Comfort for the soul

...and for the body.

You know, there's nothing like home cooked food to make you feel good. And, for me at least, nothing like making home cooked food to make me feel good. Honestly, I love it. Cooking really relaxes me. Wait a minute, let me qualify that. Cooking, when there isn't a time pressure really relaxes me. I'm not sure I'd feel the same way if I was having to churn out meal after meal to a schedule, particularly if the diners were fussy or unappreciative. I really do take my hat off to working mums (or dads, for that matter) who manage that particular miracle day in, day out.

But for me, I'm lucky. Generally the only person I have to please is myself - and I'm always appreciative of my efforts! I can pick and choose when I cook, or when I just snack. I can opt to eat in the middle of the day from the canteen at work and just have toast or something similar when I get in at night. My only deadlines are the ones I set myself, and if I'm too tired to cook but am hungry, there's usually something in the freezer that can just be heated up from one of my earlier cooking sessions. (I always make way more than I need with the express intention of freezing the rest for a later date. I know my work/life [im]balance, after all!)

So, last night, after a great day out in Edinburgh exploring what was left of the sales, my relaxation method of choice for a fun Saturday evening was to raid the fridge and get cooking. I confess that I'm not organised enough to plan menus out - unless for special occasions - and my dishes tend to be combinations of what's in the fridge/cupboard and needing to be used up. Years of Protect and Survive from my Mum have left me with a 'nuclear store cupboard' mentality to food shopping, so it's not usually too hard to whip something up from what I can find around and about of an evening.

I'll sometimes buy ingredients with the intention of making a particular dish, but more often I buy things because they look interesting, or I like the taste and know that I'll find something to do with them. As a result, I don't often follow recipes. Generally my dishes are made up, sometimes loosely based on a recipe from a book, but more often just guess work about what flavours and textures will work well together.

Don't get me wrong, I own tons of cookery books, and I love reading them. They generally make my mouth water. I also have a subscription to the ever enticing Delicious magazine. And I wouldn't be without any of them. But they're pretty much just for ideas. My true passion is creating!

And this little lot? Well, it was 2 (3 minus 1 because I had no kidney beans!) and mushroom chilli, and stuffed portobello mushrooms. I ate some of the chilli, which was very good if I say so myself, and the mushrooms have gone into the freezer for another day - probably to be eaten either on their on with a salad of some description, or as a side dish to another main meal. Can't wait!

OK, I did promise the recipes to some friends so here they are - or as close as you get to recipes from me!

Chilli - sweat off some onions and peppers, add chilli flakes and powder, cook off a bit and then add a tin or so of chopped tomatoes (plus any whole ones left in the fridge!). Throw in some quartered button mushrooms and tins of whatever beans you have handy. Cook for about 30 mins to let the juices out and flavours in. My secret additional ingredient for last night was a dash of Jerk Molasses Barbeque sauce, which added a fabulous hint of smokiness. 

A tip from a friend was to make corn bread to go with it. That's a definite for me when the remains come out of the freezer next time!

Stuffed mushrooms - take however many portobello or breakfast mushrooms you have, brush them with olive oil and put in the oven on a baking tray for 4 mins. Meanwhile chop up onions - or in this case, leeks - and sweat in butter. Add garlic if you like, I didn't but I'm sure it would taste good. I had some thyme - which is great with mushrooms - so that went in after the sweating. I also added the stalks from the mushrooms for some extra flavour and to avoid wasting them. Crumble up some cheese, add to the pan together with some breadcrumbs and an egg. Season and then pack on top of the part cooked mushrooms. Put the whole lot back in the oven and cook for another 6 mins or so. Remove, eat, enjoy!

Cooking up a storm

As regular readers of my blog will now, I really enjoy cooking. It's one of my relaxations. Amazingly, after a tough day or week at work, I really do find comfort and calm from messing about in my kitchen and rustling up something to eat from whatever I can lay my hands on.

I must confess, however, I had got myself into a bit of a rut. Same old favourite recipes time after time. Last year, partly in celebration at being able to cook pretty much whatever I liked now that I was only catering for one and partly to get myself out of my rut, I started trying out new recipes again. I joined the local library with the express purpose of getting out cookery books and my Mum bought me a subscription to the fabulous Delicious magazine. And since then, I've been cooking up a storm.

There is something wonderful about creating your own food. One of my favourite things (yes, I'm that sad) is to do a whole batch of cooking, eat what I can manage that night and then divide the rest up into portions for the freezer. Sadly, what I'm not so good at doing is labelling what I've made so defrosted meals can sometimes be a bit of a voyage of discovery!

Probably another reason I do so much of my own cooking is that I have a food allergy - I can't tolerate much wheat. And I've found that the safest way to know that your food is allergen free is to choose and combine the ingredients yourself. It's amazing how much stuff wheat gets hidden in and unless you can be bothered to spend time reading ALL the labels, it really is quicker - and more fun - to make it from scratch yourself.

(Incidentally, if you love cooking too and haven't yet watched the film Julie and Julia, it's a must. Even if you don't love cooking, you'll probably love the film. Highly recommended.)

But there is one thing about cooking that I just can't stand - and that's the washing up! Sadly it's always there, waiting, lurking, doing it's best to spoil an otherwise joyful experience. In a kitchen as small as mine, there's no room for a mechanical dishwasher, and try as I might I just haven't managed to secure a replacement human one yet either!!

But still, it's not enough to spoil the Joy of Cooking altogether, and for the timebeing I'm quite happy to take the rough with the smooth and soldier on.

And if you're wondering, the dishes above are (respectively) Tray Baked Asian Crusted Salmon - with fillets bought from our local Farmers Market, yum; Asparagus and Spinach Quiche; and Gourmet Mushroom Pies, complete with homemade Rough Puff (gluten free) pastry.

What's cooking?

Despite how tired I can be at the end of the day, more often than not I find cooking really does make me feel better. And those days that I'm too tired to cook from scratch, I try to make sure I always have something in the freezer that I've made earlier and can just heat through. It's very rare these days that I buy in a prepared meal - even as a treat.

This is last night's tea, creamy fish pie cooked at the weekend and a portion saved in the fridge for heating up when I got home from work. Somehow it made all the trials and tribulations of the day melt away and gave me a real sense of satisfaction. As you can see I even managed to add a bit of colour with some sliced beetroot and green 'squeaky' beans on the side. Yum!

And while it seems all too rare these days, I'm pleased to say I'm not the only one. My sister has started blogging recently about some of her recipes for busy working mums, while a friend's sister dedicates her whole blog to all things cooking. Both are inspirational to someone like me who loves cooking, and hopefully to others who maybe don't like it quite so much but want to give it a try.

If you want to give it a go, why not have a look at their blogs, get out your cookery books, watch Food shows on the the TV, take out a magazine subscription, visit your library and see what's on the shelf. Whatever it takes! It's fun, you know it is.

So, after all that, what's your favourite recipe?

T minus 1 ...

... and counting.

Tomorrow is my first ever 10k race and so I spent today resting and preparing.

I started my preparations with a visit to the beautician for a very relaxing treatment. Followed by coffee, brunch and some gentle shopping. Then it was back home for some internet surfing - with a brief interlude making some soup with what's left in the fridge - before carb loading with homemade vegetable lasagne from the freezer tonight.

The evening has been spent watching my latest addiction, Law & Order and making progress with my current crochet project. I've also been watching the Stephen Hawking documentary on Channel 4. All I can say is, I hope no aliens were watching. Far too many ideas on how to colonise the Earth!

In terms of proper preparation, I did my last training run on Wednesday and managed to crack the 10 minute mile for the first time.

So anyway, off to bed for an early night now. Wish me luck for tomorrow!

Where does the day go?

And the minutes and the hours and the weeks?

I can't believe it's over a week already since I got back from my fabulous holiday in Spain. (I promise I will stop mentioning it soon) So what have I been doing with my time? Where has it all gone?

Well, a lot of what I've been doing has been working. I sometimes wonder if going away on holiday is a good idea or not, when you end up coming back to all the work that mounts up while you're away. With the added complexity of trying to remember what it is you were doing before you went! I've had some fairly long days since coming back, a completely full schedule and some tricky issues to deal with. I've also had some fun along the way and some (mini) successes - which is always good.

I'll not bore you with the details, but I'm smiling to myself at something I did yesterday - possibly against my better judgement but... As fans of West Wing will know, it's never a good idea in your work capacity to engage with blogs. By engaging I mean responding. Well, yesterday I did a Joshua and responded in my official capacity to a blog post. Today I sat back and watched the fun! Tomorrow I'll probably regret it, but for now, it's kind of fun.

As well as work, I've been cooking, dancing, running and crocheting. I've also been reading, something I managed not to do much of on holiday unusually for me. Inevitably, I'm reading about Spain! What I've not managed to do is write another chapter for my collaborative book project. But give me time!

But I'm also looking forward - not to wish time away, but genuinely excited about a few things coming up - my first competitive race next weekend, Scotland's first Tango Festival next year, hopefully a trip to see big sis and family at Christmas/New Year and maybe another visit to Spain too at some point.

And that's not even mentioning housework, admin, emails, blogging, chatting to friends, catching up, grocery shopping. (Although mercifully not washing the car since the neighbour's kid has very kindly offered to do it for me - I think in return for not shopping him to his folks about the party he's planning for this weekend while they're away!)

So that's where it goes then!

Wow, fridge surprise supper

I was pondering what to make for my tea tonight and was going to fall back on my old faithful stand-by dish of pasta with butter and black pepper. I thought before I started I would have a look in the fridge to see what I had - and more importantly what was close to (or more accurately passed!) its use-by date.

And that's when I found the beetroot and the goat's cheese. I remembered seeing a recipe for beetroot risotto in one of my cookery books. So I dug it out, read the recipe and then promptly ignored it and did my own thing regardless! Which is pretty much par for the course with my cooking.

Here are the results - a lovely rich looking, and even more fantastic tasting, beetroot risotto. I'm tucking into it just now and can safely say it was worth the extra little bit of effort. Which truth be told wasn't really that much. It took no longer to cook than it did to finish washing last night's dishes and required very little supervision. The trick with my cooking I find, is that, like my gardening efforts, it works best if it can survive a fair degree of neglect!

And for those wanting to emulate, the ingredients, put togethier in standard risotto fashion, are - arborio rice, cooked beetroot, chicken stock, red wine, crumbled goat's cheese, butter, black pepper and lemon thyme.

Mmm!


Now excuse me - I've got to dash and check the peaches and apricots that are baking in the oven (smothered in Cointreau so not as healthy as they sound) for pudding. Another Maxwell if in doubt faithfuls!!

The joy of cooking

I cooked again last night - to celebrate the start of the bank holiday weekend. Sadly I forgot to take a photo of the dish in question, but in my imagination it looked something pretty much like this!

In reality it was a bit less elegant, but still tasty all the same.

After one of the busiest weeks at work I can remember for a while, still not feeling great after my 'man flu' of last week, and at the end of not one of the best days, having sat in the late evening sun (yay for British Summer Time!) for a while with a glass of wine, I decided the best way to relax and cheer myself up at the same time was to do some cooking.

And a prawn curry was the result. Since I hadn't been shopping for a while I was restricted to what was in the cupboard/freezer for ingredients, but luckily I found some mushrooms and a pepper lurking at the bottom of the fridge that made up the bulk of the curry, with some frozen king prawns taking star billing. Rooting around at the back of the cupboard unearthed some ground almonds which, together with a generous dollop of natural yoghurt, helped to lift the dish from prawns in a tomato sauce with a hint of curry into something that, in all honesty, didn't actually look that much different from the picture above.

Mmm! Culinary adventures definitely lift the spirits.

And now, since miraculously the sun is shining on a bank holiday weekend, I'm off out for a tramp round Stirling with my camera. Watch this space for the evidence of my wanderings later.

Home cooked hand made

I'm so glad I took the extra time to cook dinner tonight rather than just slump when I got in (late!) from work.

I'd bought 4 sea bass fillets at the supermarket yesterday as they were on special offer and I vaguely remembered I had a recipe I wanted to try out. Unfortunately I didn't have the rest of the ingredients so it was another quick trip out to the shop for potatoes and mushrooms tonight after work before I could start cooking.

Ever the mistress of multi tasking I even managed to get some chores done while this was cooking.

So now I have a car ready to in to the garage tomorrow, a tidy flat, a full tummy AND 3 more portions to freeze for more dinners in the future.

And yes I am feeling smug since you ask!

Different kind of handmade!

I thought I'd share a different kind of handmade today. I was inspired by a friend who has been posting about some of the great meals she's been making and I thought I could join in too.

Yesterday we were discussing what great meals you can make from left-overs. So tonight's meal is a homage to Frances.

Voila, baked egg with yesterday's left-over roast vegetables and the end of a yummy goats cheese. Cook in the oven for 20 minutes and there you go. And it even tastes good too!

And the one he's been waiting for!

Apparently what my nephew really wanted to see was the kitchen. So here it is.

I'm not sure why he's so interested in the kitchen (other than that's where the food will come from) but curiousity must be satisfied. I suspect he may be disappointed.

It's much smaller than what he's used to. (And what I'm used to come to think of it).

Let's put it this way. If my cat were a swinger, she would struggle in this bijoux facility.

(Outdoor entertainment zone pictures will follow in a future post)

A different kind of handmade.

I was wondering what to do with myself this evening seeing as my man has gone out drinking with his mates. And then I remembered the bread mix big sis gave me when I was in Canada.

This is the result. (It actually looks a lot better in the 'flesh' than it does in this photo - blame my mobile phone.

As you can see I couldn't wait to try a bit. Mmmm! It tastes damn good.

And in case you're wondering why it's a Canadian bread mix, they just make better gluten free ones over there.

PS The rest of the evening will be spent crocheting, drinking red wine and watching The Narnia Chronicles on DVD - all at the same time!