Sunday supper

As previously noted, we picked up the first local asparagus of the year on Saturday; with it, we cooked one of our favourites - asparagus stir-fried with ginger and red chilli. It sounds a terrible thing to do to fresh asparagus, I know, but trust me … it really is glorious.

We followed this with a rhubarb and ginger sponge pudding - bit piggy, really, but it is Sunday. I discovered the wondrous combination of rhubarb and fresh ginger a couple of years ago; I was following a recipe that called for stem ginger in syrup, and I thought it would be too sweet, so lobbed some finely minced fresh in instead. We’ve never looked back!

If you don’t have any ginger in the house (and you *should*, of course) remember that elderflower works wonderfully well with rhubarb too, so a splash of elderflower cordial would make a very good substitute, although I’d cut the sugar down a little in that case.

Rhubarb is a Very Fine Thing indeed.

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Sunday breakfast

Home made scones are lovely, but until I came across this recipe I was utterly unsuccessful at scones.

But now I’m not. Hurrah!

p.s. the dough freezes really well.

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deep joy

We nipped (or popped, if you prefer) to North Street this afternoon. Lunch in Cafe Ceiturica (mixed skewers for me, and a rather nice mackerel for Pete (seems like a fair swap)).

Then to the deli for crispbread, Green and Black’s choccie and bread flour, and then to the greengrocer. Where they had the first local asparagus of the season. We fell upon it with cries of glee, and into the basket it went, with the organic lemons and carrots, chillis, celery and flat leaf parsley.

Not sure what we’ll do with it yet, but we’ll enjoy it!

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weekend 19/20 april

We didn’t set foot out of the house. Made a batch of bananananana muffins on Friday night, and then we ate far too many of them, and both had a nasty sugar hit overnight. Serves us right.

Saturday, made soda bread for lunch, which we had with the previously mentioned chickie! soup. Supper was pork and pineapple - I went into autopilot while I was making it, and did a load of ginger, which isn’t actually in the recipe. Was still delicious.

Sunday was toasted soda bread for breakfast, and a moussaka for supper, followed - foolishly - by a plum crumble with ice cream. Belch.

I’m going to have to start photographing things, aren’t I ..

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weekend 12/13 march 08

Lazy, by and large. We found a tub of goose in the back of the freezer that we didn’t know we had (more on that project later), so half of it was stir fried on Thursday, and most the rest was shredded, and turned into a goose and leek rissotto. The balance went in the soup pot.

I made the dough for hungarian fennel bread on Saturday night, then got up at ridiculous o’clock on Sunday to knock it back. It was worth it - gorgeous. perlmonger went out on his velocipede yesterday afternoon, and I made a carrot cake. Supper was roast chickie! with roast spuds, and courgette and kale stir fried with some tamari, and the carrot cake with a rather splendid blood orange compote, and vanilla ice cream.

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weekend 29/30 mar 08

On Saturday, I set to with a will, and the determination (and the assistance of The Tribe) to complete Project Kitchen. And I won!

• All pulses and similar enjarred (apart from some odd pastas, where I simply ran out of jars).
• The the shelves above the cooker - everything taken off, the shelves cleaned with bicarb, then steam cleaned, then new and different and more appropriate Stuff put on them. This was horrible, and involved me standing on a stool, which surprised perlmonger somewhat, as i get verdigris if I’m anything more than 12″ above the ground
• the crockery cupboards were reorganised - all the bowls and jugs were sorted, and moved to a different cupboard, while the everyday plates were shifted to a cupboard of their own, where they should hopefully be more accessible
• the shelves by the kitchen door were completely sorted, and now hold only “spare” stuff - all current foods are now properly organised into appropriate cupboards. I also found room on there for the bits of the Kitchenaid food mixer that I rarely use
• moved said Kitchenaid to the other side of the kitchen - meaning that the Magimix is far more accessible, and the mixer is more usable

This - I think - concludes the kitchen reorganisation, and took me most of the day.

Supper was sausages, with red cabbage and roast potatoes.

Today perlmonger took himself off to the Bristol Cycle Path protest celebration, so I had the place to myself - lovely :) Went to the farm shop for Bits, did the washing, emptied the dishwasher, hoovered (well, yes - the Roomba did it for me), made a silverside potroast for dinner, and watched lots of Jericho - not quite sure whether I like it or not. It’s rather Lost-ish, but intriguing enough to keep watching.

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balance of Easter weekend

We didn’t do much Sunday - ate a humungous fry up for brunch (lamb and rosemary sossidge, apple-smoked bacon, egg, black pudding, beans, sourdough toast), and then some nice fresh home made scones for supper. And slumped.

Monday I decided to go to Ikeal. Astonishingly, perlmonger elected to accompany me. The roads through Bristol were very quiet; this was because everybody in the area was already *at* Ikeal, and it was *packed*. Still, we trundled round, buying 2 wicker hampers to tidy up Under The Stairs, a plastic mat with fish on for the cats’ food bowls, a new step stool, two mats for by the patio doors, and some tealights.

Came home and cooked dinner. We bought half a salt marsh lamb last year, and so we decided to cook the leg (why did we only have one leg, when it was half a lamb? Was it deficient in the leg department?). This leg of lamb was *huge*. And utterly gorgeous. Studded it with garlic and rosemary, and bunged it in the oven with a good sloosh of red wine. Had it with green beans and garlic in tomatoes, and roasted spuds.

While it was in the oven, we did indeed clear out the horror under the stairs, and put down the new door mats. So Project House is continuing well.

Last night, perlmonger chopped the rest of the meat off the bone, and we minced up most of it. We cooked some into Madhur’s Ground Meat with Peas, which unaccountably I have not put online yet. There are two more tubs of mince in the freezer, and some sliced lamb in the fridge, so thats [counts] five exceedingly generous meals from that joint.

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did you get the things we needed? (an occasional series)

We sallied off to Nailsea yesterday morning - it’s a nice little town that has most of what you might need for day to day stuff. I wanted to get some more catnip for the Tribe - they love it, but they want it in a herbal form. Sadly Aaron’s Pets didn’t have any, so the search continues (we are almost out of it). I also nipped (or popped) into the opticians to have my glasses adjusted *again*.

The rest of the haul included:

• a new cutlery drainer to replace the ancient and horrible dark green plastic thing
• a shoe cleaning kit wooden box, reduced to £6.50 in Woolies - been after something like this for *ages*
• a small non-stick saucepan; I don’t like non-stick, but for scrambled eggs and white sauce they’re handy
• cress, red chillis, eggs, beansprouts, new potatoes, cabbage from the greengrocer
• 2 plastic bottles from the pound shop, to put my vinegar and lemon juice in (switching to a green cleaning regime, bit by bit)

Then we hurtled round to Taste at Barrow Gurney, to pick up some rhubarb, and a couple of their most excellent pasties for lunch. Disaster! - all gone pasties :( So instead,

• 2 crayfish tartlets - gorgeous, consumed with homemade lentil/tomato soup for lunch
• some Parmeggiano Reggiano
• a small sourdough loaf
• apple smoked bacon
• a stalk of teeny tiny vine tomatoes
• organic milk

And that was that. Home for lunch, then the rest of the day was mostly slumpage for me after the disturbed sleep on Friday.

Supper was sublime - we did the Boy Oliver’s Hot and Sour Pork with Rhubarb, and I recommend it most highly. Really, really lovely. And there’s enough left over to put a tub in he freezer.

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Did you get the things we needed? (an occasional series)

We sallied forth this morning to do a bit of shoppering - something we don’t necessarily enjoy, so we had several places to go. I wouldn’t say the weather was actually nice when we left, but by the time we got to Whiteladies Road, it was pouring. And neither of us had a jacket, a hat, or an umbrella. Soggy.

We started at Kitchens, where we purchased

• a new cheese grater. The Microplane snapped its plastic handle in half last week, and we thus declined to spend £17.95 (if you please) on a replacement, and instead bought a stainless steel one for eight quid
• 3 huge and 3 medium glass storage jars - the mission to Tidy The House continues
• a 12 bottle wine rack. For shoes. Yes, really. Works really well, and we don’t have much any spare floor space

From there we waded round the corner to Wild Oats, the health food place.

• two bottles of Teriyaki (two because they are tiny)
• some laundry balls - they’d better work, at 35 quid
• a sourdough loaf
• Ecover washing powder and dishwasher tabs
• no blackcurrant juice for perlmonger

In the greengrocer next door, I bought basil, mushrooms and carrots. I do very little greengrocery shopping these days, due to the Riverford box, but sometimes you gotta.

Then we hurtled over to Wai Yee Hong, the Chinese supermarket at Eastville, for

• noodles
• dried orange peel
• 3kgs of bicarbonate of soda (great for cleaning)
• oolong tea
• fresh ginger

Next up, the Better Food Company at St Werberghs.

• Ecover fabric conditioner
• posh organic kitchen soap stuff
• unpasteurised cheddar
• brie
• no blackcurrant juice for perlmonger
• maple syrup

We had lunch there too - very nice pasta bake with roast peppers.

Last call was to Asda, to pick up

• some more of the nice plastic storage boxes we bought last week - I WILL organise this house if it kisl me. Which it probably will.
• turkey mince for Iggy, as he loves it so
• some raw tiger prawns, to be stir fried tonight with the aforementioned basil
• a nice little ceramic oblong dish, which will replace the one accidentally left on the gas (made a nice BANG when it exploded)
• waffer thin meat for the cats’ treats
• some cold meat for next week’s lunches, as I can’t be arsed to go down to Costco and buy a gammon, never mind cook it

We have to go out again in a bit to collect the wine from the offy, but that’s it, now - I’m in for the rest of the weekend.

perlmonger says he may go out on his bike tomorrow to Gloucester Road in a last ditch attempt to find the blackcurrant juice he likes, but I fear he might be better off tilting at windmills … and the forecast is very wet.

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weekend 20/21 jan 08

Fairly quiet, as the weather was vile. Seems ages since we went for a yomp across the fields :(

On Saturday, we had lunch in Cafe Ceiturica - they had only one portion of kofta meatball casserole left (wah), so we shared it, and had a plate of their lovely kebabs too. Then Aldi for bits, down to Stoke Bishop for episode x of the Eternal Hunt for the Perfect Gas Lighter (no, this one ain’t it either), and the farm shop on the way home for meat and veg. We were still full when it came to supper time, so I made some cheese scones and some banananananana muffins. We ate the scones, but had to leave the muffins …

Sunday was mostly spent in evaluating visual mySQL tools, as the data we have inherited on the New Project is utterly incomprehensible. These tools seem to be pretty much all awful - Aqua Data Studio would be the best if it a) weren’t so slow, and b) didn’t disconnect itself silently from the database server. And at $400 a copy, I’d like to see a searchable help file, thankyouverymuch. I think we’ve settled on DBVisualizer, which seems to work reasonably well, and is priced at a more acceptable $149. 20 days left of the evaluation copy, so time will tell.

Had a brunchette of scrambly egg and bacon on toast, then cooked pork pot roast with mushrooms and apple for supper. This left 3/4 of a bramley, so I made the world’s smallest apple crumble with it. Freehand, as the battery in the scales gave out just as I’d measured the wholemeal flour. Still good, though.

And that’s it, apart from a rather soggen Cat Incident, which I am about to write up on the cat blog, should anyone be interested.

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