Packed Lunches and Picnics

Evening all!

This morning started off very exciting in #tweettreat land, with recipes donated by @LouDPhillips - Lou Diamond Phillips himself - and by @Schofe - Philip Schofield! How cool was that? Thanks and kudos to @ShirtnTie and @thejayfaulkner respectively for those two, very well done guys. :) That brings our celebrity total to 82 - a mere 58 to go! Very doable.

Some lovely, unusual recipes came in for today's challenge. Though we didn't quite hit the 1500 mark - we have 1494 recipes - I'm sure we'll get there tomorrow. I really like this one:

"Fry onion garlic add Shi-i-take s&p put in wrap smeared with smashed avocado+juice fresh lemon tomato&salad on top"


And today's rockstar is @CreaZin! Well done, nice to see another newbie winning a challenge. :)


Tomorrow's challenge, as suggested by yesterday's winner @Danoosha, is for cakes - or any and all baked goods, including cookies, etc. As ever, the best recipe will earn rockstar status. 


Have fun!

The Staff of Life

Happy Tuesday everyone, especially to newcomers to #tweettreat - feel free to read down through the blog, try out some of the recipes, and spread the word! :)

Today's challenge was Bread; either baking it or recipes featuring it. You have been a very busy lot and loads of great recipes came in; it was really, genuinely hard to pick a winner today. In the end, I chose this one:

"Brioche
60g bttr, 3tbsp mlk, 2 egs, 30g sug, 275g pl four, 1 sch yeast tsp mixspc milk into melted bttr, add rest set brd mker on sweet 500g loaf"


That is a perfect example of a #tweettreat if ever I saw one - concise, intelligible and yummy! What's amazing to me is that this great effort came from a #tweettreat newbie, @Danoosha, who is today's rockstar of #tweettreat. Some of the rest of you could learn a thing or two from that (cough@chiddle84cough)


Tomorrow is my darling daughter's last day of school before the summer holidays (can you smell the dread from there?). So, tomorrow's challenge is for packed lunches (cos no more of them for a while) and picnics (if the weather holds!)  As ever, the best recipe will win rockstar status. :)


At time of blogging, we have 1482 recipes and 80 celebrities! I'm sure we'll easily pass the 1500 mark tomorrow.


Thanks again everyone, and huge ongoing thanks to #teamtweettreat - I couldn't have picked a better bunch of people to work with even if I had, you know, actually picked you. Instead of you foisting yourselves on me. Love you all! ;)

Musical Monday

Hi all and I hope you had a good weekend!

My Monday got off to a truly stonking start when I received a #tweettreat from none other than @neilhimself - Neil Gaiman! A very nice recipe it is too, for cherry crumble. I'm still on cloud nine. :)

Anyway, today's challenge was for musically inspired food, either suggested by the title of a song, featuring in a musical, etc. There was less messing today than I'd feared with this topic, and some very good recipes were tweeted. Today's winner is one which put a nice twist on the music-inspired theme:

"Toast 2 sl of bread. Put peanut butter on 1 piece, banana on other. Sandwich together and fry in real butter. Bow to the King."


Today's rockstar is @jeanharrie! Well done you. As of today, I've received 1442 recipes from 340 contributors including 79 celebrities. Not half bad. :)


Tomorrow's challenge, as suggested by @chiddle84, is bread. You can tweet recipes for baking bread, or to use leftover bread (breadcrumbs?) or even things to make with bread, such as sandwiches. A nice, versatile task that - so no excuses, right?


Now, a few more statistics for you. I've been getting rather nosy about you lot and wondering where all of the #tweettreats have been coming from, so I spent the day on some more statistics. So far, I've received recipes from 15 countries, with the nationalities of people donating #tweettreats breaking down as follows:
UK               47.18%
Ireland          19%
USA             17.8%
Scotland       3.26%
Canada        2.37%
France         1.48%
N. Ireland    1.19%
Australia        .89%
Netherlands   .89%
Kenya           .60%
Bahrain         .30%
Israel            .30%
Mexico        .30%
Qatar           .30%
Spain           .30%


I find this sort of thing fascinating, though it'll prolly bore you lot to tears! I thought it very interesting that although this project started in Ireland, by far the most contributors to date have come from the UK. On a day you're all probably pretty down about the World Cup, that's something you can feel good about!


Talk to you all tomorrow. 

Thank Crunchie it's Friday!

Welcome to the weekend!

Today's challenge was Thank Crunchie it's Friday - or thank Mars, or Maltesers, or Skittles, or anything else. You were invited to create quick and easy desserts with choccie bars from the corner shop (so long as they weren't Nestle.)

Now, remind me never to do a challenge like this again, cos I've had a longing for chocolate all day that has nearly been the undoing of me! You all relished this task, with double cream, caramel and chocolate abounding in your recipes. Evil sods that you are.

Anyway, it was hard to pick a winner cos they were all massively calorific, but this one really sounded good to me:

"Melt 300g mlk choc & 25g butter Bash sm pk Rich Tea bisc & 4 Crunchies & stir in Press into 15cm sq foil tin Chill Cut into sqrs"

Today's rockstar is a relative newcomer to #tweettreat, but a very welcome one - @JackyHSF! Well done, and keep them coming. :)


We also beat our goal today, which was 1400 - we now have 1409 #tweettreats, and 73 celebrities! The celebrities section on the right hand side of the site will get a makeover during the weekend, cos it's getting a bit unruly...


On to Monday's challenge; given how much fun everyone had with Food on Film, Monday is Musical Monday. Food in songs (even bad puns; "Oh, EClaire..."), food from musicals (Oliver?) etc. Let your imagination run wild! Try to make actual recipes, though. If you can. 


Now, if anyone reading this blog is still confused about what Twitter is and what it's for, this video... really won't explain anything at all. Sorry. 


Have a great weekend everyone, enjoy and have a good rest - you've earned it!

Tart Thursday

I despair of the twitterverse, I really do. I mention that today's challenge is for tarts, and suddenly you all turn into giggly ten-year-old boys. Honestly.

Still, you seemed to be having fun coming up with the goods! Some fantastic recipes came in today, bringing us to a total of 1384. We've also now received contributions from 70 celebrities - half our goal of 140! Huge kudos today to @mduffywriter, who managed to get a contribution from @PaulaAbdul of all people - and to everyone else who's spread the word and pushed the message today, thank you too.

On to tonight's winner, which is this:

"Fill cooked pastry case with stewed apple.Dot with bits of marzipan,cook in mod hot oven til marzipan rich brown& sort of crispy on the top"


Tonight's rockstar is @Chadwickauthor! Fabulous sounding recipe. It had me at marzipan. ;)


Now for some interesting statistics, which took me all day! Thus far, I have received: 


1384 recipes from:
323 contributors with a combined following of:
3,348,350


How incredible is that?! And how amazing are all of you, for all the work you've done!


Round of applause for yourselves, please! 


Now, tomorrow's challenge is an easy one; Thank Crunchie it's Friday! I want simple recipes that involve Crunchies. Or Mars Bars. Or Maltesers. Or crisps. Anything, really, so long as it's not a Nestle product - no Nestle products will make the grade in this book!


Have fun with this one and I'll talk to you all tomorrow :)

Romancing the Stones...

A very quick blog post tonight, hopefully before midnight so it counts as today! Sorry, I had some friends drop in for a couple of drinks and got very held up with tonight's bloggage. 

Anyway, today's challenge was Romance - romantic food, aphrodisiacs, food your beloved loves, etc. All I can say is that this challenge proved that there are some very sick, very kinky people out there in the twitterverse! I expected oysters on the half shell, but I actually got multi-flavoured chocolate body paint from @mduffywriter...

However, that's nothing on tonight's winner, which is this:

"Aphrodisiac: One for the men, obviously! Cojones al ajo. Skin, slice, and gently fry sheep or stallion testicles in olive oil with garlic."

This jaw-dropping offering was from tonight's rockstar, @davidgilray! Remind me never to come to your house for dinner, ok?

Tomorrow is Tart Thursday. Tarts of all descriptions are welcome. Sweet, savoury, miniature, @mduffywriter ;) -  whatever. As ever, other recipes are also welcome. Today we reached the respectable number of 1355 recipes, and 60 celebrities. How far can we get tomorrow? 

Mother Hubbard Miracles

Today's challenge was for those meals that you manage to ingeniously scrape together from whatever is left in the cupboards, rather than going shopping (or if you're broke!). You came up with some great ones, one or two that I'll definitely be trying.  Today's winner is this:

"Slice potatoes thin, parboil for 10 mins. Put in dish with onion, mushroom, cheese layers. Add stock and milk. Bake for 30 mins" 


I really like the sound of that. Today's rockstar is @dorristheloris - your student days have been worthwhile after all!


Tomorrow's challenge - as suggested previously by @neversarah - is Romance. It's a loose category (phnar phnar), so you can tweet heart-shaped food, recipes that sound romantic/poetic, aphrodisiacs, even your loved one's favourite dish. I'm not fussy. :) Remember, the daily challenges are just for fun and I'm happy to take any recipe, any time. 


Now, some news. The wonderful and very very clever @neversarah suggested some time ago that I should aim for 1400 recipes in the finished book, as a direct reflection of the number of characters in a tweet. She also suggested aiming for 140 celebrities. See what she did there? See? Told you she was clever. :)


Anyway, after due consideration, that's what I'm going to do. (I hope.) It means I'm going to have to increase the target from 1200 (which we've exceeded now anyway, we're at 1326) to about 1600, once again to allow for editing and culling. 


At present I've received recipes from 58 celebrities, so we're not quite halfway there on that score. Come on, #teamtweettreat! :) I hate to keep asking and pestering you all to help, but so many of you have gotten so good at celeb stalking - I mean, asking - that it's a little scary. ;) I know it's easy to start flagging at this stage - I'm fairly wiped myself - but I really believe that it will all be worth it in the end. I couldn't have gotten this far without all of you helping and contributing, and I really hope you'll put up with me for a while longer. :)


Talk to you all tomorrow!


Last minute edit - forgot to add this link, to another funny recipe blog post. Enjoy!