Friday's pine nut double bake

There are several things which indicate the arrival of a warmer season. This may include the outside eating of ice-cream, blossom on trees, turning the heating off, getting my legs out, hanging washing outside. 4 of the above have happened this week. Additionally the lip balm that I have been carrying in the inside pocket of my car door for the last couple of weeks melted today resulting in an unpleasant splodge of grease landing on my lips today during my new(ish) lip care routine. As well as making me reconsider my lip care routine this unexpected heat in my car made me think about summery cakes. Still having half a net full of small courgettes in the fridge my thoughts inevitably ended up with the “dolce zucchini cake”. A tried and tested recipe but one that just doesn’t work when the weather is cold.

I finished work late and had pretty much written off the possibility of making cake tonight. It wasn’t the end of the world; I could always make cake tomorrow. The plan for tonight was pizza with Matt, my husband, and Barbara, his mum; so my Friday night desire for carbohydrate would be met. Pizza is Matt’s realm (he even has a pizza chef hat) so while he was getting on with making it I decided to make myself scarce with a trip to the swimming pool.

It’s my big swim tomorrow and I hadn’t been for over a week. I didn’t want to exhaust myself but I needed to make sure that I could still 1. float 2. kick and 3. breathe etc. in order to feel confident for the 200 lengths. The breathing one was particularly worrying me as I’ve been having some upper respiratory tract symptoms for the last few days. 40 lengths later I had proved that all the above functions were fine. I also decided that the upper respiratory tract symptoms must be hay fever (yet another sign of the seasons beginning with “s” arriving), as they completely resolved whilst my face was mostly submerged in chlorine solution and didn’t come back again until I was exposed to teenage boys’ aerosol spray in the changing rooms.

Friday night is youth night. I have discovered that this mostly means that there are lots of teenage boys trying to impress teenage girls who are clearly not interested in them but find it amusing to tease them into thinking that they might have a chance. It also means that mostly the swimming lanes are empty as they do not lend themselves to teenage flirting. But the changing rooms are full of teenagers. Mostly I find their antics amusing but the one thing I cannot stand about teenage-boy behaviour is the excessive use of unpleasant aerosols. Quite how smelly they think they are after lurking around in a swimming pool is a mystery to me. As is how the smell of their aerosols is supposed to be (as the adverts would have you believe) alluring to the girls.

I was mildly impeded in my return journey from the pool by some dogs which seemed to find me alluring. The first was odd looking and had scary eyes. I didn’t have my glasses on which made it probably seem scarier than it was. The owner responded correctly to my verbal cues (yelping, which my friend who I was on the phone to mistook for back spasms) and called her dog back. The second was an imminent attack by two big bounding black labradors. The owner responded to my cries inappropriately with the words that dog fearers hate “they’re really friendly”. That’s as maybe but they may well knock me over / maul me before our friendship was consolidated.

I used my dog handling techniques – walking on, avoiding eye contact, not aggravating owners – to make it home safely. The pizza was well off being ready and Barbara was yet to arrive. The compulsion to bake summery cake was overwhelming. As well as courgettes the cake consists of butter (or lower fat alternative), sugar, flour, baking powder, sultanas, raisins and pine nuts. It’s a recipe that I would never have considered making in my before-food processor days as it requires 300g of grated courgette and courgette is very challenging to grate. But now I can grate all that in less time than it takes someone to go to the toilet.

The cake went in once the pizza was done. As usual the pizza was mostly Matt’s work – my contribution being a little bit of vegetable chopping (with a knife this time, not the food processor). Tonight we had “Greek salad pizza”: spinach, tomato, feta, black olives & pine nuts; and vegetable & tuna pizza. Both were amazing (not a term I use lightly in the description of pizza), but the Greek Salad one was my favourite. Matt pre-toasted the pine nuts which was very effective. There’s enough leftovers for lunch tomorrow which is just what I’ll need pre-swim. (At least it will taste nice. Unlike for running, there seems to be a lack of information about how one should approach a long distance swim from a nutritional perspective. Or from any other perspective for that matter.)

The cake should have been coming out about the time we finished our pizza, but my first skewer test suggested it needed a bit longer. So we put on some early 1990’s comedy-drama set in Kent to pass the time whilst waiting. Second skewer test indicated further cooking necessary. Further plot development / cringe-worthy character interactions. Third skewer test showed the cake was getting there but still not quite ready. I was getting inpatient by now (as was everyone else) so cranked up the temperature a bit. Bit more TV but couldn’t really concentrate due to thoughts of imminent cake. Fourth skewer test: success. This was fortunate as the top wouldn’t take much more browning.

Unfortunately it needed to cool before it could be cut safely. It was getting late and Barbara had to go. Matt and I should have gone to bed (I suppose I need to make sure I’ve got plenty of rest before my sporting endeavours and Matt’s supporting role) but now the cake was there it was just too tempting not to stay up so we could try some. So we let it cool just a little bit more before Matt sliced it. And it was worth staying up for. And given the lack of any other nutritional advice I can’t think of many better sources of energy for my swim tomorrow; but I will deliver a slice to Barbara first.

Monday's chilli incident

Again, I find myself in the position of having a surfeit of courgettes. They looked so nice in their little net the other day and I am determined to use them while they are relatively nice, before they get to that pre-slime stage.

It being Monday I had to do something quick. This is because Monday night is band night. And given that we only have pathetically tiny baking potatoes (based on my knowledge of potato farming this is probably because of sub-optimal potato growing conditions recently), and that courgette doesn’t really go with baked potato anyway it would be a pasta evening.

A pasta dish would also be a good opportunity to use up some feta cheese, which has been open in the fridge since a friend wanted it on a crumpet a few weeks ago. Matt, my husband, deemed that this was still fit for human consumption.

So the pasta sauce would consist of red onion (x 2, sliced), courgette (x 4 small, “ribboned” with the peeler), chilli (tiny bit, chopped up really small), thyme (few sprigs, from the garden, still uncommonly exciting), feta (about half a block, chopped in dice sized bits), low fat soft cheese (tablespoon or so), sundried tomatoes (x 8, quartered) and black pepper (few grinds). The most difficult part was deciding what pasta to use; the options being twists, tubes or spaghetti. I went for the twists, purely on the basis that there was about the right quantity for dinner for two, which would have the consequence of freeing up a plastic canister for some pasta bows (my favourite pasta shape).

It took longer than planned to make. Mainly because I wanted to make sure that the onions were nice and soft before adding the rest of the sauce ingredients. I would not be making it to band on time and so was really hoping that my improvised cooking delay would be worth it. From somewhere I had the inspiration to add a few pine nuts just as the sauce was nearly finished. I would have grated over some parmesan before eating if we had some. But we didn’t, and low fat cheddar seemed somehow unfitting.

Even if I do say so myself it was one of the best pasta dishes I have had in ages. Based on the “mmm” sounds, Matt agreed. I was especially pleased because I seemed to have got the chilli just right for my husband’s delicate palate. It gave it a nice warmth, but didn’t make his mouth hurt or my nose run. And the pine nuts were a good inspiration, giving it just a little bit of crunch in random mouthfuls.

It was gone 8 by the time we had finished and I umm-ed and ahh-ed about whether to go to band as I was feeling very tired. But I decided to venture out (mainly to leave Matt in peace with his skirting boards).

It was a particularly comical rehearsal. I do my best to keep “smut” out of these blogs but these sound bites from our fabulous conductor just have to be shared: “Does anyone have the horn?” and “You’ve really got to feel each other”. It would have probably gone un-noticed (not the most innuendo loving room of people you could get) but for the clarinettist I was sat next to who pointed these out to me and had a little chuckle. And for some reason the mood I was in I descended into hysterics.

Having composed myself the rehearsal proceeded uneventfully for a while. And then I got a little itch in my eye, or maybe my eyes were feeling tired. Either way I gave my eyes a little rub. I had clearly not removed all traces of chilli from my fingers. I think I let out a little yelp. The chilli in the eye thing is one of those things that you always hear about but can’t really believe ever happens, or at least not to you. Well it does. And it really stings. It is one of the most sting-y things I have ever experienced.

This called for a quick dash out to the toilets but I didn’t really know what to do. My instinct would be to bathe my eye in water but I couldn’t stop thinking about when you eat a too spicy curry and water makes it worse but beer or milk makes it better. Being in the toilets of a church I had neither beer nor milk available to me. The stinging was clearly not going to go away on its own. This called for a quick call to my mum. Although she was clearly inexperienced in first aid for chilli related eye injuries she was calm in her advice to put cold water on it and I felt bolstered to follow this course of action. It helped. So much so that I was able to go back and join in the remainder of the band rehearsal unimpeded (apart from my lack of skill at high notes – there’s a reason I play 3^rd clarinet).

I think I might cook the rest of the courgettes without chilli. 

Thursday's quick curry

Until today, most of this week’s meals have been of the x-on-toast variety: beans, cheese, sardines, more beans. I branched out and tried out a different type of sardine (my usual is the sort in tomato sauce): picante. This was mainly because there were none in tomato sauce in the cupboard. Picante turns out to be oil with a 2 whole chillies. It was a good job that Matt, my husband, didn’t try these – they made my nose run so I dread to think what they would have done to his delicate taste buds.

The x-on-toast meals were a result of there not being anything much else at home: yesterday’s “big shop” was well overdue. Mostly this involved me doing the shopping while Matt was on the phone. I replenished the oily fish supplies, reverting to form with the tomato sauced type and also got a good selection of fresh food. We shopped after our dancing class. This has the benefit of the shop being quite empty and there usually being quite a few reductions but the drawback of being hungry whilst shopping (the cha cha cha is particularly energy consuming). So, unchecked by Matt (we usually put the brakes on each other’s retail impulses), I was unable to resist the super-reduced bakery products. I saw the super-reduced stickers but didn’t really think about what I would do with a packet of sesame seed bagels, 6 finger rolls, 6 granary rolls (I am at least partially prepared for barbeque season now) and a full-sized loaf of sliced bread when I got them home.

The other drawback of the late evening visit to the supermarket is the lack of checkout staff – necessitating the use of the self-checkout. These were initially a source of great amusement to me and reminded me of my days working in a large stationery shop. They’re still fine if you just want a few simple (i.e. not age restricted or security tagged) items but for a trolley load of stuff they are not optimal. My usual supermarket bagging system is ruined. Anyway, last night I let Matt deal with the self-checkout on his own while I then talked on the phone.

As well as all the refined carbohydrate I had picked up sufficient provisions to make a curry tonight. This actually only required only the addition of an onion and some mushrooms to a few things we already had but psychologically the restocking of the fridge restored my cooking motivation. Usually I like to cook curry very slowly but today we wanted to swim before dinner and I thought better than to leave the gas on while we were out.

After a quick fuel up on half a bagel with my favourite yeast extract we headed out to the pool.

The pool seemed rather busy so I asked the lifeguard if all of the lanes were for general public lengths. Despite being a lovely new facility they have yet to devise a system of indicating where I should swim at any particular time that I turn up. I was told that none of the lanes were for the public as it was “The University”. I think he must have noticed a disappointed look on my face as he then said that it would be ok to swim in one of the lanes. Clearly my physique did not give away the elite swimmer that I am becoming (haha!) as he suggested that I go in the lane with all the people doing breast-stroke with their heads out of the water. I explained my training and that I would be going fast (haha!) and was redirected to the “fast of the fast lanes” (haha!). Whilst I was preparing to enter the water (positioning of goggles) the lifeguard commented that I must be an open water swimmer (haha!), I’m not sure if that might relate to my physique too – maybe I looked well insulated! I started off going quite fast and was keeping pace with the “fastest of the fast” but reverted to my usual pace as they emptied out of the pool. Eventually I had the lane to myself. This struck me as the perfect opportunity to practice my tumble turns. Believe it or not the tumble turn has been recommended to me by a doctor as a good exercise for my back. Usually they aren’t possible because either there are too many people hanging around at the end of the lane and I can’t judge my tumbling that accurately to avoid them, or there are swimmers behind me and I worry about getting disorientated during my tumbling and crashing into them (or them into me). Allegedly the tumble turn is supposed to be an efficient way of getting from one length to the next but I think that I’m missing this benefit by coming to a standstill before executing it. It is a very non-automatic motion and it’s never until I’m upside down that my brain realises that it’s going to have to twist my body to get out of it.

I had a sesame seed (from the pre-swim half-bagel) stuck in my teeth for most of my swim which distracted me from my length counting.

We got home at 9pm after a reasonable swim (it was cut short because some club people turned up to use the section of the pool I was in and I was insufficiently motivated to move to another part once my rhythm had been interrupted). This was already too late to be eating but I had been thinking about curry all day and if it wasn’t this then it would be another x-on-toast. I was very hungry so filled the immediate gap with a mini cheese in red wax which one of Matt’s friends had left behind at the weekend.

The curry is a tried and tested one first created by Matt and replicated on many occasions since; sometimes by him but tonight by me since time was of the essence and speed chopping does not feature on Matt’s CV. The curry consists of local curry powder, chilli (not too much), onion, garlic, sweet potato, mushrooms, chickpeas, tinned tomatoes, a bit of stock and some coconut milk.

While this was all brewing up I had to deal with yesterday’s bread. Matt managed to rearrange the freezer to make space for the rolls. This required the removal of some soup which will have to be eaten this weekend and some pistachio ice-cream which would not last so long. There was still a full sized loaf of sliced bread. I decided that the best thing would be to turn it into bread crumbs. I intended to package this in 200g and 100g bags which would fit into small spaces in the freezer. I was 30g short for my final 100g bag. I suppose that is accounted for by all the crumbs that Fred, my mother-in-law’s Yorkshire terrier, helpfully cleared up.

The curry was delicious, despite the quick cook. Matt had his with naan bread (also removed from the freezer to make way for the new things). I had mine with lime pickle to spice it up a bit. We both had mango chutney. Desert was the pistachio ice-cream with some unnecessary spray cream. Now I’m thinking of things to do with 770g of bread crumbs. All I can think of at the moment is Christmas pudding.

Thursday's thursdaes (and other things)

After work today I didn’t really feel like going for a swim. But Matt, my husband, said “let’s go now” and since he was showing unusual enthusiasm I thought I’d better not make any excuses.

My previous swim had been on Monday and had been cut short by a small boy vomiting in the pool. So today I was of the opinion that if I was going to make the effort to get into the pool I should make up for that short swim with a long one. Matt was not of the same opinion and I noticed at about 80 lengths that he had got out. I am a very antisocial swimmer and swim with an MP3 player so am basically oblivious to what is going on around me. This proved to be hazardous on Monday when I failed to notice that the lifeguards had cleared the pool following the vomiting incident until one of them tapped me on the head. Fortunately Matt was still in the changing room after I had made my 100 length target so I was not forced into even more physical exertion with a walk home.

It was quite late by the time we got in, but after all that exercise I felt pretty hungry. Something quick and filling was called for: jacket potatoes or pasta. (We have a microwave with a jacket potato function which kind of half-microwaves-half-bakes the potatoes so that they are done really nicely in about a quarter of an hour.) Since we had no jacketing potatoes pasta it would be.

I made a quick kind of bolognese sauce. In a household that doesn’t eat meat it will only ever be a kind of bolognese sauce. Today’s variant was:

- A large onion, 2 sticks of celery, 3 carrots - all chopped up and fried until soft. Sometimes I also add mushrooms and / or peppers here but we had none. I would also usually put in garlic, but we only had smoked garlic. When I went to get some for chopping it was quite evident that it was past its best. Which is unsurprising, I suppose, given that I’d imported it from the Isle of Wight last August.

- Vegetarian mince, added until browned a bit. We had half a bag in the freezer which was ideal.

- A tin of plum tomatoes. It wasn’t until after I’d added them that I realised that they weren’t chopped. Usually I use scissors in the tin to chop non-chopped tinned tomatoes but today I had to undertake the slightly trickier task of chopping in the pan. The tricky bit is avoiding the non-stick surface of the pan.

- Some (probably about 100ml) red wine (which I rinsed the tomato tin out with). A spoonful of vegetable stock powder. A spoonful of yeast extract. Some Worcestershire sauce could have replaced either one of those. I have found that using all three on one occasion is excessive.

You can simmer away for quite a long time if you like, but hunger dictated that it would be a less mature kind of bolognese this evening. Matt kept an eye on it and got the pasta ready (fusilli today) while I made some cookies.

These were very simple: butter, sugar, flour, egg, vanilla and chocolate. The recipe said that I should mix it with a wooden spoon but I figured I would use the electric whisk. I have been having some problems with my elbow (if it’s possible to get tennis elbow from swimming I think that might be it) so wanted to avoid manual labour if possible. The electric whisk was fine. 

The main hazard I found in the preparation of the cookies was the presence of a small dog. We are taking care of my mother-in-law’s Yorkshire terrier, Fred, for a week. I have been led to understand that dogs should not eat chocolate - apparently it can kill them. The chocolate for the cookies had to be “roughly chopped”. Fred is always around your feet when there’s anything to do with food going on and the process of chocolate chopping inevitably results in some chocolate dust finding its way to the floor. Matt said not to worry too much and pointed out the time, Christmas 2011 I think, when he managed to get his way into and lick away a not insignificant quantity of premium dark chocolate. He was fine then and 2 hours after today’s chocolate consumption seems to be none the worse for it.

The cookies baked while we ate dinner. I wanted to put some cheese on it but the small amount of (open) remaining cheddar had grown a fur coat so I thought better of it. There will be some lucky birds getting that cheese tomorrow. Rather than opening a new cheese Matt challenged me to eat dinner cheeseless. And do you know? I don’t think it was any the worse for the absence of dairy. I was somewhat shocked when I returned from the kitchen having removed the cookies from the oven to find Matt feeding Fred veggie bolognese from a fork.

Since the cookies would have to cool before we could go to be and it would be nice to digest the pasta bit before bed I decided to have a bit of pudding – very rare for a week night. I’d bought some strawberries a few days ago (out of season I know but they smelt lovely) and it was about time that they were eaten up. I’m going away for the weekend and it would be unlikely that Matt would choose them himself. My first thought had been to serve them with some spray cream but as I was rinsing them I had the idea of making strawberry sundaes: the above with the addition of some vanilla ice-cream and sprinkles. I would have added some fruity sauce too if we had some. Our ice-cream thursdaes were devoured.

The cookies did the usual thing of spreading out whilst baking and joining up to each other. I refuse to use more baking trays to prevent this so my cookies are likely to always be slightly non-round. Most of the cookies are for sharing with my friends this weekend but one of them broke in the process of removal from the baking tray so it seemed only prudent to test it. Matt approved, but he generally does of sweet things.

They’ve packed up nicely into a two tier sandwich box (I partially chose cookies for ease of transportation); and now I just await the verdict of a broader jury.

Tuesday's mushroom rejuvenation

I was thwarted in my intention to come home for lunch today due to never predicted but often occurrent Tuesday busy-ness. So lunch was a sugary drink from my favourite bargain supermarket and a just-about-enjoyable cheese scone from a local chain bakery.

So my planned lunch was to become dinner. Which in itself was a modification of Sunday’s dinner. Which had been substantially modified yesterday morning, further modified (unsuccessfully in my opinion) by Matt, my husband, yesterday evening and served up in its final guise tonight, after Matt had made another (successful this time) modification.

Sunday’s dinner was a mushroom stew with dumplings. We have a large store of  vegetable suet due to a misadventure a couple of months ago. I can’t think of much to do with suet except for dumplings and Christmas pudding. I have investigated the Christmas pudding option but it seems that I’m 6 months too early. That also gives me 6 months to get some breadcrumbs.

Normally I would put celery in the stew but our weekend visitor, Glen, makes no secret of his dislike of celery so it consisted of mushrooms, onion, carrot, garlic, thyme from the garden (still disproportionately exciting) and stock. And more mushrooms. To make it really mushroomy you use some normal mushrooms and some of those preserved mushrooms. The dumplings were a tiny bit mustardy (I was careful with the mustard powder but will be more liberal next time). The stew was served with veggie sausages and lots of brocolli (Glen likes brocolli almost as much as I do), which soaked up the juices in a most delightful way (to paraphrase a song from one of my favourite Disney® films).

The first modification was the addition of a load of (green) lentils to the stew leftovers (all the dumplings had been eaten), all simmered up until they were soft (approximately the time it takes to do a load of non-dishwashable washing up and then all blended up. This did not look very nice, but did smell very nice. I was looking forward to having some later in the day.

Matt offered to get the dinner ready – the modification being the addition of enough hot water to turn the mixture from mush to soup and then salt / peppering it. Unfortunately he was perhaps too liberal with the salt for my liking (and I am a bit of a salt fiend). Fortunately he had only modified a enough for a bowl each (about a quarter of the mush). So after a few mouthfuls mine went back in with the rest of the mush.

I now had 30 minutes to get dressed, put on some make-up, tweak my instant fake tan (an impulse buy from earlier in the day – I do not usually “do” fake tan but was pleasantly surprised and it even smelled quite nice) and get my stuff ready to go out to a wedding reception. A wedding reception is a strange thing to go out to on a Monday night, but it was one of the most enjoyable Monday nights I’ve spent in a long while. There was no capacity for further soup preparation prior to the anticipated arrival of our lift. Instead I jammed up a scone (leftover from Sunday afternoon’s tearoom visit) and managed to eat this in the back of my friend’s car with minimal (although not absent) crumb-age.

Tonight Matt did the same modification but this time without the salt. I added my own. As I said I’m quite a salt fiend so I added quite a lot but it still tasted of delicious mushrooms rather than the sea, so I dread to think how much went into last night’s bowl.

A bowl of soup seemed somehow insufficient following the day’s busy-ness. So I put some peppers in the oven to roast up while we were slurping with some vague idea that I’d put them into a wrap (a lot of wraps have somehow appeared in the bread bin).  The idea matured while I slurped and I was aiming to assemble something featuring tomatoes, feta and sweetcorn as well as the peppers (basically all the things that needed using up). I was aiming to assemble them into something resembling a quesedilla. I put all the fillings between two wraps and pan fried in the griddle pan (a rare outing for the griddle pan and it may have actually been more of a toasting since I didn’t actually put any oil in the pan).

The serious flaw here was that quesedillas generally rely on being held together with lots of stringy cheese, versus tonight’s creation which was relatively cheese light. And feta is not renowned for its adhesive properties. So after a few accidents with bits of filling falling out whilst turning the creation (fortunately I had fairly recently cleaned the hob so they could be safely reinserted) it really ended up being more like a toasted sandwich with really thin bread. I cut it into triangles. I’m sure serving food in triangles makes it taste better but it was good whatever. And because we had to use knives and forks to eat it (due to the risk of filling loss) it felt more like a meal than a sandwich.

Saturday's long awaited cheesecake

Last night one of my very best friends, Glen, arrived for the weekend. This is pleasing for a number of reasons including: day trips, food and games to name a few.

Glen is very good at sleeping and there are blackout curtains in our spare room. This morning while he slept I set to work hacking back the unidentified tree in our back garden. We inherited the tree. It’s quite nice but I decided that it had got out of control last week when I hit my head on it when standing up after filling the watering can. I also think this tree is taking more than its fair share of nutrients, depriving the Christmas tree that we are trying to nurture. I have no idea about pruning so approached the sawing with an artistic rather than horticultural perspective. I found the sawing strangely satisfying and ended up lopping off more than I had originally intended but am pleased with the result and as a bonus there’s now a nice spot for a new garden table.

Once we had breakfasted (although whether you can use this verb to refer to a meal eaten after midday is doubtful) we set out for a day trip around the sunny South Hams. Although short in distance to visit this part of the country, the style of the roads (narrow and windy with a high concentration of tractors and big cars) means that it takes quite a while to get to places. So when we arrived at our first destination (a house with gardens with beautiful views of what we learnt from the knowledgeable room guide is called a ria: something that looks like an estuary but isn’t really) we were ready for a bite to eat. We explored the property and gardens after a moderately agreeable Chelsea bun.

Onwards to Slapton Sands. Interesting fact of the day: 769 American servicemen died here during the “dress rehearsal” for the D-Day landings in 1944. The sun was properly warm and being by the seaside the occasion clearly called for an ice-cream. This was to prove somewhat tricky. Ice-cream stop 1: posh-ish looking tearoom. We went inside to look at the cakes but were rather rudely told that if we wanted ice-cream we would have to queue outside. Lesson 1 to ice-cream sellers: please do not be rude to potential ice-cream clients. Ice-cream stop 2: fish and chip restaurant. They were able to offer us vanilla, strawberry or chocolate, which in this day and age to an ice-cream lover is simply uninspiring. Lesson 2 to ice-cream sellers: please offer one or two “alternative” flavours (raspberry ripple would be fine). The fish and chip place people suggested we tried the pub next door. Ice-cream stop 3: pub. Here I faced the dilemma of whether to go for ginger or coffee ice-cream. I chose coffee and was not disappointed. We enjoyed our ice-creams whilst walking along the beach. And then back along the “ley” where we observed (what I suggested to be) the mating behaviour of (what were probably) some cormorants. This was just conjecture: I am not great at bird identification and I am certainly no expert in bird behaviour.

For a change, tonight’s dinner had been planned. Basically a big mixture of onion, peppers, salmon, curry paste, mushrooms, couscous, cherry tomatoes and black olives. It sounds deeply weird but I can assure you it’s very yummy. You pre-cook the veg and the salmon and then bake it all in the oven together. Due to extreme laziness it was served today with bagged salad (which we had planned to eat with Matt’s homemade pizza last night but forgot about in the deliciousness of the pizza).

Pudding was to be a cheesecake. I have quite a few recipes for cheesecake, none of which I have ever made before. So (being a good host) I offered Glen his choice of cheesecake. He chose cherry. I think this was selected following a viewing of a cherry pie earlier in the day. The making of the cheesecake was to prove far from straightforward.

(If you are finding this blog to be too long today I suggest you break here and finish reading another day.)

Most of the cheesecake recipes did not just require cheese. They also required soured cream or something similar. I found one cherry cheesecake recipe which was more fundamental in its ingredients but unfortunately only had the list of ingredients. I had somehow discarded the method from the cutting and not being an experienced cheesecake cook I wasn’t confident about the temperature etc. More searching and I found a simple recipe for a New York Cheesecake which was modifiable to include the desired cherries. Time taken to identify recipe: 15 minutes.

Setting to work of the base I was alarmed to find that we had no biscuits. The low risk option would have been to pop to the corner shop and get some biscuits. But I chose the high risk option and decided to make a base from scratch. I used a very basic shortbread recipe from my most trusted recipe book and pressed it into the base of a spring form tin. I thought it would probably be best to pre-bake this. I had a bit of shortbread mixture left but would worry about that later. Time taken to make base: 15 minutes. Time taken to bake base: until it looked a bit brown around the sides – about 20 minutes I think.

The cheesecake bit required full-fat cream cheese. I can never bring myself to buy full-fat cream cheese. So two tubs of half-fat (at least I didn’t use the super-low-fat stuff) were mixed up with some sugar, lemon zest (I wasn’t totally sure about this based on the subsequent planned addition of cherries but thought that the acidity might be needed so went ahead), a tiny bit of flour and 2 eggs plus one egg yolk (I now have one egg white in the fridge which I am rather at a loss with what to do with). I poured it over the shortbread base. This needed to cook at a lower temperature so couldn’t go in until the main dinner was out. I had a bit of cheesy mixture left but would worry about that later. Time taken to mix cheesy bit: 10 minutes. Time waiting to put cheesecake in the oven: 20 minutes. Time baking: 20 minutes.

After consuming the salmon / couscous dish I removed the partially cooked cheesecake from the oven and went about adding the cherry topping. I had no idea what I was doing and had sort of abandoned any semblance of a recipe. I had 3 choices of cherry: 1. jar of cherry jam 2. jar of cherries in syrup 3. jar of cherries in kirsch. I thought it best to test a spoonful of each and decided that a combination of the cherry jam and cherries in syrup would be best. I heated up some cherry jam in the microwave and poured over the cheesecake then piled on the cherries before putting it back in the oven.

I had a few cherries leftover, plus a load of cherry juice, plus a bit of cherry jam, plus a now open but barely consumed jar of cherries in kirsch, but would worry about those later. Time taken to devise cheesecake topping: 10 minutes. Time taken to add cheesecake topping: 5 minutes. Time taken to complete baking of cheesecake: 45 minutes.

While this was baking I used up some of the leftovers to make some mini-cheesecakes. I was pleased to be able to use the mini-flan tins that I had inherited from my granny. Whether it will be possible to remove the mini-cheesecakes from these we are yet to discover. I was pleased to experiment with some other flavours, so we have some chocolate-orange cheesecakes (made with marmalade) and some crustless ginger and honey cheesecakes (I ran out of shortbread mixture). Whether these will taste any we are yet to discover.

It wasn’t until it was nearly time to remove the cheesecake from the oven (by which time we were all salivating in anticipation) that I realised that the cheesecake would need to be chilled before serving. Apparently you’re not supposed to put things straight out of the oven into the fridge. Matt, my husband, says that it’s bad for the fridge (this strikes me as being the domestic appliance equivalent of anthropomorphism). So I wrapped the cheesecake up and put it in the garden.

Whilst it was chilling I enjoyed a game of my favourite colourful block based game and also one of my favourite word tile games. Time taken to chill cheesecake: 1 hour.

The cheesecake wasn't fully cold but we could wait no longer. But it was amazing. Time taken for 3 people to eat half a cheesecake: 5 minutes.

Tomorrow we plan to go for a long swim. And maybe a long walk too…..

Before trying the fully chilled version of the cheesecake. And the mini-ones. 

Monday's medley of soup

After a leisurely start to the day it was all systems go to equip the garden. The leisurely start included reading an old book – I’m sure I’m enjoying it more because it smells old.

The equipping of the garden first involved removal of junk from the boot of my car at the dump. This included:

1. An enormous and cute, but slightly mouldy teddy bear, that had been freed from our loft by my cousin, Alastair, in January. It had been sat around in a black sack in various locations since as I had been intending to fettle it up with a trip to the launderette but finally thought better of it.
2. A whole load of VHS tapes which I had discovered whilst spring re-arranging (more enjoyable than spring cleaning) yesterday. Both mine and Matt’s and none of them viewed in at least the last 7 years.
3. My condemned sandwich toaster.

Items 1 and 2 disposed of according to plan. Item 3 disposed of causing Matt great hilarity. Today I was fulfilling the role of dumping whilst Matt watched from the car. This is often beneficial as the men at the dump are generally quite keen to help ladies with their dumping. I was duly assisted with items 1 and 2 but today the electrical waste was unmanned.

Taking health and safety seriously I called out before throwing the sandwich toaster into the skip to check that there was no-one inside it. There was no response so I went ahead with the launch of the sandwich toaster. Unfortunately I didn’t launch with quite enough force and the sandwich toaster rebounded from the side of skip, plug flailing and narrowly avoiding my head. It was whilst I was picking up the bits that Matt wound down the car window and told me, between fits of laughter, to walk round the other side of the skip. Where the side was down and I could just place in the sandwich toaster with no risk of head injury.

A successful trip to the garden centre ensued and 8 terracotta, mosaic encrusted pots later we began the return journey. Matt had seat belted the larger pots into the back seats with the rest in the boot so there was limited capacity for shopping from a “luxury” supermarket. One of the best things about said luxury supermarket is that when they reduce things they do really good reductions. Today’s best bargain was watercress and I picked up 4 packets. I also picked up a packet of reduced salad which when put together with some reduced beetroot, the remaining salmon & prawn leftovers and a homemade dressing made a very nice lunch.

After lunch it was back out to another garden centre where we successfully equipped ourselves with garden tables (that sort of match the pots) and a hose. And what appears to me to be an extravagant hose attachment but Matt assures me that we will not regret it.

Once home I needed to turn the watercress into soup while it was still nice. I think that potato is the traditional thickening to go with this but I prefer lentils to add some protein.

Realising that we’d had watercress in the lunchtime salad I thought that I should mix up the day’s flavours, I decided to make another sort of soup too. I got a leek and potato one on the go. 

Then I thought: why stop at two? We had eaten the last portion of frozen soup yesterday (the parsnip and apple one) so there was scope for restocking.

One of my other luxury supermarket bargains was a pot of sun ripened tomatoes and I thought I’d try these with some slightly wrinkling peppers. Having started to heat some olive oil to sauté an onion I noticed that there was quite a bit of oil in the tomato pot and not wanting to waste this I got out another pan and heated that instead.

So now I had a spare pan with olive oil and the only logical thing was to use this to make another soup. I had used up nearly all of the fresh vegetables in the house but there were still some carrots. And I had a little knobble of ginger so decided to try carrot and ginger. To improve the flavour I oven roasted the carrots before adding to the onion and ginger. Whilst the carrots were roasting and I was pondering this creation I felt inspired to add orange juice. This would be the perfect opportunity to use up the oranges and satsumas etc that had been sat, unloved, for a good long while (some I fear since 2012) in the fruit bowl. This is because I love nice citrus and am often tempted to buy. But if I buy a pack, eat one and it’s disappointing then it puts me off the rest. But I hate wasting food so the citrus stay there. (If it’s nice the whole lot may well get devoured in one sitting.) Matt can usually be counted on to help consume food but he isn’t keen on oranges due to the peeling issue (not that I’ve ever perceived that as a particular issue). So I was pleased to be able to squeeze some semi-decent juice out of my languishing fruits, which I added with some stock and red lentils to the other ingredients.

The tomatoey-peppery soup was looking rather insubstantial so I added a tin of tomatoes to that. And some red lentils.

Once all the soups were blended up (separately) we faced the dilemma of which to eat tonight. Matt went for the watercress (with a dollop of crème fraiche) – I am told it was scrumptious. I went for the carrot / ginger / orange. It too was scrumptious. I think that I’ll call it velvet carrot soup as the lentils gave it a gorgeous texture (although I did miss a few bits of carrot in the blending process).

Now I’ve just got to find enough containers to freeze it all. And replenish the lentils.