)

Blueberries, desiccated coconut, cinnamon

Banana, Raisins, cinnamon

Heat up the water in a small pan until it starts boiling. Add the oats and let them cook for about 2 minutes, add the sprinkle of salt. When it starts to bubble cohesively and looks a bit gloopy it's perfect. Take it off of the heat and stir in the milk. Leave it for about a minute so that the oats can soak up all of the liquids.

Pour the oatmeal in a bowl and add the toppings. I gave you three of my favorite versions, as you can see I LOVE cinnamon... I can't help it. I also have a bit of a sweet-tooth, so I always add a sprinkle of sugar. Not too much, just a bit to give it a hint of sweetness... I know I should learn to live without... 

I don't always have the time to prepare my oatmeal, so I used to have some regular cereal that I would eat with yoghurt or milk if I had to get out of the house really quickly. But then I found a recipe to make my own granola! Life changer! It is so damn easy, and so tasty, and I really believe it is a healthier option to buying the stuff in the shop! The reason for that is that you can control the amount of sweetness you add, and I prefer to use honey because it is a natural sweetener and I think that makes it a healthier option to some artificial sugars. Make a large batch of this stuff on the weekend and you'll be laughing the rest of the week! I eat it with some yoghurt and some fresh fruit, and I'm a good girl so I don't add any more sweetness to my yoghurt and muesli, at least that is one step forward ;). 

Ingredients:

The result of a saturday morning cooking session, granola with mango

Steal-cut oats (as much as you want...) 

Honey

Sunflower Oil

(egg white)

cinnamon

ground ginger

dried fruits

desiccated coconut

toasted almonds

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees celsius. 

Pour your oats onto a baking tray and add your spices, then start drizzling some honey and some sunflower oil over your oats. You want all of those little oats to be coated in some lovely sweetness and a bit of oil, it should end up looking a bit sticky. If you would start baking this off now you would end up with a granola that has a lot of loose oats (which I like). You can also loosely whip an egg white and add that to the mixture. The egg white will make sure more oats will stick together and you'll end up with some nice crunchy oat-clusters. Yum! 

As with the oatmeal, the toppings really are up to you! Before it goes into the oven add the stuff that needs toasting off as well, such as the coconut and the almonds. Add the dried fruit after the mixture comes out of the oven so that they don't become too tough. 

Bake off the oat-mixture for about half an hour, or even longer. It really depends on how dark you want your granola! Do mix up the mixture on your baking tray every ten minutes so that every oat gets nice and toasty. 

When you're done baking it, take it out of the oven, and let it dry completely on a cool surface. So take it off of the baking tray and let it cool completely until dry. When it comes out of the oven it might feel a bit moist but that will go away within 10 minutes!

Ahhh I'm glad I got that done... I hope it is as nice to read as it was to write! Please let me know what you think about my 'healthier' breakfast options, what toppings you like to add to your oatmeal and also please let me know if you give making your own granola a try! 

Lots of love,

Floor

Something new: YouTube Video!

Happy monday everyone!

I hope you're all surviving the first day back at work or back in school, and I hope you didn't have any problems getting out of bed this morning! I had to get up at 7 am. It was just not the right time if you know what I mean!

Last week I've been thinking about about what I wanted to do for my blog, since I really like to try new things and trigger my creativity. Unfortunately my creativity failed on me, but the reason for that was perhaps that I was focussing a bit more on some other things. I'll ramble on about those things in a second but in the end I did manage to make something new for you guys: it's a youtube video!

Last week I had another one of those weeks where I didn't cook anything all week besides my breakfast. I know my mother would love to have a week like that but feel really disconnected if I don't cook my own food, I like to know what goes in it and the process of buying the ingredients and cooking everything is very soothing to me. I was also wearing a new (not necessarily pretty) accessory: a borrowed fitbit. If you're a bit into fitness you might have picked up on this hype, it is a little sensor that detects how many steps you take every day, how many stairs you climb, how many calories you burn etc. So at the same time I was focussing on moving around a bit more, but I was eating very unhealthy and I didn't cook anything... That seems a bit unbalanced, doesn't it?

This week I'm cooking again, and I'm also focussing on my fitness because I got some new running gear from my dad, which is a good incentive for me to go for a run. (By the way, if you are in need of some new running gear to get you out of the house, check out the H&M. I got the cutest and most comfortable top in bright orange with long sleeves and a little orange jacket to go with it and I'm soooo satisfied with the quality of the fabrics! And it's H&M so the prices are really wallet-friendly!)

My new flashy running gear :)

Back to the cooking... Most of the time I cook pretty healthy anyways, but I do like to bake. My personal philosophy is that if I have baked it myself it's not as bad as when I buy my treats because I'll end up sharing more and I only put in good ingredients in anything I bake. So when I finished my assignment on sunday afternoon I thought I deserved some little baking-time. I made madeleines again, and if you've been reading my blog for a while you know I have a blogpost about honey and earl grey madeleines, but this time I made lemon and poppyseed madeleines. This change is not really worth writing a whole new recipe so I did something else instead! I made my recipe into a little video!

It was very funny to film because I used my iPad, so I was holding it while stirring or picking things up, so every now and then you'll see me mis-grab something or just being very clumsy in general haha, but in the end it turned out to be quite cute, so I thought that would be a fun thing to start this week with!

I hope you guys enjoy it as well, please let me know if you do because then I know whether I should try to make these little clips more often! You can like it or comment on it or send me a message via twitter or via facebook, in general I just love getting messages from you :).

Lots of love,
Floor

These are a few of my favorite things!

Cream colored ponies and crisp apple strudels,

Doorbells and sleighbells and schnitzel with noodles,

Haha just joking! (Although I wouldn't pass on a good apple strudle!)

Happy saturday! 

It's weekend again and my mind has cleared up from all those stress clouds that were so dominant last week! The moment I know things are going well and relaxed again is when I start to notice all those little things that can make you so happy. That is why I am sharing those with you now, maybe you're stressed out and you need a little reminder of life's joys, or maybe you are already on a life-high, in that case we can ride that wave together! High-five! Yeah! (Did i just virtually high-five you...? I guess I did hahahaha)

1. First of all, I got my new glasses! Finally! I've been waiting for 4 weeks before they were ready! I don't really mind wearing contacts, but I hated my old glasses, so every time I would wear them I would feel seriously unpretty. Definitely not a way you want to feel because of something silly as glasses... But now I've got these and I like them ;). What do you think?

My new Vogue Specs :)

2. Yesterday I had the best valentines day ever, and the best thing about it was that it wasn't a big deal for once! It sounds really boring but I really like the security I have with Joost as my boyfriend, while at the same time we go out of our way to do all these fun things together. It's so uncomplicated! We had an excellent dinner though, tapas like they are supposed to be and a good glass of red wine for me and some beers for Joost :).

The best tapas in town!

3. I read somewhere that with celebrating valentines day we also celebrate spring winning the battle with winter, and I totally agree with celebrating that! Spring is about a month early (or so I read), but I started noticing little green buds and pastel colored flowers in gardens and fields. Best time of the year ever! 

Bright green buds on a tree

4. With spring comes a different set of clothes, not everyone might agree with me but I cannot wear the same colors in winter as in summer. In winter I wear a lot of burgundy, black, dark blue and green (and I think winter has been going on too long according to Joost because he starts to comment on my amount of dark clothes now haha). While in summer I wear more brights, corals, mint greens, white and light blue. My mother is actually a really good seamstress, so today we went to a large fabric wholesale store (the ones participants of project runway go to as well), and we picked up some lovely fabrics for a pair of pants, a blouse and a dress for me. The colors are so bright, you can only get happy looking at them! Love!

Beautiful fabrics for some summary clothes

And then there were all these little other things: shouting at the television because a Dutch ice-skater almost won a gold medal, apart from 0,003 seconds (Koen Verweij, if you read this, we're still so proud!!), finally figuring out a knitting pattern, treating yourself to a Starbucks cappuccino with cinnamon, and it goes on and on and on!

I hope I have inspired you a bit, let me know in the comments what you have enjoyed today and let's keep this happy-wave rolling and infecting many more people!

Lots of love and happiness,

Floor

What I ate Wednesday

Happy Wednesday everyone!

Oh what a day haha... This week I'm running around town entertaining a group of international students, mostly in the evening. What a culture shock for me! And no I'm not talking about the cultural backgrounds of the members of my international group, I'm talking about the 'being active in the evening'-culture.

As you might have read I had one of those writing-boring-essays-weeks again last week, which was the reason why I locked myself in my room with my laptop and my books once again. The world outside is so real, and cold, and busy. Luckily I have some time today to curl up with a blanket and experience the outside world through my window, safe, inside the house ;). Haha no I'm just kidding, but I am trying to cope with a never ending hangover, it started as an alcohol hangover and it continued with a lack of sleep hangover, do you know what I mean?

On those days I try to be a bit nice to myself, I'm never really strict with what I eat because I believe that if you keep thinking about all those things you can't have you end up wanting them even more, so I allow myself to eat a couple of things I normally wouldn't have.

What I ate Wednesdays are one of those blogger things, and I thought I'd join in to show you that I don't always cook gourmet meals. Good food might make you feel better though so I do choose what I eat carefully! We're only half way through the day though and I haven't had lunch yet, so I'll just describe to you the things I ate yesterday to make myself feel a little bit better while coping with a massive headache:

• I started with water and a vitamin supplement, I don't always take those, only when I feel like my body needs a bit more... 
• I was out of bread and I didn't feel like having my normal oatmeal so I had two mini raisin rolls and a cup of tea, if I had had the energy to cook I would have made oatmeal with water and raisins, some cinnamon and toasted almonds. 
• Then I went back to bed and around 1 I did some groceries, so when I got back I had two pieces of toast, one with hummus and sliced chicken (such a yummy combo) and one piece of toast with nutella (and another cup of tea)
• As a little snack I had a couple of 'cranchito snax', it's a new thing from Milka chocolate: corn chips (savory) covered in chocolate. It's really good but you can't eat too many of those...
• For dinner I made something that I wouldn't cook for myself on a regular day, but a friend told me it was the best anti-hangover cure! I wouldn't want to call this a recipe because we stacked a burger and some things on a bun and called it a hamburger but it was an epic one so below this list you'll find the little 'recipe' of my creation. With the hamburger we had a couple of fries and a little salad to keep it on the healthy side! 

Epic hamburger by housemate Peter

1 soft bun

onions

1 hamburger

cheddar

bacon

an egg

lettuce

tomato

curry sauce and mayo

We toasted the buns, caramelized the onions, panfried the bacon, panfried the hamburger, fried an egg, put the cheddar on top of the hamburger, put some sauce on the toasted bun, put onions on top, added lettuce and tomato, added the hamburger, added the bacon, added the egg, top of the bun on top and done! 

The egg yolk should be runny and when you're finished your face should be completely covered in food, that's the only way to eat it, I assure you! But it made me feel so much better that I had enough energy to go out again till 2 in the morning. When I woke up at 7 today I wasn't that pleased, but hey. It's only for one week. I will survive! 

I hope you liked this post, it was a bit out of my comfort zone talking about what I eat during a day but I hope you enjoyed it nonetheless. 

What do you like to eat when you're hungover? Do you prefer savory things or do you get a sweet tooth the day after? Please let me know down in the comments below this post or have a look at my facebook-page or twitter to find other ways to get into contact with me :). 

xxxx Floor

Study food: comfort food (Spaghetti Bolognese)

Happy thursday everyone!

Oh naughty me... I should be working on a paper on Research Methods, I've only got 300 words to go and it'll be finished but damn it, I need to let out some inspiration first before I can finish this boring paper haha!

Me, not studying, in Barcelona, ahh the good times!

It is one of those weeks again, two paper deadlines and of course I've left it to the last minute to write them, I never seem to learn the trick do I? :P I'm not particularly stressed out either, I just don't want to do it, if I was stressed out I might have spent a little less time on facebook and twitter, but that's not the case for me this time! Still, most of the time this week I've been trying to concentrate on writing my papers and during those weeks I want easy, tasty comfort food. And what's better than making a whole pot full of delicious sauce that is too much for two people so you get to save a little bit for another meal during the week! It always makes me feel so satisfied... not having to think about what I'm going to eat in the evening and not having to do groceries every night of the week!

So last monday I decided to make Spaghetti Bolognese. Multiple reasons for that: it's easy, you can make a large pot, it's super tasty and it contains basic flavors that won't bore you after one night (which is necessary if you're planning to eat something more than once during a week if you ask me). Another personal reason was that my boyfriend thought he didn't like Spaghetti Bolognese, and I'm not bragging when I say this but everybody loves my Spaghetti Bolognese. I stick to a very basic recipe and I'm very keen on only using good products, fresh products, and I don't use any silly supplements.

In the Netherlands there is a commercial on television at the moment of a fake Italian chef who makes Spaghetti Bolognese with this 'powder', I've never really understood people who use powdered food... I've tried it, and when I first started cooking I did use it from time to time but the flavors are so bland and boring... With a couple of herbs, onion and garlic you can get so far and it isn't more difficult than popping a bag of powder in a pan with some water... So if you're one of these people who, out of habit, uses powdered food a lot, do me a favor and promise me to at least try this recipe. I can promise you that it is the easiest thing, you don't need a ridiculous amount of ingredients and you'll feel so satisfied and proud of the dish you've made from scratch!  (The only exception I make is for stock-cubes... It really takes a long time to make stock, and you can get pretty good quality versions of those stock-cubes).

I cooked this on monday and posted a little comment about it on twitter. A fellow blogger called 'perlenmama' commented on my tweet saying that she couldn't wait for the recipe even though I initially wasn't planning on doing a blog post about this week haha, but because she was looking forward to the recipe I decided to share it with you anyway, even though I didn't take a lot of pictures of it!

Spaghetti Bolognese

The final result

Makes 4 portions

a swig of olive oil

500 g of mince meat (half pork half beef)

a couple of slices of bacon, cut into pieces

1 large carrot

2 sticks of celery 

1 small onion

1 clove of garlic

1 tin of tomatoes

half a stock cube

1 small can of tomato concentrate

1/2 tsp of dried rosemary or oregano

25 ml of milk

Spaghetti (or any other type of pasta)

-optional: 100 ml of red wine-

Start by heating your pan and add the olive oil. When the pan and the oil is nice and hot add your bacon and fry that off for a couple of minutes. It doesn't need to be crispy, you just want to get the flavors going. When the bacon is cooked add the minced meat and fry that off until it really is nice and brown and you have some bits sticking to the bottom of your pot! At first, some liquid might seep out of the meat, just leave it on a medium heat so that it can evaporate and your meat can brown, no need to drain it because then you'll lose some of the great flavors!

While the meat is browning cut your vegetables in teeny tiny pieces, when they go in the pot you want them to almost melt in the sauce, Bolognese is not a sauce that's all about the vegetables (I feel a lot of students make this mistake...). The vegetables give the sauce it's flavor and sweetness but you'll need to prepare some vegetables on the side with this dish to make it a healthy one! When that's done add everything to the pan and make sure all of those little veggies go soft and yummy and release all of their sweet flavor.

When the meat is yummy looking brown, add the wine if you are using it. You want to use it to get the brown tasty bits off of the bottom of the pan and melt into the wine-sauce that you're making. The alcohol should evaporate immediately and you should be left with a wonderfully smelling kitchen! Then add your can of tinned tomatoes and stir it in. 

Now make a cup of stock-tomato tea: get a large mug, add half the stock cube and the tomato concentrate and some boiling water. Stir everything so that it starts to look like a strange tomato-soup and then add it to the pan! This is actually the first time I'm flavoring anything, the stock-cube will add some saltiness and the tomato concentrate with some acidity. 

As a last step add your dried herbs and spices (either the rosemary or the oregano, I used rosemary just because... I love the smell, sometimes I prefer oregano). Also add some pepper and some salt to taste: TO TASTE, that means that you should grab a spoon and taste what you've got so far! 

What is left to do is leave it for about an hour. Put the heat on low, you don't want it to 'boil', you want it to 'simmer' lightly. This is probably the most difficult part for anyone starting to learn how to cook: things get better over time! Thats not only the case for cheese and wine, but definitely for sauces as well. You want all of the flavors to marry and become one big family in a pot. 

After that hour (or 45 minutes if you really can't wait) add a tiny bit of milk to taste. In the ingredients list I said '25 ml' but that's just an estimation. The milk helps to correct the sharp tastes if there are any, this Bolognese sauce is all about the round and soft flavors. So grab a spoon and give it a taste, does it need that bit of milk? Does it need a bit more salt, some more pepper perhaps?  

During this last stage you should have also cooked your pasta according to the directions on the package. It usually takes about 10 minutes or a bit less for pasta to be done. 

Serve with some parmesan cheese and a green salad on the side then it should look something like the picture at the top of this article! 

I hope you enjoyed this post :) I feel it was very chatty in comparison to what I usually do haha. Please give the recipe a try and leave me a comment if you liked it! Also check out my twitter and my facebook page if you want to get in touch! (The last couple of days I've had loads of people from the philippines like my facebook page haha, hey everyone, I don't know how you found my page but I'm hoping you like the things that I put on there!)

xxx

Floor