novel34

  I don't know about you, but I find that it's getting harder and harder to stretch my food budget these days.  Food just seems to be costing more and more and sizes are getting smaller.  (Don't get me started on that scam!!) I am always looking for ways to make a little bit go further, but at the same time keeping things to the same standard of deliciousness and nutritiousness that we are used to.   Pasta is a great meal stretcher.  I know it's not Todd's favourite thing to eat, but he does like the idea of saving money, and so he tolerates it.  Myself . . . I adore pasta, and so these types of meals are my absolute favourites! Meals which take a little bit of protein, some vegetable and some pasta, combined in a tasteful way.   Simple recipes which make good use of simple ingredients in a delicious way. I have no idea why this is called Irish Supper.  I am not even sure if this is actually Irish!  Certainly there would be cabbages and sausa...

Spam was not something which we ever had when I was growing up.  I am not sure why that was.  We never had tinned meat of any kind except for deviled ham, which my mother sometimes bought to make our sandwiches for lunch with.  It came in a tin which was placed inside a paper wrapper decorated with little red devils.  I am not sure, but I think the devils somehow made it taste better! The one and only tme I can remember ever enountering Spam was at school.  A boy in my class wanted to trade his Spam sandwiches with my peanut butter ones.   I wouldn't trade because I did not know what Spam was and I was a bit afraid of trying something that I had never had before.   Besides, I really liked peanut butter.   I was very lucky.  I grew up in a country that was untouched by war in my lifetime and I had a father with a really good job.  People over here in the UK have not been that lucky.     Having been through two World ...

        I don't remember ever having Brussels Sprouts when I was a child.   They just were not a vegetable that was readily available back then. We basically only had peas and carrots and green beans and sometimes corn.  I can remember discovering sprouts as an adult and falling completely and totally in love with them, and with cauliflower and broccoli too.  I am a real brassica lover!        I got a huge bag of sprouts in my Christmas Vegetable Box and of course we did not use them all and so I sat here looking at them the other day and thought to myself, I better use them up before they go off and so I thought I would make a sort of gratin with them.      I did a search on line to see if I could find any suggestions and found what looked a lovely recipe on the BBC food web page by Sophie Grigson.  I like Sophie's recipes and so I thought I would use it as a basis for what I wanted to d...

I do the same thing every year.  I buy in far too much veg for the holidays and then am left with a surplus which I am trying to use up at the beginning of the new year.   It's usually a whole lot, but not a whole lot of anything, if you know what I mean. When I looked into my vegetable drawer yesterday I saw a whole lot of normal carrots, a couple of white carrots (Yes, I did say white.   Apparently that's a variety.  I got them in a veg box in December) a few purple carrots (see my last explanation) an acorn squash, a small to medium sized white turnip.a bunch of fresh thyme and a few other odds and sods . . . most not in quantities large enough to cook any one thing, with the exception of the orange carrots.     I peeled and chopped them into large pieces and added a chopped red onion and then I roasted them in a hot oven along with some garlic, a good grinding of black pepper, a few sea salt flakes, some olive oil and a few springs of that f...

Divorce is a funny thing.   You not only lose your spouse but in most cases you lose an entire branch of people that have been your family for a very long time, as if by still associating with you they are being disloyal or some such.  Fair dues.  I completely understand.   This is my ex sister in law's recipe that she shared with me eons ago it seems.  It's the best bean salad you could ever eat.   I love it around the holidays because it goes great on the buffet table, lasts forever and tastes better with each day that passes.  Oh, and it serves a lot of people!  The lime juice is my addition to the recipe.  I like the extra tang it gives. I dug it out and made it recently for a party we were having at church for the ladies.   Each had been asked to bring a salad to share and I thought this would be the perfect one to bring as it makes a lot and everyone always loves it. I was completely wrong.   I was the only one who ...