This charming girl has moved into the house next door to our French bakers. The builders working on the house tell me she loves tea and they can't put a mug down because she drinks it. She wouldn't talk to me the first time but she's considering now whether I might be worth notice now I've been past several times! She reminds me so much of the lovely St Bernards we used to have.
Grand-daughter has been frequently in residence, and toys, spare clothes and other acoutrements have drifted into the house and accrued in the conservatory and spare bedroom. Time for blogging has been rather limited - hampered too by the lack of phototgraphy taking place. March seems to be racing past and Easter is on the horizon and I don't really feel I've got past February yet!
It's odd that I never blog about cooking considering I do so much of it. Is it because I never think of photographing dishes before they are eaten or because I nearly always make daily meals at the last possible minute, at speed and using whatever's to hand. M has decreed that evening sandwiches are redundant and she now wants tea at 4.00 p.m. - which must include cake. The main problem was that she declared this edict at 3.50p.m. on a day when no-one had time to shop or bake (I sometimes think she images the cupboards to be stocked like a supemarket to fulfill her every whim.) Husband and I deliberately don't have cake everyday - especially since I started the 5:2 diet, and, of course, I was fully stocked with her prefered sandwich fillings. So I'm afraid she gets bought cake more often than homemade, and at least H and I aren't tempted. She wouldn't eat a Fat Rascal so that's definitely a treat for us. Daughter's partner won't eat dried fruit or spice so she loves it if we have fruit cake or buns.
Like most of us I should imagine, we have to be careful with our finances. We do eat meat, though not in quantity, and most of what we eat is cooked from scratch. I tend to cook in batches to make best use of the oven space and try to tweak leftovers to make a slightly different meal the next time round. As I've mentioned before, M's meals can leave us with a weird selection of small bits which tend to land up in a tomato sauce over pasta. The worse problem I find is adjusting quantity. I hate any kind of food waste, most of what I buy is mercifully free of use by dates as it comes either via the veg box or local butchers etc., so I don't mind using up wrinkly veg and trust to the smell and look of food to tell if it's useable. But sometimes I take my eye off the ball and find forgotten pots of yoghurt or ends of cheese lurking at the back of the fridge. H has an annoying habit of telling me what's in the fridge when it's certainly not about to go off, or 'using up' things in a spirit of martyrdom which I'd earmarked for a certain dish. Last week he had toast because he thought the loaf I'd bought especially to make bread and butter pudding was going hard, and opened a tin of pineapple I was going to use to make a pineapple upside down cake as I must have meant it for M's lunch? We're having fish tonight - though I'd much sooner eat the chicken casserole I made this morning. I shall have mine with salad and add dauphinoise potatoes to H's as I'm on a fast day. The casserole will last the weekend, I expect, even if I give M some for lunch, H is out for lunch tomorrow and dinner on Sunday. I hope the pork joint that came today will do most of next week once cooked allowing that I'm out for lunch on Tues - actually going to visit a cousin in Bristol, but daughter is staying the night on Wednesday. Monday and Thursday will have to be fast days next week. I wonder if the sausages I bought before I realised H was going to be out will fit into the freezer - I was going to make scotch eggs to take on Tuesday but Cousin insists she can manage lunch although she's hobbling around on crutches. I seem to spend an awful lot of my time thinking about food !
Hope you'll all have a lovely weekend. x
4 comments:
I suddenly realise how grateful I am to be living alone and barely having to think about food!
How you put up with M's whims and fancies I cannot imagine. Does she insist on pyjamas before or after tea?
After tea now. She's not realised yet that 4.00p.m tea means H is free now until 9.00p.m - or all evening if I do his evening jobs as well. Sadly ,he can't reciprocate with showers and pyjamas so I have to be here every morning and every afternoon as usual. As I rarely want to go out in the evening, being free from 5.00ish doesn't help me much.
Yes, I never throw away food either and can never believe those statistic about a third of food getting thrown away. I'm sure there's a lot of wastage in supermarkets though, which is terrible.
You are such a busy woman! As Relatively Retiring says,it is a lot easier if you live alone and I am certainly grateful for it.
As to wasting food, I don't know anyone who does.
Post a Comment