Blog Break - BGT is to blame!

Sorry for the unexpected blog break last week - I'm afraid my only excuse is that I was sat watching Britains Got Talent - I know it's fun to have a whole week of semi-finals, but I'd really rather it was only on once a week so I can do something else instead of watch it! (The dog was impressive though!)

So... seeing as that's all I've been doing, I don't have anything fun to blog about. Except my wonderful husband bought me a present, and I'm finally jumping on the Nigella bandwagon (my blog friend Lisa raves about Nigella all the time so I'm hoping she's right about her! Talking of Lisa, she's also gone AWOL from the blogisphere so hopefully this mention here might bring her back because I miss her comments!).

This is apparently Nigella's third book - Ian selected it because it had several chapters with recipes to make on lazy weekends - which sounds like the perfect use of weekend to me.

I like order - so if this book works out, I'll probably buy her first and second books so I have the starters of a set, instead of one randomly from the middle - although if any of you think I should shun the order and go for your Nigella favourite, let me know which it is and  I'll consider a departure from my world of OCD.
 

Diet food... a journey!

So February finally saw me convincing Ian to help me lose weight for the wedding.  He's always semi-supportive, but loves to cook unhealthy things and I love to eat them - so hammering home how unhappy I was with myself wasn't fun, but we've been looking for healthier things since, and it's been an interesting journey.  We've had some good meals, and we've had some bad - but we've generally stuck with it.  So far, I'm 10lbs down.  I'm really pleased with the turn around, and I'm going to let you see some of the things we've tried - and I'm also happy to take any suggested recipes for us to try.  

We started off just by trying to modify some of our existing meals. First we tried putting grated carrot into our meatballs - it lacked flavour and was a bit mushy, I ate it, Ian got takeaway.  We swapped the cheese in  our   fajitas for guacamole, but the avocados wouldn't ripen - it was still good, but there wasn't very much of it.  Also, Ian doesn't understand the concept of guacamole being cooling, and added lots of chilli to it!

We then decided that we'd spend some time on Sundays going through my food magazines looking for healthy recipes so that we could learn to enjoy some new things instead of stressing over changing our existing meals.

Here's the photographic evidence from week one!

 

This was a smoked paprika mackerel - it was quite tasty, but I wasn't so keen on the smokiness.  The saute potatoes were nice though, and added more flavour to the meal (I usually just have my new potatoes boiled - slightly healthier than Ian's version, but pretty boring).  We bought the fish whole so Ian got to learn how to gut a fish and I got to take photos of the heads to scare my friend with!

This lasagne was made using ricotta instead of cheese sauce and mushrooms in place of meat.  It wasn't bad but the ricotta didn't melt very nicely and so it was all gloopy.  Probably wouldn't have this one again.

 

We used a tikka masalla curry paste to make this prawn, pea and tomato curry.  The best bits were the chunks of tomatoes but there weren't many of those cos they all disintegrated.  I think I'd prefer this more if we used chicken (mainly because I think the prawn flavour isn't strong enough to come through once you add the curry paste).

 

Ian made this chicken and mushroom stir fry.  It was pretty good, but I was having a nice nap and Ian woke me up when this was ready so I wasn't really awake and the mangetout was quite squeaky and hurt my head!

 

 This was indian spiced potatoes, but we left out the ginger and onion, and it was super garlicky.  I think it would have been better in a smaller portion with something else as opposed to an entire plateful of just this.

The difference a year makes

Last Christmas I made a cottage pie for Christmas eve, ready for when my family arrived.  This time, we were spending Christmas just the two of us, but I still managed to crack out the cottage pie after boxing day when my family came for Christmas number two! Last year, my eldest niece ate the cottage pie, peas and all - this year there was a lot of effort to get her to eat it.  My youngest niece was the harder of the pair to get to eat it last year but this year she happily ate it all and had seconds.  It's crazy the difference a year makes!

Sticky Pork

The problem with me posting about the yummy stuff Ian cooks me, is that I generally don't have a recipe for what he's cooked, sometimes because he hasn't told me, but generally because he makes it up as he goes! 

But this time, he cooked from one of my good food magazines, so I can actually link to the recipe.  He skipped the couscous part (he's not a fan), and left out the mustard.  Actually, looking at the recipe, I'm pretty sure we didn't buy any orange juice, and I remember him telling me that he added redcurrant jelly or cranberry sauce, so I guess the recipe isn't much help! I know he cut down on the honey because I'm not a big fan of the taste of honey.  

The end result was de-lish! You might also have noticed that we have a bit of a thing for mangetout cooked to death in butter.  It's really good, but I have a feeling we might have to scrap it in the New Year diets - boooo!

Cooking Wednesdays - The Last of 2010

My last cooking wednesday happened in November - after that, all routine disappeared it seems.  My plan was to cook toad in the hole.

And here it is!

What? It doesn't look like toad in the hole? Well, that's because we couldn't be bothered! Instead, we got out Ian's new toaster, and christened it!

Here it is on it's first heating (bread free to get rid of the funny smell).

And afterwards, with our toast. It's really cool having my own knob, set to how I like it, and knowing that it will still be on the same setting when I get back.

Cooking Wednesdays - Damn This Morning!

I love daytime telly, especially This Morning, but obviously being at work all day doesn't allow me to watch it.  But, they recently decided to do some weekend programmes, with highlights from the week and a few extra bits too, so I caught one of these back in November when Gina D'Acampo was making a pasta bake.  I decided it looked good, so set about making it that week for my cooking wednesdays.  It was epically huge, I probably should have halved the recipe, but instead ended up with tonnes of pasta.  I quite liked it, although it was definitely the wrong ratio with way more pasta than the meat could cope with.  My mum ate it, and I ate it, but Ian just picked at it, and then refused to eat anymore than the mozarella cheesy bit.  This opened a big can of worms about how he never eats the food I cook, and he told me he didn't even like pasta.  I did wonder what he thought was in a pasta bake and why he didn't stop me from making it, but I was more concerned by him telling me he doesn't like chilli - the dish I make quite a lot! So fussy! 

So, because of Ian not liking/eating it, this is being labelled a disaster, even though I'd say it was perfectly edible, and not that bad really.  

Cherry Coke Duck

I don't like coke.  I don't like cherry flavouring (I love cherries).  I do like duck.  But I was a little worried about Ian's choice of meal back in December when he told me about it.  

But, because I love him (and because he doesn't listen to me anyhow), he made it, and it was........ YUMMY! 

It was really good, it didn't taste horrible like coke at all and the duck was nice and tender and it even looks good! 

Cooking Wednesdays - Catch up

Although I've not been blogging about the food I've been cooking for Ian, I have been cooking it (well, most weeks!).  Back at the start of September I attempted Moroccan chicken, a recipe found in my good food magazine.  This was a successful meal, the chicken was nice and flavoursome, juicy, and sweet.  The only thing I think this meal was lacking was a bit of colour.

The week after that was the inedible curry mentioned in my seven days of food post.  That was far less successful, but I have learnt never to stir rice because of it (and it wasn't even me that did it, Ian was the naughty rice stirrer).  

The following week we were back to success.  I made pork steaks with pear and a creamy cider sauce.  It was to die for - not the most healthy but a yummy treat for sure! We'll definitely be repeating this recipe, but maybe only for special occasions.  I also managed to include some green on the plate this time, so I felt better about it.

For Ian's birthday week, I agreed that I wouldn't do a whole week of meals like I did last year, I'd just do one meal on his birthday, and then one at the weekend.  This was good for me because I didn't have to cook as much, and good for Ian because he wouldn't have to eat food I'd cooked! So, for his birthday meal, I went for a simple recipe, lamb with feta, tomatoes and rosemary.  Unfortunately, my feta didn't crumble, so I had to slice it, and the steaks weren't very flat, so the topping wouldn't stay put and kept falling off.  Despite this, it wasn't too bad, although it wasn't a very glamorous birthday meal. 

For Ian's weekend meal, I pulled out a tried and tested recipe that we stole from The Dog and Crook's menu, steak with sweet chilli prawn sauce.  I made some bacon and goats cheese rostis to start, which were nice, but the goats cheese flavour got a little lost (as did the corner of the flash on the camera it seems!).

Because the rostis were quite filling, we skipped the chips with the steak, and instead just had all the steaky accompaniments - it was delicious. 

And even though they were being cooked in hot butter, the mushrooms remained happy!

Seven Days of Food

I signed up to a swapbot swap, where you have to take photos of your food for seven days and then send to your partners.  Now, I took some interesting photos so I thought it would be good to write about it here instead so I could share it with all of you.  I kept forgetting to take photos so I'm cutting it very close to the deadline (today!).

So, my week of food started last Tuesday.  I'd bought some goats cheese with garlic from the Romsey Show so we thought we'd make pitta bread pizzas with it, but got back Monday night from our weekly shop and realised we'd neglected to pick up any pittas.  So we improvised and used tortillas.  I think I actually liked it more because it was crispier.  

We had it with salad - served in my wonderful salad bowl that is very hard to tell if it's clean or not.

Here's a shot of both together on one plate.  (On the pizza is goats cheese, onion marmalade and mushrooms - Ian had the same but without the onion).

Wednesday should have been my night to cook, but we instead went to a local pub with some friends from work.  I had the twice cooked belly pork and it was good! Full review here.

On Thursday, Ian made chicken enchiladas while I went off shopping at hobbycraft for some wedding invite things (but they didn't have what we wanted).  They were really good, and we used the leftover tortillas from Tuesday which makes me happier as I don't like waste.  

I also had some cheesecake on Thursday (although I made it Tuesday night but totally neglected to take it into work on Wednesday morning).  It was a baked white chocolate one, and went down a treat with my colleagues.  

Friday night was chilli from the freezer.  I tend to try and make extra portions so we can just microwave something one night a week, and we even saved on the washing up by eating it straight out of the tub.

On Saturday, we went and got some pork shoulder from the local butchers and had a roast dinner.  Ian stewed some apples to go with it, but possibly added too much sugar so we ended up with more toffee apple pieces than apple sauce.  It was still good though.  I think this meal is lacking in green.  The potatoes were very tasty (but probably far from healthy).  

Sunday was my turn to cook (to replace Wednesday when we ate out).  I was down to make a lamb tikka masala.  Ian made the rice.  I think we both did something wrong because it wasn't very good.  Here it is in all it's glory. 

And here is what we ended up eating having decided that the curry wasn't edible.  Yay for take away.

Lastly, today's meal.  We shop every Monday, so we always try to buy something we can just eat quickly when we get home without cooking.  Sometimes we get a waitrose cooked chicken.  Today we had prawns with bread - not very exciting, but it's quick.  Apologies for the terrible photo, the prawns seemed to keep catching the light on my flash.   

I really enjoyed seeing what everyone else had to eat too, and it really made me think more about adding other colours to my food, and working out how to plate up to maximise prettiness. 

Ian's Birthday Dinner 2009

I love my Ian.  Lots.  So for some reason, I think it's a good idea to try and poison him on his birthday.  I actually attempted to cook for a whole week as part of his birthday, but I only have photographic evidence of one day.  I attempted a goats cheese pannacotta, something I'd eaten when on holiday in Oxford with my mum.  I chose far too mild a goats cheese so it lost the real flavour which was a shame, but it set well (too well, it refused to come out of it's dish).  There's thankfully no photo of this, cos it looked pretty boring really. 

One of the successful dishes was halloumi and sweetcorn fritters.  They were yummy, but we ate far too many of them to count as a starter! 

One of the mains I tried was lamb wellingtons - I put small lamb steaks and some redcurrant jelly into puff pastry and cooked - they were good, although the pastry went a little soggy in places.  

I can't remember what else I cooked that week, I'm pretty sure he got steak (which always goes down well) and probably a baked camembert (my quick easy 'safe' starter).  He's still alive, so I couldn't a have done that badly!

Just as I was about to post this, I found another photo - now, if I'm honest, I'm not entirely sure what it is, but are those puff pastry stars cute (I think Ian cooked this, as it's slow cooked ox cheek and I don't know how to make that - but I definitely made the cute stars with the leftover pastry, probably from the lamb parcels).

Tasty Lamb Shank

Not much of a story behind this one, it was just a delicious dinner.  Lamb shank, in the slow cooker, with a nice minty redcurranty gravy, mash and yummy cabbage and peas. 

Cooking Wednesdays

What did I cook this week? Well...good question. 

I cheated slightly with a premade curry paste but I ignored all instructions on how to use it so I think it's OK. The curry paste was a massaman lamb one.  I boiled both new and sweet potato for 14 and 7 minutes respectively. I then fried the lamb, added the paste once the meat had some colour, added a small tin of coconut cream and then mixed in the potatoes and a handful of cashews. I also added some water, to make the sauce go further, but then I was worried it was too watery so added some leftover creme fraiche from the pea dip towards the end of the cooking. 

The food turned out really good, despite having to wait for our late arriving builder to leave (he seemed oblivious to the fact we were about to have dinner even though I kept clattering plates as loud as I could!)

 

 

Pea Dip!

Sainsburys do a great pea, mint and yoghurt dip. I had it once at a party and then spent ages trying to find it in my local store. Turns out that it only seems to appear in the larger stores which means I don't get it very often (which is probably good for my waistline!)

On Tuesday, Ian made Cajun chicken fajitas and to go with the spice, he made a cooling pea and mint dip. It was very easy to make and very yummy, and it had half fat creme fraiche and no mayo and therefore was probably much healthier than the sainsburys version. There was plenty of dip leftover to eat with crisps for a snack so I was very pleased. Yay for Ian!

Cooking Wednesdays

In my house, Ian is the chef. He's very good too.  A while back I made the decision to do more of the cooking. One reason was obviously to give Ian a break. The main reason though is that I eventually want to be a stay at home mum, and I wanted to make sure I'd be able to cook while Ian's out at work. 

Since I started cooking (my night is Wednesdays), I've cheated really and cooked the same meals over and over. This wasn't what I wanted to achieve, and Ian kindly pointed that out last week. 

So, from now on, I'll be expanding my repertoire and cooking something new.  My first try was a recipe I found on Mimi's food blog for roasted prawns and tomatoes.  It was pretty simple to make, and was quite nice (I did go a bit easy on the lemon zest as I'm not really a big fan of lemon zest in my dinner - great in cakes though!).  

Ian seemed to like it, although he said he'd have done the tomatoes as they were in this recipe, but then would have fried the prawns in garlic butter to give them more of a kick.