November 25th, 2007
Excuses, excuses, excuses Category: General, Recipes
I can’t believe it’s nearly been two whole weeks since I last posted. Where is the time going?
We* have been quite busy recently though so if you’ll allow me, I’m using that as my excuse. You see we moved into our two bedroom flat just over two and a half years ago. But until now it’s really been a one bedroom flat with a spare room so full of junk you couldn’t move in it. So we’ve emptied it, bought some carpet, have had a trip to Ikea, built some furniture, put pictures & blinds up and generally had a big clear out and have then (in a tidy manner, of course) have put back in what we need.
Its a really nice room now, even if I do say so myself. There is just one thing that’s missing and that’s a small 2 seater sofa. So another trip to Ikea is needed but we just need a vehicle bigger than out ickle C2.
(*I say we but I’m sure Hubby will disagree. But seriously, nothing ever gets done with out a project manager/supervisor/general all round bossy boots…)
Since making the Christmas cake I have cooked, I just haven’t had enough time to blog about it. So here is a little summary with pictures:
My first ever Toad In The Hole (Jamie recipe) – severed with the suggested red onion gravy it was delicious and I was very proud of my yorkshire pudding.
We followed this up with some Toffee Apple Crumble – in fact we’ve had this twice. Once made with normal eating apples and once with bramleys (rather than the 50/50 mix suggested by Simon Rimmer). We both much preferred the bramley only one as the sweet sauce is more than enough sugar to match the tangy bramleys.
I also turned this pile of chopped vegetables…
into one of our favourite soups – Lentil and Chestnut Soup
Ingredients
- 1 small onion
- half leek
- 1 carrot
- 1 stick celery
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 225g red lentils
- 1.5 litres vegetable stock
- 225g cooked chestnuts
- double cream to serve (optional & not really needed)
How To Do It
- Finely chop the onion, leek, carrot and celery.
- Heat the oil in the pan, add the chopped vegetables and let sweat until soft.
- Add the lentils and stir, then add the stock.
- Bring to the boil and simmer until the lentils are very soft (about 40 minutes).
- Add the chestnuts and simmer for a further 20 minutes or so.
- Liquidise (I used my hand blender) until smooth.
- Sprinkle each full bowl of soup with parsley and lace with cream as required.
- Consume with lots of crusty bread and butter.
Its truly delicious.
Whilst I’ve been AWOL we also had Children In Need day at work and that means one thing – cakes, cakes and more cakes. I made my cupcakes with pink & white icing with flowers and I also tried some vanilla shortbreads – they were ok but a little soft & not quite as nice as I’d expected. Here they are among some of the other cakes brought in by my colleagues…
And last, but not least. Here is a lovely sunrise we had the week before last.
