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We had a spectacularly bad experience last night with a new recipe.  Somehow we managed to turn some rice noodles into an almost inedible mess, so we were searching for other things to fill us up for the evening. There’s not much instant food in this house at the best of times, but there’s even less now we’re trying to empty the cupboards pre-move.  But we remembered the chutney that has been brewing in the back of the fridge that we mentioned in a earlier post.

MMMMmmmmm! Good!  Especially with a nice bit of mature cheddar on some cold toast (we’re almost out of crackers too!) We liked it a lot, and we’ll definitely keep it in mind for any more courgettes that are going to go to waste in the fridge!

No photos, as we were so desperate for food that we just pigged out!  Luckily there’s a bit more to go…

Just to add a bit of exotica for the weekend, for dinner tonight we made quite a lot of Sushi!  I am lucky sometimes and manage to talk Mike into making sushi (and believe me sometimes it’s a struggle to get him to agree).  We used to make it quite a lot but lately we seemed to have not been bothered.  We made it a while ago and it was pretty much a disaster, in fact, I would go as far to say it was our worst sushi ever!

But tonight’s was definitely an improvement on the last. Nowhere near our best, but we just need to remember how to get the rice right.  Next time maybe!

Yup, that’s right. It’s the last long weekend of the year here.  No respite from work until Christmas after this.

So how did we spend it?  We’ve really made the most of it so far!

First highlight: Another puzzle!

But somehow we managed to lose 2 pieces, or they were never there to begin with.  Not sure which is the most likely.  But it did mean we filled in a few more minutes searching the house for them.  Not to be found, unfortunately.

And then, for added excitement, we made some chutney! Some courgette chutney, to be precise.  Getting in practice to use up all the extra vegetables that we’ll no doubt have when we finally get a vege garden and go mad planting stuff.  Can’t tell you how it tastes yet.  It needs to brew for a few weeks in the fridge first.  I’ll try to remember to give you an update when we try it.  It’s nice to have something to look forward to, isn’t it?!

There’s still tomorrow left though.  Who knows what exciting things that will hold!

More short filler news while we get around to finishing our holiday blog entry.  Yes, we are working on it! We’re up to documenting about day 3 so far… Only another 10 or so to go!

But in the meantime…

We’ve been making lots of burgers for weekend lunches and/or dinners lately, and loving them.  Gives me a chance to fill myself up on some meat for a change, while Bec has turkey mince patties instead.  We’re getting pretty good at making them just how we want them now.

This weekend we had a bit of a disaster though.  We were too lazy to change our grocery order to include some of the big baps that we like as buns (as you can make really big patties and burgers with them!).  Oh no! A weekend without burgers?!  Nah. Breadmaker to the rescue!  I thought Megan might be slightly impressed with the results, so here they are.

No pictures of the burgers though.  Once they’re done, they just disappear!

Well thanks to Rach we received an extra big bird to have for Christmas dinner…… yep, for just the 2 of us she was a big one, weighing in at 7.9kg (well probably 7kg by the time you take the giblets etc out)! We wondered if she was going to fit on our oven trays – but thankfully we found one that she managed to full up! (by the way I can’t believe I am sitting here writing about a bloody turkey).

Thankfully Jamie Oliver was on tv the night before, so we picked up a few good cooking tips, for not only stuffing but learning different ways to test to see if the bird is cooked right through. Now onto the prep, a bit of sage and lemon zest butter under the skin and some stuffing (our best yet), into the neck and a little inside the bird (enough so it can still breathe apparently – even though it’s dead…). Now into the pipping hot oven for about 3 hours.

And here she is………… all crispy! And let it stand while the vege roasts away. We also managed to make some of our best gravy yet too.

And here she is the completed meal for just the 2 of us….. (a lot of food there and yes there is a lot left over). We were ashamed of how much of Mrs bird had to be thrown away – even after we’d filled up the fridge with bits of it – there was just no way we could’ve used all of it! We’ll already be eating turkey sandwiches for breakie, lunch and tea for the next week……

All in all the best Christmas meal we have cooked together…. now we just have to try and repeat it sometime and share it with others.

That’s right, it’s that time of year again. The BBC wine and food festival hit town.  So off we went.

Forgot the camera, and my phone was out of battery, so here’s last year’s photo.  To be honest if we took one this year it would look pretty much exactly the same anyway!

There didn’t seem to be quite the same number of people there this year.  Which was a very good thing.  It was much more pleasant wandering around this time. And not quite so hot and yucky.

We came away with a few chilli sauces, a couple of bottles of wine, a reasonable amount of pickled herring, some cheese, and the bowl queen got some more bowls to add to the collection. Like we need any more! Oh, and a few bonus free pasta sauces, chocolate and an apple.

The other day we scratch-built an Indian style curry for tea, but we weren’t sure how hot the curry powder was as we’d never used it before, so we didn’t put quite enough in. Chilli plants to the rescue! A big, fat green Ring of Fire in the pot, and another one for me to sprinkle on the top of mine, and it was all good! Yum, yum!

It’s good to finally be eating them! Not sure that I’d use any of the others in their green/yellow states, but these ones seem to be really nice green or red.

Right.  Just because a jar in the fridge is green doesn’t mean that it’s actually Thai green curry paste.

Sometimes it’s green because it’s a jar of corriander instead.

DOH!

But at least I noticed in time!  The frantic spitting and frangrance kind of gave it away…

At least the house smells nice though.

Quite a long time ago now we were watching on and off, with a fair amount of disbelief, a whole hour long Delia cooking show on cooking eggs. Boiling them, poaching them, etc. Nothing at all fancy, just the very,very basics.

Oh how we laughed! How could anyone not know how to boil a bloody egg!

Well, us apparently. Somehow we totally failed to cook 3 hard boiled eggs to add to our salad. And that was after checking the Edmonds cookbook for the time, as we were disagreeing about how long they needed (8 minutes, apparently), and carefully setting the watch to make sure we cooked them that long.

Only something went wrong, and they certainly weren’t hard boiled! More like pretty soft boiled. Which made them pretty damn intersting to peel! Still, at least they were nice mushed up on toast as a pre-salad snack.

Delia, I appoogise. I should have been watching, rather than laughing.

Sometimes wandering around the supermarket there are some things you just want to try because they look so interesting. The other day’s find was baby Romanesco cauliflowers. They loook so amazing! A bit like a pine cone covered in big fractal patterns all over. There is a lot of information about them here.

And they were quite yummy! We’d have them again.