Cooking for one (Mark Three)

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Planned on making sout dough yesterday but actually set to bake a loaf so sliced it up and put 3/4 in freezer. Having some today for lunch with last rasher of bacon. Thinking of pasta with cheese for dinner, or get the 2 x cooked sausages out of freezer and have with some cougettes etc. Not yet decided.

Farway

Sunny start for the day, more domestic stuff to do today

Caron, jogged my memory, I need to shuffle money around as well this weekend & new month, trouble is with interest rates so low there is just not the urgency for a paltry 0.2% extra these days, gone are the days of "stoozing" between 0% credit cards & high interest accounts

After same old porridge breakfast I made a pan of stewed apples using mixed w/falls & small picked ones. No crumble this week. Last week's seems to have finished up round my belly:(

My Stanley plums are improving with age, really nice left indoors to ripen, only a few left on the tree now, and only one fig left to pick as well

I had one of my YS oblong crumpets last night, but too many to use before they go green IMO so I've frozen the rest to use as required

Lunch, I think I'm going for another Ploughman's with my YS mixed posh cheese & one of my yummy fresh apples and maybe spot of salad stuff

Dinner, not sure. I've got half the M & S YS pie left, it was lovely BTW, not sure I'd pay over £5 for it, but OK at YS price
I had it with frozen mash in the end, good choice as that soaked up the mushy pea liquor
I'll leave dinner decision until this afternoon, could finish up as beans on green bits cut off toast:D

Brambling wrote: »

. No cooking as my bil is really fussy about what he eats so I refuse to do any, just KP duty for me.

Good move on the BIL meals, no point with fussy eaters.
Reminds me with my kids, they refused to eat unpeeled stewed apples & I CBA to peel them.

Told them if they wanted to peel them go right ahead & do it themselves. Somehow unpeeled apples were no longer a problem:)

Enjoy the rest of the holiday

caronc

PasturesNew wrote: »

I don't buy/use celery, but I did buy some the other year to make a nut roast for Xmas. I wrapped it in foil in the fridge and it kept more than adequately for over 2 months before I finally pushed myself to using up the remainder.

Thanks PN, yes I do sometimes do that, it was a tip I got in the early days of CFO threads, or stick a little water in a pint glass and stick it in that if goes limp. However, it's getting to the time of year where I use it mainly as a base for soup, casseroles etc. rather than salads so I'll probably chop one head and keep the other fresh. They're nice big heads so were good value at 25p each.:)

Farway wrote: »

Sunny start for the day, more domestic stuff to do today

Caron, jogged my memory, I need to shuffle money around as well this weekend & new month, trouble is with interest rates so low there is just not the urgency for a paltry 0.2% extra these days, gone are the days of "stoozing" between 0% credit cards & high interest accounts

Aren't they just, I'm tempted just to bung it into an easy access account I have with my BS until I see something better.


Good morning everyone,

pattypan - it sounds as though a "day off" is well deserved.
whmf - I'd go for the sauage,courgette pasta option with some grated cheese on top :drool:


My it was wild overnight, lashing rain and howling wind. The rain's dried up a bit but it's still blowing a hooley. I made the most of a lull to do a bin run, water the greenhouse and pick some more toms. beans and a cucumber. The weather looks pretty dire for the rest of today and it's to drop to single figures this evening so I think I'll set the stove up in case I want to light it later. It feels a bit early in the year to be doing that :eek:but a small fire should just be enough to take the chill off.

Last night I ended up cooking potato croquettes rather than oven chips, mainly just to use up a lurking bag. There were three left so I cooked them all but in the end up only ate one, I'll have the LOs with dinner tonight. Lunch is will be a blt with cucumber sticks on the side and for tonight I have a rather lovely looking piece of Aberdeen Angus rump steak which I'll griddle with flat mushrooms and tomatoes. The croquettes should go nicely with that.:D

Wednesday2000

I've had a soya milkshake and a bowl of HM lentil soup. It really filled me up.:)

PasturesNew

caronc wrote: »

Last night I ended up cooking potato croquettes rather than oven chips, mainly just to use up a lurking bag.

They're a funny old thing.... I really should like them as I love mash and spuds ... and I love breaded things. But I've always found them to be unsatisfying, quite mushy. I'd choose/eat them in many eating scenarios, but have never felt compelled to buy or make any.

Many years ago I had access to a works' canteen - and they did monster sized croquettes, the size of a small fist, they were lovely.

It's overcast here today, with a tiny amount of rain. Air show still flying though.

I'm keeping an occasional eye on the inbound hurricane in Florida as I have a 2nd cousin down there on the coast and her town name's currently on the "yes it's coming" list... most years they miss her area. I was her bridesmaid in '67, she married an American and moved there.

Farway

Lunchtime ploughman's was fine, had bit of space left so sampled some of the freshly stewed apples, which were also fine, and this time I'd not overdone the stewing sugar


Dull & drips of rain now, ex PN's I suspect.

Dinner, decided it's cheesy beans on toast with couple of fried eggs, however I've not yet fully inspected the stale bread in fridge so could be beyond redemption if green has turned it into Hulk's bread


PN, I'm also on Hurricane watch, colleague is attending her son's wedding over there, Orlando area. Should make for "interesting" photographs

caronc

Good evening everyone,
I take odd notions for potato croquettes PN, hence the lurking bag in the freezer, I get what you mean though about the texture though as the mash is so smooth. I also have a few more rustic cheese & onion ones frozen, the mash in them is much less mushy. When my kids were small I used to make HM ones with "Golden Mash" aka potato & swede and they worked really well. My favourite though is the Spanish ones made with bechamel instead of mash. A good few years ago after a holiday in Spain I decided to have a go a making them and found a promising looking recipe. All went well until I tried to shape them what nightmare:eek:, got there eventually but they were very oddly shaped. It was only afterwards that I realised I had mixed up two steps and should have popped the mix in the freezer until almost frozen then shape/bread then chill in the fridge not the other way round as I did.:o:o I decided after that it was one I would leave to the professionals:rotfl::rotfl:.
This afternoon I diced one of the heads of celery and two largish carrots that were going past their best, both are now in the freezer though as I suspected I had to use the "holding shelf" as they wouldn't fit in the veg drawer and shelf. Parts of my freezers are now pretty full but other shelves have plenty of space if I need it for homegrown veg, passatta etc. The two chicken carcasses are in the fridge to defrost which has freed up quite a bit of space, I'll slow cook them over night tomorrow for stock and soup meat.
The weather has calmed a bit though it's still pretty windy, it's certainly warmer and drier than it was earlier. I've actually shed layers as the day went on as while still supposed to get chilly overnight I'll not need to light the stove:).

I've a change of plan for dinner tonight, I need to roast tomatoes as I have lot of very ripe red ones that will go bad if not used sooner rather than later. As I'm putting the oven on I decided to swap round the meals on my plan and keep the steak for another time. Tonight dinner is a portion HM asparagus tart with roasted yellow plum toms, a flat mushroom and the LO croquettes.

PasturesNew

Farway wrote: »

PN, I'm also on Hurricane watch, colleague is attending her son's wedding over there, Orlando area. Should make for "interesting" photographs

Pensacola for me. If you look at ventusky.com it shows you precisely/live and easily where Dorian is right now. Then, go through the days to see... it moves VERY slowly! I just checked, it doesn't at the moment appear to hit Orlando, it appears to go directly North on Monday evening... but these things do change and you can't be sure until the last few hours where it's going.

Today I did a breakfast of toasted bread roll topped with beans/scrambled eggs.

I've had a bar of chocolate... that's all gone now. Scoffed the last of the kit-kats.

For tea I re-heated a portion of the sausage/meatball casserole made yesterday, I then made some mash and squashed it down into a dish (for shape) and topped that with cheese. Nuked the spud/cheese and used a frying spatula to shovel it on top of the meatball casserole. CBA to put it in the oven just to brown the top.
That was nice enough. One more portion of the meatballs to go.

PasturesNew

caronc wrote: »

My favourite though is the Spanish ones made with bechamel instead of mash. A good few years ago after a holiday in Spain I decided to have a go a making them and found a promising looking recipe. All went well until I tried to shape them what nightmare:eek:, got there eventually but they were very oddly shaped. It was only afterwards that I realised I had mixed up two steps and should have popped the mix in the freezer until almost frozen then shape/bread then chill in the fridge not the other way round as I did.:o:o I decided after that it was one I would leave to the professionals

I've got a saying "there are no points for presentation".

A lot of things look nice, if you're choosing them from a menu. But, to make them for yourself it's a lot of faffing about when a lot of the additional instructions/steps could be omitted to obtain almost the same end result.

I spent ages once making mum a nice cottage pie. Mince, mash - then did that in a dish, into the oven to brown .... she ate it the same as if I'd just shovelled mince and mash on her plate.

Ditto my sausage pie tonight... could have layered the sausage meatballs into a dish, topped with mash, topped with cheese, into the oven to brown.... or, nuke it all and pile it on the plate like I did with less washing up, fewer steps and less time

No points....

caronc

PasturesNew wrote: »

I've got a saying "there are no points for presentation".

Absolutely especially when CFO but in the croquettes case it was the faff getting them to the point where I could cook them rather than the presentation that put me off:cool:. Years ago on New Years day my kids & sis decided to have a spur of the moment competition to see who could produce the best presented starter plate with what we were having. It was a laugh ( I was staying firmly out of the way - glass in hand:rotfl::rotfl:)but my the mess made, my kitchen look like it had exploded. :eek::eek: (They did clear up though). Still tasted the same though;). That said if I am cooking for others on special occasions I do make a bit more effort in the presentation stakes but nothing too cheffy.:)