just another morning here

Just tucking into a piece of Abigail’s friendship cake, apparently called Herman. Why it’s called Herman I really don’t know …

Anyway. This wretched cake mix has been sitting on the kitchen side for ten days since a friend gave it to her and she had to watch it, stir it, add ingredients to it, etc. My apologies if you are the parent of one of her friends, since she split it up and distributed it to some of her friends too, so now they have to have cake mixture sitting around in their kitchens too… better than some other chain things I suppose.

And he tastes delicious

Pick and Mix tea is what we have when we empty the contents of the fridge (and larder) onto the table and everyone takes what they want. Okay, not the entire contents, but you get the picture. Rules are that as long as we eat a sandwich/wrap/ricecakes and a piece of fruit then we can add pretty much what we want. The children think that this is a huge treat, so when I announced at the beginning of the week that it was going to be Pick and Mix for dinner every night it was met with huge excitement.

However, the reason for this is that we simply don’t have time this week to cook and sit down together, so I wasn’t quite so enamoured with the concept – not for a whole week! So if you want to be very bored hearing about the various reasons, read on …
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Most of you know that we get Riverford fruit and veg boxes each week; since January they have kindly been delivering recipe cards along with the boxes. These are great, because they focus specifically on the seasonal vegetables that are in the box. I’m a bit rubbish with cooking, really, so I like stuff like that.

So we’ve tried a few recipes from the file this week … I am ashamed to admit that when we’re all busy with school etc. then I just don’t have time or energy for all this cooking, but it’s nice to make time for it when I can.

Monday was Rumbledethumps, which we had with bacon for those who like it. I liked the name, everyone liked the dinner.

On Tuesday we had Turkish Soup, which everyone moaned about but then ate and enjoyed it anyway.

Wednesday was Root Veg Crumble, something I’ve done before but made up the crumble bit myself – this crumble topping was really nice.

Thursday – leftovers from the last two nights!

Friday ended up being rice cakes, cheese and wine. We all got home late and no-one was that hungry!

On Saturday we had Fennel, Mushroom and Parmesan Salad with some ham for those who eat it, followed by Chocolate Pavlova with poached pears. (I had a glut of pears!). Noses were screwed up at the salad, though it did get eaten relatively quickly by most people, it was dubbed ‘too strange’. I liked it – don’t know what they were all moaning about. The pavlova was delicious though!

Planning to try Cauliflower, almond & nutmeg soup next week, as well as a leek & cream risotto – they were the two meals on the menu for Thursday and Friday but we didn’t need them in the end!

We had this for breakfast today, inspired by a recipe card inside the egg box! It was delicious

Marmalade and Banana French Toast
(serves 4)
4 x eggs
4 x tablespoons thin cut orange marmalade
225ml milk
Pinch salt
8 slices bread
Butter to cook
2 x large bananas or 4 x small

Put the eggs in a bowl with the milk and 1 tablespoon marmalade, add the pinch of salt and mix well.
Transfer to a shallow dish.
Dip the bread into the egg mixture and fry in a little butter in a heavy based frying pan, you can probably do two at a time, depending on the size of your frying pan.

Slice the bananas.
In a small saucepan warm up the remaining marmalade, add the sliced bananas and warm through.

Serve the bananas on top of the French toast.

Yum!