I have always enjoyed cooking but my efforts have been sporadic to say the least. At home, I only really cooked at school, the occasional cake and with the Guides. When I left home, it quickly became the norm to eat with my lodgers to cut down on expense and share the work. I learnt so much at this time. I lived on a farm for a short while and tasted the finest produce labour could buy, spoilt. On my own, I reverted to the simple things in life, yes, beans on toast, scrambled egg etc. When DH came on the scene, my repertoire went back to the inevitable student fare of curry, chili, stir fry, scone pizza, etc. Okay for working people. When my children came along and I was at home more often, I made all of their baby food from scratch, even things DH and I hated (think brassicas). But I got bored. I had cookery books which only occasionally saw the light of day.
(Just checked, filling now done, left saucepan in bowl of cold water to cool.)
So I decided to have a special meal once a month for my family. Once again, my repertoire and confidence grew. I watched more and more food TV and wanted more. Then I was diagnosed with lactose intolerance. Quite a blow. If anything though, my interest and experience in cooking grew because there are dairy products in the most unlikely things. I got a bread maker and got creative, not easy when working full time in a very demanding job with two young children. Then I became very poorly. DH did a sterling job keeping the family afloat while I struggled with my health. When my condition stabilised, we decided that we needed to eat well. DH had always grown veg but we really didn't take it seriously. I decided to get much more involved in the planning and the small jobs like seed sowing he was happy to relinquish. Bring on veg garden TV, Internet and magazines! Then the credit crunch bit. More than once I have been grateful that we had already established our veg garden and 'aquired' greenhouses, grateful that we have a garden too!
(DH home, best finish dinner)
So, that pretty much brings us up to date. I now try to meal plan but stay flexible around unexpected bonuses (In-laws inviting us to theirs, unexpected 'food parcels', free eggs for selling their surplus to our friends, etc) I try to keep a stash of home-made ready meals in the freezer for times when things don't go to plan or, like yesterday, I'm too unwell to cook. Ready meals can be something as simple as leftovers just finished. Tonight is a good example. I had made too much filling to go in the pasties so I carefully spooned the excess into a clean margarine tub, stuck a label on it and, when it's cool, it will go in the freezer. Now I know I already have a portion leftover from the last batch so all I need to do is whizz up some pastry et voila, I'm on my way to a meal. I am actually quite horrified at how much food we used to throw away. Now we have a small compost caddy, which is emptied into the 'dalek' at the top of the garden, then onto the veg beds, an old swing top bin for metals and plastics in the garage which is periodically emptied into the wheelie bin (grey top) and everything else is stuffed into whatever recycling bag the council dream up this month. Very little goes into our brown bin (large compostable items and meat, etc. most of this is either burnt in the garden or in the wood burner then spread on the beds) and even less into our blue top bin (landfill). Our Holy Grail each fortnight is for it to be completely empty, not always possible.
Anyway, the pasties. I must just say that I am not and can't be slave to recipes. For example, the pasties should have been made with rough puff pastry. I have neither the time or the energy for that so made them with good old shortcrust. The filling should have had celery in it, but the celery in the veg rack was too far gone so I stuck an extra (food parcel) carrot in. I had forgotten to defrost some homemade chicken stock and I couldn't be faffed to make a veg stock so I used one of my precious organic chicken stock cubes. Then I forgot to put the mustard in at the end and the vinegar (I would have used white wine instead of the balsamic in the recipe 'cos I don't have any) but you won't tell, will you? In the interest of saving time and resources I also don't cut out pastry circles. If you do that, you always have a bit left over. Now, I know you can freeze the left overs and sometimes it's the best option but I just divide my pastry into 4 and roll out to a rough circle around 4mm thick. While they were cooking, I made the chips with food parcel potatoes. Clean plates all round speaks volumes I think.
Until next time x
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