ramtops

Saturday dawned much fairer and less windy than Friday had been, so we decided to trundle up to Flamborough for a nice brisk walk along the headland. And brisk it was indeed – so bloody windy that we could barely stand up at times, and certainly far too blustery to risk walking along the cliff edge. So we battled over to Thornwick Bay and back, managing almost three miles, but there really wasn’t much pleasure in it, to be honest.

Because I’m being quite careful with my diet again (details to come in another post at some point), we took a picnic. We had chickpea and tuna salad and a cup of tea when we got to Flamborough, and then some extremely welcome hot homemade lamb and lentil soup when we got back from the walk.

After that we drove up to Filey, but it was full so we didn’t stop. We called in at The Great Satan Tesco on the way home for bulk supplies of cat food, but vowed to cycle over to Morrisons for the rest of the shopping on Sunday. I don’t like Tesco, but we swap the cats’ tins around so they don’t get bored, and it was on the way home.

Sunday dawned … horrid. Damp and cold. In the end we took the car to Morrisons, and stocked up with sensible stuff for me to eat, then came home and slumped. Watched North by North West, which I love, and gave Downton Manor a try – not too bad.

So a bit of a lazy weekend, really – you can tell the weather’s getting seasonal …

Mirrored from kestrel.org.

Lamb is so expensive, so when I see some on offer, I grab it. Sainsburys were doing 1kg of minced lamb for a fiver a few weeks ago, split into 500g packs, so I stowed a couple in the freezer. And then Friday was such a miserable damp day, we decided to construct a moussaka, not least to use up the aubergine lurking within the veg drawer in the fridge.

So … cut a couple of carrots, a courgette and a couple of celery stalks into small dice, chopped an onion and a few cloves of garlic, and set them to saute down.

Sliced the aubergine thinly, laid it on a baking tray lined with tin foil (saves washing up!), drizzled with olive oil, and set in a hot oven for about 30 minutes.

Browned the lamb mince off, and set it aside, draining off the fatty juice. Added some Ras el Hanout to the veg mix and cooked it down for a few minutes, then bunged in the lamb, a can of chopped tomatoes, a slosh of red wine, and some salt and pepper. Left that lot to simmer for about half an hour.

Made a white sauce with wholemeal flour (always do these days, as it’s better for us than white).

Then into the dish went meat/veg mix, then the sliced baked aubergine, then the white sauce, and finally some feta cheese, cubed small. This lot went into the oven at 200 for about 25 minutes.

It made four generous servings, so we had the rest yesterday. Om nom nom :)