Cooking for one (Mark Three)

moneyistooshorttomention

Am guessing a good makeshift for if one doesnt have anything like an inverter is that yoga pose of lying down face upwards, with backside slap up against the wall and put both legs going up the wall.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, tv programme I want to watch in a minute - and I'm taking tv programmes as a good excuse to make sure I go in for a bit of "proper" deep breathing. I'm working my way up to doing breathing exercises - weight for the losing of (as, goodness knows, I've got it fairly well weighed up what new clothes to buy when....). Do hope I've still got a waist underneath the excess weight - particularly as belts are back in fashion and I do like a nice belt.

caronc

pineapple wrote: »

Anyway, yesterday was simply the chicken with new potatoes and raita made with mint from the garden. Today, it is more of the chicken but with risotto rice and maybe a bit of red cabbage 'coleslaw'. It's simple food but I find it a bit sad that so many people seem to think that you need a 'recipe' to dish up a meal.
My mother didn't know any recipes (apart from baking from the trusty Bero book ) but she served up decent unadulterated nutritious food and sometimes it seems that we've lost the knack. Programmes like Masterchef are fine but in everyday life people aren't going to come home from work to spend hours deconstructing some simple dish or producing fancy little towers of this and that. There, I'll get off me soapbox now :rotfl:

Despite being known for the odd "cheffy" moment (or two;)), I couldn't agree more. Decent food cooked well is always a pleasure to eat. I tend to think "desconstructing" is a cover for I set off to make X but ran out of time/CBA/it didn't work the way I planned........ My bugbear though is the trend both in restaurants and at home is for over sized plates/bowls or using "novelty" things IMHO to serve food in/on. Please can I just have my meal in a normal sized plate or bowl!

PN- sounds as though you had a great weekend. I used to camp loads when I was in the Guides and later teens but I think the last time I camped was in 1982:eek:.

It's been a cracking day here, still a bit overcast at times but pleasantly warm, no need for a cardi though I think some of the "beachwear" folk were sporting in town was pushing it a bit.:eek: The town was heaving so we didn't manage to get to the tearoom we planned to go to as it was a 45 min wait for a table and we would have felt obliged to eat & run when we got one. We were considering buying sandwiches etc. and going to sit near the beach but by chance a table cleared in another cafe just as we were passing. They did advise there would be a wait for food which actually suited us fine as it meant we could get a good natter. By the time our food arrived the lunch peak was over so we were able to sit with a cuppa and continue our chat.:) In the end up I opted for a cheese & ham sandwich which was freshly made and really tasty.
Apart from filling some trays to plant more peas & beans into tomorrow and some watering nothing else was done in my garden today.
Having had cheese at lunch I don't want it again tonight so I'll heat up last night's LO roast veg and chicken and cook some sprouts to have with it. There will still be chicken left (I'll not reheat all of it) that I'll have for lunch tomorrow and probably freeze the rest.

Brambling

caronc wrote: »

Despite being known for the odd "cheffy" moment (or two;)), I couldn't agree more. Decent food cooked well is always a pleasure to eat. I tend to think "desconstructing" is a cover for I set off to make X but ran out of time/CBA/it didn't work the way I planned........ My bugbear though is the trend both in restaurants and at home is for over sized plates/bowls or using "novelty" things IMHO to serve food in/on. Please can I just have my meal in a normal sized plate or bowl!.

I'm another one who cooks mainly off the cuff, but I like to look for new ideas to ring the changes not usually too cheffy simple recipes via google which I often tweak to fit the ingredients I have in the cupboards. I'm old enough to have benefitted from home economics lessons at school and parents who cooked every thing from scratch on a low budget, it gave me a good foundation. My bug bear is when you see them spend ages tweaking food with tweezers, adding flowers etc. I look at it and think all that man handling of the food before it goes on the plate I'm not sure I would want to eat it :cool: oh and where's my vegetables, a hunk of meat, a smear of 'puree' potatoes and a [STRIKE]spring onion[/STRIKE] baby leek :mad:

I'll get off my box now :rotfl:

Not so much cba today just not very hungry. Fruit for lunch, I had some chilled rhubarb and strawberries (I love it chilled rather than hot) and a small piece of salmon with a small salad for dinner. Glass of milk before bed as I don't want to wake up hungry in night

I did bake a couple of cakes tonight a lemon drizzle and an almond slice so not a totally cook free day

[Deleted User]

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

Am guessing a good makeshift for if one doesnt have anything like an inverter is that yoga pose of lying down face upwards, with backside slap up against the wall and put both legs going up the wall.
.[/QUOTE

not quite, you still get compression. Alternative would be to lie flat on back on the floor right up to a kitchen chair, knees on the edge and lower legs flat on chair. This at least would relax the back without compression but it does not pull the spinal joints apart like gravity does with an inverter. Back feels good this morning and no hip aches waking me up. I must remember to use the inverter more often, to keep the discs hydrated. Like everything I forget until I creak

I had cottage cheese with chives/leaves/tomato again and glad to say that the tub is now empty and salad bag too. I am nicely full. Lunch will be a meat, maybe lamb cutlet and a mix of steamed veg. I still have 2 jersey royals left in the vac tub, they lasted a full week. More coming tomorrow but no more after that. I like JRs small, buttery and very young. Same with the asparagus. I love simple unadorned food, the pure taste of organic veg and grass fed meat

I am looking forward to the next few cooler days and a bit of rain, perfect for growing my veg on. Salad leaves will be put out on wednesday, I will protect them with LO slug wool pellets

wort

A great day Sunday, i took dgson to the park and met brother snd sis in law, then other sister as the local football team was celebrating winning the league. It was hot and only stayed a couple of hours, then cut the lawn at home,and did the prep for bbq.

The bbq was lovely, dd1 came up with the meat, lamb kofta s with pitta bread, hm steak burgers, plain/ tikka chicken kebabs, black farmer sausages. I did a huge amount of salad and baby potatoes, dips and sauces, and crisps for later.

The weather was boiling but we only started about 5.30 so only too hot for my brother and dds partner who were cooking!! There was about 25 of us and the last left about 11.30, I'd tidied as much as I could and went to bed but then woke at 4 am and couldn't get back off.

After dd1 left at 11 am had a good clean, and changed the beds and got them washed and dried.then i had a ham salad sandwich, with a few lo crisp.
Then had solero style lolly whilst reading later.
Tea was a big salad with lots of bits and dips, olives, sun blush tomato, coleslaw, jacket spud ,yummy. Then I had Greek yogurt with raspberries.

Back in work today and it's grey and overcast, lunch will be a repeat of yesterday,not decided on tea yet.

wort

Kittie, my yoga teacher mention the legs up wall pose, I will try it with a chair that sounds better thanks.
I often wish I had a rack !! Standing in my job doesn't help.

PasturesNew

Brambling wrote: »

... think all that man handling of the food before it goes on the plate I'm not sure I would want to eat it ....

That's always the thought in my mind. I'd rather go to the chippy where a shovel has been used to shovel chips into a bag, than some "posh place" where god knows who has been leaning over the food, breathing all over it, touching it all, poking it all about.... puts me right off it!

I started at 6 this morning, weeding a 2.8m x 1m strip, laying down weed suppressant sheeting, then shovelling bark on top. Of course, you never quite have enough to get to the end do you, so I need to pick up a small £1-2 bag of bark at some point, rip that open and just toss it in the general direction of the exposed sheet areas.

I also tackled a small patch that's about 1.2m x 15cm - it had long grass, small brambles, old dandelions, etc.... so I ripped all that out by hand, took the secateurs to the root of the brambley bits ... then reached for the weedol and gave it all a good soaking. Some time in the next week or so I'll cut a strip of suppressant sheet and cover it with 1-2 bags of slate chippings from £land.

Then I went food shopping. I wanted bread rolls + whatever I saw that took my fancy. I had in mind "get food in that you like, that's nice in this hot weather" (it's sunny/hot here again today).

I ended up getting a 400g pack of beef cubes that were on YS to half price + a pack of muffins YS to half price. Beef's already in the freezer, although I didn't rebag it (which I normally do to save space) as I CBA. Muffins will be frozen later, I'll probably toast one for breakfast. I got the bread rolls I wanted, 10 large eggs, a frozen meat feast pizza, a pack of 40 cooked cocktail sausages and a bag of chocolate covered peanuts.

I've always liked/bought cheap supermarket multipack choc ices, usually 8 or so for £1 or less. Last year 4ldi sold some, but they've not reappeared this year... which is a nuisance. I'd have got a box of those if they'd been for sale today. It's just nice to have a quick 10p ice cream ... I've never been one for buying pricier branded posh ices.

I then decided to drop into L1dl for sausage rolls and to get a 6-pack of the fizzy pop I like (I still have two bottles from last time, but I'd rather get them when I'm in the mood and the shop's almost empty, than struggling with 12 litres of fizzy pop on a busy day). I also got a pack of veggie samosas, only because they were YS to 30% off (so 60p I think they were).

Today I will be eating .... anything and everything that takes my fancy.

[Deleted User]

My favourite is magnum, which I only have very rarely. I will never forget my very first white magnum, I thought I was in heaven. Could easily become an addiction but isn`t. I confess to being an ice cream addict but am restraining myself

Back from planting out, almost all bed areas are now planted up. I need to shower and change as am muddy

re food handling, you see it all the time on tv and sometimes you see them touching their faces with the same hands. I hate it, pure hot from the cooker is safer, like fresh cooked fish and chips. I don`t even handle my own food much, only salad and only with pristine clean hands

PasturesNew

kittie wrote: »

My favourite is magnum, which I only have very rarely....

Years ago there used to be a lolly called Lord Toffingham. It was a layer of soft/runny toffee round the stick, surrounded by chocolate ice cream, then the top half of the lolly was coated in chocolate. They stopped making those decades ago.

I don't buy ice cream because you then get into that whole raft of "having to think about it" and choosing, then realising you need a 1 litre tub to get "value for money", then realising you have to eat the whole lot .... so those little cheap choc ices just "hit the spot", without the financial overhead and saving hours of decision-making time.

caronc

Good morning everyone,
Sounds as though you had a smashing bbq wort
It's much cooler and very overcast here this morning, I think the forecast for rain this afternoon will be right.
I've not much planned for today, after being out and about yesterday I'm a bit off kilter/unsteady so a quiet day is needed to get things back on track. I'm going to cook a beef olive and make root veg mash for tonight. Not particularly summery fare but I think summer has disappeared again. Lunch will be peri peri chicken, salad and a mug of pea & ham soup.