WEATHER IMPROVES! HOORAH!

Rogue raspberry from under fence

Well it's been a week of hit and miss; some days have been brilliant and others have been, shall we say, a little stressful.  But the Wing It kitchen has been reasonably busy along with the Wing It garden.

Monday was last of the frozen pumpkin, last of the carrots from last week and chopped swede, coconut curry.  Problem was I thought I had some coconut milk in the cupboard which I didn't; whoops! I did, however, have desiccated coconut, so I stuck a couple of handfuls in a bowl and poured on boiling water and left for half an hour.  This I then drained and squeezed which gave me a very watery, but coconut flavoured liquid which I used to cook the veggies in before adding the curry spices and the coconut at the end.  Good flavour, but wouldn't recommend swede in a curry unless a tomato based one.

Tuesday was eventful to say the least as I had a hospital appointment to check my ears as I suffered from a dose of tinitus a few months ago and my ears felt blocked, but there was no wax or infection. On the way up to the hospital I get a phone call from a job I'd applied for many months ago asking if I was still interested and would I like to come along for an 'interview/chat' the next day.  Eeek!  Anyway, ears all fine, no hearing loss; probably just a dose of blocked sinus/ear canal and that is now drained.  Phew! So nice and easy dinner of spaghetti bolognese made with quorn mince and my oven roasted and slow cooked tomato sauce with added sliced mushrooms and a splash of balsamic vinegar.  Again I had the buckwheat pasta which I am definitely liking.

Weds arrived and I walked son up to his course, popped into docs for results of blood test and all now fine!  Eh???  So one week they are fine, two weeks later they are borderline diabetic and two weeks after that they are fine again!  Osteo after a quick Aldi shop and I can finally walk without feeling like an old lady.  Getting older sucks!  Haha.  Interview in the afternoon and I'm offered the job!!! Double EEEEEEEKKKKK!!!  So two evenings a week as of next week I'm a working woman again after many, many years.

Dinner was a disaster!  Yep, I have those days too.  Wanted to do a stir fry noodle dish and try out my new gluten free noodle find which are made with sweet potatos.

White haddock fillets were marinaded in the morning in a curried spice mix with a tsp of sugar, pinch of salt, crushed garlic and a tablespoon of olive oil and then cooked in a dryish pan until cooked through.  Then stir fried pak choi, baby corn, spring onion, sugar snap peas and mushrooms, with chopped ginger, coriander and a splash each of water, tamari sauce and fish sauce.  Noodles were soaked and then tipped into veggies to finish cooking as per instructions!  Yuck!  They looked like see through worms and tasted like plastic and acted like elastic bands.  I ended up attempting, and exceeding pretty well, picking the lot out of the stir fry and spiralising some courgette instead.  Meant the fish ended up cold, although nice flavour and my son refused to eat the stir fry as there were a few remaining 'plastic worms' left. He made himself toast! Never again!!

Thursday and I'm having doubts!  What the hell am I doing?  Am sure I'll be fine!  Ached like hell all day and brain was all over the place so it was an easy dinner of slow cooked chicken, butter beans, chickpeas and sweetcorn with leeks and plenty of freshly chopped parsley to have as a soup bowl dinner with bread for dunking.

No dinner cooking over weekend again as that's partners job so out in the garden to start putting things to bed.  Ie, chopping back herbs and seeing what's left to harvest.  And I made a banana bread using up the, now browning, bananas and some candied cut peel I had in the cupboard.

Chillis

Weird chilli

Chilli plants from seeds of a chilli are ready for picking.  As are the tomatos that were also grown from tomatos cut into halves and planted.  And the butternut squash seeds I planted (also from veg seed not packet) have gone a bit rampant.

Butternut squashes

Row of tomato plants from cut tomatoes

 MY BANANA BREAD

200g plain flour (I use a mix of soya, buckwheat, gram and potato starch, but any plain flour will do)

2.25tsp baking powder

0.5tsp of salt

0.75tsp of cinnamon

75g butter or marg

115g caster sugar (mine is sugar beet sugar not sugar cane)

3 ripe bananas

2 eggs beaten

2 tbsp chopped candied peel.

In a bowl sieve flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and sugar and then add marg and beaten eggs. Thoroughly beat the mixture together using a hand mixer if you have one or plenty of muscle and a wooden spoon.  In a separate bowl mash the bananas and then add these to the cake mix and beat again.  Fold in the candied peel and bake for 50mins to an hour in a greased and lined 2lb loaf tin at 180C.  It's cooked when knife or skewer (whichever you prefer) comes out clean and the cake is coming away from the sides a little.  Turn out and cool.