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.

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.

Friday's fishy and lemony dinner

I do find bank holiday weekends rather disconcerting. Having been confused by the days all week I’ve been convinced since I woke up that today is Saturday. When a “weekday” radio show has come on, rather than re-orientating me to (Good) Friday, it only goes to make me feel even more bewildered that that they are not airing Saturday’s programmes.

One benefit of the bank holiday is that I felt unusually enthusiastic for cleaning the kitchen. By about 2pm it was looking lovely and shiny (I had been doing other things in the course of the morning) and therefore I didn’t feel like messing it up. So I grabbed a quick lunch of my mum’s carrot cake and headed off for a swim. And 180 lengths later I think that I must have burnt off said carrot cake and most of last night’s rice and lentils. The main challenge of this swim was the paradoxical one of needing the loo and also being very thirsty.

Lucy and Barbara, my sister- and mother-in-law, were to be joining us for dinner this evening. Last weekend, whilst at my mum and dad’s, I had hastily purchased a whole salmon. Mum had said that it was fine to invite some friends round for dinner but that we’d need a bit more fish. When I got to the fish counter whole salmon were on a special offer just too good to leave behind. So mum cooked the whole fish, we ate about half of it last weekend and she sent me home with the rest.

So this morning, with a view to constructing a fish pie, I extracted the salmon, along with some pollack and prawns from the freezer. I’d assumed that there’d be some smoked fish there too but that was not the case but since I was going to have to visit the shop anyway it wasn’t too much of a problem.

After my swim the insufficiency of my lunch hit home. Firstly I missed the turning for the nearest supermarket. So I had to detour around one of my least favourite roundabouts.

Whilst trying to select broccoli I observed the man who was refilling this on the shelf cough all over it. Rather than go for the time sensible option of selecting some of the pre-packed stuff I decided that I would leave said supermarket and head to a different one with hopefully better food hygiene standards. Or at least I wouldn’t know otherwise. The main disadvantage in this course of action was that the supermarket that I was about to leave has the advantage of selling French set yoghurts with a lemon flavour in the pack.

I was then hit with indecision. Should I go to the slightly more distant but larger supermarket that would definitely have everything that I needed? Or should I go to the smaller but nearer supermarket which offers a more pleasant shopping experience with less risk of unnecessary purchases but a higher risk of not having everything I needed. I could tolerate almost anything else on my list not being available but without the smoked fish the pie would just not be right.  

When I got to the junction where I had to make a decision I took the gamble on the smaller supermarket. It was obviously my lucky day. Not only did I get the last pack of smoked haddock it was also reduced. Not only did they have French set yoghurts, these included “new” lemon flavour (replacing I think the slightly peculiar pineapple). Not only did they have broccoli, it was 50% extra free.

I made the fish pie with leeks and mushrooms. I used some bay leaves from our garden in the white sauce which I think I found disproportionately exciting. And chives from the pot that my mum had sent back with me last weekend in the mashed potato.

My mashed potato is slightly unconventional as I choose not to peel the potatoes – all the goodness is in the skins surely. I omitted to pre-warn our visitors but Barbara hadn’t noticed until I pointed it out and Lucy had noticed but seemed to think it was ok.

Whenever I eat with Matt’s family I am struck by how slowly I eat. Today everyone else had finished but I had only eaten my veg and had my whole portion of fish pie left. I always eat my vegetables first because I can’t stand them cold.

And then on to pudding. Lucy had asked for something fruity. I needed to use up a couple of lemons. I identified something that fitted the bill: “lemon layer pudding”. This is one of those recipes where you mix everything together and when it cooks it divides into a spongy layer (although in this instance more sponge-soufflé) and a sauce layer. Having cleaned the kitchen earlier I took extra care to avoid splattering the mixture all over the worktop with the electric whisk.

Barbara declared the pudding to be one of the nicest ever – and I don’t think she was just being kind.  Lucy and Matt demolished it swiftly. I feel suitable inspired to try it with different flavours.

We finished off the evening with some (more) wine (always a risk when Matt’s female relations are around) and a board game. I love games!

Sunday's experimental dumplings

Today saw the sad demise of the sandwich toaster. Probably inspired by the delicious fried bread I had enjoyed at breakfast, I felt inspired to make some cheese and tomato toasties for lunch. This included the slightly taxing task of purchasing tomatoes. Available were 2 packs (of 5) for £2 or loose for £1.99 per kilo. But the packs didn’t have a weight on them. And I’m dreadful at estimating weights. Having found some scales, weighed the loose ones and worked out that I could get five for just about £1 I went for this option. I don’t know why I bought five as the toasties would only need one.

But upon opening the sandwich toaster (which had lain dormant for at least 2 years), the inners appeared to have decayed. So toasties were off and reheat soup was on. This is always a bit of a gamble as I make soup in big batches and freeze in smaller portions which are invariably unlabelled. Today I extracted a tub at random, reheated and we enjoyed parsnip and apple soup, accompanied by toast with my favourite yeast extract spread. The soup was an improvement on its first consumption when I had failed to add enough water and it was more like eating runny apple sauce fragranced with parsnip. I don’t know why I didn’t think it out previously.

Suitably fuelled for an afternoon swim I left Matt with his skirting boards. My exercise was impeded (quite literally if this word comes from ”ped” which I think means to do with feet) by my blistered feet. Having enjoyed 2 night’s dancing in Torquay (hence the cooked breakfast) my feet were rather the worse for wear. Blisters the size of a 50 pence piece on the ball of my left foot and a 20 pence piece on the right, and on both little and big toes. Which resulted in diminished pushing off from the ends and discomfort from the turbulence of the water flowing around my feet.

And then it was time to think about tea. We had a butternut squash which I’d been intending on cooking today and when I inspected it there was a suspicious looking blemish suggesting that it needed using. We had both eaten butternut squash yesterday – Matt as a soup and me in a pasta dish. So the pressure was on to do something creative. Also present was somewhat of a glut of vegetable suet (due Matt’s supermarket enthusiasm a number of weeks ago) and he was keen for some dumplings today. So I decided to go for a vegetable stew. And I decided that as well as the butternut squash I’d use red peppers and mushrooms.

I set the stew off with some onion, celery and garlic. And when I went to vegetable drawer I was confronted with some rather sorry looking courgettes. So one went into the stew. And then I thought I might be putting too many vegetables into the pot. Hence the idea of putting the red pepper into the dumplings.

Once the veggies were sautéed off a bit I had to think about liquid. I would usually chuck in a tin of chopped tomatoes but thought this might be too overpowering for the other relatively subtle veg. So opted instead just for vegetable stock. And then thought I’d add some sherry. This wasn’t totally random. I have made a lovely soup recently with squash and sherry so was this was an extension of that concept. It simmered away, smelling lovely, but not happy leaving well alone I threw in a couple of cups of red lentils.

And so to the dumplings. This was high risk. I am not an experienced dumpling cook but have had relative success when I have done them before so was prepared to be a bit adventurous. I chopped up the red pepper really small and fried it up in the little fried egg pan before adding to the dumpling mixture with some salt and mixed herbs. And then it was just a matter of hoping that the whole thing worked out ok.

Which it did. Not the most attractive looking of dinners but really tasty and the dumplings were lovely.

I’m looking forward to more adventures in dumpling land but first have two dodgy courgettes in urgent need of consumption.

Red pepper dumplings (will make 8 large / 16 small dumplings)

• 45g (vegetable) suet
• 100g self-raising flour½ a red pepper, chopped up as small as you can & fried so it’s soft 
• Sprinkle of dried mixed herbs
• Bit of salt (which is about as descriptive as “pinch”) 
• 70ml cold water

Mix it all up and form into dumplings. Cook in your stew for about 20 minutes, just before serving.