In my eyes a good experimental recipe is one that gets eaten so quickly that you don't have chance to photograph it for a blog post first. That's exactly what happened to the lovely lunch that Mr C made us all earlier today. One thing that I am awful at is keeping food leftovers and then doing nothing at all with them. There is far too much food waste in this house and if I'm honest I'm to blame for most of it. There are some dinners (mainly pasta dishes) where I plan carefully and ensure that we have enough left over for LMC and I to have it for lunch the next day too. Where ... read more
Sweet Potato and Butternut Squash Gratin
Pulling meals together from what's in the fridge isn't my speciality. It shouldn't be difficult, but somehow I always struggle and sadly end up throwing away far more food than we should. I'm making a real effort at the moment to change that and reduce what goes into the council compost bin and I'm delighted to say that this last week I've succeeded and come up with a great new simple meal as a result. Based on the Waitrose Baked Pumpkin Gratin recipe that I picked up on one of their cards a while back I managed to concoct a delicious sweet potato and ... read more
Tea Smoked Trout (and yoghurt sauce)
I'm still amazed at just how much inspiration I took away from my day at Yeo Valley earlier in the month. One thing that I really wasn't expecting was quite so much kitchen based inspiration. I know that they make yoghurts and other dairy products, but as I've said before them I hadn't thought much about cooking with yoghurt before. Their site in Blagdon is right next to Blagdon Lake and in their efforts to ensure that food miles were kept to an absolute minimum our lunch that day was trout from the lake. But, just bunging some trout in the oven is far too boring for those people at Yeo ... read more
Yeo Cheesecake
Did you know that you can make cheese from yoghurt? When you think about it it's actually quite obvious, but until my recent trip to Yeo Valley I have to admit that I hadn't realised you could. It's incredibly simple to do. Just line a seive with a clean tea towel or other cloth, spoon in the yoghurt (mixed with a pinch of salt) and leave it over a bowl in the fridge for 24 hours. Twenty-four hours later you end up with cheese in your cloth (otherwise known as the curds) and a bowl full of whey. In our case we just discarded the whey, but a lovely little tip from Yeo Valley's ... read more
FoodCycle
Have you ever thought about what happens to food that's still on the shelves of your local supermarket when it reaches its "display until" date? Much of it is still perfectly edible, but as it can no longer be sold it instead often ends up just going in a shop's general rubbish. Wasted food - not nice, but sadly a fact of life in many shops. There are an estimated 400,000 tonnes of surplus food that can reclaimed each year from food retailers here in the UK, but all this food can be turned into healthy and nutritious meals. Food poverty is another huge problem facing us here in the UK ... read more
Yeo Valley – so much more than just yoghurt!
Sometimes a physical change of scenery can help you clear your head and see things clearly and that's exactly what happened to me yesterday. I was lucky enough to be invited, along with a handful of other bloggers, to visit Yeo Valley - home of yummy yoghurt and some equally yummy farmers (well, so says their TV adverts!) - to find out more about the company behind all the yumminess and their way of doing things. When I recently wrote here about wanting to use my blog to find out more about the people and things that make me smile this trip was exactly the sort of ... read more
Slow Cooker Beef Adobo
The longer I have my slow cooker the more adventurous I'm getting in what I cook in it. This week's special was beef adobo. Now, if you are like me, you may well not even know what adobo is. Let me enlighten you: : a Philippine dish of fish or meat usually marinated in a sauce containing vinegar and garlic, browned in fat, and simmered in the marinade (according to Merriam Webster) Other online dictionaries suggest that the dish may be Spanish and some also say that the meat (or fish) is cooked from raw in the marinade. Things differ in this recipe as you don't ... read more
Damson gin – the finished product
It's nearly six months now since I started telling you about our efforts with our first batch of damson gin, but now that I'm seeing this year's blossom on the damson trees in our garden it's got me thinking about how we can use this year's harvest and I'm already hoping it's a good one. Back to the gin though... We made two batches in the end and thought that we'd bottle up the first one in time for Christmas - both for us to sample some and also to make some homemade Christmas presents. This bathc must have had about four months in the kilner jar, so not as mature as it could have ... read more
Helen’s egg parcels
I've been making a bit of an effort recently to come up with some new things for Little Miss C to eat, especially at lunchtimes. An economy drive means I've been reducing portions for myself and Mr C in the evening, but then that it turn means that any leftovers are big enough to do another evening meal for both of us and hence there's not a small portion left to cover a meal for LMC. Once again I have returned to the fantastic River Cottage Baby and Toddler Cookbook which never fails to give me some kitchen inspiration. This time round I went for Helen's egg parcels which have ... read more
Pancakes
We don't normally bother with pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, but I thought we'd make a small effort this year. A very small one. Only problem was that my tossing wasn't really up to the required level... Please don't laugh. ... read more