If you're feeling bored or blue
Or find yourself with nowt to do
Visit Chortleberry.com - the new photo-sharing community website.
Yeah ... I never was much of a poet.
But anyway, Chortleberry is a thriving new site where you can post your own photos to share them with others, view the work of many other budding amateur photograhers and generally have a bit of a chat. It's all lovely and free, too.
This has nothing to do with food - unless you count the photos of eggs.
Sunday, 9 March 2008
Thursday, 6 March 2008
Always do the hungry shop
The past few Saturdays seem to have taken a similar pattern: I wake up and realise there's nothing particularly exciting or appetising in the house for lunch. The sensible course of action would be to pop to Tesco for the weekly 'big shop' on Saturday morning and return in time for lunch with plenty of exciting options.
I'm not all that sensible, though. What we tend to do instead is try to postpone supermarket shopping for as long as possible in the following manner:
1. I suggest going out for lunch
2. We mull over this idea and discuss where, out of our collection of regular haunts, we should go
3. We get ready and drive to one of the lunch locations
4. While we're eating a plan for the afternoon formulates, which usually includes stopping off at Waitrose/M &S/local deli for wine and food for Saturday night
5. The shopping still hasn't been done by Sunday morning, but we've indulged ourselves gastronomically for at least half of the weekend, often at considerable expense.
Now, I have nothing against this and it means we get out and about on a Saturday, while exploring, supporting and enjoying our local eating places. We're now familiar with a fair few gastropubs, cafes, restaurants and delicatessens in the Uttlesford area, which is great.
However, there's a possible deviation from this plan and it should be resisted at all costs. Sometimes, when there's not much else to do on a Saturday afternoon, we give in and do the supermarket shopping just after lunch! This is A Bad Thing* and I'm here to warn you against it - and you never thought we'd get to the point of this post, did you?!
Last Saturday we ate a two-course meal at the Cricketers' Arms in Rickling Green (a reasonably well-known local gastropub). The food there isn't bad but, on this occasion, all four of the dishes we ate seemed to be over salty and incredibly oily! This isn't intended to be a review of the pub, though: I'm merely using this example as illustration.
So, fairly full from our large lunch of oil and salt we drove to Tesco to buy everything we'd need for the following week. But, of course, when you're full (and, in this case, bilious) you don't really fancy any more food and I found myself drifting aimlessly down the aisles unable to look a decent fillet steak in the, er, face! I just couldn't bring myself to imagine what I'd want to eat during the week, let alone that evening, and found that my powers of 'food matching' were severely under par. "Do green beans go with these noodles? Oh, I can't think about eating noodles at a time like this!"
I felt as if I never wanted to eat again (yes, me!) and the result was a whole week with no sensible food in the house. I'd hardly bought any 'proper' dinners and there was nothing to eat as a snack, so my stomach was rumbling almost every evening. I'd also failed to get anything for my lunches so I ended up spending over the odds by buying my lunch in London most days.
My advice to you, therefore, is this: always shop when you're hungry! It's the only way!
* Anyone who knows me particularly well will be surprised, nay shocked, by my use of Dickensian, teacher-style capitalisation. That's how bad a thing it is! You see what it's driven me to?!
I'm not all that sensible, though. What we tend to do instead is try to postpone supermarket shopping for as long as possible in the following manner:
1. I suggest going out for lunch
2. We mull over this idea and discuss where, out of our collection of regular haunts, we should go
3. We get ready and drive to one of the lunch locations
4. While we're eating a plan for the afternoon formulates, which usually includes stopping off at Waitrose/M &S/local deli for wine and food for Saturday night
5. The shopping still hasn't been done by Sunday morning, but we've indulged ourselves gastronomically for at least half of the weekend, often at considerable expense.
Now, I have nothing against this and it means we get out and about on a Saturday, while exploring, supporting and enjoying our local eating places. We're now familiar with a fair few gastropubs, cafes, restaurants and delicatessens in the Uttlesford area, which is great.
However, there's a possible deviation from this plan and it should be resisted at all costs. Sometimes, when there's not much else to do on a Saturday afternoon, we give in and do the supermarket shopping just after lunch! This is A Bad Thing* and I'm here to warn you against it - and you never thought we'd get to the point of this post, did you?!
Last Saturday we ate a two-course meal at the Cricketers' Arms in Rickling Green (a reasonably well-known local gastropub). The food there isn't bad but, on this occasion, all four of the dishes we ate seemed to be over salty and incredibly oily! This isn't intended to be a review of the pub, though: I'm merely using this example as illustration.
So, fairly full from our large lunch of oil and salt we drove to Tesco to buy everything we'd need for the following week. But, of course, when you're full (and, in this case, bilious) you don't really fancy any more food and I found myself drifting aimlessly down the aisles unable to look a decent fillet steak in the, er, face! I just couldn't bring myself to imagine what I'd want to eat during the week, let alone that evening, and found that my powers of 'food matching' were severely under par. "Do green beans go with these noodles? Oh, I can't think about eating noodles at a time like this!"
I felt as if I never wanted to eat again (yes, me!) and the result was a whole week with no sensible food in the house. I'd hardly bought any 'proper' dinners and there was nothing to eat as a snack, so my stomach was rumbling almost every evening. I'd also failed to get anything for my lunches so I ended up spending over the odds by buying my lunch in London most days.
My advice to you, therefore, is this: always shop when you're hungry! It's the only way!
* Anyone who knows me particularly well will be surprised, nay shocked, by my use of Dickensian, teacher-style capitalisation. That's how bad a thing it is! You see what it's driven me to?!
Thursday, 28 February 2008
And egg!
I just spotted this other blog on the Foodie Blogroll (in my right-hand column). It's entitled 'And the eggs'.
Some people will see why that's funny ...
If not, it still has some nice photos of food and a few good recipes!
Some people will see why that's funny ...
If not, it still has some nice photos of food and a few good recipes!
Oh man, I love de cake
Low-fat apple cake
For the past few weeks I've spent some time at the weekend making a cake. The same cake every time: once I find a recipe I like I tend to stick with it for a while.
It's an adaptation of a recipe from delicious. magazine, although I can't find it on the website. The idea is that you replace most of the fat element from a normal cake recipe with pureed fruit and use wholemeal flour instead of the bleached variety, making it a 'healthy cake'. Of course, it still has a cartload of sugar in it and the fruit's probably cooked so much it loses most of the goodness but it certainly does have far fewer calories than traditional cakes. The original recipe included a lemony icing but I have dispensed with that because it just didn't seem to go with the cake!
I'm not really one for paying attention to quantities; I hardly ever weigh or measure anything when I am cooking. But for cakes and pastries one just has to because the results are weird and unexpected if one just guesses. So here goes with the boring formalities:
100g of either plain or wholemeal flour (or half of each)
100g of caster sugar
50g of raisins
25g of walnut pieces broken up into even smaller pieces
1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
1 teaspoon (ish) of ground cinnamon
2 large Bramley cooking apples
A bit of sunflower oil (around 25ml)
Phew! That's that over! Now the far more interesting bit.
To begin, peel the apples and chop them into small pieces, then cook them in a saucepan with a splash of hot water over a low heat. You're basically trying to break them down into a mush. When they're done, leave them to cool completely. While they're cooking you can pre-heat the oven to about 180 degrees (is that roughly gas mark 4? I can never remember!)
In the meantime, weigh all the dry ingredients and mix them together. Once the apple has cooled down, weigh out 250g of it and add it to everything else with a little bit of sunflower oil. It's approximately 25ml of oil which is such a small amount it's actually quite tricky to measure! I tend to sort of add it gradually until I have something resembling a wetter-than-normal cake mixture; if it looks a bit like wallpaper paste you are probably on the right track.
I use a loaf tin to cook this in - it's approximately 10cm x 20cm. There's probably a proper, official size for things like that but I know nothing about cake tins! Anyway - grease the tin liberally and dump in the mixture, then bake it at the bottom of the oven for about an hour. Stick a wooden skewer or toothpick into the centre to test whether or not it's cooked - if it comes out clean you're good to go, but if it brings mush and goo you need to cook it for another ten minutes.
The secret of this cake is not to be impatient and greedy (yes, I learnt that from personal experience!) and to let it cool sufficiently before trying to cut yourself a slice. Let it cool down in the tin for ten minutes or so before turning it out onto a wire cooling tray ... because we all have one of those lying around, of course! I usually use the metal shelf bit from my grill tray, personally! Either way it needs to be cooling down from above and below, because if you try to cut it while it's warm it'll be too soft and you'll just get a mushy, squished wedge (which is still delicious with a cup of tea but won't win any prizes for presentation).
If you've got the willpower and discipline this cake will last for several days wrapped in foil and a great big slice is ideal for elevenses!
(PS: hey everybody - surely you've noticed the enormous plea for votes on Fuel My Blog logo in the right hand column. Don't be afraid to click it ...!)
For the past few weeks I've spent some time at the weekend making a cake. The same cake every time: once I find a recipe I like I tend to stick with it for a while.
It's an adaptation of a recipe from delicious. magazine, although I can't find it on the website. The idea is that you replace most of the fat element from a normal cake recipe with pureed fruit and use wholemeal flour instead of the bleached variety, making it a 'healthy cake'. Of course, it still has a cartload of sugar in it and the fruit's probably cooked so much it loses most of the goodness but it certainly does have far fewer calories than traditional cakes. The original recipe included a lemony icing but I have dispensed with that because it just didn't seem to go with the cake!
I'm not really one for paying attention to quantities; I hardly ever weigh or measure anything when I am cooking. But for cakes and pastries one just has to because the results are weird and unexpected if one just guesses. So here goes with the boring formalities:
100g of either plain or wholemeal flour (or half of each)
100g of caster sugar
50g of raisins
25g of walnut pieces broken up into even smaller pieces
1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
1 teaspoon (ish) of ground cinnamon
2 large Bramley cooking apples
A bit of sunflower oil (around 25ml)
Phew! That's that over! Now the far more interesting bit.
To begin, peel the apples and chop them into small pieces, then cook them in a saucepan with a splash of hot water over a low heat. You're basically trying to break them down into a mush. When they're done, leave them to cool completely. While they're cooking you can pre-heat the oven to about 180 degrees (is that roughly gas mark 4? I can never remember!)
In the meantime, weigh all the dry ingredients and mix them together. Once the apple has cooled down, weigh out 250g of it and add it to everything else with a little bit of sunflower oil. It's approximately 25ml of oil which is such a small amount it's actually quite tricky to measure! I tend to sort of add it gradually until I have something resembling a wetter-than-normal cake mixture; if it looks a bit like wallpaper paste you are probably on the right track.
I use a loaf tin to cook this in - it's approximately 10cm x 20cm. There's probably a proper, official size for things like that but I know nothing about cake tins! Anyway - grease the tin liberally and dump in the mixture, then bake it at the bottom of the oven for about an hour. Stick a wooden skewer or toothpick into the centre to test whether or not it's cooked - if it comes out clean you're good to go, but if it brings mush and goo you need to cook it for another ten minutes.
The secret of this cake is not to be impatient and greedy (yes, I learnt that from personal experience!) and to let it cool sufficiently before trying to cut yourself a slice. Let it cool down in the tin for ten minutes or so before turning it out onto a wire cooling tray ... because we all have one of those lying around, of course! I usually use the metal shelf bit from my grill tray, personally! Either way it needs to be cooling down from above and below, because if you try to cut it while it's warm it'll be too soft and you'll just get a mushy, squished wedge (which is still delicious with a cup of tea but won't win any prizes for presentation).
If you've got the willpower and discipline this cake will last for several days wrapped in foil and a great big slice is ideal for elevenses!
(PS: hey everybody - surely you've noticed the enormous plea for votes on Fuel My Blog logo in the right hand column. Don't be afraid to click it ...!)
Sunday, 24 February 2008
Who are ya, Delia?
So, just as I decided to write about ready-made things and 'convenience' cooking, Delia Smith brought our her new book on more or less the same topic! Cheeky madam.
Delia's How to Cheat at Cooking is about making use of pre-prepared food if you are busy or inexperienced in the kitchen. It's assembly cooking for work nights, making use of the storecupboard and freezer rather than buying everything fresh and spending your whole weekend chopping, pickling and making your own stock.
I think this is a pretty good idea but I'm not overly sure I care for her tone! "Who peels the potatoes? Anyone but you!" It's got a hint of 'I'm sick of cooking for you ungrateful lot and I've become slightly jaded but I'll be damned if I can't make a bit of money out of opening a packet of Smash, since you're probably all cheesed-off with chopping too'.
After all, it doesn't take a staggering IQ to read one of her old recipe books and substitute freshly-grated ginger with some from a jar, does it?
Delia's How to Cheat at Cooking is about making use of pre-prepared food if you are busy or inexperienced in the kitchen. It's assembly cooking for work nights, making use of the storecupboard and freezer rather than buying everything fresh and spending your whole weekend chopping, pickling and making your own stock.
I think this is a pretty good idea but I'm not overly sure I care for her tone! "Who peels the potatoes? Anyone but you!" It's got a hint of 'I'm sick of cooking for you ungrateful lot and I've become slightly jaded but I'll be damned if I can't make a bit of money out of opening a packet of Smash, since you're probably all cheesed-off with chopping too'.
After all, it doesn't take a staggering IQ to read one of her old recipe books and substitute freshly-grated ginger with some from a jar, does it?
Saturday, 9 February 2008
Ready-made goodness!
Apparently people imagine me spending most of my time behind the cooker and never buying anything ready-made!
I guess it's partly true: I do like to potter around in my kitchen at the weekends and I do spend a lot of my free time making or preparing food. I also enjoy the challenge of making things myself rather than buying them at (often) extortionate prices. But that's only half the story, because I'm often quite lazy and I'm heavily into comfort eating which, I find, is better if you don't have to cook first!
For a start, see my earlier post about pancakes. I don't see buying ready-made pancakes as a terrible thing even though they weren't anywhere near as good as my own ones. I never have much time for breakfast so I often resort to little pancakes I can sling in the toaster or cereal bars I can eat on the train.
I'm also a huge fan of oven chips. Well ... any chips, really!! But having had a deep fat fryer and having made my own chips regularly at one time, I know full well that it's not worth the sacrifice of the whole house smelling of oil just for fresh chips. The oven-ready variety will do just fine (and they're far healthier) with a pie (ready-made) and baked beans (from a tin!) in the evening when I get home from work.
I'd say it's all about getting a balance: some things aren't worth the effort of making from scratch when there's such good ready-made versions available at a good price from the supermarket. I enjoy cooking but I don't want to be spending all my spare time pickling onions or rubbing flour and butter together for the 'perfect' crumble mix or boiling chicken carcasses to make stock. I have other pastimes - such as writing this blog...!
I guess it's partly true: I do like to potter around in my kitchen at the weekends and I do spend a lot of my free time making or preparing food. I also enjoy the challenge of making things myself rather than buying them at (often) extortionate prices. But that's only half the story, because I'm often quite lazy and I'm heavily into comfort eating which, I find, is better if you don't have to cook first!
For a start, see my earlier post about pancakes. I don't see buying ready-made pancakes as a terrible thing even though they weren't anywhere near as good as my own ones. I never have much time for breakfast so I often resort to little pancakes I can sling in the toaster or cereal bars I can eat on the train.
I'm also a huge fan of oven chips. Well ... any chips, really!! But having had a deep fat fryer and having made my own chips regularly at one time, I know full well that it's not worth the sacrifice of the whole house smelling of oil just for fresh chips. The oven-ready variety will do just fine (and they're far healthier) with a pie (ready-made) and baked beans (from a tin!) in the evening when I get home from work.
I'd say it's all about getting a balance: some things aren't worth the effort of making from scratch when there's such good ready-made versions available at a good price from the supermarket. I enjoy cooking but I don't want to be spending all my spare time pickling onions or rubbing flour and butter together for the 'perfect' crumble mix or boiling chicken carcasses to make stock. I have other pastimes - such as writing this blog...!
Wednesday, 6 February 2008
Don't forget to add a little flower
It's pancake day, yes it's pancake day ...
Hands up who remembers the pancake day song from Maid Marian and her Merry Men? I taped it at the time and watched it time and time again until I knew all the words and actions!
I was a bit miffed this year to work out that I'd be out on Shrove Tuesday, because I love my annual pancake-making evening and look forward to it throughout the year. I'm not a Christian so it doesn't really matter what day I make them on, I suppose - why not Easter Sunday or my birthday?! But it's the tradition of the thing! I love a bit of tradition and if we all ignored these calendar milestones and did everything whenever we fancied, I'm sure the very fabric of British society would begin to unravel! At the very least we'd be a bit confused ...
So: this year I was forced to make my pancakes on Ash Wednesday! Bad from a tradition point of view but as close as I could get. I'm a traditional Delia-recipe pancake-maker, with only lemon and sugar as additions; I have no truck with chocolate spread or syrup. There's nothing better than hot, freshly-made pancakes drenched in fresh lemon juice (from a lemon, not Jif-style!), sprinkled with sugar and eaten with a fork.
Incidentally, to overcome my feeling of ickiness about missing Shrove Tuesday itself, I bought some ready-made pancakes to eat for breakfast on that day. They weren't great but, with enough care and attention to lemon and sugar, they were a chompy enough breakfast and fulfilled the requirement!
NB: If you didn't get the title, you didn't watch the video!
Hands up who remembers the pancake day song from Maid Marian and her Merry Men? I taped it at the time and watched it time and time again until I knew all the words and actions!
I was a bit miffed this year to work out that I'd be out on Shrove Tuesday, because I love my annual pancake-making evening and look forward to it throughout the year. I'm not a Christian so it doesn't really matter what day I make them on, I suppose - why not Easter Sunday or my birthday?! But it's the tradition of the thing! I love a bit of tradition and if we all ignored these calendar milestones and did everything whenever we fancied, I'm sure the very fabric of British society would begin to unravel! At the very least we'd be a bit confused ...
So: this year I was forced to make my pancakes on Ash Wednesday! Bad from a tradition point of view but as close as I could get. I'm a traditional Delia-recipe pancake-maker, with only lemon and sugar as additions; I have no truck with chocolate spread or syrup. There's nothing better than hot, freshly-made pancakes drenched in fresh lemon juice (from a lemon, not Jif-style!), sprinkled with sugar and eaten with a fork.
Incidentally, to overcome my feeling of ickiness about missing Shrove Tuesday itself, I bought some ready-made pancakes to eat for breakfast on that day. They weren't great but, with enough care and attention to lemon and sugar, they were a chompy enough breakfast and fulfilled the requirement!
NB: If you didn't get the title, you didn't watch the video!
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