NEW WEEK! RAIN! SPRING MAYBE SPRINGING (includes recipe)

Weekly posts are getting too long and as I don't tend to cook at weekends anyway it does seem a bit pointless to wait a week.  Plus if I do a quick daily, I can include a recipe if I think it deserves one.

So today; weather is awful!  Raining, dull, miserable and not really making me want to go out and about.  So I stayed in and did the housework instead; catching up with washing, dusting and sweeping.  Oh and writing up this of course and last week's, haha.

This week's box delivery

I have tried to be a bit more organised this week by going through some recipe books and ordering just what I needed to get me through the week, so ordered individual items rather than a random box. I still have a couple of beetroots, half a red cabbage, a celery, some mushrooms and some tomatoes leftover from last week so will use those up somewhere along the line.

Planning on using up the slow cooked boar with veggies from yesterday and turning it into a shepherd's pie type dish tonight so all I need to do is some mashed potato and I'll serve it with the kale from the box.

First bulb of the season

Spring may seem a long way off with regard to the weather but this little beauty popped it's head out over the weekend and another one looks like it's on its way so, hopefully, it isn't that far off.


SON'S FAVOURITE BANANA BREAD

200g plain flour (obviously I use my grass free mix, but you can use anything you like)
2 heaped tsp baking powder (gluten free of course)
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon (although I tend not to measure this out and you could replace with mixed spice)
75g butter/marg
115g caster sugar
3 ripe bananas, mashed (I tend to wait until they are beginning to go black and aren't really suitable for eating as is)
2 eggs, beaten.

Preheat oven to 180C/Gas 4
Grease and flour an 8.5 x 4.5inch (21 x 11cm) loaf tin.

Mash the bananas in one bowl.

Sift the flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon into another bowl then add the butter/marg and eggs; beat until combined.

Fold in the bananas and spoon into the loaf tin.

Bake for 50mins or until skewer/knife comes out clean.  Cool for 5 mins and turn out onto a wire rack to completely cool before eating.

This is rather nice slightly warm with butter :-)

WHERE IS MY BRAIN? BRING ON SPRING! (includes recipe)

The non-plastic plastic bags my veg come in

Well that was an odd week.  I was a week behind in my head.  Both my partner's and daughter's birthdays are this week and I was convinced they were next week (or as I'm late with this post; this week).  Confused yet?

Anyway kitchen duties weren't too bad but I'm still suffering from non inspiration.  Been thinking that maybe I'm awaiting Spring and am getting a bit fed up with Winter food.  Looking forward to asparagus and spring greens.

Had a few bananas left over and as we had run out of apples and my son loves his bit of fruit in the evening, I made a banana bread.  Not that healthy I hear you say; why not just give him a banana? However, my son doesn't like bananas as bananas; as he says "the only way to eat bananas is in banana bread".  So I cooked one and he was delighted and snatched a slice before I could photograph it, haha.

Son's favourite Banana Bread

This wasn't the only cake made this week as partner likes a coffee cake so a coffee and walnut cake was made for his birthday.  Luckily I found some chocolate butter cream in the freezer which I must have put in there over Xmas; I don't waste anything if I think it might be worth keeping and butter cream freezes beautifully.

Partner's Coffee and Walnut Cake

Whilst rummaging around in the freezer I came across one last batch of frozen pastry so thought a roast vegetable and bacon pie was in order to use up the leftover Sunday veg.

Roast Veg and Bacon Pie with mashed potato and greens

Rest of the week wasn't as inspirational and my shift of dinners ended with a rather quick and easy storecupboard dinner of tinned hotdogs, tinned beans, scrambled eggs and toast!

Am hoping next week will be a bit more exciting.

This week's box delivery

COFFEE AND WALNUT CAKE - you will need a food processor or something similar

140g walnuts
150g caster sugar
5 eggs, separated
55g flour
1 tbsp instant expresso powder
1 tbsp cocoa powder
2 tbsp boiling water
pinch of salt

Butter cream and some sort of jelly/jam to fill.

Preheat oven to 180C/Gas 4 and grease and line a 9in x 2in (25 x 5cm) cake tin.

Grind the walnuts with 3 tablespoons of the sugar and when ground blend in the flour (hence the need for a food processor or something similar).

Beat the egg yolks and the remaining sugar until thick and pale yellow in colour.

Sift the cocoa powder with the coffee powder and dissolve to a fairly runny paste (not too runny though).

Fold the walnut mixture and coffee/cocoa mixture into the egg yolks.

In a clean bowl and with clean whisk(s), beat the egg whites with the salt until they form stiff peaks and then carefully fold this into the yolk mixture with a spatula.  You can always slake the mixture by folding in 1 tbsp egg whites first and then folding in the rest.

Pour into the cake tin and bake for approx 45mins (check after 40mins to see if cooked).

Leave to cool for 5 mins before slicing in half horizontally and filling with the jam/jelly and butter cream.

Tah Dah!

BUSY WEEK AND A TON OF BOXES AND TOMATOES

Oooops!  I missed a week.  Sorry about that but it was a pretty uneventful week on all fronts anyway.

This week a lovely pile of boxes arrived from my veggie delivery although as you can see from the contains I probably didn’t need that many boxes just as you never need the amount of carrier bags that they put things into when you get a supermarket delivery unless you shop with one that gives you the option to be carrier bag free.  Bonus for my delivery is that all the boxes and 90% of the packaging can be returned and reused, even the string.  Must admit I tend to keep the string as it’s handy for tying up plants in the garden and some of the plastic trays are useful as seed trays or pot holders, haha.

A pile of boxes and their contains

It’s been an odd week of ‘in and out’ the house, so dinners have been as quick and as simple as they can be with the exception of Monday when I felt like doing a full on curry using left over chicken from Sunday to make a korma and the left over pumpkin to make a dahl.  I still marinated the cooked chicken in the spices and yogurt and I replaced the lentils in the recipe for the smashed up pumpkin.  No-one died of food poisoning and there were clean plates all round.  And before you ask; no I did not make the poppadums!  They were bought and are gluten and grass free; I checked. 

Chicken Korma, Pumpkin Dahl and Poppadums

Tuesday’s slow cooker recipe was a huge tomato sauce as I appear to receive a ton of tomatoes this week and still had some left from last.  Red onion, courgettes (yes Abel & Cole had some), the last of last week’s mushrooms, balsamic vinegar and salt and pepper, oregano and thyme were added and set on high for about 5 hours.  Then served with pasta and grated cheese on top!

Weds I went all Asian again and did stir fry fish with lime, leek, remaining cooked carrot and green beans from Sunday, Aldi mangetout and baby sweetcorn.  I sloshed in some fish sauce, rice wine, spattering of sugar, ground cloves, fennel, coriander and sesame seeds, then served with mushroom, egg fried rice.

Mushroom, egg fried rice with spring onion

Fish with Lime, Carrots, Green Beans, Mangetout and Baby Sweetcorn

Apologies for photos; it was a bit steamy, haha

Yes I know! I had rice! I only normally eat rice about once a fortnight, if that, as it bloats my stomach and I feel awful, but I needed something a bit more exotic this week and rice just happened to be in the cupboard and I’d run out of my noodles. L

Thursday, as always, was busy backwards and forwarding to trampoline centre with an extra lengthy session in the afternoon as son had group lesson followed straight away by private session.  So time was short and having prepped Tuesday night’s dinner on Monday night and sticking it in the fridge to shove in slow cooker in the morning, I did the same on Weds night by prepping layers of sliced potato, Jerusalem artichoke, celeriac, leek, chopped ham and grated cheese.  In the morning I poured over a combination of cream and milk and switched it on and walked away.  Next time I won’t add equal quantities of milk to cream as it did produce quite a lot of liquid.  However, it tasted fab!

Alfred on the move!

In other news; the bulbs I hastily planted a couple of weeks ago are growing rather well.  The potatoes that The Potato Council sent us are chitting away nicely on the window sill and Alfred, after moving about and deciding to stop on the ceiling right above the kettle and abseiling up and down with the inevitability of eventually landing on someone’s head and thus causing panic and death, was carefully removed into the garden to find a new home.  I’ll miss him, but hopefully he’ll find a comfy spot and a decent mate.

DREARY FEBRUARY AND THE SHORTAGE OF LETTUCE!

Funny old week!  It’s very grey and miserable in the South East of Blighty.  February has arrived!  Although on the bright side bulbs are beginning to push green shoots out above the soil so the promise of colour is there.

Alfred the garden spider has decided to move home and taken himself off to the corner of the kitchen between the above sink cupboard and the wall; maybe he’s thinking of looking for a mate which is rather sad as he won’t find one.  If he lasts long enough and the warm weather finely arrives, I’ll reinstate him into the garden.

As to food and menus; I’m still finding little inspiration but then it is the ‘lean’ time of year.

The garden has a few turnips and leeks left but that’s about it although rosemary, sage, thyme, young mint and a few fronds of fennel are still there for the picking.  Talking of the garden I’ve had a tidy up and cut back a few bits as there is less risk of frost now.  Also found a few bulbs, that I hadn’t got round to planting in November, in the shed which were sprouting so risked planting up a couple of pots to see how they fair.  Next week will be checking over seed packets for dates and ordering new strawberry plants as the old ones have become far too old to produce much crop.

The festival of Imbolg was this week so I decided that Wednesday would be the day that I decorated the house with fresh flowers (supermarket unfortunately), greenery from the garden (eucalyptus needed a cut back), and candles and did a yellow and green themed dinner of smoked haddock, spring onion and pea frittata along with a fresh salad of lettuce (not iceburg I might add; more about that in a min), onion, watercress, apple, walnut and cheese.  I also took half the rhubarb out of the freezer and made an orange and rhubarb ‘cake’ with one of the blood oranges I had left and served this with custard.

Now to the lettuce issue!  Apparently the UK imports more than half its fruit and veg from abroad, which personally I find astonishing and rather worrying, and, as there is currently unusual weather conditions in Southern Europe, it’s affecting their ability to produce veg and this has meant a shortage of foodstuffs like courgettes, spinach, iceberg lettuce and now broccoli reaching our supermarket shelves.  My issue here is that why are we trying to buy courgettes, spinach, iceberg lettuce and broccoli now anyway?  To be honest why would you buy iceberg lettuce at any time of the year; it’s foul! Those are summer veggies! Why? Because we have become so used to buying anything at any time of year that we have become distanced from what we truly should be eating at any specific point. I often wonder if this is why illnesses have increased. Our bodies are attuned to eat certain things at certain times and to eat seasonally has a huge impact on our health and, obviously, the planet. Now I’m not being all evangelical about it; I love my blood oranges from Sicily and, of course, I’m still eating tomatoes in February which is silly unless canned, pickled or dried but I’m trying to eat as seasonally as possible and to grow my own or buy mainly from the UK and preferably local. I wonder how others would fair if they did the same. Perhaps if we did we wouldn’t be panic buying lettuce, yes people really are, with one supermarket rationing them to three per person.  On that point; to whoever is buying three at a time, all I can say is you must be eating a hell of a lot of lettuce as it wouldn’t last in my house and would go off before we could use it up.  Hmmm, more food waste I think.  May I make a suggestion?  Eat cabbage!  Red cabbage is around and that’s lovely and crunchy raw.  Finely shred it, shove in some grated carrot, possibly a chopped onion, maybe a few raisins or grated apple or both, add a light dressing and you have homemade coleslaw; tastes much better than lettuce anyway!

For further information I’ve added a couple of links below.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/03/no-three-lettuce-heads-supermarkets-tell-customers-extreme-weather/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38666752

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2014/aug/12/seasonal-eating-vegetables-uk-does-it-matter

http://eatseasonably.co.uk/

Cya

Menu plan for the week is as follows:

Monday – Roasted veg pasta

Tuesday – Turnip and chickpea casserole with mashed potato

Wednesday – Smoked haddock frittata with salad and rhubarb and orange cake for pud

Thursday – Mushroom curry with rice

ENERGY LEVELS UP AND DOWN AND SUPPLIES RUNNING LOW

Had a brilliant start to the week; woke up at a reasonable time, garden was all frosty and beautiful and I felt I had some energy.  Garden was so pretty I rushed outside in pjs and bare feet just to get some photos. Needless to say that my tootsies were a bit ‘cold’ by the time I’d finished, so wrapped up in slipper socks and boot slippers under a blanket with first morning’s coffee.  Roasted off a whole pumpkin; cut it in half around the middle, rubbed with salt, pepper and oil and cooked in the oven for about an hour. Half of it was used for the pumpkin polenta and the other half will be made into a pumpkin and walnut loaf (I still have 1 very large and 2 medium pumpkins left from Halloween, but as I hadn’t cut them due to their decorative skin, they’ve kept perfectly fine in my chilly utility room).

Was a bit slower on the energy levels on Tuesday, but that was mainly due to having osteo the evening before.  Took an age for me to decide what to do for dinner as was slightly lacking in inspiration; yes it does happen to me!  So after ploughing through about half a dozen cookery books, not finding anything that totally grabbed my attention, I decided that a couple of recipes could work if I combined them and added my own flavours, so roasted roots with chickpeas, feta and Moroccan spice.

Still struggling for ideas on Wednesday; it’s the end of the month and the cupboards are getting a little bare and because I’m trying to eat as seasonable as possible I’m finding that I’m getting a little bored with the same old thing; time for spring!  Cleaned out the freezers (I have one large one that gets full quite quickly when we are harvesting, but remains half empty if I’m not filling it up with baked goods when garden isn’t over producing) and a small upright one in the kitchen which is used for open packets, breadcrumbs, leftover meals, etc.  Now I have two clean and tidy freezers and I know exactly what I have in them which should help a bit when planning meals.  I’ve also had a chat with partner and should be taking full control of food shopping again as of next week!  He took over the shopping nearly 10 years ago when I broke my leg and has been reluctant to let me take it back even though I’m constantly shopping as he only ever buys the basic boring stuff as he’s a meat and two veg kind of guy when it comes to cooking.  Ended up cooking six of the bubble and squeak patties I made before Xmas, grilled bacon, fried mushrooms and eggs and whizzing up my own version of baked beans (we didn’t have any; like a said, it’s the end of the month) using an inch of chopped chorizo, 2 finely chopped tomatoes (no tinned toms either), squirt of tomato paste and ketchup, splash of balsamic vinegar for sweetness and a tin of cannellini beans.  Actually I rather liked them and, although wouldn’t necessarily want to do them every time I used baked beans, I would definitely do them again.

Bubble & Squeak Patties

Thursday was mega busy with loads of online grocery shops, son’s trampolining group and then work, so slow cooker back in business with sweet and sour fish.  I’ve used the recipe for chicken before, but didn’t have any so thought ‘why not’ fish! As it was it worked!  Phew!

Biggest excitement of the week apart from Monday’s frosty garden was the fact that Alfred the spider isn’t dead as we first thought but very much alive and well! I hate spiders normally, but I’ve become quite attached and was slightly over excited by the fact that after spending 3 days curled up in the corner of the window with no new webs being built he was back in the middle of a brand new web and looking healthy again.  Hoorah!

Alfred the Spider (old picture)

Menu plan for the week is as follows:

Monday – Garlic chicken with pumpkin polenta and peas.

Tuesday – Oven roasted roots with chickpeas and feta

Wednesday – bubble & squeak patties, fried mushrooms, fried eggs, grilled bacon and home-made baked beans

Thursday – Sweet and sour fish

BONUS: GLUTEN/GRASS FREE PASTRY

My Gluten/Grass Free Pastry (because people keep asking)

200g plain flour (my flour mix is made from 1 cup each of gram, soya, buckwheat and potato starch and ½ cup of nut flour depending on what I have.  This is all placed in a large container and shaken until thoroughly mixed and obviously you can double/triple up if you have a bit enough container)

Pinch/grind of salt

100g marg/butter/dairy free spread OR 50g previous mentioned plus 50g white vegetable fat

2 tbsp cold water roughly

Sift flours and salt into a bowl.

Rub in the fat until breadcrumb looking

Bring the mixture together to form a dough adding a little water at a time.

Turn out and knead well and then wrap in clingfilm and chill for at least 30 mins in the fridge.

Preheat oven to 180C/Gas 4

Roll out to thickness you desire before cutting and using as needed.

NOTE: This flour combination seems to produce the best pastry I’ve ever tried making as gluten free.  It’s light, crumbly and doesn’t tend to turn to ‘stone’ after a day.  I make it up in a large batch and then freeze down into usable portions (200g/8oz) and even once defrosted it still works.  Partner complains that it tastes a little sweet, but that is probably due to the nut flour (coconut flour or ground almonds), but it’s this nut flour that I think makes it stay moist and not turn into the normal ‘hard rock’ of a pastry that I’ve made before when using pre mixed flours like Doves Farm.  Nothing against Doves Farm, but I prefer my mix plus Doves Farm has rice flour in it and I'm cutting my rice intake down as much as possible.

Game Pies - cooked

Crumble topped mince pies - uncooked

FFS!!! SLEEPY HEAD AND THEN FEELING ROUGH

A bit higgledy-piggledy this week as shifts swapped at work so worked Wednesday and Thursday instead of Tuesday and Thursday and ended up feeling rough towards the end of the week.  Was rather nice to have a couple of days off at the beginning of the week and the plan was to spend some time in the kitchen getting ahead, but that didn’t happen as I’ve gone into hibernation mode and am struggling with sleep and then not waking up and then was ill from Thursday with stupid viral thingy which made me freezing cold and headachy.  Hopefully within the next few weeks this will all rectify itself and I’ll be full of the joys of Spring, haha.

Forgot to mention last week that we had snow!  Well, a few centimetres of snow anyway, but it did make everything sparkly and pretty for an evening and half a day.  Brought everything to a standstill as usual although have no idea why as it was hardly anything and other places manage to keep going through masses of it on a daily basis.  Come to the conclusion that we South Englanders are pretty naff when it comes to snow.

Snow in Gillingham. Picture: Alan Spoore

Kent Online

This week I had two boxes delivered as they had an offer on ‘pick me up’ foods (quite funny considering I had no ‘up’ to be ‘picked’ by Thursday) so took a nosey in the cupboard and what was available and did a little order which included my blood oranges (yay), watercress (mmmm, soup!), venison mince and pigeon breasts (both now in freezer) and yogurt (I get through rather a lot as have it with my gluten free oats for breakfast instead of milk/water).  The veg box was quite standard as it would be at this time of year but I was able to double up on the broccoli meaning we had a decent amount.

Menu plan for the week is as follows:

Monday – broccoli and butterbean bake.  Was a lot better than I was expecting as I’d chucked it all together and laid slices of emmental on top; got eaten though and there was enough left over for me to have at the weekend instead of chips.

Before the slices of Emmental were added

Tuesday – Game pie with mash potato, the remaining broccoli, Brussel sprouts and carrots. Luckily pie was already made and in the freezer, so just an easy job of removal and allow to defrost before ensuring heated through in the oven.

Luxury Game Pie

Wednesday – Teriyaki quorn chunks in the slow cooker.  Hmmm, must use less Tamari next time.  Used the same amount as the note said for soy sauce, but the tamari was quite strong, so probably will halve it next time.  They all ate it though, so can’t have been that bad.

Thursday – After shoving flour, oil, water, yeast, sugar and salt in the bread maker before going off to son’s trampolining class, I made pizza.  Dough was good and I covered it in tomato sauce (ketchup), chopped onions, sliced mushroom, pepperoni, ham and cheese.  Made two of the paninis in the fridge into garlic breads for them and a bowl of salad to go with it.  Unfortunately I was starting to feel pretty crap by the time I got back from work, so the couple of slices of pizza they had left me were enough.

Pizza before cooking

Spent Thursday night, all day Friday and Saturday wrapped up in layers of clothing and a blanket whilst drinking plenty of tea, water and vitamin C drinks and reading a book.  Partner cooked for them and I ate sarnies and the broccoli bake as really wasn’t that hungry.  Luckily Sunday morning I woke up feeling rather a lot better.

RECIPE:
Mixed Game Pie with Sausage meat-stuffing balls
Serves 4 or 3 if you're piglets, which we are.

Sunflower oil
knob of butter
approx 600g mixed game (mine was venison, pheasant and partridge)
about 4 rashers of smoked bacon cut into chunky strips
1 medium onion, chopped
thyme springs (I used 4, but this is to preference)
400ml of stock (I used veg)
A good glass of port
1 tbsp of redcurrant jelly (although I used my Hips and Haws jelly so you could use cranberry or any other jelly to be honest)
3 bay leaves
couple of carrots, diced
couple of celery stalks, sliced
heaped tbsp of flour for thickening

Brown the meat in batches in the oil and butter and set aside, then brown off the bacon and set that aside.
Cook the onions, added a glug more oil if needed, with the thyme until soft and lightly browned. Stir in the flour and gradually add the stock, port, jelly and bay leaves. Bring to the boil and return the meat and the bacon and allow to simmer, covered, for about an hour.
Gently sweat off the carrots and the celery in another glug of oil and butter and when browned add to the meat dish and simmer, again covered, for another 15 mins until veg is soft.

Meanwhile make the sausage meat balls:
150g sausage meat (mine was, of course, gluten free)
2 rashers of bacon, finely chopped
Approx 50g of nuts (could be walnuts, hazelnuts, chestnuts; I used hazelnuts), chopped
grated zest of a lemon
20g of breadcrumbs (mine obviously gluten free)
chopped thyme to taste
salt and pepper.
Squidge all of the ingredients together and form into walnut sized balls.
Fry them off until brown all over and set aside.

You will also need 250g of shortcrust pastry (either bought of homemade.  You could use puff if you can make it or find it gluten free or use normal if you aren't gluten free)

Transfer the meat and veg from the game mix into a pie dish and reduce the cooking liquid to approx 350ml or slightly under.  Pour this back over the meat and arrange the sausage meat balls on top and leave the whole thing to cool.

Roll out your pastry and cover your pie and if you have a pie funnel use it, but I don't and just made a couple of holes in the pastry top.  Cook this 30-35mins in an oven of 220C/Gas 7 until pastry brown and filling it bubbling.

NB: It's a long winded recipe and I've tweaked the original a fair bit. This isn't something I would do on a weekly basis, but would use for special occasions.