Crazy Days Challenge - Day 26 - Hot Dogs

Strange times call for strange meals.  But some strange meals are so bloody tasty you wonder why you don't have them regularly.  Perhaps this current situation will change our eating habits for good.

The other day for instance we had hotdogs for our lunch.  Tasty and simple with two types of sausages, the ones above for me and some Cumberland style sausages for Alan.

I  line my baking tin with foil when I'm cooking meaty and a non-meaty things together so that they don't touch or any leaking fat doesn't mingle with my non-meaty offering. 

Perhaps you can see the divider better in this photo.

I simply cooked a couple of medium onions in a dash of oil and a pinch of salt for ten minutes, as the sausages cooked quietly in the oven and than we had them all on buns from the freezer spread with lots of tomato ketchup.

So very tasty that I totally forgot to photograph the finished article!!  Hopefully I'll remember to cook these again.

Sue xx

Crazy Days Challenge - Day 22 - Potatoes

When we went shopping the other day we picked up a pack of four potatoes.  I knew I had some at home that were on their last legs ... I've been knocking 'sprouts' off them for a couple of weeks now ... but I thought I could set to and use them all up and have the new ones in waiting.

I wonder how long it will be before these new replacements start to sprout?  

At this time of year as soon as the producers remove last years potatoes from the cold stores to send them for packaging and on to the supermarkets and shops, the potatoes want to become seed potatoes and start a new generation, hence the ability to sprout so quickly in the ambient warmth of our kitchens.

Anyway, I set to, knocking off all the sprouts first and then peeling them.  I kept the two best potatoes to be a baked potato for each of us one night this week, and then peeled all the rest.

I gave the peelings a good wash ...

... drained them through the colander.

And then added them to the 'soup bag' that lives in the freezer.

I see a big pot of soup being made by the end of this week, as it's full of tasty bits already.

The peeled potatoes were then cut into largish chunks and put into fresh cold water ready for boiling.  I always keep the chunks large even if I'm making mash as if you chop them too small the cooked potatoes end up tasting watery rather than potatoey, oh and always start with cold water or else the hot water starts to cook the outside right away rather than the heat seeping gently through and cooking the whole chunk evenly.

After coming to the boil and then simmering in the bottom oven of the Aga for twenty five minutes the water was drained off into a jug and the potatoes were left to steam dry nicely.

I had an idea to use up some of the cooked potatoes.  There was a little chunk of steak that I had rescued ... or rather that I forbade Alan from eating with his tea the other night, chopping it off before the rest even landed on his plate ... the steak he had was HUGE and I decided I could make him two more meals from this little piece!!

I cut up the steak into small pieces and added it to some of the cooked potatoes and a small handful of frozen mixed veg, moistened it all with a couple of tablespoonfuls of Bisto gravy, and then I retrieved my leftover pesto/spinach/pasta from the fridge and added some potato to that as well.

Everything went back into the fridge for a while and then I used some of the leftover ready rolled pastry from the fridge to make pies.  I didn't have enough of the shortcrust pastry left so I made shortcrust pastry bases and added Puff pastry lids. 

What a revelation I'll definitely be doing this again in the future, the two types of pastry make for a delicious pie, the shortcrust being sturdy enough to hold the contents and crisp up nicely but the Puff pastry staying deliciously soft and absorbing the steam from the cooking contents. 

Then last night for tea we had our pies with some of the cooked potatoes, which were quickly zapped in the microwave and some more frozen mixed veg with a good slosh of Bisto gravy.

It was very tasty and there are still some more potatoes in the fridge for a future use ... and two more pies each for our tea tonight to have with a different side veg.


Sue xx

Crazy Days Challenge - Day Thirteen - Making Your Lettuce Last

Unwrap your lettuce ... this works with most kinds of lettuce by the way ... slice off the very tip of the brown bit.  Put that into your compost bucket or onto the compost heap, or in my case add it to the 'chickens treats bowl'.

This is the only bit of the lettuce that you don't eat, and in doing either of the above this isn't actually even wasted!!

Next take off the outermost leaves, the limpest and perhaps marked ones.  Add these to the polythene bag or plastic box that you keep in the freezer ready to make soup at a later date ... you don't do this?  You should, a free pot of soup at the end of each week or so is not to be sniffed at.  All trimmings and peelings can go in here ready for when you have the time and the inclination to make the soup!!

Another use for the outer leaves is as a natural food wrap, they help to keep other ... perhaps more valuable ... vegetables fresher for longer in the fridge if wrapped tightly around them and then bagged.  They can still be added to the soup box after this  🙂

In my case I was using one of the first good leaves of this lettuce to contain a messy sandwich filler that I had concocted for my lunch.

A lettuce leaf works a treat to keep things more contained and adds some more taste and crunch to a salad sandwich..

After taking off the leaf I needed I sat the lettuce on it's now trimmed core onto a piece of kitchen paper, this helps draw any moisture from the lettuce and feeds it back slightly if it is needed, which keeps the lettuce fresh for longer.

Then it was popped into a clean polythene bag and all the air pushed out before twisting the neck of the bag and holding it tightly closed with a peg.

This lettuce should now last for around two weeks in the salad drawer of the fridge.  

What you have to remember is not to slice into the lettuce ... as my darling husband tends to do if I'm not here to remind him ... if you want shreds of lettuce, instead of slicing it directly off the lettuce, pop off a few leaves roll them up tightly and slice them instead.  Air is your enemy in a lot of food storage, and cut ends of lettuce/cabbage and this type of vegetable start to go off so much more quickly if you expose too much of them to the air.

This has been a Lesson in Lettuce.

The word lettuce now has no meaning to me ... I have typed it out far too often 🤣🤣

Sue xx  

Peanut Butter Balls, Handcream and Dogs

I like peanut butter and I like dark chocolate ... but these peanut butter in dark chocolate balls are too rich for me.  Slowly eating our way through the cupboards brought these to light yesterday and although at first taste they seemed yummy, after two I felt decidedly queasy.  They were a Christmas treat that I won't be buying again.

And that is partly why I decided to do this Challenge to see which out of the mass of foods that we have in our cupboards and freezer would be things that would be needed to be replaced, and which are foods that are really totally unnecessary and will not be replaced once they are used up.

Something that I thought was all used up yesterday was the tube of hand-cream on my desk, although after chopping it in half with scissors I found it to be still almost half full.  I think they make the plastic so purposely thick that it's virtually impossible to squeeze all the product out, hoping that you'll just go out and buy another one.

They don't catch me out this way though, this should last me at least another week.

There's been something else on my desk this week!!

Sue xx