AAAAAH! NORMALITY HAS RETURNED!

Sorry, this is a couple of days late.

Well, it was rather satisfying to get back into the rhythm of things today with a clean out of the fridge, veg rack and fruit basket in preparation for the veg box order.  I was pleased to discover that the veg rack is finally empty apart from a half head of celery which was looking decidedly brown and unappetising, so was fed to the worms in the wormery and the rack wiped clean ready for new goodies.  The fridge had been emptied of all its mouldering items as well, so apart from jars of half eaten preserves, a bit of blue cheese and a quarter of an Xmas pudding there is now nothing left to betray that there was a festive season.  Salad trays contained a fresh box of mushrooms, 3 lemons, 2 Little Gem lettuces and about half a dozen baby plum tomatoes; all were ok, so the worms didn’t get any other treats today.

Blood Oranges - Yummy

Box arrived and after giving the fridge a final clean down I could empty the gorgeous fresh stuff into the respective areas.  Firstly, a fine bag of blood oranges; mine, all mine, I might add.  I patiently wait every year for January and the availability of organic blood oranges from Sicily and woe betide anyone who sneakily nicks one.  They are my favourite and only available for such a short time. They were added carefully to the fruit basket along with apples and satsumas.  The bananas were removed swiftly and put aside for banana bread later as they are beyond eating as a snack but will be wonderfully sweet and gooey for a cake. More cherry tomatoes, sweet bite tiny peppers and chestnut mushrooms were put in the fridge and 1 fennel, bag of Brussel sprouts (yeah I know you’re probably all sick of them, but we love them), 4 sweet potatoes, leeks and a bag of Cavolo Nero were housed in the veg rack.  I know that there are still leeks, curly kale, parsnips, swedes and turnips in the garden along with various herbs such as rosemary, sage, bay, thyme, marjoram and mint.

Menu plan for the week is as follows:

Monday – Quorn sausage, tomato, mushroom, pepper, garlic, onion, plenty of dried oregano, splash of gluten free Worcester sauce and big squirt of tomato puree cooked to form a sauce and served with pasta for the boys and buckwheat pasta for me.

Tuesday – slow cooker of quorn mince, mushroom, walnut and rice filled Cavolo leaves (apparently these parcel type things are called Dolmades and I’ve made them before with cabbage leaves).  Stock and lemon juice will be poured over to cook and keep them moist – this didn’t quite go to plan as the Cavolo leaves were so thin I couldn’t stuff them, so layered them with the quorn mince filling like a lasagne.  Clean plates again tonight.

Apologies for the quality of picture; it really did taste better than it looks

Wednesday – chicken and vegetable pie made with the leftover roast chicken & the remaining roasted veg from Sunday and mash potato.

Thursday – a layered potato, sweet potato, fennel and cream concoction with plenty of cheese including the last of the blue cheese; wasn’t as much cream left as I’d hoped so topped it up with milk.  As there was plenty of cheese I knew it wouldn’t matter and the potatoes easily soak up the liquid.  

White Orchard - a touch of beauty in the drabbest month

KITCHEN BLITZ AND PLANNING

Hi all,

This week has been clearing out the fridge and freezer of any bits and bobs and frozen 'half' dinners so that I have a fresh freezer to fill with baking and all the final leftovers have been used. I try and do this at the beginning of most months, but definitely at the beginning of December as there will be cakes, extra bread, Christmas Day meat, pastry, biscuit dough and all the other extras that will be needed over the festive season, although I'm sure that some of it will be still there in January.  Also the kitchen itself gets a winter clean with cupboards and drawers cleared out of 'stuff' and washed down along with double checking on cleaning tiles and those hard to reach corners.  Why I do a winter clean I don't know, but it's become traditional for me to do a pre-Christmas blitz.

So after a mega blitz, Monday's dinner was a big moroccan spiced 'stew' made from a fairly large, already moroccan spiced, veg dish I found in the freezer, last week's sweet potatoes, tomatoes and carrots, quorn pieces, lambs lettuce (in place of spinach) and more spice.  This was basically shoved in the slow cooker all afternoon whilst I cleaned the kitchen.

Stores cupboard (left side)

Stores cupboard (right side)

Tuesday was breakfast with a friend I hadn't seen for a while, bit of shopping, posting a parcel and some Xmas cards and then work in the evening.  I have to admit that after a very large breakfast I wasn't that hungry before work, so I passed the responsibility of dinner onto my partner and requested he bunged a pizza in the oven for me for when I got home.  Sainsbury do a rather good gluten free pizza and I do tend to keep a couple in the freezer for those days when either I really fancy one or when the boys are having them themselves; normally a Saturday when it's partner's turn to 'cook'.

Mushroom 'risotto' on Wednesday as I had a tonne of mushrooms in the fridge.  The risotto is in quotation marks as I didn't have risotto rice so used quick cook long grain rice instead.  After frying off some onion and the tonne of mushrooms in some olive oil, adding plenty of fresh thyme from the garden and a twist or two of black pepper and salt, I added this and a large mug of rice to an oven proof casserole dish, then added two mugs of boiling water, gave it all a stir and put in the oven, covered in foil, for 20mins on 180C.  Another stir and more boiling water, about another mugful, and back in the oven for another 10mins whilst I grated a largish piece of parmessan and a big chunk of cheddar.  Out of the oven again, check to see if rice cooked and then stir in all of the cheese.  Check seasoning, add a little more water if dry and back in oven for another five mins to melt the cheese.  Voila!

Thursday was another slow cooker day as it was son's weekly group trampolining lesson and then back to work a couple of hours later.  This time it was an 'anything goes' stew, meaning leftover roast veggies from the weekend, couple of spoonfuls of mashed potato which thicken the stew, sweetcorn, any veggies that were found in the bottom of the fridge, tin of tomatoes, tin of beans and some water.  Plenty of salt and pepper and herbage and I've finally got rid of all the odds and sods.  Hoorah!!

Friday is my first day of not cooking dinner, so after a private lesson in trampolining for my son, it was home to wade through a pile of cookery books with a cuppa and plan out some menus/dishes for the next couple of weeks so that I don't have to think too hard about what to cook whilst I get on with baking, present wrapping, decorating and card writing.  Shopping lists written and I can relax for the weekend. Although I actually did a fair amount of visiting, shopping and a rather lovely amble around a Christmas Fair where I bought a rather ingenious bowl that folds flat when not needed, so not a huge amount of sitting and relaxing, but was a well spent weekend.

Chicken Bowl

Chicken Bowl flat

Do you think this lot will fit in the bowl??

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.