Cooking for one (Mark Three)

Farway

threepenny_bit said:

Quiet day here. I decided to try a banana spread with peanut butter for breakfast as my co worker swear by it .... doesn't keep you full for long and I missed my usual porridge lol! Not sure it is a substantial breakfast really! Had some time to check the store cupboards for dried fruit ready for mincemeat and found a few odds and ends lurking from making the fruit cakes; also found an old jar of store bought mincemeat  from quite a while back. I will add it to the Mary Berry Farmhouse Kitchen mincemeat cake recipe I use and make a fresh batch for mince pies. I struggle to find suet here so will go to the British store and buy a box of Atora at an exorbitant price and use the rest for dumplings! 

What do the locals use? Or is mincemeat a peculiar British thing?

That sounds a skimpy breakfast to me as well, I always have porridge with a sliced banana added

Sun's peeking out, at last.

Ready mix bread into the Panny while I mooched around the block, another rebellious anti clockwise day

The loaf is now out & cooling with it's smell wafting around the house

Lunch will be a couple of slices of the fresh loaf for a faux Spam + Branston sarnie

Dinner, now sun's out the salmon fillet + HM AF chips + salad is looking possible

caronc

Good afternoon everyone, 
Dry but bitterly cold here today, thick socks have been donned!
The virtual audit meeting went smoothly after initial doc sharing glitches. I'm always glad when that is done. Final pull together done this morning and we just need to organise some socially distanced paperwork signing now 😁. 
My son is busy painting and I'm trying to not get in the way and have retreated to put my feet up for a couple of hours. This evening we are recreating a dish my elder son cooked last week of pasta in a mushroom, spinach and tomato sauce topped with pigs in blankets! A case, for us anyway, of what's not to like. In theory there should be LO PIBs but I suspect that might not be the case lol. 😉

threepenny_bit

Farway said:

What do the locals use? Or is mincemeat a peculiar British thing?

That sounds a skimpy breakfast to me as well, I always have porridge with a sliced banana added

Mincemeat is British and certainly not Canadian! I know other countries have it but it isnt a big thing here. Canadians tend to have butter tarts which I think are their version. You can buy a jar of mincemeat occasionally at Walmart (Asda) and a couple stores that have a "British' or 'International' aisle but it costs around $8 - $9 a jar and needs alcohol and other fruits adding in my opinion. 

threepenny_bit

I was just going to my make Nigella Essential bread recipe and see my book is missing - think daughter may have borrowed it lol! Please does anyone have the Nigella domestic goddess book and could take a pic of the recipe for me? It is the essential white bread one with potato water in, hers is free form but I just pop it in a loaf tin. There is a picture of the bread on a right hand side page and recipe is on next page - you would think I would remember the whole recipe but unfortunately my brain is having problems with thinking about it haha! 

I THINK it is 

500g Strong white bread flour

7g dry yeast 

1 tbsp. salt

approx 300ml warm tap or potato water 

1 tbsp. unsalted butter

caronc

threepenny_bit said:

I was just going to my make Nigella Essential bread recipe and see my book is missing - think daughter may have borrowed it lol! Please does anyone have the Nigella domestic goddess book and could take a pic of the recipe for me? It is the essential white bread one with potato water in, hers is free form but I just pop it in a loaf tin. There is a picture of the bread on a right hand side page and recipe is on next page - you would think I would remember the whole recipe but unfortunately my brain is having problems with thinking about it haha! 

I THINK it is 

500g Strong white bread flour

7g dry yeast 

1 tbsp. salt

approx 300ml warm tap or potato water 

1 tbsp. unsalted butter

I'll PM it to you 

Brambling

I've never made mincemeat, I don't eat enough to make it worth while but I can remember the only time I ever heard my mum swear was when we came back to the house one evening and whilst we were out her mincemeat had exploded in the cupboard 😳 she never made it again, she blamed the central heating we had installed that year making the place too hot as previously there was just a coal fire 🙂

As payback for complaining yesterday morning the furry alarm woke me this morning before 7 by knocking something off the dressing table, I was in a deep sleep so ended up sitting bolt up in bed and thanks to my low blood pressure the room took a while to stop spinning 🙄 other than a catch up with my sister and nephew for a couple of hours it's been another indoor day, I'm glad I decided to leave a trip to town until Monday as my sister said it was really busy when she went down at 3pm

lunch was a cheese omelette thanks to Caronc putting the idea in my head 🙂  dinner was a M&S YS chicken breast joint from the freezer roasted with parsnips, broccoli and sweetcorn 

Farway

Lovely sunny day out, already had my mooch around the block but bit chilly for bare hands at the moment though [I wore gloves]

My bread turned out well, although I now use @sda RM packs in my Panny some still seem to turn out better than others, very odd, all are tasty though

Lunch today will be cheese & sliced raw onion sarnie

Dinner, a roast at long last.

Using the deal offer from @sda, it's a prepacked roast in bag chicken so not much mess post scoff

I'll have steamed fresh cabbage, carrots, LO limp celery & possibly frozen beans with it

threepenny_bit

caronc said:

threepenny_bit said:

I was just going to my make Nigella Essential bread recipe and see my book is missing - think daughter may have borrowed it lol! Please does anyone have the Nigella domestic goddess book and could take a pic of the recipe for me? It is the essential white bread one with potato water in, hers is free form but I just pop it in a loaf tin. There is a picture of the bread on a right hand side page and recipe is on next page - you would think I would remember the whole recipe but unfortunately my brain is having problems with thinking about it haha! 

I THINK it is 

500g Strong white bread flour

7g dry yeast 

1 tbsp. salt

approx 300ml warm tap or potato water 

1 tbsp. unsalted butter

I'll PM it to you 

Thankyou so much - I really appreciate seeing it written down in the actual book haha! I could almost see the recipe in the book and knew which page it was on etc. Just didnt know if my mind was remembering it correctly; better to check  before I wasted ingredients.

caronc

Good evening everyone, 
Absolutely threepenny-bit always best to check, I know my memory has a habit of blending recipes when I think of them 
Pigs in blankets + pasta was a winner and there were a few spare to make a nice and naughty snack this morning . Less good was the amount of fat that came off them, I had cooked them in the air fryer and hadn't realised how much there was and managed to fling it over the cooker and floor. At the time I just covered the floor splatter with a towel and tackled the spillage this morning. Cue mishap number two, I'd used a lot of detergent to mop it up and chucked the mop head and clean up cloths in for a hot wash. Toddled off to do other things and came back to what could have been a scene from an old B horror movie to foam oozing from the washing machine and taking over the kitchen!  Not my finest hour.....
Bacon butty with HM (not by me) grape and chilli jam, tomatoes and grapes. Tonight I'm CFO as my son has headed to the front room to have a virtual "pizza and beers" catch up with his mates. Dinner for me was HM cheesy croquettes from the freezer, jerk spiced chicken thighs, mushrooms and corn.

Brambling

You're not meant to wreck the kitchen before it's finished Caronc 😁 personally I usually wait until I've washed the floor before I throw food over it 🙄

i annoyed myself today today I had pushed a big used tub of 'branded' Greek yogurt to the back of the fridge and it froze  unfortunately when it defrosted it didn't taste right and had separated so I had to bin it - the only reason I had brought the expensive one which I do prefer was because it was on offer   of course it couldn't be the cheaper Lidl one 

lunch was using up some of a egg glut I seem to have acquired so today I scrambled some  dinner was sweet n sour pork with veg and rice there will be LOs but that will be Tuesday as I've LO chicken to do something tomorrow