ramtops: (Default)

plums

Well, rather, autumn is here, and we’re back to more suitable cooking for the season.

I spent a lot of time in the kitchen this weekend; I made bread, pizza dough, and peanut butter and choc chip cookies on Saturday (recipes to come, I promise, but I’m still tweaking a bit), and on Sunday I did lamb and veg soup (or at least the components thereof), plum, apple and five spice crumble.

The soup involved roasting off £1.20’s worth of lamb bones from Morrisons, then boiling them down for stock, then picking the meat off them. There was actually enough meat for two big pots of soup, so some has gone in the freezer. Then I very finely chopped ¼ swede, 1 leek, 2 carrots and 1 courgette (takes bloody ages, but I never feel the food processor does it as well), and put them in the medium slow cooker with a glug of olive oil, and about ½” of water. Then this morning I married up stock, lamb and veg, together with 1 litre of veg soup left over from *last* week. That will do us for lunches for this week, with some crispbread or whatever.

The market stall in Hull was selling 2lbs of plums for a quid – rude not to, really. So I bought them, a *huuuuge* green cabbage, a cauliflower, and two Bramleys, for £3. Most of the plums went into a crumble – I say “most”, because I couldn’t fit them all into the pan. How I wish I had room for another freezer.

I halved them, and laid them flat in a heavy based frying pan, sprinkled with five space, and added about 1″ of water. Simmered until they were soft, then decanted them into a dish, and cooked the syrup right down. Added a peeled and chopped Bramley, topped with a oaty crumble mix and … nectar.

Pete constructed a pizza on Saturday – I use 500g of flour for dough, and it makes three pizzas for us, and freezes well. He used some smoked salami that we discovered in Aldi (along with various other stuff), and very nice it was too.

Sunday we dined on venison steak and braised red cabbage (both out of the freezer), and potatoes roasted with olive oil and rosemary. And the aforementioned crumble. It’s amazing how little meat we want these days – a 300g venison steak was plenty between us, and we used to eat 400g steaks each in the day.

This week, we will be mostly eating cabbage, I suspect. And soup. :)

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

ramtops: (hat)

As regular readers will know, it has been my wont through the summer to go out for an early morning bike ride. I went out yesterday for the first time since the previous Wednesday (25/8), and what a difference … Autumn has arrived while I wasn’t looking.

I took a thin cardi and never took it off, there was a heavy mist which didn’t burn off till about 7 a.m., and it won’t be long before I need lights at 6.30. There’s a real sharpness to the air now, and the days are becoming noticeably shorter.

Not that I mind – autumn is my favourite time of year, and if we’re lucky we get lovely sunny days and crisp nights. Must find time to go brambling on Sunday!

Mirrored from kestrel.org.

ramtops: (weather rainbow)
It was very cold last night for September. It was very cold this morning, and the house felt .. damp, somehow. I've been cold all day, despite wearing a cardigan, and wooly feet - the wind is blowing the wrong way.

So that's it - I've switched the boiler back to rads, and we shall be warm this evening. And bugger the expense.
ramtops: (Default)

signs of autumn
Originally uploaded by ramtops.
this weekend is [livejournal.com profile] geoffcampbell's annual Summer Camp, a gathering of bikers, bofhen, and friends; it's one of our absolutely favourite weekends of the year, and heralds the end of the summer for me.

stalking Iggy round the garden with the camera this lunchtime (without much success in terms of good photographs), I noticed that the Virginia Creeper we planted to cover up the hideous pebbledash on the shed is just starting to turn. And there's a nip in the air morning and evening. Autumn seems to be arriving a little earlier this year, and that suits me fine.

Profile

ramtops: (Default)
ramtops

March 2016

S M T W T F S
  1 2345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags