Cooking for one (Mark Three)

PasturesNew

I just came a cropper in my hated hallway... I thought I turned the corner, but the wall was still half there... so I walked into the corner, hurting my left wrist badly

I'll just sit here for awhile and feel sorry for myself for a bit. It hurts.

I had eight squares of chocolate since my nice chilli/spaghetti. Truth be told, when I boxed that one up, it was one of those "odd portion sizes" where I just split what I had in the SC into an appropriate looking number of portions and, today, that portion was a bit much.... got through it all though

I had two hot sausage rolls for tea. That's the end of that pack of 6.

caronc

Good evening everyone,

Ouch PN - you'll need to join flubberyzing on the sofa nursing sore bones. Hope it's ok though <<hug>>
Farway - I think I'll be joing in you in on the "CFO medal of honour" podium.;):rotfl: Apart from making soup earlier on Wednesday I've not really cooked anything this week. Plan to rectify that tomorrow and make a beef stew.:)

candygirl - :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl: re the Advocaat lobbing

Novice- happy freezer raking, if you fancy some more cleaning feel free to pop by;):)


I'd like to say I had a productive afternoon and my Christmas cards are written but I'd need to watch my nose grow:eek:. Did do some laundry and had a bit of a tidy but that was about it in the "getting stuff done" department. My nephew popped round and I got him to lug through the big kilner of bramble vodka from the dining room (I wasn't convinced I wouldn't drop it:o) and it is having it's first filter. Smells lovely though potent.
Dinner is a rehash of last night's spicy pasta with some diced turkey mince patty and mushrooms chopped through it. A sprinkle of parmesan on the top and that will be dinner "cooked".:rotfl:
It's only just above freezing outside but I've not got my heating on just the stove and I'm toasty. I think I'm in :heart2: with it!

Brambling

Hopefully not too much damage PN, and it's just bruised, ouch as well Flubberzing I broke a toe many years ago and I think it was six weeks in wide flat shoes

In the 70s before they invented Baileys my eldest sister would drink snowballs I remember as I young child I really wanted to be allowed to have some, they were yellow and had a cherry in unfortunately I was never allowed to even take a sip and still haven't

Sounds like the stove will pay for its self Caronc in what you are saving in CH

I did plan to get stuff done today but my sister texted and invited me to try the soup she had made, it would have been rude not too so lunch and a gossip plus some online Christmas shopping for her and one of her sons, just need to sort his brother now. The soup was tomato and basil, a bit of a surprise as she normally only makes chicken soup. Dinner was pulled pork, I found a small shoulder joint in the freezer which I pressure cooked and served with veg. When that was cooking I made a minestrone soup for lunches i fried off a little bacon first and deglazed the pan with a little dry vermouth and it's turned out really tasty, as I don't blitz this soup I take more time to chop the veg in nice little cubes makes a change from a rough chop, throw in pan and blitz :rotfl:

Novice_investor101

It is cold tonight - heating has come on again this evening. Usually it comes on for 1.5 hours on the timer, warms the house up to the thermostat temp, clicks off and doesn't usually come back on again. The house really holds the heat as when I got back from T at 2pm, i could feel the warmth indoors compared to outside and the heating hadn't been on since 8am. Seeing as it's supposed to be frosty tonight i've closed the curtains (usually just close the blinds) in the bedroom and bathroom.
Got my mini xmas tree all lit up and a big flickering candle on the fireplace mimicking a real fire........

dinner was 2 sausages, mash and some frozen veg with gravy. Only used one potato of the two i had. The remaining one looks fine for a while yet, maybe wedges later this week.

Caronc, that stove will be well used if the weather where you are is anything like the forecasts where i am. Down to freezing tonight and no higher than 7c early in the week - then down to 4c and snow on thursday!
I'll be getting the winter coat back out in the morning for the walks to work.
PH, sounds painful. The usual CFO advice of put some ice on it may apply?

caronc

Brambling wrote: »

Sounds like the stove will pay for its self Caronc in what you are saving in CH

It will take a while Brambling but if you exclude the building work yes it should save in the long run. Don't care though for what I might spend in ramping up the CH I'm properly warm:D

Sounds you are like me and keep a bottle of vermouth on hand - wouldn't be without mine in so many dishes:D

Novice_investor101 wrote: »

Caronc, that stove will be well used if the weather where you are is anything like the forecasts where i am. Down to freezing tonight and no higher than 7c early in the week - then down to 4c and snow on thursday!

Glad you got the lights working:D.
Sounds as though we have the same forecast - cold followed by very cold followed by Baltic and repeat....:rotfl:

PasturesNew

I am still trying to put together my draft Xmas ideas for food list.... I have a collection of about 4000 "recipes", some are recipes, some are just memory joggers and ideas to bounce off.

Every one is tagged and fully searchable....

At this stage it's a question of dreaming up something I might like to eat, then doing a search to find what's in the 4000 ideas list ... then thinking about whether I'd really want it, or if it's a faff (too many ingredients I wouldn't use/don't have) - and, if it gets into the first pass then I check it's tagged as Xmas_All (a tag for browsing all/past Xmas food ideas and potentials when discovered through the year) - AND - tagging it with Xmas2018. That leaves me with a tag I can click on that just shows me things I might like to make this year... and I can browse previous years' lists too as I've been creating an annual Xmas tag for years.

The reality is: I create the list, I jot down the extra ingredients I'd need to buy .... and then I don't actually ever make any of those things at all as just a straight forward dinner, some crisps, couple of bags of chocolate biscuits and suddenly it's not xmas any more and I never got round to them

This year's objective IS, however, to make something ... preferably using up ingredients I've bought in previous years and never got round to, or leftover ingredients still lurking 2-3 years on.

Last year I bought a pot of ginger, I only needed 1/2 a teaspoon .... so still got the rest of that. Ditto a couple of other "christmassy" flavours.

I'm sure that, this year, there will be a cake. It won't be a Xmas Cake (too many ingredients), but it'll be a simple "boiled fruit" style one, using up a little more of the dried mixed fruit I bought last year ... and I might top that with a little drizzled icing ... as I bought a whole box of icing sugar 2-3 years ago that's not even been opened yet. Having said that, once opened, I'd expect just to just 1-2 teaspoons to drizzle on a cake, which doesn't put a dent in the box!

That's the trouble with ingredients.... you have to keep things basic/simple or run the risk of having cupboards full of things you'll never use again, or will only use once every 2-3 years.

Lemons are typical. I never use lemons. If you buy one lemon it's a pricey item "for not much gain" ... but if you wait for a bag of lemons deal then it's too soon for Xmas (I think there was a cheap bag at L1dl or 4ldi about 5-6 weeks ago). I bought a single lemon last year, which I needed for the nut roast and I lobbed the leftover bits (after squeezing) into the bottom of the SC for the turkey to sit on. So, with little need for lemons (which aren't actually cheap) .... I just go without that ingredient most of the time... ignoring it if it's in a recipe.

Ditto for 100 other ingredients.... some things I have absolutely NO need/desire/liking for at all, so it's annoying when they're omnipresent. I mean, say, cream, bacon, half a glass of wine.... it can be hard finding recipes that I'd like, that don't REQUIRE ingredients that are tricky to source affordably in a tiny volume... which is why I started building up my recipe list as 90% of it's JUST recipes that aren't unachievable due to ingredients. The other 10% is just stuff to gawp at

Take bread.... just watched a lovely little video about making some little spiced buns (think hot cross bun innards).... watched it: It made 12.
It used a sachet of yeast (7g), hard to buy one and split that in half to make 6 buns. 6 buns would be too many, I'd only really want to make 2. Then there was the tray, a specific size (which I don't have) - and even if I did have it then it wouldn't fit in the mini oven... which isn't a big deal if I had another tray half that size, which I don't....

So I watched the video ... just to gawp at ... as I don't want 12, I want 2 ... and you can't split a 7g single sachet of yeast into 1/6ths.... in part because that's nigh on impossible and in part because they come in a box of several sachets... and I'd only really want to make 2 spicy buns per year

Brambling

caronc wrote: »

Sounds you are like me and keep a bottle of vermouth on hand - wouldn't be without mine in so many dishes :

I use both vermouth and port Caronc ideal especially if I don't want to open wine for a splash whilst cooking

PN 4000 recipes :eek: I like to cook but I would find that too daunting

PasturesNew

Brambling wrote: »

PN 4000 recipes :eek: I like to cook but I would find that too daunting

It's just a collection .... but not physical books. Whenever I see something I fancy, that's achievable, I copy/paste it over, tag it and move on....

That means I always have my starter point for recipes that would suit my tastes, ingredients, etc... rather than starting with Google from scratch

If you take, say, an idea ... and Google it ... it can take an hour of your time to finally find one recipe that has ingredients you like, doesn't have ingredients you're avoiding ... and/or doesn't involve complex tasks, or equipment, etc.... so, whenever I am looking at food, when I spot something "doable" in it goes....

I use it mostly as a "prompt". e.g. if I had, say, a pepper and two onions to use up ... I can simply type those ingredients into the search box and it brings up every recipe that, in the past 10 years, I've found doable ... and I can skim down all the photos looking for my inspiration of what to do with them.

I don't have to read any of the recipes... just type in a couple of ingredients.... then skim down past all the photos and titles ... pausing at 3-4 ... before I finally know what I'll be making.

But, some things are "more complex" such as rare events, like "things I might fancy at Xmas time" .... and those items might require me to buy ingredients.... but 90% of the recipes it shortlists for me will already have had my beady eye cast over that in the past, when I've chosen whether to add it or not.

Take that box of icing sugar.... I just typed that in and I have 101 recipes, reminders and ideas that use that... just the simple job of adding water to icing sugar to make a drizzle icing can easily be forgotten about .... but up it pops as one of the 101 ideas/recipes in my collection. Although, to be fair, a lot of those recipes might just be using it for dusting... and once I realise that I simply add -dust -dusting to the search box to omit those .... and I've still got 71 left. ... and oooh, just found one I added in 2014 that I'd forgotten all about .... that's now been tagged Xmas2018. I already know I'll never make that recipe, but it'll keep popping up now and I can enjoy looking at the photo - and why won't I make it? Because it's sweeties .... and I can pop into Poundland and buy a bag of them ready made cheaper than I can pick up the ingredients And will I buy those sweeties? No, because you can only buy a limited quantity of sweeties (even at Xmas) and I've already got the sweeties slot filled by another bag of choccies from Home Bargains

PasturesNew

XCFO and nuts....

Nuts are a Xmas thing .... I like nuts. But it comes down to that choosing thing again.

I love chestnuts
I love walnuts
I love salted peanuts
I love honey roasted nuts
I love dry roasted peanuts
I love monkey nuts

Can't have them all though ..... so another thing to choose... just the one, maybe two .... but which.... ... and is two "piggy" ... they're high in calories... but one isn't a choice... so it has to be two... really? you need two?

*sighs*

candygirl

PasturesNew wrote: »

XCFO and nuts....

Nuts are a Xmas thing .... I like nuts. But it comes down to that choosing thing again.

I love chestnuts
I love walnuts
I love salted peanuts
I love honey roasted nuts
I love dry roasted peanuts
I love monkey nuts

Can't have them all though ..... so another thing to choose... just the one, maybe two .... but which.... ... and is two "piggy" ... they're high in calories... but one isn't a choice... so it has to be two... really? you need two?

*sighs*

I love Brazil nuts, especially choc coated ones