Retirement

Trulyscrumdiddlyumptious has gone into retirement (maybe only temporarily. We'll see)

I'm currently hanging out at http://mywonderwomanknickers.blogspot.co.uk/

Feel free to pop over and say hi! 

That moment when you don't know what to do with a veg box ingredient..

I really had no idea what to do with fennel, so looked for a recipe and found a tomato and fennel gratin.

What to have with it though? The WW website (GRR) had spiced turkey meatballs on it so we gave those a shot as well. It was actually a really good meal - a few roast baby new spuds and some green stuff finished it off well!

The mark of a good recipe book..

...is when the pages are all stuck together.
Orange Carrot spice muffins. Definitely a family favourite.

Ahem

peers round the edge of the door and sneezes as dust floats everywhere....
Um. Hi!
waves and grins a bit sheepishly..
It's been a while, huh.

Lets not pontificate on how UTTERLY RUBBISH I've been at blogging as of late (like the last, erm, 9 months...No. I haven't been having a baby. I've just been crap.)
Lets just get on with a recipe shall we??

Joanna's Purple Sprouting (From my beloved Leon 2)

I got a big bag of lovely purple sprouting in my veg box and that can only mean one thing.. this delish sausagemeat, chilli, fennel and purple sprouting dish. I even bought sodding Weight Watchers sausages to do it with (more of that later I'm sure) but only because Asda didn't have any own brand reduced fat ones which I'd far rather have bought evil WW.. bad enough I'm paying them to keep an eye on what I eat.

Recipe itself is a doddle with only a few ingredients..

Heat oil in a large frying pan, fry off garlic, chilli flakes and fennel seeds.. Add the sausagemeat, smush it up into crumbly bits and leave it to go golden on one side then stir it about again. I have to admit, I like it when it sticks to the bottom as all those brown crispy bits scraped up and added to my dinner makes it for me. Add the chopped purple sprouting in and stir it about for a while. I don't like it quite as crunchy as this recipe makes it (not when it's lovely veg box stuff with real stalks as against the slightly bendy supermarket version) so I tend to start off by pushing the sausage to one side of the pan, frying the broccoli in the oil for a bit, then putting in a couple of splashes of water on the purple sprouting ONLY so that it steams a bit. You don't want to be steaming the sausage as well. Uck. Then mix it all back together and scrape up the extra sticky crispy bits you got from underneath the sausage.

Finish with lemon juice..

We had ours with roasted carrots and parsnips as I'm on this stoopid diet, however it's MUCH better with crusty bread!

Cheating a bit..

So this was work not home but it is the first wedding cake I've ever done and whilst not being entirely happy with it, I was a bit proud that I managed to do it whilst the boss was on hols.

Smitten Kitchen's Strawberry Summer Cake

http://smittenkitchen.com/2011/05/strawberry-summer-cake/

I made this a couple of weeks ago. It was lovely!!
This was my version:

Before

After

Oh Leon Leon, how I love you Leon!

This is the book that brought back the mojo. I've cooked and cooked and cooked and loved eating from this.

I love it. It's fresh, simple food, fast. I am totally inspired..

Sadly I didn't take photos of last night's dinner which was Chicken with preserved lemons and olives and Sunshine Salad.

Papas Con Bravas, Italian Broad Beans, Courgette Ceviche

Fried courgettes with green sauce, roasted cauliflower with turmeric, 30th b'day salad

Cooking tonight's dinner (after all the chopping!)

Lots of stirring pans all at once :)

Spicy fried fish, 30th b'day salad, roasted cauliflower, broccoli with cashews, garlic and chilli.

Love it.. so many more things to try.

Hot dogs for tea

Somehow I feel far more justified in giving the kids a couple of hot dogs for tea (and not a lot else) if I serve them up in freshly home-baked rolls.. 
There. I did it. I blogged again. BAD blogger.
Must play catchup.

Sticky Lemon Pork and Brown Rice Pilaff

Nom.
In a word.
I made this for tea tonight. YUM! I stuck it in the intellichef and it was really really good.
I was a bit stuck as to what to stick with it but fell back on an old fave that I discovered in my original weight watchers days.. not because it's that healthy as it stands, but it's really tasty.. Find it here

Then quite lamely I stuck peas with it at the last minute as I needed something vaguely green in there and only had broccoli in the fridge (that was green) which I wanted for the weekend.. can't win them all. Didn't distract from the loveliness that much ..

Fry off some onions gently in butter (oops - mushrooms sneaked in there again..), then stir in the rice, s&p and cinnamon

Add luverly slurpy homemade chicken stock full of goodness..

This is the pork thingy - Fry off pork which is coated in flour and paprika, add rosemary, garlic and bay, then wine. Boil for a minute, add lemon zest then simmer for an hour. Add lemon juice.

Rice - done. Baked in the oven for an hour till it's all delish.

Dinner. With peas. Ahem.

Oh blimey

Oh deary me. Nearly two whole months have passed again.
Here's the thing. I get (racks brains for who that I know has been allowed a link to this little bit of me..) pretty depressed from time to time.
I chose that word carefully because it's not about being fed up or sad or grumpy or cross. It's about being disfunctional and dragged down and stuck in a cloud of loathing and desperation and desolateness. There's a made up word for you..
Anyway. The relevance of that to this is that I know now that when I get like this, when everything is conspiring against the wobbly balance board that is my emotional wellbeing, I lose interest in food.
*gasps*
Who'd have thought!?
The really tragic part is that I don't lose interest in eating. I just get less picky about what I consume, so no magic diet  and skinny sized clothes either. Dammit.
Anyway. That's my excuse. It's been a bad couple of months for foodiness. I'm working on it. Given that foodiness is most of what I am and do nowadays I need to pull it back from somewhere..

Alternative to pizza

I knew I'd have some feta left from last night's Jme Peri Peri chicken meal, so planned in Feta, Spinach and pine nut pastries for the grown ups tonight.

Soften onion in butter (The more observant of you may spot a bit of stray mushroom in there too)

Toast some pinenuts - the recipe doesn't say toast, but frankly all nuts are better toasted I reckon

 

Mix Feta, Spinach, Balsamic vinegar, the pine nuts and the onion

Dollop into the middle of a scored, glazed puff pastry sheet (Don't use reduced to clear, past their best, shoved in the freezer ones...)

Bake and enjoy

Strawberry and Nectarine Pie

We had some slightly shrivelled nectarines that needed using fast, so after a bit of googling I thought I'd try strawberry and nectarine pie.
I remembered seeing a generic fruit tart recipe in Rachel Allen's Home Cooking and as I'm not that great with pies I thought I'd take her advice. Results were good but it was a bit weirdy at the time!

Cream together butter and sugar

Add an egg

Beat another egg separately and then mix half in. At this point I stopped using the recommended dough hook.. I mean.. Dough hook?

Sift and stir in flour, knead briefly and spilt into two discs. Fridge for an hour.

Mix strawberries and nectarines with cornflour and caster sugar

Ignore cleaning up and go and investigate large pile of boxes that lovely postie just delivered

Pop to chippy to get lunch as it just feels like that sort of day

Roll out pastry (HA HA HA HA HA HA... good luck) and line pie plate

Dollop on fruit mix

Cover pie with pastry, seal and glaze with the other half of that egg from earlier. Stick in oven.

Play with new toy for a while

Admire pie

 

Eat Pie

Poor neglected blog

Hello poor bloggety blog.. you've been neglected for a while! Life went and threw us a doozy. There's been some comfort cooking, there's been some grief induced not eating, there's been a lot of can't be arsed-ness.

I thought I'd rummage out some photos of what has been worth photoing and then make a new start.

Spicy Tortilla Lasagne

A snickerdoodle in the making

Royal wedding cupcakes

Royal banquet

Wedding watching bacon and sausage sarnie station

Lemon cake

Lamb Biryani