{quilt} while you're ahead

- 3 - Hello Fresh

So a few days before Christmas I got talked into joining HelloFresh by two very polite (and completely frozen solid) young men canvassing the neighbourhood.

 I'd heard of the company before... but they didn't seem to have a box for 'five' people and to be honest my kids are kind of stupidly fussy when it comes to food so it never seemed the right thing for me.  This time though... I thought...why not?  I get bored of cooking the same stuff, it's a crazy busy term at school and there are so many sporting events to attend/drive people too that letting somebody taking over some of the shopping and thinking seems like a good idea.  All I need to do is select recipes on the website...

And it's January, folks, need I say more?

The first box arrived yesterday.  £40 for four meals for five people.  That works out at £2.00 per portion.  Not bad, me thinks.

The delivery dude showed up at the allotted time.  Good, I hate it when they don't.  The box had been well treated and sturdy.  Good, always worrying when the corner are squashed or something.

Inside you have a paper bag for each meal, sealed by a colour sticker matching the recipe sheet.

Easy peasy.

All the cold stuff is in this bag:

A lot of packaging yes, but it can all be re-used/recycled.  Another bugbear of mine... hate useless packaging,

For the first meal we decided to have steak tagliata.

... it was delicious.  The meat was tender and tasty, the portions size perfect, the instructions easy to follow... I was very impressed.

They boys were impressed.  (And they're fussy customers).  Mr M was impressed.

So all in all a success.

(Lilli was not impressed.  No left-overs for her)

I now look forward to try the other recipes and see how we go on, I know myself well enough that there will be weeks when I skip the delivery because I want to cook other things, and four meals a week like this might be a little much, we're all over the place half the time... but yes definitively, goos stuff.

If you leave in the UK and fancy try it out leave me a comment with your email.  I have a three promotional codes for a free box...

...first come first served...

 

PS this post is not sponsored.  All opinions are my own.

 

 

*99** food.

Catchy title, I know.

The thing is I've just had a very stressful hour and I'm still a little frazzled.  

Why?  You may ask... let me tell you .... One thing that you might not know about me is that I get dates wrong.

A lot.

And I don't mean I miss birthdays or important dates (I'm good at remembering those)... no I mean I book things on the wrong day, or I forget I booked something and don't show up, or I book it on the right date and write it down in my diary on the wrong night so I still miss it...

I mean... I don't do this 'all the time' (now that would be worrying)... just frequently enough that it's getting noticeable.  (Drives Mr M slightly mad.  Just a little bit...)

Sigh.  

So this afternoon my mother called me and tells me the flights I booked for her and dad to come and look after the boys when Mr M and I go to Palm Spring at the end of the month... are the wrong way around... the outbound flight on the inbound date and vice versa.

AAARRGGHHHH...

 

It's all sorted now but Mr M's eyes are still in the back of his head he rolled them so much...

 

Anyway, back to food.  

I love cookery books.

Recently I had a little tidy up and got rid of the ones I know I'll never use (and put the left over in some sort of colour coordinate order - which btw will change as soon as I'll finish writing this post, it's just not right) and leafed through the others.

I found this one I didn't even know I had?!  A present?  It's brilliant so why hasn't it ever been used?

I'm not very good nor very confident in cooking meat but the boys love it so I picked a recipe and got to work

Ribs.  Who doesn't love ribs, right?

And the results?

It kind of proved my point about cooking meat.  It's never as easy as it seems.

The recipe for the sauce was great and tasted delicious... The meat was... hard.  

Was it the meat's fault? A bad piece?  I followed the recipe but maybe I went wrong somewhere?  The wrong sort of ribs?

I don't know,  The boys ate them because they're feral and rather than eating the braised courgettes they'd have eaten the chairs but still, I was a little disappointed.

 

Tonight we'll try another new thing:

Purple potatoes.

"Violetta" potatoes to be precise.

I'm going to mash them... they should make a lovely lilac mash which tastes the same as the normal one.

(Although it'll clash terribly with the green beans and the salmon... oh well)

*91** peas

I love peas.  Do you love peas?

I could eat peas everyday.  Not my kids.  They eat them because let's face it they're fairly innocuous as vegetable are concerned, right?

Braised peas.  Steamed peas.  Peas and rice, fab.  Tuna and peas pasta... yum... although I'm alone on that one in this household.

I normally use frozen peas, or if I'm really strapped for time, tin peas.  

Petit Pois are my favourite.

The other day I was in town for something or other (I actually can't remember why... oh getting old is fun... ) I stumbled upon the bimonthly farmers' market and bought fresh peas!

I hadn't seen them in years.

Decades since I'd shelled some, I remember moaning as a child about doing it because it seemed slow and boring and wanted to do other things...

They're the cutest thing, aren't they?

(and my nails have ridges... mmmhhh what to do about that?)

I have to admit it takes rather a long time to shell them, and the cooking time is much longer too... but they taste so goooooood.

I cooked them with ham and herbs, according to a recipe found in "Five Quarters" by Rachel Roddy (very good book on real Italian food by the way), and they were delicious.

It was fun.  My kids claimed they'd never seen peas in a pod before.  Liers.  I think.  

I hope.

Sigh... 

*83** postcards from Tuscany

Seven hours.

40 kg of tomatoes.

In pictures:

Too tired for words.

 

*52** salads

Big family lunch today.

I was on salad duty.

First up, potato salad (potatoes salad? whatever).

New potatoes with peas and green beens and a little smudge of spring onions. Smothered in a lemon mayonnaise/olive oil ensemble.

Second... coleslaw.  The recipe for this one comes from the book Deliciously Ella.  Carrots and red cabbage in a cashew nuts/olive oil/garlic/lemon/maple syrup dressing.  Totes yummy.

Third and final salad... the ubiquitous green job.  Made slightly more interesting by making child No 3 cutting all the cucumber slices with a cookie cutter.  At least he wasn't on his iPad for 15 minutes. Whatever it takes, right?

 

Lunch was great.  The salads got eaten.  The cousins played, the adults talked.

 

All's good in the world.

*47** inspired to cook

I don't know you, but I get really bored of cooking. 

If I were really really rich I'd have a cook and someone to wash my hair everyday.  Don't you just love having your hair washed? I'm digressing here.... food ah yes, food.  My lot are not very adventurous with food.  No salads (the odd leaf in a sandwich is vaguely acceptable.  No tomatoes. Not everybody eats eggs.  Or salmon.  Or fish in general.  Or steak.  No zucchinis or aubergines.  No avocados (wait... that's me).  Not too spicy from one camp.  More spicy from the other side.

Trying to find something that everybody eats is tricky.  And boring.  Deadly at times.  There are moment that if see another piece of chicken I might lose the plot.

More than usual that is....

Sometimes I just don't care.  

Sometimes I tried doing something new and keep my fingers crossed.  Sometimes they surprise me and love the result - last night paella (with prawns!! I know... daring) was a hit for example.  Who would have thought eh?  I was ready for battle and all...

And sometimes they surprise me and don't love something I would have sworn they'd do.

For example last night, for dessert*, I baked Portuguese custard tarts from Bill Granger's everyday food. (Both recipe were on the same page... it's easy that way!)

I'd never made them before.  

But these babies are gooooooooooood!

... even if they don't look very pretty...

(not sure how they're supposed to look)... trust me they very very very goooooooooooood!

 

And the boys didn't like them.   Not one of them.

 

I did.

Unfortunately.

 *don't be ridiculous I don't always bake things for dessert.  More often than not I hold a gun to their heads and ask them nicely to eat a piece of fruit.

**I don't own a gun.  It was a figure of speech.  For dramatic effect.

*43** the ubiquitous chocolate 'salame'

... because sometime (often) I need a slice of this wonderful 'refrigerator cake' (horrible name).

100gr melted butter, unsalted

125gr sugar

2 large eggs

50gr cocoa powder (unsweetened)

100gr broken rich tea or digestive biscuits

whisk together by hand the sugar and the eggs

add the cocoa (I will sift it before mixing it, breath easy!)

I use this stuff.  It's the good stuff.

Now add the biscuits... try not to eat too many of them... I know broken biscuits have no calories, but still...

I know... this doesn't look good at this stage... just trust me, it will be delish.  Just 'plop' (couldn't resist, I apologise) the mixture on a  sheet of foil and wrap it up.  

Then it's in the freezer for a couple of hours or until hard.

Then you eat it.

 

I'm serving it tonight when the mother in law comes to dinner.  

With an hypocritical fruit salad.  Of course.

 

(hashtag cocoaisafruit)

 

 

 

*30** crunchy lemon cake

Ok, I might have mentioned this cake previously on this channel... but hey it's that good and that easy that we can talk about it again.

The recipe comes from Mary Berry Baking bible and it's one of those 'chuck everything in the mixer and bake' (bake the resulting mixture, not the mixer... doh) type recipe that I favour when life is a little frantic.

Which is often, let's face it.

Right now the offsprings are still in bed which makes the kitchen an oasis of peace.  The hum of the refrigerator, the birds outside, the click clack of the keyboard.  Mr M has just gone to work.  My hands are very dry and I haven't showered yet.  Ok this was a bit of a non sequitur and could be considered as oversharing but sometimes I get 'writing Tourette' and it just pours out.

Also my old computer is not connecting to the iCloud properly and the photos are not downloading and I'm thinking that if I waffle on for a bit and give it a little more time it might work.  

Nope... time to apply the good old ctrl-alt-delete manoeuvre...

Yup, the old ones are always the best ones.  Here's the recipe:

and here are a few gratuitous yellow photos to add interest and a pop of colour to this post

oh yes... and here's the cake

I promise you it's so easy it makes itself.  And it's delicious, or 'dolishoth' as No 3 used to say when he was small and cute.

And now that my tea has gone cold and it's time to take the rubbish out before the bin men come.

 

Such a glamorous life.


 Sigh.

*13** zappole

I know lent is only a few days away... but that is why I'm going to give you this recipe only now: so you don't make them too many times and then blame me for not fitting into your bathing suit this summer.

They're not exactly lent food... if you know what I mean...

 

BUT They are UTTERLY delicious.

And so quick to make it's unfortunate.

I believe the recipe comes from an old issue of Simple Things magazine (originally it comes from the book "Donut" by Tracey Meharg), but it could easily have been from somewhere else...  I have a pile of orphan cuttings in the kitchen I'm slowly cooking my way through...

150g self raising flour

1tbsp granulated sugar

230g of ricotta cheese

2 eggs at room temperature lightly whisked

1tsp vanilla essence

Vegetable oil for deep frying

Icing sugar for dusting (generously as you can see from my photo)

 

Basically you chuck all the ingredients in a food processor bowl and mix till you get a sticky batter/dough.  Don't over mix it.  Then you heat the oil in a deep heavy based pan till hot.  Gently roll 1/2 tbsp of the batter in the oil and deep fry them till golden brown, they'll float to the surface and will need to be turned over once or twice until puffed up.

Tranfer to paper towel briefly for draining and then dust generously with the icing sugar.

Oh lord, I'm salivating just writing the recipe out.

 

DO TRY THEM. 

And then report back.

 

 

*6**2016

I've come to the conclusion that it's absolutely impossible to be completely on top of things.

Seriously.

It's like when you climb a mountain and you get to the top and you realise you're not actually to the top but you need to get a little bit further again.

AND the more you do the more you realise that you could do and so on and on and on.

The more I tick of the list the more I add at the bottom of it.

It's ridiculous.

And not in a funny ha ha way.

More in a hit your head repeatedly against the wall way.

This has been my view for this morning. 

I'm cooking dinner and frequent stirring is required.  Also the winter sun blasts through that big window and burns your retinas if you sit at the table. 

The big amaryllis flopped down last night so I cut the stem and hopefully it'll grace us with a few more days of beauty.

The two black things in the fruit bowl are two black bananas awaiting to be smashed and baked into more banana bread.  I might add chocolate chips this time.  just because.

I've moved to fill the dishwasher/emptythedryer/fillthedryer/openthedoortothecourier/cookdinner and that's it.

2430 fitbit steps without actually going anywhere.

Whatever.  Modern life is weird.

 

Nothing much has happened since we last 'spoke'.

The most 'exciting' (and I say this very loosely) thing occurred on Sunday night when No 2 announced at 5.55pm that he needed a cake inspired by Shakespeare and the Globe Theatre.

WHAAATT??

We made it.  It took three hours, a trip to a very small open all night shop, a few tantrums (two from him one from me), but we did it.

Hamlet's skull is a diabetes inducing lump of sugar - a pound in weight - and if you're really interested I can tell you it was eaten (it got split in half and two 13yr olds had a competition to see who could eat their half first.  Gross).

You must forgive us the architecturally inaccurate wooden structures, but chocolate mint stick are extremely friable and their load carrying capacity is, let's be honest, rubbish.

We did however received two commendations for it. (Yes WE)

AND a very small post apocalyptic remnant of the cake did make it home, which surprised me.  Or maybe it didn't.