Full Metal Wheelbarrow

PIe made from the apples in yesterday's picture. It has been sampled and pronounced good :)

I think the technical man got the hint that we would rather like this sorted as he rang me before 9 o'clock this morning and the part should be on its way to us soon, along with the missing bolt.

Tonight we went out for my belated birthday dinner, and very nice it was too. I had Paneer Makhani (hard to describe, but cubes of soft cheese in a sort of fruity, coconutty, spicy sauce), which was jolly nice and Mango Kufti for afters.

And anyone else who likes Marmite flavoured cashew nuts - Approved Foods currently has them for 60p/packet or 50p/packet if you buy 2 or more.

Obviously you'd need to order a fair bit to make the postage worth it, but I thought it was worth pointing out.

I know some of you lovely folk out there know a lot more about cooking than I do, so I'm hoping you can explain something to me.

I've just acquired, in an order from Approved Food (which is relevant, because it means I didn't have a chance to read the instructions before buying) some
"James Martin Apple, Cinnamon and Raisin pudding mix".

The instructions on how to cook it say to divide the mixture into four ramekins, cover the ramekins with tinfoil, stand them in a roasting pan, fill the roasting pan with hot water to halfway up the ramekins and bake them for 40 mins at 180 Centigrade.

What I am curious to know, not least because I have neither ramekins nor roasting pan among my assorted cooking implements, is whether there is any sensible and rational reason to cook them in this bizarre fashion, or whether it's likely to work just as well if I bung the whole lot in a dish and bake it as is?

When I described it to Rob, he was of the opinion that the whole pan and water arrangement was just a means to stop the small puddings from heating up too fast and burning.

So - is James Martin just being poncy or do I need to go ramekin hunting?

I promised edith_jones  I'd post recipes for some of the veggie stuff I eat, so here we go :-)

Celery and Almond Casserole

This recipe I've been using for more than a decade - in fact I think the original recipe comes from the book that came with our first combi-microwave oven! I've changed it very little really, except to use more almonds than the original recipe calls for.

My mum likes this enormously when I cook it, but says she can never manage to get it to taste the same when she cooks it herself, so results may be variable :-)

Ingredients

1 head of celery
2oz flaked almonds
1 stock cube (I use Oxo vegetable cubes)
200ml water
knob of butter
small amount of flour and water to mix

Chop the celery stalks into thin slices and put into a microwaveable dish with the almonds and the butter. Boil the water and dissolve the stock cube in it, then pour over the other ingredients. Put the lid on the dish and microwave on full power for fifteen minutes, stirring every five minutes.

Mix a desert spoon or so of flour with a little water and stir into the cooked dish to thicken.


Goes nicely with couscous and most vegetables.

I haven't been posting much lately, mainly because of inertia - I've been commenting a fair bit, but just haven't worked up the impetus to do a proper post.

Last week I rang the surgery to see if they'd had the letter from the hospital yet. They hadn't. But they made me an appointment for when it arrived - for the 7th of January. Bah. I'd really rather hoped to get things sorted out a bit earlier than that.

On Monday, I stomped around Derby for three hours and sorted out most of my Christmas shopping. I was surprised how quickly I got tired - I must be out of practice.

Yesterday I posted most of my Christmas cards. I also planned to make shepherd's pie for tea, but found that all my onions had gone mouldy, so ended up cleaning out the fridge instead. Joy. (We had toad in the hole for tea if anyone's on the edge of their seat wondering :-)).

Today, I bought more onions and some sellotape for doing parcels with. Shepherd's pie was had.

Although I was in all afternoon, the veg box man left the box on the doorstep.
Perhaps he didn't knock loud enough or perhaps something more sinister happened, since, in addition to tasty nutritious veg, this week's box also appeared to contain one of the Great Old Ones :-
( Ai! Ai! Cthulu fthagn! )

So I've just spent an hour or so chopping up bits of dead cow to make jerky for Rob's trip. Yep,  vegetarian-for-more-than-a- quarter-of-a-century me ... it's not helped by the fact that it dries better in really small pieces and I was being extra careful to cut any fat out. Since fat doesn't dry properly, if there's too much of it in the finished jerky it can send it rancid. Normally I don't worry too much about tiny bits, as we store the stuff in the freezer anyway just to be on the safe side, but this batch will be travelling on the trike with Rob, so I wanted to make extra sure that it wasn't going to poison him. (He had salmonella once. It wasn't pretty.)

Still, the cats were happy with the scraps...

Also humming away in the dehydrator is the contents of a tin of mango pulp which I bought at Asda this morning and seems to be the ideal consistency for making fruit leathers. Later I'll stew some cooking apples for more apple leather and I need to call the campsite at Mablethorpe (the start point for the journey) as we'll be driving out there  next Wednesday evening and camping there overnight, ready for an early start on Thursday morning.

All of which is to say that the trike was despatched from Australia yesterday and with any luck will be delivered here on Friday. Rob will still have to get the electrics sorted, but he's hoping to be able to get a practice ride out to his parents' place this weekend. We're very grateful to Mick at Greenspeed, who, once it became clear that there was no way that Rob's own trike would be ready in time, offered to send out the demo machine so that Rob could go ahead with the tour.

Recently I had my first order from Approved Foods, who sell food which is past its Best Before date but otherwise perfectly cromulent at greatly reduced prices. I got a Several of my favourite nut roast mix, for instance, which is normally 80p a packet for 99p for a case of 8. Very pleased with all the stuff I got from them so far.

One of the things I bought from them was a case of 10 packets of flavoured couscous mix. Tonight, I made one up for dinner, only to find, as I added the hot water, the scent of mint rising up into my nostrils.... Rob hates mint and won't eat anything with even a trace of it in. Good thing I noticed before I served it up to him, or worse, packed it as part of his food supply for his camping trip! I guess I'll be eating a bit of couscous while he's away :-)

I wouldn't have known the stuff had mint in it even if I hadn't bought it online though - the ingredients say only "dried herbs". I would have thought they ought to list which ones really, what with the prevalence of allergies these days. At least I only paid about 10p a packet for it though :-)

(And I don't blame AF for this - they couldn't have known any more than I did)

Meanwhile, I've ordered three books from Amazon, two of which are the last two of a four book series. They've just emailed me to say they've posted two of them - guess which two. Yep, the unrelated book, and Book 4 of the series...

Yesterday I bought a pie. There were four reduced price fruit pies on the shelf, two labelled apple, two rhubarb. I chose an apple one, because I knew Rob would like apple better than rhubarb. But when I cut it open later it was rhubarb...

I know it was reduced, but I did rather expect it to have the advertised fruit inside! just as well neither of us are violently allergic really!

Rob has been looking at some recipes for camping food this weekend, some of which are fro the opposite side of the pond.

Now, we understand, at least vaguely about "cups" as a measurement, but the measurements in this recipe have us rather confused :-

Black Eyed Peas and Rice
serves 1

1/4 cup instant rice
1/4 cup dried black eyed peas
1 T shelf stable bacon
1/2 T dried roasted red pepper
1/2 T dried tomato
1/2 t dried oregano
1/4 t onion flakes
1/4 t garlic powder
red pepper flakes to taste

1 t olive oil
1/2 t red wine vinegar
1/4 t liquid smoke
2 dashes hot sauce (or to taste)


Is it "T" for tablespoon and "t" for teaspoon perhaps? And if so, what in the name of His Noodly Appendage is "shelf stable bacon"? Not to mention "liquid smoke"....

All help gratefully received