What's for dinner?

Garden veggies!

Peas, the first few little French beans, Charlotte potatoes, beetroot, and carrots. Plus some lavender and mint.

We had salmon fillets pan fried with lavender and a little lime zest (worked well), boiled potatoes with mint and butter, and gently boiled beans, peas and carrots. Lovely fresh summer flavours.

In the process of harvesting I discovered more of Summer's weirdness.

Picture me with a wooden bowl which I'm filling with peas. I worry when I'm pulling the pods off that I'll pull off half the plant with the pod so I pick two-handed, one hand supporting the stems. I put the bowl on the floor.

So I'm reaching though the trellis (which is there so I can train the pumpkins and buttercup squash up it - didn't really think it through) to grab the peas. And the bloody dog's putting her nose into the bowl of peas and grabbing some and eating them with obvious enjoyment.

I mean, raw peas! And while I was shelling them she was sitting by me looking expectant, so I let her have a few empty pods. Typical bloody Labrador. She likes raw broccoli and carrots too.

We have an orchid in the orchard. Not on purpose, it just turned up there, looks very pretty. Michael has pics of it which I'll have to steal from him. And I saw a frog earlier, and we had a couple of nuthatches the other day (along with 20 or so regular bird species). And there are loads of common red soldier beetles which I've never seen before (they like to eat aphids and other small insects so they are good guys). Guess my somewhat laissez-faire attitude to weeding is paying off for the wildlife.

Carrot wars and rainbows

I'm growing two types of carrot in the veg plot at the moment. I bought the seeds a few years ago to sow in pots, therefore I picked varieties that I could harvest as baby carrots.

Not knowing then of course that you can use any type of carrot as baby carrots, you just pull them up before they're fully grown. Ah well, I'm better informed now. Still with our clay soil it's a good idea to stick to the shorter ones anyway.

So I grabbed some of each for dinner today, to do a taste comparison. Boiled for just a couple of minutes, then served with a little butter and parsley.

In the blue corner... Parmex. In my stupidity I didn't get a pic of these guys, so here's one from Thompson&Morgan instead. They can afford the bandwidth.

Designed to be very stumpy and ball-shaped. Mine are slightly more traditional-carrot-shaped than that (although the smaller ones are pretty round), maybe an inch in diameter and a little bit longer than that with a pointy end.

And in the red corner, the catchily-named Amsterdam Forcing 3-Sprint. Looks basically like a normal carrot. I did get a pic a few days ago.

The Parmex pic makes them look really dull (since it's obviously photoshopped), but they are a lovely orange colour, with a great perfumed carrot smell when you pull them up.

My prediction before the trial was that Amsterdam Forcing would taste better, based on the intensity of fragrance.

Michael had no such preconceptions, but we both agreed on our favourite... sure enough, the Amsterdam. Tastes sweeter and more "carroty", and the texture is better too, firmer. We have a winner!

* * *

Thinking about carrots made me remember that you can get purple carrots*, and I thought I'd have a look for some kind of mixed pack of seeds of different colours. I was disappointed. All I could find was mixtures with orange, yellow and white. Almost all were F1 hybrids (bah).

So instead I bought separate packets of red, purple, yellow and white from eBay, at a total cost of about £4.50. I'm intending to mix them with the Amsterdam Forcing I already have and sow them all together to create my own rainbow carrot mix. I'll happily swap some of them if anyone's interested.

And completely randomly, here's a dish I prepared a few days ago using garden veg. It's a stir-fry with chicken, noodles, purple kale, spinach, chard, rapini and mangetout peas. Wasn't bad at all.

*Carrots also come in yellow, white, purple and as I discovered today, red! How pretty!!

Nothing very exciting

Yesterday was very windy, and some emergency plant support measures became necessary. Luckily there was only one casualty, a courgette plant that got decapitated when the stake it was tied to blew over. Peas and potatoes and sunflowers got battered about a bit, but they'll survive.

Today the new little purple-podded pea and pole bean plants got planted out, in containers because there's literally no room in the raised beds. One of the containers is an old plastic storage box with holes in the bottom. (Gotta love recycling!)

After deciding that liqueur making sounded fun, I raided the 'net for recipes and started off 4 different liqueurs - lemon, lavender, kiwi and lemon cream. Some more will happen as soon as I buy more vodka. It really is easy, just soak fruit in vodka for however long, add sugar syrup and strain and bottle and keep for a while, then drink. The lemon cream is very quick - it's in the freezer right now and it's really good - I found the recipe here.

Next step is to start making wine again too. I've started off some ginger beer. No, it's really not all Famous Five, this is serious stuff at about 5% alcohol (10% proof). If Julian, Dick (snigger), George, Anne and Timmy had been on this ginger beer I think the books might have been a little different... something like Five go to Al-Anon or Five wait for 7 hours in A&E after some drunken snooping goes horrible wrong. Or something.

Here's what I've harvested from the garden so far...

* Salad leaves
* Mangetout peas (just a handful today)
* Carrots (finger sized baby ones, because they needed thinning, plus baby carrots = so good)
* Oriental veg mix (eaten in a stir fry today)
* Spinach/leaf beet/chard

Potatoes and dwarf beans are in flower, and tiny courgettes, pumpkins, cucumbers and French beans are appearing. Also the tomatoes have buds.

I'm tired and need to sleep.

On yumminess

So I couldn't resist picking and eating one of the yellow pea pods the other day. It was probably half sized, not even the size of a mangetout, but I was too curious.

Straight off the plant and into my mouth.

You know what, I never knew peas were so yummy!

I've had so-called "fresh" unshelled peas from the supermarket and they were good, but this was something else.

Crunchy and quite sweet with a lovely sort of resistance when you bit it and a flavour which frozen or tinned (yuk!) peas can't even hope retain. Of course it tasted like peas, but it also tasted a lot like raw skinless peanuts, for some reason. Delicious. Can't wait to be able to pick a proper batch to stir-fry, but I have a feeling they might just end up raw in a salad, they're that good.

In completely unrelated news, I really fancy making liqueurs this year, with fruits and flowers spices and such. Looks easy and fun, and tasty.

Yesterday I had a go at making elderflower cordial (that's a non-alcoholic drink for you Americans, which we dilute with water), since I have 3 or 4 elders in the hedges around my garden. It's steeping in the kitchen. Tonight I'll strain and bottle it - hopefully it will be really good and I'll have to make loads more. I've done lavender before, but never elderflower.

I can see myself at the end of the year with a kitchen full of jams and jellies and chutneys and sauces and cordials and liqueurs... anyone fancy saving jars and bottles for me? I'll swap them for finished products!

Feta and tomato pasta plus

Bout time I posted a recipe.

The title doesn't really say it, but I can't think of something more imaginative or descriptive. I used chicken but it would be equally nice without it (or with Quorn or whatever) if you fancied a veggie version.

Anyway, this serves 2.

1 chicken breast (optional), skinless and boneless, cut into small pieces.
1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
1 green bell pepper (or whatever colour you like), in 1cm squares
1/2 courgette, in 1cm cubes
8 sun-dried or semi-dried tomatoes in olive oil, cut into small pieces
1 or 2 medium tomatoes, cubed
2 or 3 good handfuls of fresh young chard leaves or spinach, torn in half
75g feta cheese, broken into pieces
2 tbsp fresh oregano or marjoram leaves, or 2 tsp of dried (use other herbs if you like - mint, thyme, parsley or basil would all be good)
10 black olives, halved
150g dried pasta (I use a chunky sort of pasta rather than spaghetti or tagliatelle, but use what every you like)

1) Put the pasta on to boil, according to packet instructions.

2) Heat 1 tbsp of oil from the sun-dried tomatoes in a medium saucepan or frying pan and fry the chicken pieces (if using) with the garlic until mostly cooked. For the veggie version, fry the garlic for a minute then move to step 3.

3) Add the pepper, courgette and sun-dried tomatoes and fry until the veg is slightly softened and the chicken is golden. Add the fresh tomato and continue to cook until the tomato is mushy.

4) When the pasta is nearly done, add the chard or spinach and herbs to the sauce and stir until just wilted.

5) Add the feta and olives and stir, then drain the pasta.

6) Place pasta and sauce in the empty pasta pan and stir to combine.

Serve with a green salad. Should taste like summer in the Mediterranean.

Yum - and today is day 76. I counted.

It's pretty awesome to be in the middle of cooking a meal and decide you want, say, salad leaves or spinach or some fresh herbs, and just go outside and collect them.

Yesterday we picked baby spinach, leaf beet and rainbow chard (there isn't really enough of any one of them to make a meal on their own yet) to eat with dinner. I simply washed it and wilted it in a hot saucepan (I hate overcooked spinach), squeezed out the excess water and added a little butter and some black pepper.

It tasted completely different to the stuff I buy in bags from the supermarket - very tender but with a nice crunch to the stems, a lovely earthy and slightly sharp taste. As fresh as possible, and no nasty chemicals. And weirdly none of that not-so-pleasant "furry teeth" feel I associate with spinach.

I wonder how much of my enjoyment is due to the fact that home-grown stuff does taste better, and how much is due to my pride in the fact that I grew it myself?*

*Not massive amounts of pride admittedly, because chard and leaf beet and spinach are all really really easy to grow. I just sowed the seeds and watered them and they did the rest.

This is what happens...

...when you take one batch of choc chip marzipan cookie dough, one set of alphabet cookie cutters, and two very immature adults.

Enough negative stuff, let's talk gardens!

I haven't got garden pics yet, sorry. It's on my list for tomorrow, which means there's half a chance it'll get done.

The heated prop's currently full to bursting with seeds, and I have some little plants already. So here's what's happening in Embryo Veg Patch Central (otherwise known as my utility room) at the moment.

Black pumpkins (they look funky), little plants about 3 inches high, just getting their first true leaves.
Yellow patty pan squash, little plants about the same as the pumpkins.
Sweet peppers, two varieties. We probably get through 10 peppers a week, so I figured it was worth growing a few plants.
Chilli peppers, cayenne and jalepeno. I haven't grown them before. I intend to dry some of them for winter use.
Various mixed lettuces, in the greenhouse, which will be harvested for baby leaves or used as "cut-and-come-again" types.
Purple sprouting broccoli, since we love broccoli too.
Watercress, which sounds like fun.
Nasturtiums, as companion plants for cabbages/lettuces - the idea is that the butterflies prefer them so my veg are safe from caterpillars.
Sunflowers, for the birds, and also to attract beneficial insects as companions to the squash.
Marigolds, companions for tomatoes/chillis/peppers as they repel nasty bugs.
Other flowers, such as violas, candytuft, swan river daisies, black-eyed susan, virginia stock, pansies, sweet peas. Will be joined by others as soon as I have room.

And the seeds I sowed the other day:
More summer squash - green and gold courgettes/zucchini, green patty pans, little round ones, and very pale ones. Because they're pretty and tasty and I bought a pack of six different varieties pretty cheap.
Melons - watermelon and honeydew. Because they taste a million times better than supermarket ones.
Tomatillos, an experiment, because they sound cool.
Huckleberries, as above.
Basil, companion for tomatoes both in the greenhouse and the kitchen!

And on order, or yet to be sown:
Tomatoes, cordon and bush types. Some will go in the greenhouse, some outside in pots.
Sugarsnap peas, which I've never grown either.
Sweetcorn, a type which copes well with our awful summers.
Strawberries - I've only just started liking them again after being put off by eating too many as a kid. These will go in hanging baskets.
Garlic, essential in my kitchen.
Onions, all three colours. My dad used to grow them on his allotment, and prided himself on growing HUGE ones. I never saw the point, as they didn't taste of much. But he enjoyed it.
Carrots and parsnips, if I can get the soil sorted out enough for a decent crop. If not I'll probably just grow baby ones.
Salsify, which I've never even tasted but keep hearing about on food programmes.
Cabbages - what's a veg garden without cabbages?
Cauliflowers, some pretty spirally green romanesco ones.
Rhubarb, as the stuff already in the garden's exhausted. I'll add loads of manure this year and dig it up and separate it next spring if it isn't any better, and use the new stuff if not.
Various types of beans, including kidney, dwarf french, Cherokee.
Asparagus, which I've been meaning to grow for ages. It will be a few years before I can harvest though.
Asparagus peas, another thing which looked cool.
Potatoes, five different types, cropping at different times. Should help with the nasty clay soil.
Artichokes, never tried them but they look so funky, and therefore must taste good!
Leeks, as they're tasty. My surname would suggest that I have some Welsh ancestry somewhere.
More melons, very early ripening small ones, in case we have a really dodgy sumer and the normal ones don't ripen.
Two other peppers, also early ripening.
Herbs, too many to list.
Fruits, which I won't list either.
Wildflowers, for my wildlife area.

And of course more flowers. And I'd like at least one type of winter squash, either acorn or butternut probably.

Looks like I'd better get on with the digging...

Feeling better now

I usually see feeling/being depressed as my brain's way to telling me I need to to make some changes.

So Thursday night I made the decision to get my life sorted out.

True to form, I haven't worked out how I'm going to do it yet, or what I need to do, but just making that decision has made me feel better.

Probably a good way to start is to be healthier. More fruit and veg (I already eat loads but more can't hurt, right?) and less cake/biscuits/sweets, more exercise, more "quick reward" type tasks that don't require too much mental energy to get my brain back into work mode.

And in that vein, the garden is my big project this year. I want a pond, a wildflower meadow/wildlife area, and an organic veg plot/herb garden. I've bought a healted propagator, in which seeds are germinating, and I've ordered a shedload more seeds. I've concentrated on non-hybrid varieties so I can collect the seeds to sow for next year, because I hate the idea of paying a vast amout to seed companies every single year.

There's a fair bit of room for me to play with - for an English suburban garden mine is pretty big (something like 1/4 of an acre), with an orchard (three full-sized apples and two full-sized pears, one young plum and one young greengage). Unfortunately we do have heavy clay soil which isn't ideal, but just means I need to only grow certain veggies, or buy loads of manure.

I'd love to keep ducks and/or ex-battery chickens for eggs, but Michael isn't keen. I'll have to persuade him, they don't seem to need much looking after - I'd fence off the whole orchard for them and build them a house (and a paddling-pool pond for ducks), and they'd just need feeding and shutting in at night and cleaning every so often. Easy.

Anyway, apart from the fact that I actually like gardening, I like the idea of knowing exactly where my food has come from, what chemicals have been used on it, whatever. I'd rather get my hands dirty and produce my own food than pay silly prices for tasteless, uniform veg that's been flown halfway across the world, which the poor farmer has been paid a pittance for so that supermarkets can make vast profits.

I'll take some pictures so you can see what the garden is like now.

I need your input, oh culinary people

I'm tired now. And lonely, because Michael's away for two nights with work. Generally feeling a bit sorry for myself.

Due to kitchen panicking, I ended up with some food left over from the formal. Like 4kg of onions, which should have gone in the fennel/orange salad and saffron rice. I made the executive decision that they'd be fine without onions (and they were). Similar decisions were made with other dishes.

So now I have...

2 big bunches of flat-leafed parsley, 1 small bunch of chives, a little coriander/cilantro
900g of mild cheese
3kg onions
20 oranges
15+ limes
5 bulbs of garlic
4 fennel bulbs
1 litre + of olive oil
Other stuff in more manageable amounts, such as chillies, various spices, butter, soured cream, sugar, eggs, concentrated vegetable stock.

.. which of course I'd rather not waste.

I've already made orange cake for Ladies' Choir (which dealt with some oranges, eggs, sugar and butter), and tonight a big pot of onion soup (which used, well, onions) which I'll eat some of and freeze the rest.

Any ideas what else I could make?? Assume I have common ingredients, including pretty much every type of herbs and spices it's possible to buy in Sainsbury's, and usual store cupboard stuff. Preferably something I can freeze.

Oh yeah, I'll be adding some of the formal recipes soon as well. Starting with the salmon in Canary Island green sauce, which Kim requested.

Just two things, because I'm off to make cake

A selection of us at the formal - I think this was all the Small Groups girlies that were there... I stole the picture from Harriet. I'm at the back in red, with straight hair and glasses.

1) Formal was AWESOME last night. Had people telling me I was wonderful all night, that the food was better (and cheaper, lol) than a proper tapas place, and a couple of people even told me that I should open a restaurant myself! Made all the hard work worth it - and it was hard work. At least I remained mostly calm. But couldn't have done it without all the lovely people who helped.

I might post in a bit more detail about it later.

2) I'm not needing a second pregnancy test. Yes, I have finally been visited by the period fairy. After making me worry all week (especially after I spoke to my friend Emma on Friday who told me that my last period was 5 weeks ago - she remembers because it was the week before hers), my little "friend" decides to show up the weekend of the formal. Thanks for that.

And yet again, on that note, I'm touting the Mooncup. I love my 'cup. I love not having to worry about whether I have enough tampons or towels, and the tell-tale carrying my bag to the loo with me. No more dilemma time with tampons - you know that thing where you're not sure if you need to change it yet, you don't want to wait too long in case you leak but if you take it out too soon it's rather uncomfortable? And definitely no more sleeping with a small mattress between my legs which invariably ends up out of place by morning - I generally sleep more than 8 hours so tampons at night are not an option. And I've saved money already, even with my actually-I-can't-be-bothered-this-month cycle.

Sorry, but the cup is so awesome that I feel compelled to tell everyone how great it is! There are a couple of negatives - you have to wash it out which isn't terribly convenient in a public loo but you can just wipe it out and wash it the next time, you do have to look at your own blood, and there's a certain amount of "bodily contact" required to insert and remove it but nowhere near as much as with a non-applicator tampon. But I can't say I mind any of that.

So yeah. Now I'm off to make some sort of orange cake because I have maybe 20 oranges left from the formal.

New toys, and birds

So both Magimix and waffle iron arrived yesterday.

I immediately set to making waffles, naturally, using a recipe from Allrecipes.

Not quite what I was expecting - not at all like the Belgian waffles I've had before, but pretty good.

Definitely want to test more recipes though. Anyone have a favourite waffle recipe I can try?

And I made pizza for dinner, using the processor to make the dough and chop everything up. One pizza with spicy sausage, chicken, peppers and olives (using up stuff from the fridge), and one with just peppers and olives. Both were pretty good except I used a little too much tomato sauce on the bases - I was quite pleased in general as I haven't made pizza from scratch since I was in school, and the one I made then wasn't very impressive.

Today's lunch was a savoury waffle sandwich, which was intriguing. My waffle maker makes a round-ish waffle which you can cut into 5 heart shapes - I made one cheesy waffle and cut it in half. Then used the waffle iron to cook an egg, leaving the yolk a little soft. Inserted egg between bits of waffle, along with a slice of processed cheese, the type I refer to as "plastic cheese" - you know the stuff where each slice comes wrapped in plastic, the sort you'd use on a cheeseburger. A little black pepper. Yum!! Will definitely make that again at the weekend, maybe with bacon or sausage as well.

Took Summer out to Linacre with Emma this afternoon, quite a nice afternoon. Loads of birds about, and I got to practice my newly acquired song/call identification skills. We heard a great spotted woodpecker drumming many times, tried to track it down but didn't see it. And got good views of three little grebes calling, two of which were duetting which was cute. And two pairs of goosanders. And Summer is now knackered.

And I've been seeing long tailed tits more often in my garden, seen at least two every day for the last week or so - hopefully it's a pair and they'll stick around and nest nearby!

Fun Monday, but late

Okay, okay, I know it's Wednesday.... but it's still Tuesday somewhere in the world, right?

2) Not sure what my favourite dish is. I like a lot of different foods. But the one most requested is lavender cake, which is a big favourite of my fellow choirpeople.

The dish I make most often is probably the Greek stuffed peppers. Halloumi is one of the nicest things ever, and I love peppers so much that the two of us get through maybe ten a week. Not that I use them all for that dish!


On a completely different note, I experienced my first earthquake earlier.

Yeah, an earthquake in England!!

Wasn't expecting that. I was in the living room, cross-stitching a green woodpecker and watching Sex and the City. It was almost 1am. I heard a noise, a little like when there's a sudden guest of wind which makes the windows rattle. Then a rumbling, and the room shook. I was moved backwards and forwards as I sat on the sofa - the first thing that I thought was that maybe the house was falling down, or that something had hit it, but there was no impact noise. The whole thing lasted maybe 5 seconds, maybe 10, long enough for me to realise what was actually happening, then I went upstairs to the bedroom where Michael had been woken up by it.

Summer got up maybe a second before I heard or felt anything, I'm pretty sure she sensed it in some way. She didn't seem scared but she was definitely disturbed. She settled down again almost straight away afterwards.

10 minutes later and it was being reported on Sky News, with a succession of dull people phoning in to say that they'd been in bed and felt the quake and they'd felt one before in LA and that there didn't seem to be any damage and no-one was out in the street, but a lot of bedroom lights were on. Yawn.

Turns out that it was centred in Lincolnshire, about 55 miles away, and had a magnitude of 5.2 ML. Small potatoes on a worldwide scale, but pretty big for here apparently. At least one person was injured, and there's been some structural damage to chimneys near the epicentre.

Was an experience, certainly.

A visitor and some new possessions

Needing a wee earlier this evening, I saved my Pokémon Diamond game and wandered upstairs to the bathroom.

The light switch, annoyingly, is on the wall outside the bathroom, next to the door. I clicked on the light and pushed open the door.

To be confronted with a small dark fast-moving object with a tail running across the floor. A mouse! It ran behind the cupboard under the sink. It made me jump.

And having on full bladder, that can have an unfortunate effect.

Yes, I did wet myself very slightly.

Not that I mind mice. I'm in no way scared of mice. I just wasn't expecting one!


And on a completely different note, I've ordered myself a shiny food processor, on the advice of Which? magazine and several internet reviews. I've never owned one before. I think it's about time, and the formal has given me the incentive to bite the bullet - it will save me a lot of time during food prep.

The frugal part of me (the bit that channels Michael - I never had a frugal part until I started seeing him) said it was silly to spend the best part of £100 on a food processor when you can get them for £30. But the sensible part of me knows that you get what you pay for with these things. A £30 machine will either break after a while, or just won't perform well, so I'd end up buying a new one anyway. False economy.

I also ordered a waffle iron. £15. Bargain. Because I've never had a real waffle, only the supermarket ones you put in the toaster. Plus I recently found out that you can make savoury waffles! How cool is that??

Both should get here some time this week.

And then I will pig out.

Food, music, and me bitching

So here it is, the menu produced by the lovely Pippa (who is taking me shopping for shoes and make-up for the formal, because I need all the help I can get). How cool is this??


Now I officially can't change my mind about the food I'm serving. Oh well...

While I'm on SingSoc stuff, I can't say I'm 100% happy with the music this semester. A lot of it's just not my kind of thing.

With Socii:
Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell - Bah. Opera. I hate opera. Rob keeps telling me it's not really an opera (I'm not sure why it isn't, to be honest, but I believe him). I haven't heard a single bit of it I like yet, and it isn't endearing me at all to the genre. It's kind of banal random repeated disjointed bits of sentences, hard to follow and the music doesn't seem to "follow" the lyrics at all. I'm fully expecting to yawn throughout the whole performance. Which isn't helping me to learn it, to be honest.
Gloria by Antonio Vivaldi - Yeah, this is okay. Can't say I'm keen on the whole Baroque style, but this is nice so far, and we don't really sound like the recordings I've heard, which is good. Probably we will before the actual performance, not sure how Harriet wants it yet as we're in the note-bashing stage right now.

With the main chorus:
African Sanctus by David Fanshawe - Supposedly a celebration of all faiths, a kind of traditional Latin mass type thing intertwined with traditional African music. It doesn't encompass my faith at all, but then I don't have any. This is the cornerstone of our huge £10k concert to celebrate our 10th anniversary. It jarrs me to be honest, African music's great, and Latin masses are great, but together? It just feels wrong. Plus as a second alto I'm not very happy about the horribly high top As we're expected to sing. It's hard, because I don't know what to expect from it in terms of rhythm and harmony and so am consequently struggling.
Carmina Burana by Carl Orff - I like this one, I've done it before (on no sleep), even though it's rather difficult, especially the fast bits. I especially like how it's not in the slightest bit religious. It's all sex, and drinking, and gambling and fate and not a "deus dominus" or "jesu christe" or "agnus dei" in sight. Plus, there's shouty bits and pretty slower bits and bits that are very catchy. And who doesn't love O fortuna? For those of you who think you don't know it - you do. And here's the proof.



So yeah. I'm hoping I'll grow to like them more as I learn them better. And if I don't... well it's no big deal.

Sorry no London pics yet. Because I still can't be bothered.

Oh, and I finally read the last Harry Potter book the other day. It was okay.

How exciting!!

Pippa sent me a copy of the actual menu for the formal, which looks fantastic. I'm not sure I'm allowed to show it to you, as it hasn't been shown to SingSoc members yet! Maybe after tonight's rehearsal?

Oh, and I've added some recipes here My Recipes at i-ERM.com!, and I'll be adding them here as well at some point.

We had a great time in London at the weekend. I'm still organising photos (translation: I haven't even started yet) but I'll get them up as soon as I can be bothered. While you wait (with baited breath, I imagine!), have a raven.

Catering for 50!

I mentioned last year that I'm in charge of the food for SingSoc's formal meal this year (it's in March).

This means, as the title suggests, that I'll be catering for 50.

Which is a bit scary and daunting, but I'm really excited.

You know me, I love cooking, and I really enjoyed cooking under Pete's direction last year, but I've never been in charge of a kitchen before, let alone had to do budgeting and portion control and menu design and all the other essential jobs that go with it. So all new experiences.

The formal will have a Spanish theme, mostly because I fancied having a crack at tapas. I've spent the last two days planning the menus and budgeting for the ingredients (mySupermarket has proved invaluable already, saving me around 15%).

Here's the provisional menu... basically each table will get enough of every dish for everyone to have some, for vegetarians I'll reduce the portions of meat/fish on the table and increase the veggie portions. Far too complicated to ask everyone to order individual dishes. Once I get all the recipes up, they'll all be linked to here. Bout time I posted more recipes anyway.

Meat
Lamb meatballs in tomato and pepper sauce
Chicken in lemon and garlic

Fish/seafood
Salmon in Canary Island green sauce
King prawns with lime

Veggie
Baked tortilla
Deep-fried manchego cheese
Stuffed garlic mushrooms

Salads
Rocket salad
Orange and fennel salad
Roasted pepper salad

Potatoes/rice
Spicy potato wedges
Saffron rice

Dessert
Orange and mint flaó (Spanish cheesecake)
Fresh fruit

Also bread and marinated olives served with sangria when the guests arrive! Marinating olives is fun and tasty. :)

Good news is that it's inspiring me to get off my arse and do something that isn't watching TV, reading, playing Pokémon or cross-stitching.

Greek stuffed peppers, for OC

I mentioned this in chat ages ago, and just remembered that I promised to post it!

So here we go. This is very simple, healthy, and probably my favourite veggie meal ever. It serves 2.

2 bell peppers (that's just the normal peppers you get in the supermarket), whatever colour you like - I tend to use two different colours
100-150g halloumi cheese
Zest and juice of one lemon
4 tbs pine nuts
1 tbs dried oregano
1 tbs dried mint
Olive oil

1) Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F/Gas 6.
2) Cut each pepper in half lengthwise through the stalk, and remove the seeds and white stuff. Leave the stalks on, as they look pretty. Pop them into an ovenproof dish, cut sides up.
3) Cut the halloumi into small cubes, and divide between the pepper halves.
4) Sprinkle the lemon zest, pine nuts, oregano and mint over the cheese.
5) Pour over the lemon juice, and drizzle some olive oil on as well.
6) Roast in the oven for approximately 30 minutes, until the peppers are tender and the cheese has browned a little on the top.

Serve with rice cooked in vegetable stock, and a green salad. There you go, 3 portions of veg with no effort at all!

I love the way the halloumi keeps its shape when cooked - it doesn't melt like normal cheese. It's also excellent sliced then grilled or fried until brown, and you can even make kebabs with it. But it doesn't make good cheese on toast. ;)

My favourite lunch...

...just happens to be rather healthy.


Two wholemeal pittas, warmed until they puff up (I always have pittas in the freezer), filled with houmous, raw peppers and raw baby leaf spinach.

Only 300 calories, load of vitamins and fibre and other such good things, plus it tastes wonderful, especially with roasted veggie or lemon and coriander flavour houmous. I tend to buy mini three-packs of flavoured houmous from Sainsbury's beause I like to have a different flavour every day.

What's your favourite lunch?

Both ways fruit cake

When I was a kid, we always used to visit my Auntie Lorna and Uncle Keith for Sunday tea.

It was the traditional English working class Sunday tea, with sandwiches - open sandwiches made with bread cobs (or bread rolls if you're not from round here), crisps, boiled eggs, pork pie, sausage rolls, salad, trifle, stuff like that. And always cake.

We brought the cake, every week. From the age of about five, the cake was my Sunday morning job. I'd do all the measuring and mixing and mum would do all the oven bits. From seven I could do the whole thing myself.

It was my great-grandmother that taught my mum, and she taught me. And the love of baking has stayed with me ever since. I've always liked the enjoyment it gives people. Plus - cake, yum!

And so back to Sunday tea. Usually I'd make a fruit cake, because that's Uncle Keith's favourite. He'd eat huge slices of it at tea, and if there was any left he'd take it to work to eat with his lunch.

I remember Mum finding a new recipe for fruit cake in a magazine. Basically you just mixed everything together and chucked it in a tin. I thought this was cheating - cake tastes better if you've had to work hard to make it! I'll admit though, that method is much easier and quicker and still tastes pretty good... so I'm going to share both with you.

6oz sugar (brown is best, but white is also fine)
6oz butter or margarine, softened
3 eggs
6oz mixed fruit (raisins, sultanas, currants, candied peel)
2oz glacé cherries, halved
2oz chopped mixed nuts
12oz self-raising flour
2 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon

The Hard Way

You'll also need 1 teabag.

1) Make a cupful of strong tea, and leave to cool. Soak the fruit and cherries in the tea overnight, stirring a couple of times. Drain the fruit well and reserve the tea.

2) Grease a 1lb loaf tin and pre-heat the oven to 200°C/400°F/Gas 6.

3) In a large bowl, cream together the butter/margarine and sugar until slightly paler.

4) Beat in the eggs one at a time, getting as much air in as possible. It isn't as critical as when you're making a Victoria sponge because a fruit cake will never rise as much, but a little effort will make a difference. Don't worry if it curdles, it's not the end of the world! Happens to me all the time.

5) Put the drained fruit in a sieve over the bowl, add a few tablespoons of flour and shake until all the fruit has a covering of flour (this apparently stops the fruit from sinking to the bottom of the cake as it cooks), then add it to the mixture. Sift in the remaining flour, the nuts and the spices.

6) Fold everything into the mixture with a metal spoon. You'll need to use some of the leftover tea to get the mixture to the correct consistency, that is so a lump of it falls off a spoon with minimal encouragement.

7) Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for approximately 45 minutes, until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.

8) Cool in the tin on a wire rack.

The Easy Way

You'll also need milk or orange juice.

1) Grease a 1lb loaf tin and pre-heat the oven to 200°C/400°F/Gas 6.

2) Melt the butter/margarine.

3) Put all ingredients into a large bowl and mix until combined. You'll need to use milk or juice to get the right consistency, as above.

4) Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for approximately 45 minutes, until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.

5) Cool in the tin on a wire rack. See? How easy was that?

I recommend this in the afternoon, with a nice cup of tea. I like to spread the slices with a little butter.