What's everyone cooking this week? 2

[Stokey Sue Profile]

My potatoes keep better since I got a special potato bag from Poundland, it’s quite small though, just about takes the contents of a supermarket bag. They really do help though


Today I made parsnip soup, because I had a marked down bag of baby roasting parsnips. Usually I add curry powder, Jane Grigson’s recipe, but still off the ground spices. So it was a simplified method
~750g parsnips, scrubbed, trimmed (not peeled) and roughly chopped.
1 onion
1 block frozen ginger-garlic paste, 0.5 block green chilli
Salt, veg bouillon, pepper, water
Softened the onion and flavours in a little butter, added everything else, simmered, blitzed
Added a bit of milk to the bowl
Think I might like it better than curry powder

[herbidacious Profile]

I did actually buy a bag in Lakeland yesterday. I used to keep them in a black cloth bag. Fingers crossed the Lakeland bag is better. I am sure we have talked about this before, but it's odd, my parents used to buy a big (paper? Hessian?) sack of them and keep them in the garage without this happening until the end of the bag. I am sure we got through them more quickly as a family of four, but not that quickly (as that was the point of buying in bulk).

[Stokey Sue Profile]

It’s less cold at night currently in and around London than it would have been in Sheffield in your childhood of course Herbi, that might have a bearing

I have a suspicion that supermarket spuds are over refrigerated before sale, so when you get them home, even to a garage or a lean to, they think it’s spring

[herbidacious Profile]

Yes, very true re the former, and I did wonder if they did something to them re the latter.

I made more farls for dinner and husband seemed to like them so will make again. Good comfort food with a lightly fried egg.

[smitch Profile]

Yesterday, I made a fried rice dish with Christmas dinner leftovers. It was really tasty and made a nice change.

Tonight was M&S squash pasta with a ‘sauce’ made from ajvar. Not sure about tomorrow, will see how the essay writing goes

[herbidacious Profile]

I saw the pic on instagram. It looked very nice.

[scullion Profile]

we had a waitrose recipe last night - a joint cook with our daughter roasted butternut squash and lentil crumble. really nice - it'll be done again. the crumble topping is very tasty.

[herbidacious Profile]

I just made posh nachos for lunch, which were very nice indeed and led me to look up their origins... which turn out to be 1940s Mexico, near the border. There is an annual International Nachos Festival in their home town. I'd go (if I were in the area).

[KeenCook2 Profile]

I did actually buy a bag in Lakeland yesterday.

Herbi, where is your Lakeland? We have one in Wimbledon, and Brent Cross, but neither of them is specially useful for us.

Now we have a Lidl in Hammersmith, and are about to get an Ikea, perhaps I can hold out hopes for a Lakeland

We had soup for lunch too, Sue. I had a couple of parsnips and a couple of sweet potatoes, and a couple of shallots. I added an ordinary potato, some garlic and a finger of fresh ginger with some veg stock.
Delicious!

Tonight I think it'll be spinach and ricotta tortelloni with a frozen spinach and cream sauce, with loads of nutmeg, and grated parmesan.

There are a couple of nice-looking recipes in the Good Housekeeping that arrived today, and I'm looking forward to trying out some new Ottolenghi recipes in Simple, one of my Christmas pressies from OH.

[Renee Profile]

On Christmas Day, as I was on my own, I had roasted duck breast with sauté potatoes, green beans, carrots and apple slices softened in butter.

[Gillthepainter Profile Website]

Ooo, nice one, Renee.
We reverted back to turkey, with parsnips and roasters etc. I don't add too much to the accompaniments.
Not a great pic with candlelight but hey, it's a Christmas dinner.
And it's nice to get the blue and gold plates out.

[Renee Profile]

Oh, that looks good Gill and I love your plates! Obviously I didn't have crackers, cos it might have been difficult pulling one myself!

[Gillthepainter Profile Website]

That's true!
We've decided not to get crackers any more. Too much waste, and little reward.

[RockyBVI Profile]

Lovely looking plates of food!

Can’t think when I posted last… but we are in Slovenia!

Had rather a nice spicy chicken noodle soup at Wagamama at the airport for lunch on Monday. We managed to get to the supermarket before it shut when we arrived so made some bruschetta / toast type things with ham, cheese and bits. Yesterday we had a lovely long walk and I ordered something by mistake that ended up being delicious. I thought I was ordering a Wiener schnitzel but when it came it was more like a ham and cheese sandwich with the meat instead of bread! Last night we had picky bits of interesting hams and salamis, some really lovely salads, pickles, ajvar etc

Today I had beef noodle soup which is very light and consommé like. For dinner I am cooking some cevapcicci which we will have with salad and some spuds cooked in the absurdly cheap local pancetta.

[Renee Profile]

No reward, I would have said Gill! Having said that, my son got a pack of mini screwdrivers from a cracker and didn't want them, so I kept them. Several times after that, he asked if I had a very small screwdriver, so the Christmas cracker ones came in very useful!

[herbidacious Profile]

I made homemade Christmas crackers the year before last. It was a kit and you can buy more 'snaps', and reuse the 'carcass'. It was quite fun getting little, useful and desirable things that were tailored to the recipient to put inside. (Although I realize tailoring them thus slightly misses one of the points.)

KC2 our Lakeland is of no use to you - Bromley. My mother once made a pilgrimage all the way from Sheffield to Chester by train to go to one in the days when they mainly sold freezer related things.

When I was out shopping I noticed a lot of shops had empty shelves or had very empty looking shop floors. (White Stuff must have had half the stock they used to have. Holland and Barretts were similar). Lakeland had swathes of empty shelves. Very sad. I hope this is not a prelude to a lot of places going bust.

[Pepper Pig Profile]

There’s a Lakeland in Watford, or was last time I looked.

I bought musical crackers for Christmas Day which of course I missed. They had a lot of fun with them though. I’ll see if I can put the short video on the FB page.

[PatsyMFagan Profile]

Saw that PPig............

[Stokey Sue Profile]

The Lakeland I use tends to be the Stratford one, it's a bit small and cramped, but they have most of what I want, I used to like the one at Chichester when I went ot see Mum, by far the nicest I've been in

I have just made a massive black eyed bean based cottage pie, which turned into a bit of a project, mainly because I wanted something that I could eat with a lot of Brussels sprouts!

[Linnet Profile]

Unfortunately my nearest Lakeland at Epsom closed last year after the first lockdown, so the next best is at Kingston.