Favourite food

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I’m making a trifle (my favourite food). I use sugar free jelly in the base, making up about a pint.  Usually I add a little sherry to the mix. This time I used a stale scone cut into pieces to give the jelly a bit more strength. I put them in the base of a nice glass bowl. You can get trifle sponges but I couldn’t find any. Once the jelly has cooled but not set I poured it into the glass bowl covering the scone pieces. This goes into the refrigerator. Later I will make a pint of chocolate blancmange, I use sweetener instead of sugar to sweeten it. (I don’t like custard, but some use it instead). That gets poured on the jelly once it has cooled but is still liquid so that it doesn’t melt the jelly. The bowl goes back into the fridge. Finally I whip double cream till its stiff and spoon it over the trifle. Serve with cherries and chocolate shavings. Enough for six large portions.

Slugs and snails and puppy dogs tails

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The other reason why I drew a slug.

I had fetched a takeaway meal from our local Chinese restaurant last night but had to go out for an hour before coming home to eat it with my hubby.

An hour turned into two (as it does), so I came home hungry and ready to eat.

I said hello, and my hubby complained he had lost a bottle of beer. He could remember drinking one but could not find the other bottle. But he proudly said he had made a loaf (he likes making bread). We went in the kitchen and he showed me the bread he has made. So where’s the takeaway I asked, looking in the fridge which was empty. Oh I put that outside to cool down, he said!? What?

He went out and bought the bag in, together with the beer bottle which he had taken out too.

Both had slugs on them!

I’m sorry to say it went in the bin. The little trays the food was in were covered with hungry slugs. The beer was empty, not because he had drunk it, but because he had put some in the bread. I was not a happy person.

Next time I’ve told him to use the fridge!

Can you see the face?

 

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I am doing it again, I can see a crying clown!? On my tea which I’d a cornish pasty. (a pastry case filled with minced lamb, sliced potato and swede or turnip) the proper ones have much thicker pastry and are crimped along the top so they look like a bag with a curved, arching top. They are originally from Cornwall although Devon, the next door county also claims to have made them originally.

We had them for tea with a cup of coffee. The sauce is HP brown sauce. Slightly spicy, and the pasties have quite a bit of pepper too.

Oatcakes with filling.

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I thought I would try and lighten my mood by posting about food.

These oatcakes (like savoury pancakes but more oaty,) with a savoury filling.

Traditionally its bacon and cheddar cheese, but that can be too greasy. So I cooked cherry tomatoes and button mushrooms on the hob with a little olive oil. Then when they were cooked I added camembert so I ended up with a melted creamy sauce.

In the meantime I put the oatcakes under the grill and toasted them on both sides so that they were crispy. Then I poured the mixture onto the oatcakes and rolled them up. Result, hot and tasty lunch.

Banana

 

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I just made a culinary disaster. I decided to make a milkshake with a mashed up banana and some milk I frothed up.

The milk was frothed in a glass container with a metal mesh on a length of metal and a lid (like a small caffitierre).

The disaster? If you try and mix mashed banana with milk make sure it’s properly smooth, or you end up with a cold lumpy mixture. It tasted OK though.

Nutritional facts, I think I read there are 89 calories per 100 grams. There isn’t as much potassium in them as urban myth says. People with latex allergy can become allergic to bananas. They are related to plantains which are more starchy and can be cooked. There are other species including green and purple bananas.

Cooking toast.

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When I was a child I used to cook toast-on the gas fire!

I would come home from school and warm up in front of the fire, warming my toes, feet, hands and face. We didn’t have central heating, so only the living room was warm. I was older than my siblings so this was my job. Slices of white bread hooked onto the bars on the front of the gas fire with a metal fork. A few seconds and you turn the bread over. Delicious hot toast and I guess margarine because we couldn’t afford butter. If it was a Sunday I sometimes cooked crumpets. They are like a savoury bread like a muffin but full of holes  through the middle of them and at the top of them so when they have butter or margarine spread on them it melts right through the middle of them.

I remember the lovely smells of toast and margarine, together with a hot cup of tea in small cups with orange and brown patterns on them.

This memory was prompted by a question on the Alchemists blog page which asked for memories of being cozy. It’s good to uncover old memories like this.

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Sprouts

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Sprouts to go with this evenings meal. I cut the bases off then cut a cross in the bottom of them. I don’t know if that’s what other people do but it seems to let them cook better. I put them on to boil with water from the kettle for about 15 to 20 minutes. I don’t like them over cooked.

I don’t have them very often. Usually just around Christmas and New Year. They are a seasonal vegetable, a winter crop. Some people think they have too strong a flavour and fry them with bacon. I don’t mind them at all. Definitely one of my five a day.

Hand in the cookie jar

DSC_2409grr. Grr!

Annoyed. We had a box of shortbread biscuits for Christmas, we have had a few. My hubby more than me. The box is on top of the fridge. So I went into the kitchen to make us coffee and get the last few biscuits. Guess what? The box was there, but empty. I’m annoyed.

At least throw the box away once it’s empty. Don’t leave it there to tempt me. He does the same with tubs of butter, bananas (yes he left an empty skin on the fruit bowl!), or he finishes strawberries off and doesn’t throw away the punnet. He finishes bottles of milk without leaving some for my coffee.

Grr.

Why are there foodbanks?

sketch-1577233161543.jpgThis might be someone’s meal today, tonight, next week. They may be on a low income, on benefits or state handouts. They might be in a refugee camp trying to flee from famine or oppression.

Coming closer to home, in a land that is the sixth richest in the World and where many more billionaires live than ever before, the number of Foodbanks here over the last few years have soared, from a handful ten years ago to more of them than McDonald’s outlets now! There are around two THOUSAND Foodbanks in this country now. Let that sink in. And people using them are only allowed two or three referrals in a six month period. That referral gives them emergency food for three or four days. They are used when someones benefit has been cancelled or delayed. I know about them because I used to refer people into them. I had to jump through hoops to get a referral for them. Often I came up against the arguments about whether they were deserving enough. I would be talking to a decision maker who would criticise the person’s ability to budget a paltry amount of money that the decision maker could not possibly have lived on themselves.

My question again is why are there Foodbanks? Why are the poorest in society forgotten? Why do the rich think it’s OK to look down on the poor? Remember that it is only by luck that we are born into the lives we have.

 

What a faff!

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Faff! Not sure what it means but we are faffing about. Staying at a hotel. Breakfast and lunch for Christmas day, but no evening meal. I have asked about room service, they don’t have any. I know I’m faffing, but I have to eat regularly because I have to take tablets with  every meal. (I know I’m very lucky not to live in the majority of the world where one meal is very rare).

I guess I could have worse problems. Its only when you think about them that you realise how very trivial they are!