WHAT DID WE HAVE FOR TEA?

[Marilyn]

35degrees (+) here....and 'muggins' is roasting a chicken with all the trimmings. Son is coming to dinner and this is what he fancied. It is starting to smell really yummy, though the oven is competing with the air conditioner for supremacy over the air temperature of the house. Just about to pop the spuds in....

[Moh]

I decided to spread mustard on the port steaks and cooked them on a bed of onions & garlic, served with roast portatoes & garden peas.
Roast leg of lamb tonight with mashed potatoes, roasted sweet potatoes & cauliflower cheese.

[Stanley]

I think that reading 'Food in England' is a slimming aid! Cheese and tomato butty at dinnertime and a bowl of the latest ham and pea soup for tea with a banana, a pear and an apple for pudding. (I love fruit!) Went mad and weighed myself this morning and I'm dead on thirteen and a half stone which is my normal weight these days. I think I shall try to whittle it down a bit, it'll help my knees!

[Stanley]

A slice of toast spread with the remains of the dripping from the Dexter roast with two poached eggs on top for dinner and the last of the new ham and pea soup for tea.
Dorothy Hartley has some really good recipes for pot cooking. This is making an entire meal in one pot and often incorporates an internal lid of 'huff pastry'. This is what she calls suet pastry, it's the archaic name for it. The pastry cooks and rises and is a substitute for potatoes. This means that the flavours of the meat, vegetables and condiments doesn't get diluted by the spuds and the internal lid contains them as well. I'm going to try that one! What I really need is a heavy cast iron pot with a close fitting lid. Any suggestions?

[Moh]

Doesn't all that fruit raise your sugar level Stanley - my brother-in-law was told to only eat half a banana as they are full of sugar.
Cold lamb yesterday and shepherd's pie today - three good meals of a leg of lamb costing £8.

[Stanley]

Don't know Moh. I haven't had a bad blood analysis yet. Mind you, I have always suspected that even if I have diabetes it's so marginal that the Metformin looks after me and keeps me stable. I wouldn't have known I had it but for a rogue reading in an analysis a few years ago.
Pot roasted a small piece of silverside with veg yesterday. I made the stock out of the veggie trimmings and peelings with the onion skins in as well and it's good. Silverside can be so dry but this was lovely, moist and almost like chicken breast. Had porridge at dinnertime and the pot roast for tea. Plenty left.....

[Marilyn]

Beef Curry on a slow cook in a stoneware casserole at present, to be served with Jasmine Rice.
Smells wonderful. Must go and give it a stir.

[Moh]

Beef casserole with dumplings, mash & cauliflower tonight.

[Stanley]

Both examples of slow cooking like my silverside and veggie roast. Lots to be said for slow cooking as you can use the cheapest cuts and funnily enough they taste better. I love the way slow roasting with the minimum of water brings out the sweetness in vegetables. My current effort is so sweet you'd think I'd put sugar in it! By the way, I extended it with a frozen portion of the last but one ham and pea soup and some frozen peas. Economy is the household mint!

[Moh]

When hubby came home he suggested we go out to eat so casserole on tonight. We went to the Sparrow Hawk in Wheatley Lane which has been taken over by new people with a new menu. Not a very exciting menu, I had the small fish & chips whilst hubby had the strangest looking Lancashire hotpot I have ever seen. It was a solid square cut from obviously a big pan bake, he said the potatoes at the bottom were soft but the top ones were solid. It should have been made & served in individual dishes. They had roast veg. lasagne on I bet that was the same.

[Stanley]

I had a butty made with cold stew at dinnertime and finished the remainder for tea. It got better as it aged! Butcher's day today so a bit of pressed beef and a meat pie will figure large today. Am eating less and it's showing..... I've just written an article about people over-eating at Christmas so I have to practice what I preach!

[Moh]

Home made fish cakes tonight with tomato sauce.

[Stanley]

Made another small roast stew with some Dexter shoulder steak. Good stuff, fed my daughter with it and had some on a butty for my tea with a second course of toast with St Augur cheese on as I had missed my dinner! Apples and pears for pudding....

[Wendyf]

As soon as the sun hits the solar panels I'm going to put a beef stew on in the slow cooker! I'm just going out to get some veggies to put in..think I might experiment with some celeriac.

[EileenDavid]

We are having roast chicken with all the trimmings tonight yummy. Eileen

[Marilyn]

BBQ.

[Wendyf]

Barbecue...huh! We didn't even get ours out this year. I shouldn't have mentioned the sun, as soon as I switched the slow cooker on it clouded over and now it's raining!

[Moh]

Celariac mash is good. Pot roast, mash, roast sweet potatoes, cauliflower, mashed carrot & swede, yorkshire pudding & gravy.

[Stanley]

Wendy, slow cooking is best. When the solar panels aren't working how about trying a very old method. I use a variation where I smother the pan with tea towels etc as it sits on the hob. Get Colin to set up a box lined with hay underneath and on the sides, a nest in other words. Get the stewpot to a brisk boil, put it in the box, cover the top with hay (packed in an old pillowslip is good to stop bits flying) and then put the lid on the box. Leave it in all day and when you open it up you'll be surprised how it has cooked. All you are doing is conserve the heat you put into it originally and it doesn't need to be boiling to cook. Haybox cooking is very old and was popular during WW2 to save fuel.
I had bacon and tomato butty for dinner and small bowl of stew for tea.

[Stanley]

One small helping of beef stew left so I made mashed potatoes and mashed swedes and used some to bulk it out. I realised I had a surfeit of onions so I boiled two of them with the swede and mashed them in with it. Never done that before, lovely result, I recommend it! Dorothy Hartley is definitely influencing my cooking.

[Marilyn]

Made a Red (Alaskan) Salmon and Spinach Fritatta. Just about to serve it up, with Salad and a few Weight Watcher style chips.
Yum!

[Moh]

Lasagne

[Stanley]

I had a bowl of ham and pea out of the freezer at dinnertime but at the same time I had a big pan simmering. I told you the other day that I was going to lose some weight to take the strain off me knees. I had some bacon in the fridge tempting me towards bacon butties and I had a cabbage grinning at me so I cut the bacon into lardons, fried them with chopped onions in the bacon fat in the frying pan and used that as a base for the shredded cabbage. I cleared the fridge out and put the mashed spuds and swedes left over from yesterday into the mix, added a few goodies and left to simmer slowly until teatime. So everything tidied up, nothing wasted and I have a good soup for freezing and eating. Economy is the household mint!

[Marilyn]

Rogan Josh Curry....with Jasmine Rice.

[Moh]

Home made Lamb Korma Creamy curry with plain rice & naans.