Tag: cooking

weekend 5/6/7 sept 08


lots on the go
Originally uploaded by ramtops

Friday night there was Phil Beer and Reg Meuross at Nailsea Folk Club. We attend the club sporadically; I knocked out a quick site for them as a favour a couple of weeks ago, and now we have free tickets whenever we want. Which is nice.

Later Friday night, and also Saturday night, there was a WASP (link is to perlmonger‘s entry. Huge, it was. And determined. I killed it with flea spray in the end.

Saturday involved lunch at our favourite cafe, bit of local shopping, a sleep in the afternoon, and perlmonger‘s first attempt at drop scones, which worked better than mine do, so he can do them in future.

Sunday was cooking – see photo, and indeed my post at Reactive Cooking, where I keep most of my food related stuff. P continued War on Fleas, so now the house has all been Dysoned and sprayed. We shall Frontline the Tribe *again* today, and hope that sorts it.

Also, Season II of Babylon 5 finished. What a fine, fine televisual feast this is – it seemed to ramp up several notches during the last episodesof this series, and it was very hard not to start Series III *at once*. And we’re out tonight – a no doubt thrilling meeting of the Long Ashton Transition Group.

prodded

I’m very glad I wrote that last post. It reminded me that the bone from the lamb was sitting in the huge cast iron vat. On the top of the fridge, rather than on the gas, being made into stock.

That situation has now been corrected.

a merry Good Friday to you all

I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to four days of doing what I want – I might do some work for clients, I might do some work for our sites, I might do NO WORK AT ALL if that’s what I feel like.

I plan to sort out the pulse cupboard – rice and lentils and nice and so forth. Oddments of packets and all that sort of stuff; I have lots of jars in readiness. I also want to do some spring cleaning type stuff, and maybe some gardening if the weather is good enough.

In the meantime, the Roomba is vacuuming the hall, I have hot cross buns rising ready for the oven, and last night I made my first moussaka evah – and it was gorgeous.

Have a good Easter break, everyone.

yesterday's cooking

Last night, we had the Boy Oliver’s Pasta Bake – the one that’s been on the television ads, I added a yellow pepper, as we had one in the fridge that was going wrinkly. And we had no fresh red chillis, only green, so we deseeded a dried one and used that. My *word*, it was hot – even perlmonger thought so. But very nice indeed.

I also managed to use up the hateful beetroot, in a chocolate beetroot cake, which was very nice indeed, much nicer than you might think. Should the ghastly red beets even turn up again, I know what to do with them.

Large pot of lentil, veg and tomato soup also constructed, to assist in fending off the traditional Easter snowstorms.

another year over …

well, not quite – and I will be writing up some stuff about 2006; I bet you can all barely contain yourselves. I hope you all had a jolly time.

we had a very quiet festering season, which is exactly what we wanted. We collected kalunina from Temple Meads on Friday afternoon, and apart from a brief foray to North Street for veg and brunch on Saturday, we didn’t stir out of the house again* until we returned her to Bristol Parkway (why she used two different stations, lord knows). And we saw nobody apart from Pat and Dave (WANOLJ) who popped over on Xmyth Eve with some home made gifts of fudge and damson vodka.

mostly, we cooked and ate, as follows:

  • Friday: lasagne with embedded spinach, something that I tried once when we had some of the green stuff to use up, and it worked fabulously well. Just bung a load of fresh washed spinach in between the last meat and bechamel layers.
  • Saturday: lunch in cafe in North Street, boeuf stroganoff and chips for supper. I know, I know: chips. In my defence, it’s Rick Stein’s idea, and it works so well …
  • Sunday was 24 hour roast chili and lemon pork. I was so looking forward to this – and I was all geared up to do all the fiddly stuff on Saturday night. But it was disappointing – very dry, and no gravy juices. Don’t think I’d bother again. We had it with sweet potato/ordinary potato mash, which was delicious. And some sprouts.
  • The Day bought forth roast goose with apple sauce, red cabbage, sprouts, roast parsnips, roast spuds, home made sage and onion stuffing. All cooked as a team effort, dished up right on time at 3 p.m., and all perfect. I was well chuffed. We were far too stuffed for pudding, and barely managed anything else all day!
  • Boxing Day – cold cuts, including a gammon boiled and baked in spices according to the blessed Nigella, which was beautiful.

we also consumed home made sossidge rolls (go me), mince pies (dozens), walnut bread (go pete), grapes, and god knows what else.

tonight perlmonger is cooking his wonderful indian lentils with spinach – we’ve eaten *far* too well over the past few days, and we’re both suffering from it 🙂

*actually, we did go for a walk down the part of the River Avon trail yesterday, but it was miserable and damp, and the cold got right into my joints. My arthritis really is bothering me right now, but hey ho.

now we’re going to go into hibernation until NYE, when we will be holding our usual Open House. If anyone in the Bristol area (or further afield for that matter) would like to join us, drop me a mail to my LJ address, and I’ll furnish you with details.

Stepford Wife

today, I have been mostly baking. I made a fabulous gruyere and cracked peppercorn bread. Or, at least, it would have been fabulous had I had a decent loaf tin instead of the ancient old things I use. It wasn’t /quite/ cooked through, but we toasted it, and it was delicious.

and I made some shortbread bikkies, and cut them out with my festering xmas tree and star cutters. And I made some walnut shortbread, and cut them out ditto, except the recipe said to leave the dough in the fridge for half and hour,and I left it in there for about 5 hours, and had to soften it all up again. But they’re out of the oven now, and they’re gorgeous. I’m going to bung a bit of icing and some glittery balls [fnaar] on the shortbreads tomorrow.

tomorrow – marzipan the cake, have a bash at sausage rolls {dear god – pastry; I can’t do pastry …), maybe some banana muffins.

I got Pete to drive me up to the Kitchen Shop this afternoon (I can’t park the Thaab, try as I might) and bought two new loaf tins, and another heavy duty baking tray – now I’m doing lots of this stuff, I want better quality tins, cos it makes all the difference.

and we called in at the local off licence on the way home and picked up 26 bottles of wine (including some vintage Pelorus – hurrah, and some pink fizz just for kalunina. There are six assorted bottles of fizz on the top row of the wine rack, which should do us through to next year.)

now I’m sitting here while perlmonger cooks me a lump of Dexter steak before settling down to the X-Factor (which the Tivo is recording.

all recipes are on Nibblous, should you be interested.