Cooking for one (Mark Three)

Brambling

Evening

He's almost returned to the stable thanks Caronc I just have to be careful if I bend down for too long or too quickly, hopefully yours will settle down soon. <<hugs>> re the dentist, will taking calcium tablets help or would they clash with your meds.

I was throw out of the site and it took me a while to reset my password as it wouldn't except my email address either and then all of a sudden it did :cool:

It was my neighbour's funeral this afternoon i went with the neighbour who recently lost his wife, I will never get in a car with him driving again :eek::eek: there was a incident with a bus which made me think mine might be the next funeral :eek: there should be an oh S*&t handle in his car to hold on to, definitely more than one moment when my life flashed before me.

Early lunch before I left of HM soup and fruit salad. All this talk of lamb sorted dinner for me although not as nice a bigger piece of lamb I had a lamb steak with mash potatoes, green veg and gravy - mint sauce of course . Now I'm thinking I have smoked haddock in the freezer, maybe dinner at the weekend

Elona I know what I'm trying the next time i have blackened bananas

elona

Brambling

It is dead easy and uses very little fuel compared to something like banana loaf or banana muffins. I scoffed the lot but did not feel too guilty as there was very little "bad" in there. It did not need sugar and only a little oil or butter to grease the fry pan.

Just had an e mail from dd and the mince and veg frozen meal I gave her has been bulked out to four portions with a veg and potato mash topping, tomatoes and lentils added to the base etc. I congratulated her on her ingenuity and reminded her never to share how things had been bulked out and how much better for fibre and veg content it now was and good for heart and blood pressure etc.

I have lots of rolled oats and plan to soak some overnight and use them for porridge or pancakes so shared that idea with her.

caronc

:eek::eek: re the car journey Brambling perhaps it's time for the conversation re continuing to drive;). Glad your "wonky donkey" is heading back to the stable- hope it stays there:) (could be a wee pal for mine and then neither might want to break out:rotfl::rotfl:).
If the toothpaste doesn't help then yes tablets might be the next option but I'd then need to take something else to avoid side effects with another med and so it goes on(and on, and on).... I can live with less than sparkling gnashers if I don't end up adding x more meds as long as overall my teeth are ok:).

caronc

elona wrote: »

Brambling

It is dead easy and uses very little fuel compared to something like banana loaf or banana muffins. I scoffed the lot but did not feel too guilty as there was very little "bad" in there. It did not need sugar and only a little oil or butter to grease the fry pan.

Just had an e mail from dd and the mince and veg frozen meal I gave her has been bulked out to four portions with a veg and potato mash topping, tomatoes and lentils added to the base etc. I congratulated her on her ingenuity and reminded her never to share how things had been bulked out and how much better for fibre and veg content it now was and good for heart and blood pressure etc.

I have lots of rolled oats and plan to soak some overnight and use them for porridge or pancakes so shared that idea with her.

Good call elona, I'm great believer that what folk don't know when it comes to bulking out meals (allergies, intolerances, vegan/veggie etc. excluded) won't hurt them. If it's good food and enjoyed who cares how far something has been stretched:D

Brambling

Caronc I remembered too late that he lost his license for a few months a couple of years ago for going the wrong way on a busy A road :eek: he blamed the shingles which he had on his face at the time and they gave it back. it's frightening to think before Christmas when he was visiting his wife in hospital it was a forty mile round trip part of it on the M23 :eek:

As a poor student and later when I had my first mortgage at 16% I revisited my mother's ways of stretchingggg food and bulking it out and as you say what they don't know what hurt them :rotfl: it's like feeding my nephew 'special' chicken when he was younger rather than rabbit

caronc

Brambling wrote: »

Caronc I remembered too late that he lost his license for a few months a couple of years ago for going the wrong way on a busy A road :eek: he blamed the shingles which he had on his face at the time and they gave it back. it's frightening to think before Christmas when he was visiting his wife in hospital it was a forty mile round trip part of it on the M23 :eek:

As a poor student and later when I had my first mortgage at 16% I revisited my mother's ways of stretchingggg food and bulking it out and as you say what they don't know what hurt them :rotfl: it's like feeding my nephew 'special' chicken when he was younger rather than rabbit

:eek::eek:and double :eek::eek: Brambling definitely time for the "driving" conversation
My "hidden special food" was lentil soup, my younger son was not a huge veg fan but liked "lentil soup" - he was 7 or 8 before he worked out that the various lentil soups he ate with enjoyment had very little or no relationship with lentils and were basically any soup with the tag of "lentil":rotfl::rotfl:
He did keep eating them once he had realised

elona

My dds eventually worked out that various dishes had the same base of mince , onions and tomatoes with different spices, herbs and toppings and different names.

Lasagne, spag bol. cottage pie, meat pie , savoury pancakes etc,

There were lentils in there somewhere caronc. It sounds like the old joke about rabbit and horse pie - 50% rabbit and 50% horse!!

Brambling

:rotfl::rotfl: Caronc

When my nephews didn't like soup they would eat my chicken 'casserole' after eating it several times as I would make it at their house with their chicken carcasses when babysitting (I love my sister :cool:) my eldest nephew who was 7 or 8 looked up and said you know you could almost call it soup :rotfl: and then realised when I laughed what he had been eating. They did both carry on eating it and I had to teach my sister how to make it and later both boys. My mum made it to feed us another meal from the chicken there was less chicken in it then

PasturesNew

elona wrote: »

Pastures

Could you cook the tomatoes with onion and herbs to make a pasta sauce, pizza topping on french bread etc? There was a book called "Cooking for one" by Shirley Goode which had some really good ideas like using a four hole yorkie tin and pastry to make one meat pie, one small quiche, one apple pie and one pasty that only used the oven once and gave variety.

I have multiple issues....

It's not that I can't think of things I could eat - I've just never got the ingredients for "what I fancy".... I've actually got some part-baked baguettes, so could make such a pizza thing, but I don't fancy that I've had that baguette pack 2 months now, never fancied making a pizza thing from them. I've even got about 5 peppers I sliced/froze in the last two weeks ... sitting in the freezer waiting for the future time when I'll fancy something that uses them... they'd go on a pizza, but I don't fancy pizza -and- I don't fancy pizza as small as a baguette.... and I had pizza 4x the other week

As for using a 4-hole yorkie tin ... I've not got one because I can't use an oven or hob I use a little toaster oven. My cookware is "small/individual"; I've no need for a 4-hole tin, which wouldn't fit in my toaster oven in any case

It's not that I can't have great ideas .... I simply don't fancy things that can be made with the ingredients I've got ... or I CBA.

I've a recipe collection of over 3000 items I could make, that use ingredients that I am prepared to eat ... I use it as a reminder that things exist....

The main issues are:

1/ Having to use up the ingredients I've got that'll go off if I don't.
2/ Wishing to minimise/exclude freezing where possible as my freezer's small.
3/ Not having ingredients in for things I do think of.

But the biggest issue is: CBA.

I dislike kitchens, I dislike my kitchen. It's gloomy, it's depressing... there's no joy in cooking for me.

PasturesNew

Every day for the last 3 months I've thought "I should knock up a biryani" .... then I go to sleep and wake up the next morning and think "No ... it'll smell ... then the phone will ring and somebody will want to view the house and it'll reek of onions".

Many days I've thought of making something with sausages... then I see I already have lots of food in the house and should be eating that up, so I can't buy sausages yet.....

Lots of times I've fancied getting a pie in ... but then I've looked at what needs using up already and thought "No, eat what you've got".

The trouble starts with the quantities you have to buy at the start..... because it's cheaper to buy a 2.5Kg bag of cheap spuds at 4ldi than it is to start going further afield to buy "just as many as I need".

There's always tons of food that needs using up ... which I'm pretty bored of and/or CBA to spend more time turning into a meal. Let's face it - it takes 3-4 minutes to eat a meal ... so spending more than 20 minutes pulling it together really grates.

Right now on my "got to use it up" list I've got: 2Kg spuds, 500g carrots, 1 salad tomato, 350g cherry tomatoes, 16 slices of bread, 2 crumpets. So, those items "dominate" what I'll have to eat for the next few days to crack through them .... so that, if I DO have to freeze something, it'll only be a small bit.... but avoiding freezing is key.

I am also trying to run the freezer down, so I can defrost it.... there's not a lot left now though... although the bread half drawer is pretty full of a variety of bread-like things I bought in late December... crumpets, pittas, muffins....