Cleaners and Cooking

Today my lovely cleaners came - well needed after a two week gap. After they left I peeled and cooked 4 large cooking apples and cooked two beetroot.

At least, I thought I had cooked them, but after 2 hours, they were still brick hard.

Anyway on to the next task which was to make a pot of what TBSITW and I call "soup soup". This is chicken soup with carrots, onions and rice. I had no chicken meat or stock so just used 2 stock cubes, and added salt at the end when I tasted it.

A quiet evening now, then back to the Day Hospital tomorrow for my final Thursday visit.

Cooking Again

Thursday was back at the Day Hospital and once more worked hard by the physiotherapist. She did give me a bit of a row about my expedition to the butcher and told me not to do it again. Not likely to anyway as I found it quite scary.

This morning I made use of 2 tattie scones from the freezer and a packet of pancetta to make bacon, egg and tattie scone for breakfast. (pancetta is not as good as Wiltshire bacon for this purpose). I don't know how long it is since I made a cooked breakfast.

Shortly after I finished, TBSITW arrived with two dogs - I always love to see them. We then went off to Dobbies to find a tray with bean bag. I must confess that, for eating on your own, it is wonderful. It also acts as an excellent tray for my book. (The Return by Victoria Hislop).

We also went looking for a desk with filing drawer. No success at the first shop, but got a better idea at Staples of modular furniture..

I had no real idea how small a desk would fit.

Both TBSITW and daughter suggested that I try to relinquish one chest of drawers to make more room. I kept saying it could not be done, but I am trying it out now.

That could make a bit difference.

I came back to tackle the pok choi from the organic veg box delivery and made soup with it using my usual "green soup" recipe. No, I had never heard of pak choi either (or Chinese leaves). Soup made and meal of potted meat, potato, and broccoli eaten.

I had to place a Tesco order as, amongst other things, I am completely out of potatoes and onions.

Cooking Over The Years

My organic vegetable box was delivered yesterday and before I put it away, I removed everything in the vegetable drawer and discovered an excess of onions and potatoes. Today I am making onion soup (and later my sprout and chestnut recipe) with leek and potato and celery soups to follow at the weekend if not sooner.

Looking through my files for onion soup recipes set me thinking and remembering.

When I got married I could not cook; it had always been considered that my studies were more important, and to me were much more fun!

A small and somewhat insignificant wedding present came from the mother of a school friend: this was The Penguin Cookery Book by Bee Nilson. This became my cookery ‘bible’ as it covered absolutely everything from boiling an egg to baking cakes by way of vegetable cooking and choosing and cooking different cuts of meat. I still use it, although I had to buy a new one as the first one was falling apart at the seams.

To illustrate how little I knew, my toes still curl at the memory of a visit from my lovely mother - and father-in-law. We must have had roast chicken the day before because for this lunch I made my first ever chicken casserole. The meat was cooked, so all that now needed to cook was the vegetables (potatoes and carrots I think).

Now, we all know that potatoes need only to boil for 20 minutes to cook.

I think you might be ahead of me here.

I popped the casserole in the oven (and I can’t remember if I even preheated the oven) and left it to cook for 20 minutes.

I was probably green enough to set the oven temperature to boiling point.

This was in 1961, so I don’t think they would be cooked yet.

Exit one very red-faced Elaine.

I checked the recipe books after that until I had more, well-informed, confidence.

The next cookery book arose from the fact that we were entertaining a bit, so I bought The Robert Carrier Cookbook, a fat paperback. This is very 70s, full of rich food. I used it a great deal, so much so that it is falling apart. I don’t use it often now, but it is still there. Following on its heels was Robert Carrier’s Cooking for You, a hardback with two recipes to a page and a picture with each recipe. It is a bit like learning to read, a picture does help when learning to cook!

Next, of course, was the famous Delia, another well thumbed paperback.

Now I have a bookshelf of cookbooks on differing subjects, Indian, Italian to mention two. Over the years I have borrowed recipes and adapted recipes and kept them in a folder – they are now of course transferred to my computer, but are constantly being adapted and updated each time I make a recipe, and of course I am constantly borrowing.

Off to the onion soup now.

If It's Thursday, It Must Be ......

...... cleaning day.

My wonderful cleaners arrived, with L. bearing a bunch of roses. She removed the flowers which were well past their best and gave the vase a good wash before trimming the roses and putting them in water in the same vase. Some of the carnations were all right so they joined the roses. This looks really pretty on my mantelpiece.

Not only that, but L. peeled my potatoes and left them under water as well as preparing the sprouts. I think she knows me well enough to realise that I would be more likely to make a meal and eat it tonight if everything was ready. The meat course (mince and beans) I had removed from the freezer last night.

So now I have no excuse.

Cooking (but only just)

After the electrician had done his job, I returned to my flat to make my evening meal.

I could not summon up the energy, so sat down with a few nibbles.

Yesterday was another day much the same, except that I was determined to make a cauliflower macaroni cheese.

First, removed the casserole dish from the sideboard and took it to the kitchen.

Then sat down for a bit.

Then back to the kitchen and put cauliflower and macaroni into a sauce pan, brought it to the boil and set it to go for 10 minutes.

Sat down again.

Drained the pan contents into a casserole dish.

Sat down again.

Gave myself a metaphoric kick and made the cheese sauce in the same pan as I had used to cook the macaroni and cauliflower.

At last it was made and poured over the cauliflower and macaroni mix.

Stirred up together and left in the casserole dish ready to heat through for this evening’s meal.

Even did the washing up.

This morning my friend J from upstairs came to see how I was doing and we had a cup of tea and a blether.

A Cook-a thon

After I came home from visiting TBSITW I decided to start preparing the vegetables for a shin of beef, so I peeled and cut into small cubes 3 potatoes and 1 carrot, then placed them in a jug under cold water. The quantities are not exact and depend on what you have in the fridge or larder.

Yesterday I washed and cut into small pieces some very small celery and 2 leeks. I was going to add two onions but in the end felt that, with all the leeks I would use only one large one, peeled and diced.

I put all the vegetables in the bottom of a soup pot and boiled water to which I added two Kallo organic beef bouillon cubes. I then added enough of this stock mix plus some extra boiled water just to cover the vegetables.

On top of all this I placed the shin of beef which I had bought at a Farmers Market and frozen prior to defrosting it over the night before.

I then brought the whole thing to the boil and turned the hob down to 2 (the setting at which I cook vegetables), but turned it down to 1 to simmer away very gently for over 3 hours.

After I turned the hob off I left the pan to stand there while the hob was still hot.

Meanwhile I peeled, cored and sliced 8 cooking apples given to me by TBSITW and placed them in a heavy pan I added some sugar and a wine glass of water, brought it to a gentle boil and left it for about 20 minutes until the apples were falling.

Later on I rescued from the fridge T****’s Finest Streaky Pancetta a good week prior to its use by date and grilled all of it, leaving it to drain on kitchen paper before crushing it and freezing it for use in potato salad.

After all that I sat down to read Private Eye.

Today I have posted the shin recipe on my recipe blog.

Cooking and Cleaning

The weather today (so far) is a bit drier, thank goodness.

I noticed yesterday when making the meat loaf that I thoroughly enjoyed getting my hands stuck in there kneading it, whereas I thought it might be a bit painful for my poor old thumbs. On the contrary, and with the quantity of meat mixture to get mixed evenly together - remember we are talking steak, ham and the breadcrumb/egg mix - it took quite a lot of kneading.

Now I think I might actually be able to make a loaf of bread or rolls myself.

And I always thought it would be impossible.

See, nothing is impossible.

This morning I have sliced the meat loaf into quite thick slices and layered them, 2 at a time, in freezer layering tissue. and put into the freeezer 5 bags of 2 slices.

(and yes to TBSITW, I did update the list of freezer contents!)

My two lovely cleaners are due shortly, so I hope I have time to nip out for a roll and to post a letter

A Quiet Day.....

..... after all the excitement of yesterday, catching up with blogs, washings, and my 2 readers know how much I love that latter job ;-(

I am in the process of cooking my lamb mince and have prepared the onions and mushrooms. The potatoes, carrots and kohl rabi are in the sink awaiting my input with a peeler and a knife. I have discovered that it makes sense for me to prepare 2 days' worth of veg and keep half under water in a jug in the fridge (Laziness is the mother of invention).

I forgot to mention yesterday that I received a most delightful and unexpected extra birthday gift - a tail feather from the neighbourhood peacock, so that I now have two. I spotted him at the weekend walking purposefully across my little patch of grass towards my herb and flower pots. I bet he was looking for my, now non-existent, parsley and a tail feather must have got caught, probably in one of the lavender plants - I have two, bought last year at a bargain price of two for £5 and they are really growing apace.

Le Weekend

Yesterday afternoon daughter, her partner and her younger son came to collect me and take me to their home. Before we left, her partner (hereafter known as M) fixed the water tank problem – after adding a small amount of water to the header tank he could see (and feel) that it was virtually full.

So he inspected things more closely.

Being both a man and a plumber, (and even though he had not come across this kind of water tank before), he looked at it more carefully.

And found a button labelled “Reset”.

So he pressed it.

And, lo, two green lights could then be seen.

I wonder how often this would have sufficed……..

After this, daughter put two cables into their respective USB ports on the front of my pc – they are too low for me to reach.

Then off we set.

While sipping on a glass of wine, I made a rainbow salad to start (shamelessly stolen from missbliss ) It really does look and taste good. This was followed by a rather good bolognaise with tagliatelli. I must get the recipe from her as it was different and really tasty. Had to pass up on the film after dinner and head off to bed, but it was a smashing evening. M has just driven me home by a new and very pretty route.

So here I am, on-line again, and glad to report that I am feeling well.

Now You're Cooking

Recently I have been publishing posts with my purchases of organic meat and vegetables, and from that have also posted some recipes. Now, all my life I have been known as "The Casserole Queen"; the reason for this being that I was married to a man whose time of arrival home (and sometimes the number of people he brought with him) was wildly variable. The easiest way of coping with this was to cook casseroles as they could be left on a slow cook until required.

I have to admit defeat, and to a Young Pretender* missbliss who not only turns out to be an imaginative and good cook, but who also takes photographs of professional quality of the various stages from raw ingredients to the finished article. [Have you tried finding a publisher for this sort of thing?]

Not only that but she makes cakes which had me slavering over a hot pc keyboard.

The Little Medic is a very lucky man.

I hereby renounce my title in favour of missbliss, and look forward to many more interesting recipes (and photos).

*Pretender = Claimant

Sometimes I Sits and Thinks

and sometimes I just sits.

I am conscious that over the past week or so, I have moaned about my health or rather consequences of my ill health.

First off, I am 66, a bit disabled and have multiple pathologies, but that is not how I define myself, nor is it how I wish to be defined. Some few years age I was accused of burying my head in the sand; it was an opinion expressed repeatedly and somewhat forcibly, and caused me to lose my self confidence for a bit. However, that is past and gone.

I would prefer to define myself as someone with a cheerful disposition, caring, friendly and outgoing. I am so happy to be going to the local bridge club, and improving my game as well as meeting new people. In addition to that, I love my family and see them as often as possible. Getting a car through Motability was great as it gave me the ability to get to places otherwise impossible (or very difficult).

I love reading, particularly detective fiction; recently I have been reading authors from different countries (Italy, Sicily, Spain, Sweden, Iceland) writing the same sort of stories as Ian Rankin. They each have their own “Rebus” and they are each firmly grounded in their locality and their own climate. I enjoy seeing the parts that are almost a constant and the parts that are so different because of climate differences or other cultural differences: (In Italy, especially Sicily, the Mafia; in Spain the issues arising from the Fascist era; in Sweden the immigrants from Eastern Europe.)

I love jigsaws and recycle them through my sister, 2 friends here, and then to the charity shop. My dining room table is quite small, so I can do only 1000 piece jigsaws, which is something of a shame as the bigger ones are more challenging – mind you, some of the 1000 piece ones are very challenging too!

I love cooking, and I make it worth the effort by making large casseroles and so on and then freezing them in single serving quantities. I just love my new induction hob, it is so controllable: you can leave a casserole on it just bubbling away for 3 hours almost unsupervised.

After quite a long gap, I have gone back to the Church, and am so glad I did so. I left many years ago for rather foolish reasons involving a row with the rector and silly pride kept me away for some time.

Perhaps some of that can go towards defining me….