2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 44,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 10 Film Festivals

Click here to see the complete report.

A fabulous seasonal Slimming World treat

I’ve not been keeping to my healthy eating plan this Christmas, but have been inspired by food other bloggers have been coming up with! Like this post from The Big Brutal Belly Loss: The only good thing about tonight will be the lovely Xmas SW food.

Christmas Day dinner was worth all the prepping

The turkey, all bacon-ed up, ready for the oven. He was a rambunctious chap, and tried to make a break for it when one of his legs sprang free and began burning against the side of the oven – fun times!

 

Sides in the oven (clockwise from top left): a trio of stuffings; potato logs; roast potatoes.

 

 

 

 

The turkey came out looking stunning. The size of the bird (8.4 kg) meant he was a pleasure to carve. We served on one breast nad leg, and will use the rest for planned overs later in the week.

 

 

 

 

More food! From the left: leg meat sausage meat stuffing (meat from Joe’s Sausages, seasoned with all the herbs, and would have been ideal for stuffing balls); potato logs; cranberry sauce (the regular stuff out of the jar, with added orange juice, orange zest and port).

The trio of stuffing and roasters went down a treat.

 

 

 

Mum has finally found a use for all the lace and crochet doilies she has collected/inherited! They were great as placemats and looked really pretty on the Festive table.

The night before Christmas is all about the prep

The new fridge has had its legs stretched this week! It’s been chokka block full. About a third of the fridge is full of food prepped for Christmas Day itself, including:

• peeled sprouts and carrots, ready to be steamed
• parboiled tatties, ready to be roasted
• chipolatas, a trio of stuffings and sausage meat stuffing, ready to be popped in the oven
• potato logs and roast vegetable soup, made by one of our guests, ready to be cooked up as an accompaniment and starter* respectively
• cranberry sauce, gravy and bread sauce, all ready to be heated and served as needed

All this prep makes Christmas Day jsut a wee bit more relaxing, what with all the present-opening, drinkies drinking, and so on!

* After the soup made it to the bowl I sprinkled a little fresh parsley and a few strand of lemon zest on top. We also offered guests a wedge of lemon to squeeze over their soup. These wee touches really jazz up the soup and make it a bit special.

The turkey was a 8.4kg monster, but it was intended to feed six regular humans plus my wee brother! It was either a turkey to serve 15-18 people (as this one was) or 7-10, which just wasn’t big enough.

 

 

 

 

 

The menu. There’s nothing like too many sides!

 

A slightly odd lasagne: spinach and wurst

Talk about using up what was in the fridge (the annual pre-Christmas purge!) – lasagne with spinach and bratwurst is pretty random! TAsted good though! Bratwurst is a smoked sausage, so it;’s gonna take great whatever you do with it. And spinach cooks away to almost nothing (I used a 200g bag).

The other purged ingredients in the sauce were a few tomatoes (chopped) and a chopped onion – all cooked up in to a regular pasta sauce, before being layered between the lasagne sheets – more on making lasagne in a previous post.

I topped the whole thing with a bechamel sauce, followed by grated Parmesan (it’s what we had!).

It got cooked in the oven for about 45 minutes, until the pasta sheets were cooked. Voila!

Bechamel sauce

There are two schools of thought about how to make a white, or Bechamel sauce, in my family:

1. make a roux and add milk to make the sauce (method below)
2. add a cornflour paste to boiling milk to thicken it to a sauce

Both work just fine, but I go with the traditional method.

This recipe was taken from the BBC Food website (purely to have the instructions written down!), and Delia has a few other bits of info to add – so worth taking a look. She also flavours her milk before using it in the sauce – I often do this too, but use vege peelings, bay leaf, a bit of onion, or whatever I have lying around. It really makes the milk, and the sauce, taste lovely.

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Ingredients
40g butter
20g plain flour
salt and freshly milled black pepper

Method

1. Begin by melting the butter gently – don’t over-heat it or let it brown, as this will affect the colour and flavour of the sauce. As soon as the butter melts, add the flour and, over a medium heat and using a small pointed wooden spoon, stir quite vigorously to make a smooth, glossy paste – a roux.
2. Now begin adding the infused milk a little at a time – about 25ml first of all and stir again vigorously. Then, when this milk is incorporated, add the next amount and continue incorporating each bit of liquid before you add the next. When about half the milk is in, switch to a balloon whisk* and start adding large amounts of milk, but always whisking briskly. Your reward will be a smooth, glossy, creamy sauce.
3. Now turn the heat down to its lowest setting and let the sauce cook for 5 minutes, whisking from time to time. While that’s happening, taste and season with salt and freshly milled black pepper.

* Remember to use a silicon-covered whisk if you are using a non-stick milk pan!

What to do with a rather large bottle of Baileys (apart from just drink it straight!)

Christmas morning gets off to a fine start with some fresh coffee with a healthy shot of Bailey’s. It’s the only way to get through the day! This year I bought some orange truffle Bailey’s – a new one to me. But it’s a big bottle, and it doesn’t stay good forever, so I was thinking up a few different ways to use it up over the Festive period. Cocktails seemed like a good start.

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Boozy hot chocolate

Inspired by this recipe for White Ape I added a healthy shot of Bailey’s to hot chocolate, sprinkled in a little cinnamon, and whisked. Because I didn’t use cream, I used more hot chocolate than Bailey’s, making it a bit more palatable.

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Orgasm #7

This was another recipe found online. I happened to have some Cointreau lying around too, so this recipe was a good way to use up both bottles. I thought it was a bit strong, so added a larger proportion of Bailey’s.

1 1/2  oz Bailey’s® Irish  cream
1 1/2  oz Cointreau® orange  liqueur

Pour both ingredients over cracked ice in an old-fashioned glass, and serve.

Truffley treats (and not the chocolate kind)

The key ingredients for the truffle-laced pasta.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Asparagus in butter to start.

 

 

 

 

Fresh pasta with mushrooms and cream, topped with Parmesan and shavings of white truffle.

 

 

 

Pears poached in red wine, topped with cream.

Curry and roti

I came home on Friday night and found that Hubby had,very kindly, made a chicken curry in the slow cooker for the following night’s dinner. It looks a little watery in the pic, but it was tasty. I added a little smoked paprika and cinnamon before reheating it on the hob before we ate.

Anyway, I’m not a huge rice fan, so was trying to think what else we could have with out curry. And, after a decade or os, I decided to brave making roti. I fell in love with roti while on a youth exchange in Trinidad in 2000. Homemade is best, and I think I did OK for a first attempt. But I will persist…

So I found this recipe, and gave it a shot. It needed the resting time, and I didn’t give it that. I also think it needed a more generous doses of the oil/butter mixture.

Watch this space… Next time I might even be able to get it to buss up!

Another Sunday breakfast

This Sunday Hubby and I agreed that proper breakfast was called for. It’s been one of those weeks: last weekend I discovered I can’t drink like I used to, and spent some time recovering; and then developed a cold which has resulted in too may early nights. So a fabulous, filling, hearty breakfast was just the thing for our day off.

Aside from the sausages*, it was Syn Free on Slimming World:

• smoked bacon, with the fat removed before cooking
• scrambled eggs – I use just eggs, and seasoning, with a little Fry Light in the pan to get the cooking started
• cherry toms in balsamic vinegar, stewed for a few minutes, covered, in a non-stick pan
• sliced mushrooms, “fried“, seasoned with Worcestershire sauce

*for Syn Free sausages, try Joe’s Sausages – they deliver to your door!