The Fruitful Zebra

Baking adventures

2012-02-03T14:53:00.000-08:00

Last week I decided I'd try a recipe from my breadmaker book that I've been meaning to try for ages... Anchoy and Sun Dried Tomato Loaf. I didn't have any anchovies but I did have a tin of olives stuffed with anchovies just asking to be used up so I went with those instead. :o) The olives went in the dough mix but the tomatoes had to be chopped and put in the little compartment thingie in the bread maker to be dropped into the mix at a later point in the process. All was going well until, after the tomatoes had dropped in, I could smell burning and upon investigation I discovered that goodly portion of the tomatoes had missed the pan and had settled on the element happily smoking themselves! In order to divert a crisis I whipped the bread pan out quickly removed the offending tomatoes and shoved the bread back in to take it's chance! The resulting loaf didn't look super promising with it's crater top...

...but happily inside all was fine and dandy:

It was a pleasant loaf, not overtly tomatoey or olivey or anchovy ish. :o)

Other baking adventures included a birthday cake for my husband which my daughter and I had a great laugh decorating late one evening after rehearsal! She chose a hedgehog (my husband is into wildlife) and here is our finished creation...

Her eyes are currants and her nose and mouth are sculpted from dried prumes! Lol The baby hedgehog minus chocolate buttons was mine since I don't eat chocolate. :oD It won't win any prizes for professional cake making but it was great fun to do and much appreciated by the birthday boy. :o)

Use It Up Challenge January Review

2012-02-03T14:35:00.000-08:00

A little behind here (well, a vast one but that's another matter! Lol) but catching up on my January of using stuff up. :o)

In the last week of January my total grocery shop was £10.36 which comprised:

milk £3.48
cheese £4.38
bread flour 60p
margarine £1.90

I also have to add to that a box of organic veg as I forgot to cancel my order! I usually have a box every other week but hadn't had any for a good while and then had a Swiss cheese moment at the eleventh hour of the challenge! This added £15.95 to my weekly food bill but I confess it has been fabulous to have all the fresh veg. :o)

So, my total spend for the whole of January has been £58.66. On my usual budget I would have spent £240 so I am pretty pleased with that and, even better, I still have looooooooads of stuff yet to use up. :oD My daughter, bless her, has valiantly struggled along without some of her most favourite things to eat during January and my husband has been uncomplaining of some of the odd meals he's been dished up! Having got to the end of January I will be relaxing my grip slightly just to keep the family home harmonious! I will still be working hard to keep my spending as low as possible though and I will carefully consider any requests for inclusions on the weekly shopping list but they may have to state their case before an item is approved! Lol

Use It Up Challenge Week 3 Review

2012-01-22T06:00:00.000-08:00

Well, the week has been easier than I suspected! I had forgotten I was away for a couple of days and my daughter took on the reins without any trouble. :o)

This week's grocery spend amounted to £10.66 which comprised:

milk £3.81
plain flour 69p
cereal £2.01
cheese £4.15

Over the last three weeks I have spent a total of £32.35 out of what would have been my usual budget of £180 (£60 per week) and I'm pretty pleased with that! :o)

Entering the last week of january I'm fairly happy with my challenge antics although I think I could be more inventive and have tried more new recipes and I will endeavour to do more of that this week. :o) This morning I made some beautifully smooooooth pumpkin and chestnut soup and there's some pumpkin to spare which I will use this evening with dinner. I forgot to take pics but I made arrowroot biscuits this week which used up the aging tub of arrowroot skulking in the pantry, unusual texture but great for dunking! ;o)

This week I dug out my silicone doughnut pan to have a crack at some doughnuts for pudding one evening. I haven't used it for ages and there was a good degree of rummaging about to find the recipe that came with the pan!

In terms of the finished articles being doughnut like in appearance it was a bit of a shambles but they tasted good and were marginally healthier than traditional doughnuts, being baked rather than fried.

Use It Up Challenge Week 2 Review

2012-01-15T11:25:00.000-08:00

That's week 2 of my challenge completed. :o)

Total spend on groceries this week was £7.96. This was comprised of:

milk £3.48
cheese £4.48

This means I've saved £52.04 on my usual weekly budget of £60. :o) We got through less milk this week which was good. :o) There's even less meat knocking about now though but I'm really keen to try and get to the end of January without buying any! In this coming week I will need to buy some veg, margarine for baking and, as ever, milk!

Just as a record, and for my own self indulgent amusement, :o) I've started a list of everything I've made from scratch since I started the challenge. This may not be a complete list given my holey memory but I think it's fairly accurate! So, here it is:

lentil & ham soup
bourbon biscuits
jammy splodgers
malt loaf
chocolate biscuits
cherry & pistachio biscuits
Boston baked beans
shepherds pie
tuna pasta bake
chocolate iced buns
pizza
vegetable & bean soup
cheese & Marmita whirls
peanut butter biscuits
butterfly cakes
mincemeat browns
cheese & oat loaf
ploughman's loaf
wholemeal loaf
pea soup
cheese scones

Right, game on for week 3... :o)

Use It Up Challenge Week 1 Review

2012-01-11T15:03:00.000-08:00

A week and a bit in to my Use It Up Challenge so I thought a mini review was in order. :o)

I have crossed quite a lot of items of my list (see it here) and my fridge is looking a little bare! :o) Pantry stocks are decreasing although still plenty to be creative with! Pleasingly I have really enjoyed getting back to cooking from scratch and all the extra baking has been so very therapeutic. :o) As I go along using up my supplies I will have to be more inventive and creative and one issue I already have is that I have very little in the way of meat for main meals. Now, I eat alot of vegetarian food and could happily forgo meat most of the time buuuuut my husband and daughter like their meatiness much more! There maybe some compromises ahead! :oD

My total spend on grocery shopping for the week was £13.73. This comprised:
milk £4.10

butter £2.73

margarine £1.90

cheese £5

My current weekly budget for groceries id £60 so I have £46.27 to spare this week. :oD I was surprised at the milk consumption, I know my daughter is a big milk drinker and my husband has constant cups of tea and I do use milk in baking and cooking (and I do drink it too) but even so 14 pints seemed somewhat excessive! We have had rice pudding and I've made soup a few times but mostly it's been drunk. Something to look at reducing I think!

Bourbons and Splodgers!

2012-01-11T13:29:00.000-08:00

Did some baking this evening to replenish the stocks. :o) A friend of mine made custard creams yesterday so I thought I'd have a go at bourbons!

I've made bourbons once before, quite a few years ago, and it was a bit of a disaster! I rolled the dough way too thin and then burnt the little beasts so they were pretty inedible! Today's efforts were much improved! :o)

The recipe is from a Hamlyn book, Biscuits and Cookies by Nicola Diggins:

Chocolate Bourbons

6oz plain flour
1oz cocoa
3oz butter or margarine
2oz caster sugar
2 tbsp golden syrup
1 egg, beaten
granulated sugar for sprinkling

Filling
4oz butter
6oz icing sugar
2oz chocolate, melted

Lightly grease two baking trays. Sift flour and cocoa into a bowl. Rub in the butter or margarine until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Stir in the sugar, then bind the mixture with the golden syrup and enough beaten egg to give a firm dough.
Knead lightly, then roll out the dough on a floured board to a rectangle measuring 12 x 16 in. Trim the edges and cut the rectangle into 32 biscuits measuring 1 x 3 in. using a palette knife, carefully transfer the biscuits to the prepared baking trays. Chill for 1 hour, or longer if you have time.
Bake in a moderate oven, 180C, 350F, Gas 4, for 10 to 15 minutes, or until darkened in colour and cooked. Sprinkle the biscuits with sugar immediately they are removed from the oven. Leave to cool on the trays for a minute before transferring them to a wire rack to cool completely.
While the biscuits are cooling, make the filling. Cream 4oz butter with 6oz icing sugar and add 2oz melted chocolate. Sandwich the biscuits together in pairs with the chocolate butter icing.
Makes 16.

I didn't have plain flour but self raising worked just fine and I made the icing by adding a bit of cocoa instead of melted chocolate. They are yummy and I suspect they won't last long! :oD

I also revisited a recipe I haven't made for ages - Jammy Splodgers. It was given to me by a friend many moons ago and is scribbled on the back of an envelope so I can't tell you where it's from!

Jammy Splodgers

4oz butter
8oz self raising flour
2oz caster sugar
5 tbsp raspberry jam
1 egg, size 3

Set oven to 200C. Rub butter into the flour and then add sugar. Blend 3 tbsp jam with the egg, add to dry ingredients and mix well with hands. Divide into 18, shape into balls and place on greased baking sheets. Flatten slightly then make a dip in the centre of each with your thumb and put a little raspberry jam in. Bake for 12 to 13 minutes until just firm. Cool on a wire rack. Makes 18.

Use It Up Challenge Day 6

2012-01-06T11:40:00.000-08:00

I've spent a goodly portion of today in the kitchen. :o)

Last night I put some beans in to soak overnight to make Boston Baked Beans, a much loved recipe from a Rose Elliot cook book. The original recipe is cooked in the oven but I like to do them in the slow cooker.

The recipe uses haricot beans, the usual bean for baked beans, but I started with butter beans, black eye beans, red kidney beans, black beans and cannellini beans.

Post soaking hence the whiter beans looking purple!

I adjusted the recipe slightly as I had no dry mustard so I made them smoky beans by using smoked paprika and also added a splosh of apple juice as I had it to hand and thought more liquid was needed!

Yum!

On the UIUC front I've crossed a few items off my list today as well. :o) The list is in this post.

Ginger destined for the Treacle Ginger Cake.

I've been wanting to make a Treacle Ginger Cake since Christmas and finally got around to it today! It's a Nigel Slater (I think!) recipe from an old Sainsburys magazine. It involves black treacle, dark muscovado sugar and stem ginger and is just delicious! Even better is that it improves with age, I've put half of it in the freezer. :o) I've made it a few times before but for some reason this time it hasn't turned out as dark as usual. I'm not sure why, possibly the sugar wasn't as dark as usual? No matter though as it tastes as good as ever! :o)

I also made a Ploughman's Loaf in my breadmaker. The recipe is from the booklet that came with the breadmaker and uses apple juice and Branston pickle. Having no Branston but plenty of chutney I substituted caramelised onion chutney instead of the pickle. :o) Haven't had a taste test yet but it's quite a mountainous loaf! Lol

For dinner this evening we had home made pizza, using scone dough, with potato and sweet potato wedges. The pizza was a bit of a cheese feast jobbie as I used up a variety of small pieces of cheese from Christmas!

All in all a good foodie day! :o)

The Great Use It Up Challenge 2012

2012-01-05T16:21:00.000-08:00

As briefly mentioned in the last post I have started on my usual January using stuff up mission. ;o) For the uninitiated (not that I think there are crowds of you scratching your heads over this!), the challenge amounts to trying to use up what I have in the pantry, freezer and fridge without shopping for anything other than essentials. My definition of essentials is milk, butter, cheese, fruit and veg to start with. As I progress through the month this list grows obviously. Reasons for doing this? Well....

Money. I was in the lovely position of being able to clear my massive overdraft and credit card debt in October 2011 but I'm by no means out of the financial woods skipping through the meadow yet! I have to stick with my budget now! My current weekly food budget is £60. For the duration of the challenge I am planning on putting the difference between what I spend and my usual budget into our savings account.
Pantry spring clean. I will be conducting a major spring clean of my pantry and the less I have to take out and put back for that process the better!
Cooking from scratch. I love cooking from scratch but I sometimes slip into bad habits and the back end of last year fell into that category. I want to get back to cooking more from scratch and trying new recipes and having to use up what I have always makes me cook more creatively. :o)
Blogging. Any excuse to share what may or may not be interesting to anyone other than me! Lol
The feel good factor. There's nothing like knowing I'm being thrifty and creative. :o)

So, just what do I have to use up? Brace yourself, it's a pretty long list!

Pantry

(Anything in blue has been bought since the challenge started.)
Ackee, tinned

~~Apricots, tinned~~

~~Arrowroot~~

Beer, 1 small bottle

Black eye beans, dried

~~Baked beans x 2 x1~~

Banana chutney

Beluga lentils, dried

Black beans, dried

Black beans, tinned

Black treacle

~~Bread flour~~

Bread flour

Breadsticks

Brown linseeds

Butter beans, dried

Cake decorations, too many to list

Cannelleni beans, dried

Cannelloni

~~Caster sugar~~

~~Cereal~~

~~Champagne~~

Chestnut puree ~~x 3~~ x2

~~Chocolate cake covering, 1 1/2 bars~~

~~Chopped tomatoes, tinned~~

Chopped tomatoes with basil, carton

Cider vinegar

Cocktail cherries

Cocktail onions

Cocoa powder

Cornflour

Cous cous

Crab apple jelly x 4

~~Crackers, variety of opened packets of crackers~~

~~Cream crackers~~

Creamed coconut, sachet x 3

~~Crisps, variety of individual bags~~

~~Crunchy peanut butter~~

Crystallised ginger

Currants

Dark brown sugar

Dates x 2

Demerara sugar

Easy cook long grain rice

Evaporated milk large ~~x 2~~ x 1

~~Evaporated milk, small~~

~~Extra virgin olive oil~~

Gelatine

~~Glace cherries~~

Golden syrup

Gram flour

Green split peas, dried

Grenadine

Hazelnuts, unshelled

Herbs and spices, too numerous to list

Honey

~~Hot chocolate~~

Icing, ready made coloured

Icing sugar

~~Instant coffee~~

Japanese rice crackers

Jelly ~~x 3~~ ~~x 2~~ x1

Kirsch

Large cous cous

Light brown sugar

Long grain rice

Macaroni

Malt extract

Malt vinegar

Marmalade vodka

Marmalade x 2

Marzipan

~~Meringue nests~~

Mincemeat

Mixed bean salad

Mixed nuts

Mixed seeds

~~Nakd bars x 4 x3~~

Nori

Oatbran x 2

Oats

~~Olives with anchovy stuffing~~

~~One cup teabags~~

~~Onions~~

Onions
OO pasta flour

~~Part baked rolls~~

Pasta reindeers

Pasta twists ~~x 3~~ ~~x 2~~ x1

Pearl barley

Piccalilli

~~Pineapple~~

~~Pistachios~~

Plain flour

~~Plain noodles~~

Plum chutney

Plum tomatoes

Polenta, ready made x 2

Porcini mushrooms, dried

Port

Potatoes

~~Potatoes~~

~~Pringles, 1/2 tube~~

Pudding rice

~~Pumpkin~~

Red kidney beans, dried

Red kidney beans, tinned

Red lentils

Redcurrant chutney x 3

Rhubarb chutney x 4

~~Rice pudding, tinned~~

Roasted savoury seed mix

~~Self raising flour~~

Self raising flour
Semolina?

Seri kaya, tinned

Sesame halva x 2

Sesame oil

Sesame seeds

Sloe vodka

~~Stock cubes~~

Soy sauce

Suet

~~Sugar cubes~~

Sultanas

~~Sweet potatoes~~

Teabags

~~Tinned ham~~

Tomato ketchup

~~Tuc~~

~~Tuna x 3~~

Walnuts

Wheatgerm

Whole chestnuts ~~x 3~~ x2

~~Wholegrain spelt flour~~

Wine, home made

Xanthan gum

~~Yellow split peas, dried~~

Freezer

(Items in blue have been made and added to the freezer since the challenge started)

Baguette

Baked beans ~~x 3~~ x 2

Bananas, 2

~~Beef mince~~

Black beans, cooked

Blackcurrants

Breadcrumbs

~~Carob truffle mix~~

~~Cheese sauce~~

~~Cherry ice cream~~

Chicken giblets

~~Chicken legs, cooked~~

Chicken legs, raw

Chicken liver pate

~~Chicken livers~~

~~Chicken stock x 3 x2~~

~~Chocolate ice cream~~

Cooked chicken wings

Filo pastry, 2 packs

~~Fishfingers 2 x 10 1 x 10~~

Flat bread

~~Gingerbread stuffing~~

Gooseberries

Leeks

Lentil loaf, 2 slices x 2

Lemon juice?

Liver cake (dogs!)

~~Mincemeat brownie~~

Mini mince pies

Muffins

~~Muffins, 2 x 4 1 x 4~~

Naan, 2 x 2

Paneer

Peas

~~Potato cakes, 6~~

Puff pastry

Redcurrants x 3

Seeded loaf

Shortcrust pastry, tiny bit!

Sloes

Soya beans

Spinach

~~Three cheese strata, 3 small portions~~

~~Tomato sauce~~

~~Treacle ginger cake~~

~~Vanilla ice cream~~

~~Veg curry~~

~~Veg soup~~

~~Veg stew~~

~~Vegetarian sausage and bean casserole x 2 x1~~

White wine, 2 small pots

Whole trout x 2

I made these lists earlier this week so have excluded some items already. I will score through items as I use them. I have been using up stuff from the fridge too but I didn't make a list until today....

Fridge

(Items in blue have been made or bought since the challenge began)

~~Apple juice~~

Aubergine

Balsamic vinegar

Barbecue sauce

Beetroot, fresh

~~Boar pate~~

Brown sauce

~~Butter icing~~

~~Butter, salted~~

~~Butter, unsalted~~

Butternut squash
~~Caramelised onion chutney~~

~~Carrots~~

Carrots

~~Celeriac~~

Celery

Cheddar

~~Cheese – smallish lumps of Camembert, Brie, Cheddar, Gruyere, Cheddar with apple cider chutney, Mozzarella, Cheddar with caramelised onion and Drunken Goat,~~

Cherry jam

~~Chocolate squirty cream~~

~~Cottage cheese x 2~~

~~Cream, double~~

~~Cream, extra thick with Cherry Marnier~~

~~Cream, single~~

~~Croissant dough~~

~~Cucumber~~

Dill pickles

~~Dried onions~~

~~Feta cheese~~

~~Greek yoghurt~~

~~Ham~~

Hoisin sauce

Lemons, 3

Mango chutney

~~Margarine~~

Marmalade

Mayonnaise

~~Milk~~

Milk

Mint syrup

~~Mixed leaf salad pack~~

Mushrooms

~~Orange~~

Parsnips

~~Parsnips~~

Pickled beetroot

Pickled onions

Pickled red cabbage

~~Raspberry jam~~

Red onion relish

Redcurrant chutney

Redcurrant jelly

Redcurrant vinegar

Rhubarb relish

Root ginger

Salad cream

Soy sauce

~~Spring onion~~

Sun dried tomato pesto

~~Sun dried tomatoes in oil~~

~~Swede~~

Sweet tomato and chilli chutney

Tomatoes

So, barring a few odd things I may have missed and stuff lurking elsewhere other than in the pantry, freezer and fridge, there you have it! Quite interesting reading, well for me anyway! I seem to have a chutney fetish! Lol So, down to business, I will be endeavouring to use as much of what I have with minimal spending, watch this space for updates! If you've made it this far.... bloody well done you! Lol

Back to some foodie blogging!

2012-01-05T07:06:00.000-08:00

Yay, here I am reclaiming my foodie blog after a hiatus of some months. ;o) No apologies, life just overtook me on this particular front!

A quick romp through my festive cooking adventures to start! This year I resolutely stuck with my food budget for over the Christmas period. (yeah, I know, I was somewhat smug! lol) That meant I did alot more baking than in recent years which can only be good in my eyes! I didn't buy any mince pies at all although sadly I didn't get around to making my own mincemeat but hey ho. I spent Christmas Day at my parents so no Christmas lunch cooking for me, booooo! I did however entertain on Boxing Day and made a big puffy pastried chicken pie followed by Jamie Oliver's artic roll....

I really enjoyed making this, it was aaaaaaaages since I'd made a swiss roll and it was fun rolling it up with raspberry jam, chocolate and vanilla ice creams oozing out! I dispensed with the crushed Crunchie, of course, but I don't think that detracted from the flavour at all. :o)

On New Year's Eve we rolled out the Raclette as is now traditional!

I must search out some more specific Raclette recipes though.

I have now embarked on my annual New Year activity of using up what I have instead of shopping for more. :o) A blog post specifically about this challenge coming up....

It's good to be back!

Kohl rabi coleslaw

2011-07-28T02:49:00.000-07:00

Last week kohl rabi appeared in my organic veg box. Usually I would use it in soup or a dauphinoise style dish but there was a nice recipe on the leaflet which came with the veg so I thought I'd give it a whirl. As is my wont I adapted the recipe a little but it basically amounted to finely sliced kohl rabi, carrot and onion in fat free Greek yogurt mixed with a teaspoon of white wine vinegar, chopped fresh mint and a jigger of sun dried tomato pesto then, once mixed, sprinkled with smoked paprika. It was delicious although my husband wasn't very open to the experience!

Hey man, I just want some muesli...

2011-06-08T09:35:00.000-07:00

After months on holiday I do believe my Foodie Muse has returned, yay! ;oD

A little update if you can bear it, if not, feel free to skip over this bit! ;o) Most folk who know me relatively well will know that I like to cook, I like to try new stuff, I hate to waste stuff, I love using leftovers, I love to bake, I try to avoid processed foods, I have a thing about The Devil's Supermarket (aka Tescos) and a bee in my bonnet about organic food and I'm trying to be healthier and lose weight, to name but a few food related facts!  Over the last few months, I know not what happened or why, but I slipped into some dirty habits... processed food has been creeping in, I've not been baking or cooking nearly as much as I'd like to, my health has suffered, I've put weight back on, yada, yada, yada!   But, for a variety of reasons, the rot has stopped and I'm getting back down to it, yippee! ;o)

Yesterday my husband chalked cereal (well, he actually chalked CERIAL but his spelling misdemeanors are a whole different story!) on the board in the kitchen as he'd run out, he's pretty much the lone cereal eater in this house, his breakfast is always cereal, 365days a year he'll start his day (and sometimes end it) with a bowl of cereal. I try to ring the changes when I buy cereal, keep any boredom setting in and normally buy 3 or 4 different sorts each time but yesterday I'd just declared that we need to go on a serious economy drive so instead of going out to buy said cereal I rummaged about in the pantry and decided to make Maz's Marvellous Muesli thereby saving some money and using up various bits and bobs in the process. The hubster loves muesli, he favours Alpen and I don't blame him, I've bought cheaper stuff in the past and they've amounted to a bowl of dust with a couple of sad raisins if you're lucky!  So, museli making it was....

I use my casual chuck it and chance it method when making muesli so no two batches will ever be the same! This time I used porridge oats, natural puffed rice (I found half a bag cowering at the back of the meat safe), a handful of nuts (husband isn't a big fan of nuts), shredded coconut, dried apple, mango, banana and pineapple, figs, sultanas, cherries, cranberries and I even threw in a jigger of chocolate chips.  The wide variety of dried fruit was mainly courtesy of Graze boxes. I had a little backlog of these lovely little boxes and decided to put them to good use. Incidentally, if you've never tried a Graze box, go to the website and use this code, CR1BJYV, and you can have a free one. ;o)

And hey presto.... muesli.... ;o)

Squash Soup

2011-01-09T14:54:00.000-08:00

I had this beautiful beast of a squash in my veg box...

Don't you just love the glorious colour? Such a blast of sunshine in these dismal winter days! So, sunshine soup was on the cards. ;o) I used half of the beast, chopped up and then fried with chopped onion, garlic and cumin...

Then sploshed in a bit of stock and simmered until the squash was soft.

Then I whizzed it all up with a few jiggers of milk and served with a swirl of cream and some bacon flavoured bits, oh and some hot buttered toast of course!

Squashes make such gorgeously smooth, sexy soups! Soup-a-rama! ;o)

Egg Bound!

2011-01-04T10:48:00.000-08:00

Our chickens are giving it some! They are laying eggs like it's going out of fashion and consequently I have some serious egg cookery to indulge in! ;o)

Lunchtime today we had scrambled egg and baked beans on toast and for dinner this evening it was veg tortilla. ;o) Thinking about blogging earlier today I fell to pondering what the difference is between tortilla and frittata? It would appear they are the same thing, both omelettes basically but tortilla is Spanish and frittata is Italian. So, now I know! ;o)

Whichever this is, I can confirm that it was delicious! I love a simple dish and this is one of those. ;o) I just fried an onion in a little olive oil with some herbs, added it to a dish with cooked broccoli, potatos and carrots and poured over an ad hoc egg and milk mixture with some seasoning, sprinkle it with grated cheese and bunged it in the oven for about 40 minutes. Eggorama! ;o)

Now that we, well, my husband and daughter really, have ploughed through biscuits, cakes and mince pies leftover from the festivities I will be able to use up some eggs in some baking. I haven't baked since Christmas Eve and I'm feeling in need of a blast of baking therapy! ;oD I may indulge my husband in some custard tarts to use yet more eggs up, watch this space!

New Year, Renewed Blogging!

2011-01-01T10:15:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I've blogged in a foodie manner and here I am set to pick up the reins as we gallop into 2011. ;)

For dinner this evening we had slow cooker macaroni cheese, a dish we usually have at some point over the festive period. I can't remember just who I got this recipe from, otherwise I'd credit them, but it was via one of the Yahoo groups I used to belong to. You need to get over the fact that it's not really akin to "real" macaroni cheese made with cheese sauce but it has a charm of it's own. Made as per the recipe it has about 300 calories per portion - if divided into four portions which is really a quite generous portion. So, the recipe...

From this...

...to this!

Slow Cooker Macaroni Cheese

2 cups uncooked macaroni
2 cups cottage cheese
2 cups grated cheese
2 cups boiling water

Layer first three ingredients into slow cooker. DO NOT MIX. Pour the boiling water over and cook on high for three hours. Stir very well and serve.

That's all there is to it but, true to form, I do tinker with the recipe a little! I often make it with milk instead of water, just heat it up before pouring it in. It can be a bit clarty so if you like it a bit more saucy add another half a cup of liquid. It doesn't look very pleasant when it's cooked but perks up no end after a good stirring!To add a bit of variety, cottage cheese with onion and chives or other flavour is nice. This evening I served it with some grilled bacon and a speinkle of extra grated cheese. ;o)

New Passions

2010-09-10T06:12:00.000-07:00

Summer has been busy and blogging has passed me by a tad but here I am catching up a bit now school has started back. ;o)

New passions....well, over the summer I have developed a passion for aubergines! ;o) I found a receipe for an aubergine dip, Baba Ghanoush (don't you just love that name?), in a library book called Easy Vegan and gave it a whirl. It is deeeeeeeeelicious! ;o)

Here's the recipe as written in the book....

Baba Ghanoush (smoked aubergine dip)

This creamy dip can be served as part of a selection of little dishes or a simple appetizer/starter. Normally the dish is made from vegetables that have been roasted whole and the flesh scooped out. In this version, they are peeled, then sliced and roasted, so the result is much more mellow.

2lbs aubergine
about 2/3 cup olive oil
2 garlic cloves, crushed
4 tbsp tahini
freshly squeezed juice of 1 – 2 lemons or to taste
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

To serve:
1 tbsp sweet paprika
3 tbsp oilve oil
2 tbsp chopped fresh flat leaf parsley
toasted pitta bread or other flatbread, to serve

Serves 4 - 6

Preheat over to 200C/Gas mark 6
Trim the aubergines, peel then slice thickly. Arrange the slices on a baking sheet and brush both sides with olive oil. Roast in the oven for about 20 minutes, until browning and soft, turning them once.
Remove from the oven and let cool for 5 minutes.Transfer to a food processor and add the garlic, tahini and the juice of 1 lemon. Process until creamy, then taste and adjust seasoning with salt, pepper and more lemon juice.
Pour or spoon into a shallow dish. Mix the paprika with the 3 tbsp olive oil and trickle it over the top of the baba ghanoush. Sprinkle with parsley and serve with strips of toasted pitta bread for dipping.
Note: For a softer garlic flavour, roast the garlic cloves whole and unpeeled with the aubergines then squeeze the soft flesh out of the skins and blend with aubergines.

I roast my garlic, love squeezing it out (must try it on bread, mmmmm!) and I used smoked paprika for the dressing. It's almost superseded my hummous passion! ;o)

My other new, not to mention astonishing, passion is COFFEE! Seriously, I love coffee! Anyone who knows me in the real world will know that I don't do tea or coffee, never have done, and in the case of coffee I can't bear the smell! Well, all that changed last month when at the ripe old age of 44 I took my first tentative sips of the brew I now adore! ;o) I've spoken before about how my tastes have changed over the last few years and how I eat lots of things I disliked in the past and coffee is another on the list. For a few months I had been thinking coffee smelt nice! That in itself is something of a surprise after loathing it for so many years! When I finally tried my first cup of coffee I was instantly surprised at liking it and since have been on a flavoursome trawl through the world of coffee! I even have my very own cafetiere now! ;o) I love it when new flavours burst into my life and I'm revelling in this one. By the way, for anyone I meet in real life....strong, splash of milk, one sugar please! ;o)

Redcurrant-o-rama!

2010-07-10T04:03:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week I was given 10lbs of redcurrants. ;o) What's a girl to do? Well, this girl gets her preserving pan out! ;o) First on the menu was chutney. I've never made chutney with redcurrants so I hope it turns out to be tasty. The recipe consisted of redcurrants, cooking apples, raisins, sugar, vinegar and spices:

Then it's just cooked.....

...until it thickens up. Chutney isn't a fast moving thing, it bubbles away at it's leisure until it reaches it's destination. ;o) It probably wasn't my brightest idea ever to turn the kitchen into a steamy chutney den in this current spate of hot weather! However, eventually I got there...

I now have ten pots of redcurrant chutney gracing my pantry shelves, looking forward to trying it in a few weeks time when it has brewed. ;oD

On the evening of Chutney Day I started the process of making redcurrant jelly, which I love! I ended up with nine pots of jelly the next day and very yummy it is too. ;o) No pics of the jelly making process as it totally escaped me! I want to try making mint jelly this year as I adore that ~ my favourite sandwich is lettuce and mint jelly ~ but have never yet made it.

Next on the redcurrant hit list was muffins from this recipe. These turned out nice if a little flat!

They panned out at only about 165 calories too so quite a healthy muffin at that. You can't really tell but the muffin papers are flower shaped ones that I received in a Swap-Bot baking swap recently.

Last to roll off the redcurrant production line yesterday was redcurrant vinegar. I haven't ever made a flavoured vinegar so I thought I'd have a go as I'm experimenting with salad dressings alot more these days. It was very simple, 1 1/2 cups of redcurrants into a jar with a generous pinch each of sugar and salt, smooshed up with a masher and then 1 1/2 cups white wine vinegar poured over the top. This is what it currently looks like :

It has to spend a week in a cool dark place and then be strained ready to use. Looking forward to giving it a whirl in a dressing next weekend. ;o)

And just a random foodie thing before I go on my way....if you've ever heard me rant about crustless bread you'd have been surprised to find me in Tesco yesterday buying a loaf of the heinous product! The reason? My lovely daughter had braces fitted on Monday and has been wasting away on a diet of noodles, rice pudding and yogurts but has now progressed sufficiently to be able to gently chew crustless bread and butter, bless her! My hone made bread isn't soft enough for her to tackle yet hence my crime against food yesterday!

When life gives you lemons....

2010-06-22T15:07:00.000-07:00

.... make lemonade! When I was a little girl, every summer my mum would make home made lemonade and I've always loved it. When I left home I went armed with the recipe and I've probably made it every year since. Now, technically, I don't suppose it is a lemonade since it's not fizzy and you have to dilute it, so, more of a squash really! Anyway, here's the recipe:

My Mum's Lemonade

3 lemons
2 pints water
2lb sugar
1/2 oz citric acid

Put sugar and water in a pan, bring to the boil and boil for 10 minutes with the lid on (unless you like cleaning sticky stove tops!). Peel lemons thinly and place peel in a bowl. Squeeze lemons and reserve juice. Pour syrup over the peel and leave to stand overnight. In the morning, add the lemon juice and citric acid and stir until citric acid has dissolved. Strain and bottle. Keep in the fridge. Dilute to taste.

I usually bottle mine into empty plastic squash or water bottles but recently, whilst staying at a friend's holiday cottage, I bought a glass bottle of pink lemonade from the corner shop with this sort of groovy stopper (see pic), reusuable and it's perfect for my lemonade. ;o) Citric acid can be a bit tricky to lay your hands on but most larger chemists have it under the counter as it were! ;o) Oh, the times I've had to explain to the assistant just why I want citric acid! I've tinkered with the recipe over the years and have successfully made versions with limes and oranges although lemons remain my favourite. At this time of year it's lovely to add elderflower heads, I love the flavour of elderflower. ;o)

Now, then....if I feel stressed or low or cross (or a myriad of other things to be honest!) I will head to the kitchen to bake and soothe my troubled soul. ;o) This evening I did just that and made cheese and bacon muffins....

My seventeen year old daughter has extreme (and I mean extreme!) trouble dragging herself out of bed in the mornings and as a consequence often misses out on breakfast before we head off for the school bus. ;o( Sometimes I make muffins to freeze so that she can grab one and go and that's what these are intended for. Quite often when I bake it's the baking process I require and not the end product but this evening I did partake of a warm muffin and bloody lovely it was too! It certainly hit the spot! ;o)

I also made some plain fairy cakes which I'll transform into butterfly cakes tomorrow with buttercream from the freezer. I only recently discovered that buttercream is freezable ~ yes, I know, I have BIG gaps in my culinary knowledge! ;oD ~ and this is the first time I've used some so I will be interested to see how it's fared in the freezer. On the subject of freezers....I also intended making some ginger thins this evening and I did indeed knock up the biscuit dough but being of an impatient nature I bunged it in the freezer (instead of the fridge) to firm it up before cutting into rounds for baking and then completely forgot about it! ;oD So, that'll keep for when I next have the oven on!

Feeling the pinch but not losing the flavour!

2010-06-22T03:46:00.000-07:00

So, like many others, we find ourselves in a pretty unpleasant place financially speaking, boooooo! Without going into a long winded ramble about the whys and wherefores of it all what I will say is that our grocery bill is at least one of the places where I can attempt to make a few savings. I know there will have to be compromises and that's fair but they will have to be made working around my odd views! ;o) With a few exceptions, the meat I buy is always organic and I'm not prepared to make compromises on that one. I'd rather eat smaller portions of organic meat and more vegetarian fare (which I love!) than buy cheaper non organic meat. At the first day nursery I was cook for they used to make me use value mince and if that's not a crystal clear example of a false economy I don't know what is! Other than meat I buy organic butter, milk and fruit & veg. I usually try and buy organic flours and sugars, Fairtrade tea and coffee and other stuff as well but I may have to be alot more selective for a while.

I've posted before about my self imposed pantry challenges where I try and use up stuff from my pantry and freezer rather than buy new and I'm embarking on another bout now! I like a challenge and I especially like a foodie based challenge. ;o) So, you can expect tales of leftovers and inventive concoctions! ;oD Right now, I have a loaf of Courgette Country Grain Bread in my breadmaker, a recipe from Jennie Shapter's Ultimate Bread Machine book. It's not one I've tried before but I had a courgette fading fast in the fridge that I didn't want to waste! This morning I made a sugar free jelly from the pantry....yes, I know, I'm 44 but I love jelly! ;oD Lunch today will be home made smoked paprika veg soup and bought (well, it was 25p and I couldn't help myself!) cheese & tomato flatbread that have both been in the freezer for a wee while. Haven't considered dinner yet but I have plenty of salad to use up along with bacon in the fridge so it may be home made potato salad (with onion and bacon) and salad. ;o)

Well, that was all rivetting stuff wasn't it? LOL

Tapas, Seasonal Eating and Lemon Loveliness!

2010-06-10T15:32:00.000-07:00

I love a new food experience and last week I partook of Tapas for the first time. ;o) I'd never had Spanish food, mainly because the opportunity had never presented itself but also because I've always thought I probably wouldn't like it! Now I know better. ;o) I went to a La Tasca in Edinburgh with my lovely friend, Elizabeth. Not knowing much about the subject we elected for one of the set menus which consisted of eight dishes to share:

Tortilla Española

Spanish-style omelette with potato and onion.

Albóndigas a la Jardinera

La Tasca’s beef & pork meatballs, served in a tomato sauce

Pollo Marbella

Chicken breast cooked with paprika, chorizo, peppers, onion and a white wine & cream sauce

Croquetas de Pollo

Chicken croquettes, with roasted garlic mayonnaise

Chorizo Frito al Vino

Spicy Spanish sausage, flavoured with paprika, garlic and herbs, sautéed in red wine.

Gambas Pil Pil

Six king prawns, sizzling in a chilli-&-garlic-infused oil.

Paella Valenciana

Paella with chicken breast and mixed seafood.

Patatas Bravas

Fried potato, with a spicy tomato sauce.

Berenjenas Gratinadas

Fresh aubergine, baked in a tomato, garlic & wine sauce, topped with Cheddar cheese.

Ensalada Verde Mixta

Fresh baby spinach, lamb’s lettuce and baby gem, with avocado, cucumber and onion.

Preceding all that lovely yumminess was:

Pan de Barra Catalán

Fresh bread served with two dipping oils:
Catalán – a tomato & oil dip; picada – a garlic & herb oil

and

Aceitunas Mixtas

Mixed Spanish olives, marinated in extra-virgin olive oil, herbs, lemon and sweet pimento peppers.

And to wash it all merrily on it's way:

Fruity-Fizz Sangría

Extra-fruity sangría, with orange liqueur, peach schnapps, brandy and fresh orange slices, mixed with cava.

I have to say, I enjoyed every dish that we had! ;o) I think my favourites were probably the Pollo Marbella and the Croquetas de Pollo. The sangria was a new experience too and, my word, that goes straight to your head doesn't it? ;oD Staggering along to the station to catch the last train back to Lockerbie I was questioning my decision to drink but it was good fun! lol I'm a recent convert to olives - having loathed them for many years I recently tried them again and mysteriously I like them now! I don't know if I'm just more open to new flavours nowadays or it's hormonal or what but my tastes have definitely been changing over the last couple of years. Suddenly I love lots of things I've always disliked and a whole new avenue of flavoursome adventures has opened up to me! ;o)

I am a big fan of seasonal eating and I loathe that everything is available all year round, it's just not right! Now, if ever there was a case to be made for seasonal eating then surely the first plumptious English strawberries of the season is it? I had my first strawberries of this year a couple of days ago and they were just deliciously fabulous, why would anyone want to miss that taste bud tingling annual moment by eating the disappointing tasteless specimens wheeled in from sunnier climes all year round?? And if it needs seconding, what about the firsts of asparagus, new potatoes, rhubarb, parsnips? Come on, guys, eat seasonally! Check out Eat the Seasons! Ok, hopping down off my soapbox now....

To finish off my post a little baking... remember I made some luscious lemon curd the night before I went away? Well, this week when the baking urge was upon me I made some little plain cakes, sliced the tops and treated them to a goodly dollop of the aforementioned lemon curd each then topped with lemon icing and little lemon slices. ;o)

Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy

2010-05-28T15:01:00.000-07:00

My chickens are really getting into their stride now and so I've had a glut of eggs to use up of late! This evening I hard boiled eight eggs (they're still quite small) for picnic sandwiches tomorrow and I also made lemon curd for the first time in ages to use a few extra eggs. I used to dislike lemon curd hugely but my tastes are definitely changing as I get older and I love it now! There's a recipe for honey curd in the book I used the lemon curd recipe from which I found interesting, never seen that before, worth a try me thinks. I also want to try passionfruit curd too, yummy! ;o)

Using it up...

2010-05-18T10:31:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's my dinner! ;o) I just thought I'd share (although quite who I'm sharing it with I'm sure I don't know! Just myself I feel! lol) a picture of my dinner as an excuse to have a ramble about my current mission to use things up and cook more from scratch. So, my dinner comprises bulghur wheat, butter bean & veg stew, grilled Halloumi, broccoli and a Portobello mushroom. ;o) I found the bulghur lurking at the back of a shelf in the pantry so that was whipped out for using up purposes. The stew I found, unlabelled, at the back of the freezer and hoiked it out in the hope it was savoury! ;oD I'm so bad at chucking stuff in the freezer and thinking to myself that I'll remember what it is but, of course, I never do! I just put it down to my taste for living an adventurous life! lol The broccoli and mushroom didn't come under the using up banner as they arrived in my organic veg box this morning. The Halloumi, well, I just adore it and never need an excuse to break it out of the fridge! ;o) I have a goodly heap of leftover bulghur which I plan to use for lunch tomorrow, I'm selling my work at Mildenhall air base for the rest of this week and all the food places there (Burger King, a pizza place, Taco Bell, Baskin Robbins and Cinnabon) aren't very compatible with my healthy eating campaign! If I don't take lunch and snacks I can wander off the path of healthy eating with alarming ease! Tomorrow I will be packing some carrot soup (made for lunch today and using up some sad, floppy carrots from the bottom of the fridge!), some bulghur with veg and possibly some beans thrown in, Marmite rice cakes and some fruit. That lot should see me through til 6pm. ;o)

Baking and Basics

2010-05-14T12:30:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was in need of some seriously therapeutic baking time so I set to in the kitchen and made some iced fairy cakes for starters. Nothing special about them except that I used these pansy icing decorations. I'd like to say I knocked them up in a spare few moments but alas I didn't! They were sent to me recently in a baking swap I participated in on Swap-Bot. I rarely buy this sort of thing but it was fun to use them for a change. My buttercream was meant to be a nice coordinating bluey purple but it went a bit awry! They've gone down well though despite my lackadaisical icing attempt! ;o)

Then I made some Builder's Tea Bread from Mary Berry's book, One Step Ahead. This is a nice simple recipe (albeit involving overnight soaking of dried fruit so not one for spontaneous baking urges!) and I had some Earl Grey leaf tea to use up from the pantry so my fruit was all plumptious from it's overnight sojourn in the brew. This makes a huge loaf and always takes longer to bake than the hour mentioned in the recipe. I think it would probably fare better in two smaller loaf tins or a larger rectangular tin. It freezes like a dream and I always bung half in the freezer to prevent us gobbling it down in a flash! It's fatless too so is quite kindly in the calorie stakes as well.

Earlier this week I came across a blog called A Year of Inconvenience. Blogger, Pam Mehnert, is giving up convenience food for a year and cooking everything from scratch. How inspiring is that? I think it's a fantastic project and I will be following Pam's progress with interest. I decided several years ago to reduce the amount of processed food we eat and have had a goodly amount of success I would say, although it is very easy to slide back into the convenience food trap sometimes! Reading some of the posts on Pam's blog has made me question what I term basics foods when cooking from scratch. She mentioned making pizza sauce using fresh tomatoes and I realised that I think of tinned tomatoes as a basic ingredient when in fact they are, of course, processed! And, frozen peas! I love frozen peas and never considered them a processed food! I'm sounding a bit odd methinks! lol Anyway, rambling aside, the blog (along with something of a fincancial doldrums episode) has prompted me into one of my periodical "use it up" missions! This entails using the ingredients I already have in my fridge, pantry and freezer as much as possible and only buying essentials when I need to. I've had a Quorn Roast in the freezer for a while (I have to admit that I quite like Quorn even though it's processed!) so I hauled it out for dinner this evening. I wanted to have sage & onion stuffing with it but had none of the packet variety in the pantry so I found a recipe for it in one of my favourite vintage cookbooks. As you would suspect it involved onion, breadcrumbs, sage, salt and butter. With my usual disregard for recipes, I didn't follow the method entirely as written but it was jolly tasty! Even my daughter, who loves the packet variety of stuffing, ate it all up and enjoyed it! ;o) While I was waiting for dinner to cook I had a rummage about in the pantry seeing what I had available and decided to make some muesli as we're quite low on breakfast cereal (husband's daily breakfast is always cereal). I used millet flakes, oats, plain puffed rice, pumpkin & sunflower seeds, mixed nuts, raisins, currants and dates. I was busking it with no recipe so I will await husband's verdict in the morning! I have to say that cooking from scratch and improvising with available ingredients is a real blast for me, I love the challenge and culinary creativity. Let's do it! ;o)

Back to baking

2010-04-21T03:07:00.000-07:00

Oops, time has passed in blog land again! I have Easter egg misadventures to share although the moment may have passed! ;o) I haven't been doing anything too exciting in the kitchen of late but time is a bit more on my side now the show is over and I couldn't ignore the urge to bake anymore! So, I made some chocolate cakes and had a play about icing and decorating them. ;o) I used my newest silicone baking cases, groovy red ones. I keep meaning to do a tad of research to see if reusable silicone really is a better option ethically than paper baking cases. I tend to compost paper cases after use anyway. I saw a post on a blog somewhere recently where the blogger had made her own cases from scrapbook paper although I think they were added after baking! Last month I was in swap on Swap-Bot for spring themed foodie goodies and the lovely generous lady who sent to me included a pack of lilac coloured paper cases with the words "think spring" on them accompanied by some little picks to stick in the cakes with rabbits and chicks on! A little cutesy for me but they'll be great to use on cakes for an occasion or as a gift. ;o) Presentation is all with home made gifts, something I want to explore much more this year and especially at Christmas.

Baking Day

2010-03-25T03:24:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday I spent the day with my friend, Becky, having a bake fest at her place. ;o) It's such a long time since we've done this and it was great fun. Cooking can be a solitary occupation and generally I don't have any problem with that at all, in fact I probably prefer it alot of the time to be honest, but it was good to bake and catch up with all the news at the same time.

So, first up was my previously mentioned mission to make oatcakes! I found a Rose Eliott recipe using just oatmeal and we tried that. It didn't work splendidly well as I had to add extra melted butter and water to make a dough but they did pan out ok and do taste delicious. So, I will look for more recipes to try, I'd quite like to find one that uses oil as opposed to butter. They look a trifle rustic but then I'm a rustic loving girl so that's fine by me!

Next up and still on the savoury biscuit line was digestives. They're not at all like bought digestives but are yummy. They're not crisp like a biscuit, more bready in a way, but they are delicious with a dollop of cashew butter. ;o) Our local Julian Graves became a Holland & Barratt recently and I popped in for a peep yesterday and found cashew butter which I adore but which hasn't been readily available until now. This offset my disappointment at the fact that they don't sell carob bars as their larger shops do. Boo! Interestingly they also had pumpkin seed butter which I've never seen before and will be trying soon me thinks!

Then I moved on to a mini muffin making session! Two dozen banana cinnamon and two dozen bacon rolled off the production line quite swiftly! The banana ones are lovely with their sprinkle of demerara, cinnamon and oatmeal.

The bacon ones are a little bland and in my opinion could do with pepping up, maybe with some cheese. That could of course be due to the fact that they were supposed to have cornmeal in but Becky didn't have any cornmeal so we improvised and used oatmeal! They're still disappearing from the tin quite rapidly though! ;oD

Reverting to biscuits, but this time sweet instead of savoury, we made Raspberry Almond Jumbles. I think that's what they were called anyway but I seem to have temporarily misplaced my scribbled version of the recipe so I stand corrected if I've got that wrong! I love almondy things and these biscuits hit the spot, a good whack of almond and a nice sweet dimple of jam although we used strawberry instead of raspberry!

All in all it was a great session, lots of laughs and baked goodies to boot! ;o)

Spring has Sprung!

2010-03-23T02:30:00.000-07:00

Well, as far as I'm concerned it has! ;o) Yesterday morning I sat outside eating my breakfast! Ok, it wasn't tropical, 11 degrees I believe, but it was very pleasant in the sunshine in the sheltered corner I chose to park myself with my oatcakes and peanut butter. I took the above pic of miniature Narcissi after breakfast, they looked so cheerful bobbing about on the gentle breeze. ;o)

I have oatcakes on my mind today, I'm off to a friend's later for a baking day (yay!) and I'd like to make some oatcakes. I rummaged about and found several recipes I've never tried, some given to me and one torn from a magazine, and without fail they all include flour in their ingredients! Now, call me pedantic, but I was under the impression that oatcakes were wheat free! I trotted off to my pantry to check the packet I have in there and was relieved to find that they do indeed only contain oatmeal (with sunflower oil and salt), not a speck of flour in sight! Now, I love baking and don't have an aversion to flour, nor am I intolerant of it but I do feel an awful lot healthier when I restrict my bread intake. I will never be able to forgo bread totally, I do love it so but I do try and keep a lid on it so, I eat alot of oatcakes, which fortunately I also love, and thought if I could find a good home made version I can make them in bulk and stop buying them. Always happy to reduce how much I line the supermarket's pockets! ;o) I need to have a better root through my cookery books and see if I can find any oats only versions.

Last week I made another recipe from the Anyone Can Bake book I made Butterscotch Pie from recently. This time it was Peanut Butter Bread and jolly nice it was too. ;o) I don't have a picture as it disappeared a bit too quickly! lol The picture shows something green in the sandwich, not sure what that is but I think it's definitely better with sweet things as a filling, it's lovely with jam. ;o)

One day last week I made macaroni cheese for dinner, yummmmmmm, I love cheesy things! ;o) I don't make proper macaroni cheese very often so we all fell on this and romped our way through it happily! I'm currently teaching my daughter lots of new things in the kitchen in preparation for when she goes to university this year and cheese sauce is one she wants to learn. I don't know why some folk make such a fuss about making white sauces, I learn from Delia and have never had trouble, I just wield my whisk and away I go! ;o) With a basic white sauce under your belt you can make loads of variations of it and never be short of a dish to make. My daughter loves pasta and I can see her living on macaroni cheese once she has the sauce down pat! ;o)

Lastly, a little wander through a recent spell of guiltiness on the ethics front! I hate waste, I love using leftovers creatively and try not to let anything usable get past me and into the bin! However, last week I had a few busy days and at the weekend on deciding to sort through stuff in the fridge I discovered various things that even I couldn't save. ;o( Some went into the compost bin but there was other stuff I just to bin and it really pains me to confess to it. Mind you, since I'm just chuntering to myself here it's just me I'm actually confessing to! I try to be ethical, anyone who knows me knows that I'm a green kind of girl but I know have BIG holes in my ethics sometimes, boo. ;o( They need rectifying and I'm always on the case. I've let my meal planning slip a tad of late and I need to get that sorted. I feel a more in depth blog post on this coming on but for now I'm off to bake!

Happy Springtime! ;o)

Butterscotch Pie

2010-03-04T15:34:00.000-08:00

A while ago I came across an old American cookery book in a charity shop and just had to liberate it! ;o) It's quite a slim volume called Anyone can Bake, published in 1929, it's a Royal Baking Powder book and is full of cool recipes. The illustrations are really cute and it has some pages of photographic "how to" series.

This evening I decided to make Butterscotch Pie for dessert after dinner.

I realised after I'd started that I didn't have any cornflour so used plain flour instead. It was taking an age using the double boiler method so my Arian impatience gene kicked in and I bunged it in a saucepan and did it that way, much speedier! I wasn't sure how much to beat the egg whites so went for the meringue on top option instead. I have to say it was really yummy although pretty sweet! My husband, who is a real pudding fan, had two slices, nothing is too sickly for him!

Catching Up (Again!)

2010-03-04T05:06:00.000-08:00

Here we are in March already and it was early January when I last blogged here! Boo! Life rolled along in expected and unexpected ways and kept me from sharing any of my kitchen antics but hopefully I will now be able to post more regularly here. ;o)

Yesterday I had a bit of a bake fest, my daughter has been baking alot of late (can't think where she gets that from! LOL) so I've not done much and I reached the culinary equivalent of meltdown yesterday and just HAD to chuck some flour about! ;oD Nothing too exciting, I was just happy to have wooden spoon in hand, but here are some pictures of my makes....

My husband was complaining that there were no biscuits to go with his cup of tea so the first thing I made was Cornish Fairings, perfect dunking biscuits! I had a little trip down memory lane whilst making these as they are a biscuit that my maternal grandmother used to make. I can picture Nan's biscuit tin now, filled with deep brown, sometimes leaning towards black on the edges, very hard fairings! ;oD Don't get me wrong, my Nan was a good cook and an excellent baker (her scones were a legend in the local WI group!) but her Cornish Fairings never seemed to fare (ha ha!) very well!

Next up was spiced cherry and sultana scones. I have a scone recipe in a Pampered Chef recipe book (one day I'll fill you in on my Pampered Chef obsession!) called Create-A-Scone which I use quite often. I like it because you roll the dough straight onto the stone it's cooked on so no fiddling about rolling out and cutting shapes, it's great when you're in a hurry. I loosely followed the lemon sultana recipe in the book but omitted the lemon and added cheeries and mixed spice. They smell delightful!

Last out of the oven were some chocolate fairy cakes which I topped with chocolate and sugar sprinkles.

So, baking craving appeased I moved on to make something savoury in the form of Curried Lentil Spread. I've made this spread for quite a few years but it wasn't until I actually read the recipe yesterday, with a view to posting it here, that I realised that I don't follow the method at all! LOL I was browsing about foodie blogs the other day and found one (which I now can't find again so apologies for not being able to credit it) with the subtitle "because recipes are just a list of suggestions". That really made me smile and have a little chuckle as so often my cooking is just like that! I look at a recipe, or even start cooking it, and realise I haven't got all the ingredients or don't fancy some of them so I just improvise! That's what cooking is all about! ;o) However, I digress....back to the spread. It's from my beaten up copy of Rose Elliot's Complete Vegetarian Cookbook. Here's the recipe as it stands:

Curried Lentil Spread

This is a good mixture for sandwiches or little savoury biscuits.

Serves 4

4oz split red lentils

7floz water

1 small onion, finely chopped

1oz butter

2 tsp curry powder

sea salt

freshly ground black pepper

Wash the lentils and cook them in the water until they're tender and have absorbed all the liquid (20 to 30 minutes), then mash them roughly with a fork. Fry the onion in the butter until it's tender then add curry powder and fry for another 1 - 2 minutes. Blend this mixture into the cooked lentils to make a fairly smooth paste, then season to taste and leave the spread to get cold before using it.

I suspect it's not the most attractive dollop you've ever seen but it is tasty! Trust me, I'm an artist! ;oD

When I make it I fry the onion and curry powder first, add the lentils and water (sometimes stock) and cook until the lentils are tender, season and then whizz it all smooth. I don't suppose it makes much difference but does illustrate my random slackness in the reading recipes department! In the book, the recipe isn't marked as being suitable for freezing but I've whacked half the recipe in the freezer to see how it fares. As she says, it's nice in sandwiches and on crackers but I also love it on toast, with salad, as a topping on a jacket potato or just as a dip with cucumber sticks.

What???

2010-01-06T03:21:00.000-08:00

Just need to have a little rant about the Devil's Supermarket! Who, pray, just who rushed down to Tesco and purchased Easter eggs on Boxing Day?? Eh? Just who would do that? It's absolutely ridiculous to put Easter confectionery and hot cross buns into the shops at Christmas! Can we not hang on to the tiniest bit of tradition? Are we not allowed to have seasons? Here's a thought, save yourself a bit of trouble, Mr Tesco, why don't we just have EVERYTHING in the shops 24/7, 365 days a year? Let's not worry about how you (and the rest of your kind) are destroying towns all over the UK with your invasive, devisive methods, no, instead let's just make sure your pockets are exceptionally well lined at the cost of British tradition and ethical consumer practice, shall we?

And breathe......

Christmas Catch Up

2010-01-04T12:20:00.000-08:00

It's been oh so long since I posted here and now I'm going to treat you to a long rambling catch up of my culinary exploits over Christmas! ;oD

Soooo, let's kick off with mincemeat...whoopee, I hear you cry! I haven't made my own mincemeat for a good few years but I decided I would this year, by which, seeing as it's now 2010, I mean last year! I use Delia Smith's mincemeat recipe from her original Christmas cook book (although I now have her new version but sadly didn't make anything from it this year). I like the fact that you cook it before potting it up, I just dislike the look of suet in jars of mincement! Here it is before cooking:

I left it in the pantry overnight before cooking and was assailed by a wonderful aroma in the morning when I opened the pantry door. Once cooked it transformed into this:

The paler bits are chopped apple. Once it's cooled it's then laced with a good splash of alcofrolic goodness and away you go! ;o) The recipe can be found on Delia's website here. It's a bit late but you can always bookmark for next year!!

A recipe I've made for the last couple of years is Nigella Lawson's fabulous Gingerbread Stuffing and I made it again this year even though I didn't get to cook Christmas dinner! I love doing the whole Christmas cooking bit but it was my mum's turn this year, boooooo! ;oD If you haven't tried the gingery goodness that is this stuffing then I highly recommend you give it a whirl. I have a little stash of slices in the freezer now. ;o) The recipe is from Nigella's book, Feast, which has a whole host of other delicious yumminess I plan to try out! The recipe isn't on Nigella's site but it is on the BBC site here. And just to whet your appetite...

Last year I made another Nigella recipe on Christmas Eve, her Triple Cheese Strata dish which is lovely. I made it on Christmas Eve again this year so that makes it a tradition to be upheld in future years me thinks! ;oD Here it is in all it's cheesy glory:

It's a kind of cheese bread and butter pudding really, sliced baguette with a mixture of cheese and cream poured over, left to soak overnight and baked the next day, easy peasy and delicious! Here's the recipe.

Moving on to another of my favourite chefs... I saw most of Jamie Oliver's Christmas TV programmes and was rather taken with his Winter Pudding Bombe. I made it for dessert on New Year's Eve and I had a smashing time doing it! I'd just got to the stage where you add ice cream to your raspberry jam spread Panettone slices. I'd forgotten to get my Green & Black's out earlier so it was a tad hard, my scoop shot across the top and my elbow knocked the bowl of expectant Panettone off the counter top and smashed into a trillion pieces on the kitchen floor! I didn't think shards of glass were a welcome addition to my pud so I was back to square one! I had just about enough Panettone to make two much smaller bombes so all was well. I did, in my unique way, tweak the recipe somewhat though! The only glace fruit I had was cherries (not clementines as the recipe states) and I couldn't get any sour cherries so I swapped them for tinned peaches. My little bowls were so small I didn't have room for a layer of fresh clementine slices either. Oh, and I didn't have Vin Santo, and even if I had I wouldn't have used it as DH is tee total so I substituted grape juice instead. So not really like Jamie's recipe at all! LOL It ws delicious though and I have one and a bit left in the freezer too! ;o)

And lastly I wanted to tell you about my Christmas present. ;o) In May last year I went over to France on a Twinning Association trip and on our first evening there our lovely host introduced us to the joys of a Raclette. I hadn't heard of it before but, for the uninitiated, it is a stone plate that sits over an electric element and you can cook meat and fish on it. A bit like barbecue without the mess! There are also little pans that slide in under the element for melting cheese in or keeping sauce warm. DD and I loved our Raclette experience, I've been hankering after one ever since and Santa obliged. ;o) It's a lovely sociable meal, sitting round the table everyone cooking and concocting, great stuff! Traditional Raclette involves cooked potatoes in your little pan topped with ham and Raclet cheese (I couldn't find Raclet but Emmenthal did the job well) and, once heated under the element, served with pickled onions and gherkins. I'm planning lots of Raclette time in this coming year and will no doubt bore you all with the details on here! I was a bit slack with my camera during our New Year Raclette meal but I can share the aftermath with you:

Cake! Everybody loves cake!

2009-11-12T01:52:00.000-08:00

A couple of days ago I rescued a pair of sad brown bananas, destined to be chucked out, from a friend's fruit bowl and yesterday evening I made Banana Ginger Cake from the Australian Woman's Weekly Cakes and Slices Cookbook.

Banana Ginger Cake

90g butter

2 tbsp golden syrup

1/4 cup caster sugar

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 egg

2/3 cup mashed banana (two bananas)

1 1/2 cups self raising flour

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

2 tsp ground ginger

1 tbsp milk

Lemon Frosting

1 1/2 cups icing sugar

30g butter

approx 2 tbsp lemon juice

1/4 cup chopped glace ginger

Grease a 20cm ring pan, line with paper and grease paper.

Cream butter, syrup and sugars with electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add egg and beat until combined then beat in banana. Stir in sifted ingredients and milk. Pour into prepared pan and bake in moderate oven 180 or gas mark 4) for about 45 minutes. Stand for 5 minutes before turning out onto wire rack to cool. Spread cold cake with frosting and sprinkle with ginger.

Keeps for two days.

Lemon Frosting

Combine icing sugar and butter with enough lemon juice to mix to a spreadable consistency.

Ok, with my customary randomness I didn't entirely follow the recipe to the letter! ;o) I couldn't find my round cake tin so I used a rectangle one instead, probably about 10" x 6", consequently as it was shallower the cake only took 30 minutes to cook. I mixed by hand as I don't have an electric mixer. For the icing, I didn't have a lemon so I used lime juice instead and I didn't have glace ginger so I substituted stem ginger instead. Creative baking in action! lol My husband had two slices of cake last night so that's a thumbs up from him!

Playing Catch Up

2009-11-10T16:21:00.000-08:00

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!

Slow Cooking

2009-10-13T08:02:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure if I've said before (probably have!) but I'm a big fan of slow cooking. ;o) Even if I'm at home all day I still like using my slow cooker as it gives me the chance to work knowing that dinner is sorting itself out. I have been sorting through recipes recently (I have a penchant fro ripping them out of magazines and printing them off the Internet or scribbling them on envelopes!) and have come across a fair amount of slow cooker ones to try out. ;o) I think cheese stuffed onions might be my next experiment. ;o) At the weekend we had slow cooker macaroni cheese for the first time this autumn. It's not really macaroni cheese since it doesn't involve cheese sauce but it's yummy and stands alone as it is. ;o) It's a recipe I do a fair amount over the winter months and I try to have the ingredients in over Christmas as it's a lovely sit in front of an open fire lazy evening type of meal! I think I found the recipe on one of the many Yahoo groups I used to belong to but I can't remember where so I can't credit whoever posted it unfortunately but here's the really easy recipe....

Slow Cooker Macaroni Cheese

2 cups macaroni
2 cups cottage cheese
2 cups grated cheese
2 cups boiling water

Layer the ingredients in the slow cooker in the order they are written. Cook for 3 hours. Stir well.

It doesn't look ultra appetising but bear with it! You need to give it a really good stir when it's cooked. The more you stir it the better it will get! It sometimes comes out a little stodgy and I think the answer is just extra liquid. I've used milk instead of water and that makes it creamier. Give it a whirl, it's great comforting winter fare! We ate ours in front of our first open fire of the year which makes it taste even better of course! ;o)

One size fits all

2009-10-07T12:51:00.000-07:00

I made pizza for dinner this evening. ;o) We three have different wants when it comes to the perfect pizza so a bit of creativity is required on my part! My daughter doesn't like too much tomato topping so her third of the pizza has a very thin layer of said tomatoey goodness, my husband likes anchovies so I added some of those to his generously tomatoed section, and I am on a bit of a health kick (45lbs lost so far) so I have yummy goats cheese on my bit. ;o) Everyone's a winner! For anyone who's interested, I use scone dough for my pizza base instead of the more traditional bread dough. It's quick and easy and makes for a nice deepish, soft and yummy pizza. I make my own tomato topping by reducing tinned tomatoes (although this time I used home grown from our garden) with herbs, onions, mushrooms and sometimes carrot or anything else lurking about in the fridge! Whizz it all up and hey presto, pizza topping!

Food spending today - £2.76 (£1.73 for 4 pints organic whole milk and £1.03 for vanilla rice milk)

Funny fish and kitchen goings on

2009-10-06T04:20:00.000-07:00

River cobbler......who's heard of that? I certainly hadn't when I spied it in the fish section in the Devil's Supermarket a while ago. I wanted smoked haddock but the shelves were bereft of it so with a bit of daring do I plumped for giving smoked river cobbler a whirl instead. When I got home I was really cross because I then spotted that it was from Vietnam! I have nothing against Vietnam but I do have a thing about the air miles that food travels and had I realised earlier I wouldn't have bought it. So, I lobbed it in the freezer in disgust and there it languished until this week. I used in a rice dish with some veg and topped it with hard boiled eggs, none of us were keen on it's "fishiness", if you know what I mean, and I wasn't struck on the texture much either. I wouldn't buy it again but I was interested to know what it was so after a bit of a Google I discovered that Pangasius Hypophthalmus, as it said on the packaging, is iridescent shark catfish. You live and learn! ;o)

As I type I have some little chocolate buns cooling on a rack and I shall be going to ice them when I finish rambling here. I'm thinking of making some icing that features maple syrup since I have some in the fridge to use up. ;o) Elsewhere, I have made lentil & bacon soup this morning, using up the four bacon rashers I had lurking in the fridge and red lentils. I'm holding out as long as possible before I cave in and put the heating on so a nice warming soup for lunch will be good!! I've also cooked up the pile of home grown tomatoes I had and bunged them through the sieve. The resulting passata will probably morph into pizza topping with the addition of onion, mushroom, carrot and a few herbs. Might be pizza for dinner today then! ;o) I've also chopped up the kale (which patently isn't kale but I can't work out what it is!) to blanch and stick in the freezer.

I neglected to mention a few things yesterday in my yawningly long food list....I have eggs ~ I always have eggs since we have chickens ;o) ~ and cereal and bread.

Challenge Time

2009-10-05T10:16:00.000-07:00

Periodically I have a bit of a personal challenge to use stuff up instead of shopping regardless and I'm embarking on a bit of one this week. Finances aren't brilliant and besides I want to work through some of the stuff I have in the freezer and pantry so I can make some room for yummy goodies as we head towards....well, the C word! My usual premise is that for as long as possible the only things I buy are milk and fruit & veg and then this gradually extends to what I consider basics such as butter, cheese, flour etc. So, for your delight or boredom here is the contents of my fridge, freezers and pantry:

Freezer
banana ½
black forest gateau
breadcrumbs x 2
~~brown soup x2~~
cheese & tomato flatbread
chick pea pasta
chicken carcas for stock
chicken drum sticks
chicken stock x 4
chicken thighs x 2
chopped parsley
felafal
filo pastry x 2
~~fruit loaf ½~~
garlic bread slices
~~h/m baked beans~~
h/m beetroot soup
h/m braised red cabbage
h/m broccoli soup
h/m butternut squash soup x 2
h/m hummous x 2
h/m parsnip soup
h/m pastry
h/m savory mince
h/m squash soup
h/m tomato sauce
hummous
~~lamb mince~~
lamb shoulder steaks
leeks
naan bread x 4
~~oven chips~~
pain au chocolate x 2
pate x 2
peas
pork loin
prawns
puff pastry x 2
Quorn cocktail sausages
Quorn fillets
raspberries
redcurrants x 8
runner beans
rye bread
shortcrust pastry
sloes
soya beans
spinach
squash puree
sweetcorn
trout x 6
white wine (small pots of leftover) x 2
~~whole chicken~~

Fridge

apple sauce
Apericubes
~~bacon~~
bbq sauce
~~blueberry conserve~~
brown sauce
~~butter x 2~~
condensed milk
Elmlea double cream x 2
extra mature cheddar
feta cheese
garlic & herb soft cheese
~~goats cheese~~
h/m pineapple chutney
h/m rhubarb chutney
Halloumi
~~hummous~~
lemon curd
maple syrup
maraschino cherries
margarine
~~marmalade~~
mayonnaise
milk
mustard
pickled beetroot
pickled cucumber slices
pickled gherkins
pickled onions
raspberry salad dressing
salad cream
sauerkraut
seafood sauce
soy sauce
tartare sauce
tomato juice
tomato ketchup

Pantry

Basics & baking

carob powder
chocolate chips, white & milk
cocoa
~~cooking chocolate~~
crystallised ginger
demerara sugar
dessiccated coconut
dried apples
dried apricots
figs
glace cherries
gluten free bread flour
golden syrup
gram flour
granulated sugar
icing sugar
~~Marmite~~
marzipan
millet flakes
oatbran
oatmeal
oats
peanut butter
polenta
prunes
self raising flour
skimmed milk powder
spelt flour
sugar cubes
sultanas
teabags
treacle
wholemeal semolina

Drinks

brandy
cherry liqueur
grenadine
h/m wine x 3
mead
pear cider
port
red wine x 3
sherry
sloe gin
white wine x 2

Grains & pulses

~~alfalfa~~
beluga lentils
~~brown lentils~~
brown rice
cous cous
dried black beans
~~dried cannellini beans~~
dried chick peas
fenugreek
green split peas
jasmine rice
millet
pearl barley
pudding rice
red lentils
yellow split peas

Herbs & spices

allspice
bay leaves
Chinese five spice
cinnamon
cloves
cumin
curry powder
ginger
mint
mixed herbs
mixed spice
nutmeg
onion granules
pizza herbs
sage
smoked sea salt
turmeric
vanilla pods
vanilla extract

Miscellaneous

anchovies in oil
blancmange x 1
breadsticks
cider vinegar
coconut milk
condensed milk x 2
~~crackers – Ryvita, oatcakes, teriyaki rice cakes, Tuc~~
creamed coconut
custard powder
~~few odd bags of crisps~~
flan case
jar of assorted sweets
lasagne sheets
malt extract
malt vinegar
mango slices
~~Marmite rice cakes~~
miso
nori
paella mix
pasta
pineapple slices
popcorn x 3
poutine mix
ranch dressing mix
sage & onion stuffing
salad seasoning
seri haya
sour cream & chive mashed potato mix
stock cubes
taco mix
tahini
three bean salad
tuna x 2
vegetable bouillion powder
white wine vinegar x 2

Nuts & seeds

brazil nuts
chestnut puree
hazelnuts in shells
macadonia nuts
mixed nuts
pine nuts
sunflower seeds
walnuts
whole chestnuts

Preserves

cocktail onions
h/m orange mincemeat
h/m piccalilli
h/m redcurrant jelly
h/m rhubarb chutney x 4
h/m rhubarb relish
mango chutney
mint sauce
pickled cucumber slices
plum chutney
stem ginger

Fruit & Vegetables

~~apples~~
~~bananas~~
~~broccoli~~
cabbage
carrots
~~celery~~
~~corn on the cob~~
leeks
~~lemon~~
~~lettuce~~
~~mushrooms~~
onions
potatoes
~~red Russian kale~~
~~tomatoes~~

Just a few extras to add....
All the meat is organic.
I've worked to move away from ready made stuff over the last couple of years but there is still some stuff I'd rather not have but in my waste not want not mind set I can't just lob them! I have several packet mixes, which I don't go near usually, but I received them from various swaps on Swap-Bot when I was in swapping mode.
I have an organic veg box most weeks and supplement it if needed with organic stuff from the supermarket if I have to. I try to eat what's in season fruit and veg wise as far as possible.

Ok, if you're still awake at this point, this evening's meal for the troops was cheese & bacon pasta. ;o) Money spent on food shopping today was £2.06 on milk.

Onion Soup & Barbie Bread

2009-09-30T15:47:00.000-07:00

Soup has to be one of my all time favourite comfort foods, what better to feed the troubled soul with than smooth, silky butternut squash soup laced with cumin or steaming chunky vegetable soup or indulgent creamy mushroom soup, mmmmm. I always have home made soups in the freezer and I love making them. Yesterday, looking for something to use up some onions, I decided to make some cream of onion soup in the slow cooker. The recipe is from a book I picked up recently in a charity shop, Slow Cooking Properly Explained by Dianne Page, after a friend recommended the recipes in it. I love using my slow cooker, there's nothing better than driving home smug in the knowledge that dinner is all ready and waiting! So, onion soup....here's the recipe:

1 1/2oz butter
1lb onions, finely chopped
2oz plain flour
1 3/4 pts chicken stock
salt and pepper
1/4 pt double cream
chopped chives, to serve

Heat the butter in a large saucepan, add the onions and cook gently, stirring occasionally, until softened but not browned. Stir in the flour. Remove from heat and gradually stir in stock. Season lightly with salt and pepper and then bring to boil. Transfer to slow cooker. Put the lid on and cook for 6 to 10 hours on low, stirring in the cream for the last 30 minutes. Adjust seasoning to taste and serve sprinkled with chopped chives.

Now to illustrate just how religiously I follow a recipe! ;oD To start off with I used oil instead of butter to cook the onions. It doesn't mention a type of onions but I used red onions as I had some that required urgent attention! I didn't use pepper and I added some nutmeg. And I didn't use double cream. I do actually have some double cream in the fridge but chose instead to use evaporated milk. And lastly I whizzed the soup to sexy smoothiness and couldn't be arsed to go into the garden for chives to sprinkle about! So, my soup probably wasn't anything like what the industrious slow cooking author intended but it was lovely and here it is served with wholemeal toast and Jarlsberg cheese sprinkled with my current fave spice, smoked paprika.

I was also on a mission yesterday to use up some rapidly squishying beetroot from last week's organic veg box and decided to plump for using them to make what is affectionately known as Barbie bread chez Savill! ;oD Barbie bread is otherwise known as beetroot bread which I make in the breadmaker and it makes for a pink culinary experience as you can see! It doesn't taste overtly beetrooty but it is yummeeeee!

A little bit of baking

2009-09-23T16:41:00.000-07:00

I love to bake, I find it very therapeutic. ;o) This afternoon I developed a headache that wouldn't go away so I headed into the kitchen this evening to soothe my troubled brow by flinging a few ingredients in a bowl and getting mixing! Given my lack of brain power at the time I didn't make anything too challenging just....

...some flapjacks....

...some vanilla cakes with chocolate icing and....

...some peanut butter biscuits.

The troops are happy and, hey presto, my headache has gone! ;o)

Pantry Passion

2009-09-20T14:16:00.000-07:00

I make no bones about it, I love my pantry! It was a long time coming and was worth the wait as far as I'm concerned! Bit of background for you....I live in two former railway cottages which we've knocked into one. The half we lived in originally had been treated to lots of "improvements" but the newer half was pretty much original when we took it on. The opposite number to what is (at least for the moment) my airing cupboard was originally a pantry. Having always operated in a small fitted kitchen I couldn't wait to have my very own pantry. It was finally completed last year and I have loved it with a passion ever since. ;o) This week we repainted the pantry walls, after a slight issue with mould last year left some horrid marks in a few places, and I thought I'd share a few pics now it's all up and running again.

My pantry door. ;o) I picked up the shabby but lovely fingerplate at the local junk shop and knew it would work perfectly for the pantry. My lovely brass pantry sign was made by my husband (he worked as a etcher) as a surprise Christmas present when I was in plaster after breaking a bone in my foot.

We wanted to re use the original terracotta tiles from the pantry and I love the way they look. They vary in colour and the floor isn't perfectly level but they are perfect in my eyes!

My meat safe was in the pantry originally and I wanted to keep it. It needed a bit of repair and sprucing up with a lick of paint but it's a sturdy fella an holds lots of tins, jars and packets. The wire crate next to the meat safe came from my father in law's and acts as my bottle store! Sloe gin, home made wine, ruby port, grenadine and more.....yum!

A view of the bottom two shelves. I'm working on collecting interesting tins and glass jars. You may have guessed by now that I want a vintage flavour to my pantry. ;o) The cream and green enamel bread bin belonged to my great grandmother (known as Big Nanna).

The top shelf here is mainly baking ingredients - did I mention I love baking?? The enamel sugar tin was inherited from my mother in law and I found the matching flour tin at a car boot sale. The Radiance Toffee tin was a recent 50p bargain!

Look I have space on the top shelf, wonder how long that'll last?! The middle shelf here houses lots of grains and pulses in Kilner style jars.

A couple of closer shots of the tins. The cake patterned tin was a recent junk shop find, full of sewing stuff!

And lastly a shot of one of the glass jars that we've been experimenting on with a labelling idea. My husband came up with the idea of trying blackboard paint on the jars so that I can use chalk on them and change them as and when I need to.

There we go, a whistle stop tour of my pantry! ;o)

Squash Soup

2009-09-18T09:47:00.000-07:00

For lunch today I had some of the aforementioned squash soup along with tomato and cheese flatbread. The soup is super (ha ha!) easy to make, I just fried an onion in a little oil until softened and then added the chopped squash and some cumin and enough stock to just cover. Cooked it until it was soft and then added some milk and whizzed it to the sexy smoothiness you see here. ;o) I'd like to say the flatbread was home made too but alas, it isn't! I like to have a variety of bakery stuff in the freezer and would like to have more home made than shop bought so need to work on that one. I have a breadmaker and make 90% of the bread we eat and even though I always mean to make and freeze loaves, rolls etc it rarely happens!
As an aside, I love these soup dishes with plates. ;o) They were a present from a lovely aunt of mine and with my soup obsession (Oh, didn't you know? It will become evident as I continue to blog! LOL) they get alot of use. ;o)

Starting out...

2009-09-17T10:58:00.000-07:00

I've long wanted to start a little food based blog and, inspired by reading Julie & Julia, I've finally taken the plunge! ;o) I'm not a foodie, I don't have bags of food knowledge but I like to cook and I love to bake, I want to learn, expand my cooking skills, try new foods and new recipes and share it all on here. ;o)

My husband likes to garden. ;o) Earlier this year he saved some seeds from a squash I'd had in the box of organic veg I have delivered every week. He planted some of them and after some due care and attention a lone baby squash appeared and grew into a monster! I wasn't sure what sort of squash it was but, with a little research, I have discovered that it's a Turks Turban squash. Apparently they're often grown as ornamental squashes but I can attest that they're good to eat! ;o) I peeled and chopped some squash and roasted it in a little oil with chestnut mushrooms and smoked paprika, yummmmeeeee! Here it is:

I need to find some more squash recipes to try as this squash is a huge beast and even though I made some cumin laced soup with it yesterday (squash makes the most velvety sexy smooth soups!) I still have more than half of it to get through!