Playing Catch Up

It's been soooooo long since I've done any foodie blogging!  ;o(  In between rehearsing & performing, illness and work I just haven't found time to even do much cooking much less blog about it!  Booooooo!  Anyhoo, I'm here now and hope not to have such a lengthy gap between posts again!

Today I made a big pan of tomato and veg soup.  ;o)  It's a good hearty beast of a soup with a plethora of veg....onion, mushroom, carrot, potato, celery and cabbage and plenty of tomato juice.  I picked up a soup book from the library this afternoon and there's some interesting soups in it, new and different recipes to try out.  Yum!

At the weekend we had a lovely roast chicken dinner, haven't had a roast in a while and I did the full shebang...roast chicken, roast potatoes, pigs in blankets, cauliflower & leek cheese, sage & onion stuffing, sweetcorn and gravy.  Mmmmmmmm!  It's been too long!  The chicken was an organic one from the supplier I get my organic veg box from (they started doing meat earlier this year) and when I unwrapped it I was surprised to find that it had giblets!  Shock horror!  I can't remember the last time I saw a chicken on a supermarket shelf that had giblets.  Years ago you used to have a choice when buying a chicken, with or without giblets but nowadays giblets aren't on offer at all.  A friend suggested to me that it's because most people don't know what to do with them and, sadly, I'm inclined to agree.  Anyway, I used said giblets to make some extra yummy stock and it's now residing in my freezer and will be the basis of some proper f**k off gravy at Christmas.  ;o) 

I'm easing back into baking regularly too which always makes me happy even if I can't partake of the end product!  ;o)  Last week I was in London for a couple of days and bought some star shaped silicone cake cases.  I have several sets of ordinary round silicone cake cases which I use all the time.  I'm not really sure of the ethical or health implications of cooking with silicone (I really should check that out!) but I do use my cases alot and the only down side is that my husband moans like billio about washing them!

Recently I've been looking through the wad of recipes I have torn from magazines, photocopied from books or scribbled onto random scraps of paper and wanting to try some of them out.  ;o)  I have a huge variety of things to try out, watch this space!

Lastly, if you haven't already tried out the Supercook website, as plugged on The Gadget Show, I can recommend giving it a whirl!  Bung in some ingredients and it'll search for recipes using said items, great fun!