Cooking for one (Mark Three)

[Deleted User]

The chicken I got out was boneless thighs, not breasts, shows I have not really been up to it as I only put in freezer 2 days earlier. The chcken and mushrooms in sc was loverly though, for a change I added a Maggi paxket mix,put some pasta in near the end, could not be bothered putting my own flavours in. Had brocc with it. Am having the left over portion today with a jkt - easy micro.

PasturesNew

I have no food.
I am too idle to go out buying.



I do have chips, fish fingers, beans.... so I guess that's what I'll eat today.

caronc

Good morning everyone,

After the most hideous wind & rain from yesterday afternoon to the early hours it is actually dry this morning:eek: though that's to be short lived. I made the most of it and have watered the greenhouse and restocked my indoor log stack.:) After a break for a cuppa and a noodle on here I'm going to hoover and mop through.
I had a lovely time last night though I was very glad to have a lift door to door. My beacon like nose was suitably plastered with make up to reduce the glow though after a couple of glasses of wine I couldn't have cared less about it. :rotfl:Company was great and the food up to it's usual decent standard. I had a chicken & ham hough terrine with celeriac remoulade followed by lamb's liver and bacon which came with the most glorious onion gravy.:D I was too full for pudding ( for a set menu the portions are very generous) but the ones some folk had looked and apparently tasted gorgeous. Everyone was really happy with there food and the bill was very reasonable for the standard of cooking and quality of ingredients. I got home just before 10pm and watched a bit of TV before heading to bed with a cuppa and my book.
Lunch will be a sarnie of some description and then I'm not going to be CFO for a couple of days as my younger son is here though he may head out with his mates tomorrow night if any of them are in the area. Like him they all live away these days. I'm making (or more correctly defrosting) Cullen Skink tonight as the weather forecast looks dire and we are both very fond of it.

Farway

Wet old morning, and still tipping down.

Into L's as usual on way to volunteer, what a pain now the weekend specials start on Friday. Before it was me + another old geezer + school kids spending lunch money on sticky buns. Now it's got all sorts in there, not crowded but my "normal" slow mooch about is not the leisurely pursuit it was

Needless to say the greedy ones had cleared all the reduce offer cheese, all of it, gone. And this was 0815. I saw one lady struggling to carry her cheesy loot away. :mad:

Luckily I bought some cheese on offer in W8rose yesterday so not problem, just irritating

Lunch was BLT sarnie, using up some of the YS bacon

Last night's bacon eggs & chips dinner was super, and I'm repeating same tonight, use up the bacon and due to lack of anything YS in L's to give me ideas.

Brambling, yes I was lucky on the YS gammon, like you I've been on the lookout for a while, there was only the one "right size" one left so must be a popular CFO size. It's destined for SC tomorrow

Andy, lamb chops / steaks. I like it, but since I tried local free range etc I realised the very big difference in taste, quality. [and price as well:(] From my experience it is chalk & cheese. I found same with other meat products

I must try the salmon as well, but even I baulked at the price but will bite the bullet next time. The same salmon fishery was featured on TV this week, the import export fish BBC programme

Wednesday2000

It was pouring here earlier but I luckily missed it when I went to get my blood test. I was starving when I got in and I had bought white pittas and BBQ sauce from the shop. I had two toasted pittas with vegan bacon, cucumber and mustard and a can of coke!:)

I'm going to fry the smoked tofu and I'm making SW chips and will have that with peas for dinner. I will have the BBQ sauce with that.

pattypan4

I wanted a mushroom omlette but not much butter so I did the chopped dry mushrooms with a splash of soy sauce and later put the 2 beaten eggs on top and oh yum, what have I been missing. Was lovely, so tasty. Had that with salad and I felt as though I had eaten a bigger meal. Mushrooms and soy tastes `beefy`
Celery soup made and I dropped in some cashews before whizzing. Thats 3 mini meals for the next few days
I had better have some veg and a small bit of salmon later or I wake up hungry. Will do it all in the nuking pod, 6 minutes. A thin slice of chopped swede with it for a bit of bulk. I am trying to cut sugar, met a nice man with neuropathy the other day, was a real wake up call, he was very grateful to still have his hands and feet but was in pain and could not feel anything. Diabetes. I am no saint, marzipan chocolates eaten but no more being bought

PasturesNew

I ended up going out to L1dl as a freshly arrived housemate's not well and has cashflow problems, so I figured it'd not hurt me to offer them a lift to go "cheaper/bigger choice food shopping" than what's available a half mile wet walk away.

I bought hash browns, Linda M sausages, sweeties, a loaf, got a pack of the offer cheese (£2.39/830g), cucumber, cocktail sausages. So I'm all set up now for gazillions of egg/cucumber sandwiches and cooked breakfasts galore

Just eaten sweeties so far today - oh and a pack of doritos.

unrecordings

pattypan4 wrote: »

met a nice man with neuropathy the other day, was a real wake up call, he was very grateful to still have his hands and feet but was in pain and could not feel anything. Diabetes. I am no saint, marzipan chocolates eaten but no more being bought

I've peripheral neuropathy caused by chemo - fortunately it's just the numb kind though if I'm really tired it can manifest as tingling. It should be temporary, but...

I have to keep my nails long otherwise I'm just Edward Sausagefingers and can barely manipulate anything - taste comes & goes, and then there's the steroids to counteract the effect

AndyCF

Hello all.

PasturesNew wrote: »

Shepherd's pie is lamb; shepherds look after lambs.
Cottage pie is beef.

Oh I know I know To be honest I think I sort of look at the box if its a 'ready frozen' thing. Just that the 'content' aside from the lamb tends to be nicer (for me) compared to the cottage ones somehow, the ingredients I mean.

I was trying hard to think of a joke regarding the Shepherds vs Cottage as in "who looks after the cows or cottages" but could not really string anything half sensible together. You are completely correct though and that is the best way to remember it "aka: Shepherds = Lamb"

PasturesNew wrote: »

I have no food.
I do have chips, fish fingers, beans.... so I guess that's what I'll eat today.

I'd not say that's "no foods" , that's plenty to be going on with.

Farway wrote: »

Wet old morning, and still tipping down.

Into L's as usual on way to volunteer, what a pain now the weekend specials start on Friday. Before it was me + another old geezer + school kids spending lunch money on sticky buns. Now it's got all sorts in there, not crowded but my "normal" slow mooch about is not the leisurely pursuit it was

Rain here too. As usual!

I looked into the volunteering a few years ago re: cats protection things but could not get around to it as I was already almost nearly about ready to be 'volunteered' (by my choice) to be a carer for a relative full time for a few years anyway. What still annoys me to this day is the lack of any help 'afterwards' , I must be honest here despite it ending 6-7 years ago I've not fully 'settled' , the costs to myself are still ongoing (not all financial either) hmm. Some kind of part time job soon hopefully looms I hope anyway, all things being equal.

I did ask again recently about it (cats things) but there was nothing going lately, but I'm not quite up to it just yet really. I did do a long stint of online voluntary work helping a firm out with their client base (user to user support) for many years as I enjoyed that, plus it meant free software

Farway wrote: »

Andy, lamb chops / steaks. I like it, but since I tried local free range etc I realised the very big difference in taste, quality. [and price as well:(] From my experience it is chalk & cheese. I found same with other meat products

Yes our local (now gone) butchers who was there since the early 70's was brilliant generally. Never had a problem. Did some awesome sausage rolls too, expensive but they were properly made with real saus meats and cooked etc.
The local co-co was not too bad for chilled meats to be honest, most of the time anyway. Since it turned into BM its not quite the same somehow. Plus there's no freezers in that one for some reason.

PasturesNew wrote: »

I ended up going out to L1dl as a freshly arrived housemate's not well and has cashflow problems, so I figured it'd not hurt me to offer them a lift to go "cheaper/bigger choice food shopping" than what's available a half mile wet walk away.

That's nice to read. Soon the favour/karma (?) will be returned no doubt when a few goodies may appear. I hope so anyway, even if its a bag of yummy bits or something.

PasturesNew wrote: »

I bought hash browns, Linda M sausages, sweeties, a loaf, got a pack of the offer cheese (£2.39/830g), cucumber, cocktail sausages. So I'm all set up now for gazillions of egg/cucumber sandwiches and cooked breakfasts galore

Just eaten sweeties so far today - oh and a pack of doritos.

I'm keeping an eye out for some LM saus, although it is thin on the ground around here. I did see some chicken sausages yesterday in BM but decided I was not that keen on them, can't explain why something just said "don't buy" , well known saus brand too. Actually can't recall if I've had chick saus before. I settled for some random bits and did not get any chilled items, trouble is I'm not keen on some of the unknown brands for some reason. I'd be happier from A1d I think even if it was the same brand as you sort of expect it, difficult to explain sorry.


General food comment not aimed any anyone/anything etc:

I was looking earlier when thinking about local choices about some of the news stories I've seen over the past few years around here about shops with either bad or extremely bad (as in £10K fines) hygiene issues (mainly take-away type places to be fair not 'shops') or shops with well past food dates, although I could not find the story I did want to as its a few years old now. I did find one where they were selling meats three weeks past their date though! :eek: hmm.

caronc

Good evening everyone,

Farway - couldn't agree more that the difference between "standard" and free range meat taste wise/shrinkage etc. is huge and definitely worth making the most of YS/offers etc. as unless you have the time to shop around physically or online it can be eyewateringly expensive in comparison to SM offerings. I certainly couldn't afford a lot of what I buy at full price no matter how much I squeezed my budget but I have the time these days to shop around online and that really pays dividends.:) When it comes to decent gammon/ham if the price is right I'll buy it even if it isn't CFO friendly size then either portion into smaller joints or lob a few gammon steaks off .

pattypan - neuropathy can be such a painful thing, like unrecordings, my Dad developed it due to cancer treatment and his was the painful as well as numb type and he really suffered with it at times. (Radiotherapy affected his insulin production leading to what was for a while very unstable diabetes.) Quite right to be thinking about steps to avoid diabetes if you think you could be a risk from developing it as so many of us are these days. Chocolate covered marzipan is very hard to resist though.;)
PN - always good to help someone out where you can. :DSmall things can make a huge difference to someone that's struggling. I'm great believer in "paying forward" as you never know when you might be the person needing the help.
Andy - as someone who spent a large chunk of her career working with folk who had been out of the labour market (for many, many reasons including caring for someone) for a while I would say that if you are looking for a part time job that volunteering in some capacity is probably the single most useful thing you can do to make you a more attractive candidate to prospective employers . It doesn't really matter what you volunteer for and it gives you something current on your CV or application form under "Work History", shows commitment/skills and if you get an interview is a really useful in giving the interviewer and yourself something to frame questions/answers around. While you have an interest in Cats Protection perhaps that could be extended to other animal welfare volunteering opportunities or other things you are interested in which might be more available in your area. Local FB groups can also be a good place to look, I know ours frequently has "shout outs" for volunteers for various things and the range of where extra hands are needed is diverse, some are for "one offs" and others for longer term.



It's fair to say the weather has been mixed today- rain, wind and sunshine often all at once though it's back to plain wet, cold and windy this evening. I picked another big bowful of ripe toms so more passatta making will be on the cards over the next few days. I must also get the bramble gin started if it is to be ready to bottle for Christmas. I got the place hoovered and mopped through that with my log stash restocking this morning was more than enough exertion for me.:cool:

Lunch was boiled egg and tomato on toast with some grapes afterwards and dinner is good to go when my younger son arrives. I'm really looking forward to seeing him as it's been a few weeks since he was here.