I Heart eBay
Look at my new forks, aren’t they pretty?
Conchigelloni (Cannelloni made with Conchiglioni)
This was an experiment – a cannelloni mixture put into pasta shells instead of into tubes. It worked brilliantly. Which was mostly down to Kerri’s excellent cannelloni mixture. We ended up covering the filled shells with bechamel sauce rather than the originally intended tomato sauce. It worked rather well.
Green and Black’s
I do not have the vocabulary to describe how brilliant this is.
Breakfast
Corn Flakes and tea – we normally have PG Tips at work but today we have some new organic tea bags, I haven’t tasted it yet :skeptical:
Apples and Pears
We receive a weekly vegetable box and have done for about six weeks, sometimes it’s been good, sometimes not so good. When we originally decided to sign up for one, we did so because we thought it would help us to eat more fruit and vegetables and also give us the opportunity to eat more interesting and seasonal produce. Another reason is our local supermarket is not particularly great when it comes to fresh produce, there’s plenty of ready-meals and the freezer section is huge but sadly, that’s at the expense of the fresh fruit and vegetable aisle. We also thought it would help us be more creative with our cooking.
The first couple of weeks went well and we used everything up, albeit some of it became soup but, from what I’ve heard, soup is your best friend when you receive a vegetable box, so that’s ok. Then we found we were receiving too many potatoes and onions, that’s ok too though because you can temporarily eliminate them from your box – this however leads to other problems, namely they don’t tell you what you’re going to get instead of the potatoes and onions and you find yourself faced with four different types of leafy, green vegetables…we were definitely creative that week 🙂
So, this week we’ve had some rather strange looking apples and pears delivered. Stephen said they looked woody. I thought they looked too brown. They’re still in the fruit bowl. I’m trying to be “creative” and look for interesting things to do with them. I’ll let you know how I get on.
Aprons
Kitchen Shelf
If you can guess what any of the cookery books on the top shelf are I will award you a prize
Farfalle with Tomato Sauce
Tonight was supposed to be pasta and pesto but I went “off menu” for a number of reasons: I’ve got a cold so thought something with chilli in would be a good idea; on Saturday morning a bag of farfalle (among other things) fell out of the cupboard reminding us that we have a huge amount of pasta that needs using up; ready-made pesto (my own is rubbish) seemed a bit wrong for the first week of blogging about food.
I’m not sure where the farfalle came from, well…it came from Sainsbury’s because it said so on the packet but I’m not sure how it made it’s way into the kitchen cupboard because it’s not one of my favourite pasta shapes. I like spaghetti or rigatoni (the fat tubes) or papardelle (the wide, fat, long strands) but these bow-ties aren’t really for me. They’re a bit novelty I think and novelty is all well and good, but I like my pasta to be of the more traditional variety. I suspect Stephen bought them. And didn’t eat them. He does that a lot. That’s probably why the cupboard is so overcrowded.
Anyway, because of the desire for chilli and the need to use up the bow ties, I thought I would make tomato sauce. Easy, quick, filling and useful. I have a tomato sauce recipe that I always use but on Friday Stephen and I made pizza (we didn’t post about it because it was a disaster, don’t ask, I’m still not over it) and we used a Jamie Oliver recipe for the tomato sauce. It was really simple, just olive oil, garlic, tomatoes, basil, salt and pepper but it was really tasty and it struck me at the time it would be good with pasta. So, that’s what I did tonight, I just added a little (well, a lot actually) chilli and some sundried tomato paste to emulsify it. It wasn’t as good as it was on Friday (typically) but it checked the chilli and using-up-of-novelty-pasta boxes.
Of course, what I could have done is used the leftover sauce from Friday that I squirreled away in the freezer. That would have checked another box that needs checking: the using-up-things-that-Kerri-has-frozen box. I do that a lot. That’s probably why the freezer is so overcrowded.
Coffee
As expected, the “healthy” sandwich didn’t kept my hunger at bay, so I had a coffee. I’m kind so I made one for my colleague too, she’s not a princess though 🙂
Smoked Salmon and Cream Cheese Sandwich
In an attempt to atone for the over-indulgence of the pie and the casserole I ate this weekend, for lunch I had a smoked salmon sandwich. I made it myself (I’m not a fan of pre-packaged sandwiches), the bread was Vogel’s sunflower and barley (my favourite), the salmon was Scottish oak-smoked from Marks and Spencer and the cream cheese (also from Marks and Spencer) was low-fat and organic. I also had a glass of water :healthy:
