Cooking Part One

 

So, tonight was homemade pizza night using James Martin's topping and Jamie Oliver's tomato sauce. Both came out wonderfully, although due to my complete incompetence trying to find semolina, we had to buy a mix for the base. Next time I will make my own! :D

Today mostly consisted of me buying cook books, both as Christmas pressies and for ourselves. I got two Jamie books; one in a charity shop and one in an actual, honest to god bookshop. Yup. They still exist! :s

Sadly the charity one is missing a couple of pages (who does that, I mean really?) but it is in pretty good shape otherwise. The other one is his new 30-minute meals and has some great looking stuff in it!



And there, in that picture is my new baking pride and joy. Yes I did it. I brought myself my first ever piece of le creuset cookware. It is a pie dish (which has a free mail order pie bird to be sent off for) and it is probably just about the only thing I can possibly afford in the range (it was a 1/3 off in store today). I love it and right this minute, it is sat in the oven baking me an apple pie! Yum!

I got some other Christmas bits and bobs and some new gloves too, as well as the wool to knit Dave a case for his phone if I can ever decipher/make up a pattern for it! All in all a successful shopping day.  I am now off to make coffee and eat apple pie. Have a great weekend to anyone actually reading this!

The Good (food), the Bad (food), and the Ugly (food)

Apparently my attempts at blogging are going to be downright sporadic but who cares. Today I want to do food; how I feel about it, what I am doing with it, and how I want to change it.

Pip and I have been watching a lot of Jamie in the last week. Well, not a lot, but enough to know that things need to change. His approach to school dinners (both in the UK and the US) is amazing and he needs to be listened to. He is tackling a huge problem by taking on processed food. We also watched a one-off where they dissected an obese man... crazy gross but fascinatingly scary. He also looked at what goes into food. All this makes me want to do things better. I mean, Pip and I are not the worst offenders, we cook most meals from (relative) scratch with the best ingredients we can afford. We tend not to scrimp on the cost of meat as much as we can as the cheap stuff is fairly fatty and not particularly flavorsome. Our biggest problems come from not enough fruit and veg. Now, fruit is fairly pricey too; I tend to buy raisins as one way to eat some but grapes as well when seasonal. Satsumas too.  (Another thing we are attempting is to only eat seasonal fresh produce but this too is much harder than you might think in supermarkets. I need to find a spreadsheet or something listing all the seasonal fruit and veg).

Where was I, oh yes. Eating better. One thing we are doing is planning a week in advance. Another we are about to embark on is a food diary to see where we can change (according to the BBC, those who are aiming to loose weight are more effective if an honest food diary is kept - worth a shot I thought). I guess it makes you realise what you eat and how much you eat.

So out with the bad and in with the good. Mostly. Not all the time obviously. I am a known sweetie-biccie-aholic.

This week should look something like this
Saturday - Homemade Plain Mozzarella pizza
Sunday - Beef Stew with Dumplings
Monday - Chili with Rice
Tuesday - Jerk Chicken with chips (OK not healthy at all, but oven chips and peas)
Wednesday - Leftover Chili Night
Thursday - Chili Chicken Noodles
Friday - Plain garlic pasta (?) TBC

So that is not too bad right. I mean, most people don't make a stew and chili from scratch or noodley adventures. It is in fact not the evening meal that is a huge problem; it is mostly lunch times and throughout the day where break time at work equals snack time. I need to overcome this somehow. What do other people do for lunch? Sandwiches? Salad? I want to cut back on the actual snack food, it is just finding something to replace it with that works in the same kind of way. I don't know. I will have to thing on it. One thing I am trying next week is www.graze.com who have a free box trial and a half price box. It looks good, check it out (I guess if you are UK based anyhows.)

So we have done the good and the bad; now onto the ugly.

The 61p Rocky Road cake pudding I brought in ASDA that I ate half of.

Yeah, not that good then.

The Cure

For the kitchen at least. From Apartment Therapy. 

Time to organise the kitchen, or at least, my part of it. I will be doing step one this weekend. I never really ever got it sorted after moving so it will be something to do that needs doing.

Step One: The Pantry, Fridge and Freezer

Take photos of your kitchen as it is now, no cleaning or changing anything.

Obviously, this is the food area that Pip and I share. I didn't touch the other guys stuff except for moving it in the fridge when I cleaned it out. (BTW. YUCK.)

I also did one of the whole kitchen as it stood this morning. It is pretty messy by my standards anyhow. I just needs a good sort out; hence the cure.

So after the month is up I can compare to this first picture! :D

Anyways, this week was all about the food areas so I pulled everything out, cleaned up, threw out, condensed, tided and generally sorted out our cupboards. My idea of fun! :D

This is the result:

Tidy shelves and organisation! Yippee. I also did the fridge but the photo was atrocious so I got rid of it.

So that was this morning but then I took a nap and I took a turn for the incredibly cranky so I shall leave it here and go and get myself of this funk. 

Hope everyone is having a great, or at least an OK, Saturday.

In furious regard

of incompetence and general disregard. I will not detail it here but today has been a consent build up of rage. A lot of little things all on top of one another. A total contrast to the calm of yesterday. I want/need to get back to that happy place.

I'll start by eating a cupcake, drinking a cup of tea, and knitting some more hats.

Immediate Reaction Post

I DID IT! I passed. I. freaking. passed. WITH A DISTINCTION.

Wowza.

Weekend Rain

Well, I was going to post about cleaning and tidying but I did that fairly quickly this morning and find myself unable/unwilling to blog about it. It really didn't take long and I am left with less clutter on my desk as well as some neatly arranged pens after the sharpie/junk jar took a dive onto the floor.

I am feeling rather blah today and am still fighting a cold. It is getting better but I have spent quite a lot of the day curled up in bed reading trashy fanfiction from my phone (I love the ability to do this. I have downloaded Kindle and a couple of free books too. I cannot wait until the day I can afford an iPad now!! It is so light I can hold it and scroll one handed. Fantabulous!) The weather has been spectacularly miserable the last few days; wet, windy and chilly. I took the opportunity to dive under the covers, my little brother and his friend took the chance to get wet.

I wish I felt up to going and playing in the rain. But with a cold, probably not the best of plans! Still, could be fun!

I am currently working on getting into the Autumn/Halloween spirit. Sadly all the decorations here are fairly tacky so decorations won't be huge. There will be a pumpkin later in the month though. One thing I will go all out on is Christmas this year. I have my decorations here, as well as some empty glass baubles to fill with some things planned. Have not yet decided quite what will go in them but possibly a Berlin one and a Keri Smith style one. Have to think on it as the items to go in have to be incredibly small!!! Most of my shopping for Christmas is now done, just a few small bits to get and then that's it. But that will be next pay day now! Organization is my name this year; first time ever lol!

Finally, a round up of September in pictures as we move swiftly through the year.