Gingerbread and more cookbooks

This month's Daring Bakers Challenge is Gingerbread houses! As yet i haven't really managed to do it though I might have a proper go tomorrow, due to the holidays the reveal date is more a reveal week so many people already have thier posts up so I thought I would mention it so you could go and check out some fantastic gingerbread houses including some great igloos and other more modern buildings recreated in gingerbread!

I have however made gingerbread and indeed a tiny, tiny gingerbread shack.. I think house would be pushing it. This is because I made a gingerbread cheesecake to take to a family get together today. The recipe is adapted from Martha Stwart, I used the honey gingerbread recipe which worked very well with gluten free flour (Dove Farm gluten free plain flour).

The cheesecake come out very well, very rich but everyone seemed to enjoy it.

As to cookbooks well I lied about getting three yesterday... well not exactly lied. I had forgotten one I got early and I got two more today so in total there are 6 new cookbooks this christmas !

The one I had forgotten is Caribbean Food made easy, not something I would have thought to got myself but it has some quite interesting looking recipes so you may see more of that later.

The second one is the Wagamama book.

If you have read my blog for a while you will have heard about Wagamama who are a Japanese noddle bar type restaurant. They have a file folder at the restaurant telling you what dishes you can have or be adapted for various different allergies which means I know they take such things seriously and can easily chose something I know is safe. They also have the info on the website so you can plan in advance. They also scored huge points for having a policy of serving kids first rather than after the adults which is so common here for some reason I can never fathom. As we already know we love a good few of thier dishes this book with certainly get used and I look forward to trying safe versions of some of the ones I can't have at the restaurant.

The final book is one I've had on my wish list for a while now and have got out of the library on several occasions.

It is the river Cottage Meat book. For those that don't live in the UK the River Cottage series of books is by a guy going by the wonderful name of Huge Fearnley-Whittingstall who a good few years agoi now did a TV series about running his own little country garden complete with chickens and pigs and cooking the results, this has spawned into a much bigger enterprise but one that has always sung the praises of local food and small local producers. The Meat book is another big tome though not as heavy as the Fat Duck cookbook! It is nice to have a modern book explaining the various meats in depth and how you can use them as I have a few old ones but this covers the subject from the view point of explaining to people who havn't grown up knowing the various cuts of meat and eating the more 'uncommon' cuts or rather unfashionable ones...

I'm told I should be getting rid of a few of the cookery books I don't use to make space for them!!

Bargins on the high Street

I am very much a supporter of buying locally and I have been trying to support my local shops more recently rather than defaulting to the supermarket. I do still buy some things in the supermarket but we now get vegs from the allotment, a veg box every other week from a local organic shop and any extras from a couple of very good veg shops on the local high street. In fact in easy walking distance we have at least 4 shops with a good range of veg, some more traditional English, some quite Asian oriented.

We get milk delivered by a milk man and the local bread shop is great and we have noticed their prices have not gone up nearly as much as the supermarket so now they are on a par was as not so long ago they were noticeably more expensive.

I am also trying to buy most meat from the local butcher and having had some fantastic beef from him has really brought home how bland the supermarket stuff can be.. he also happily caters to my wims making me gluten free sausages to my specs and even getting me suet when I ask.. It turns out they normally have the abattoir throw the suet away before delivering the carcase as they have no use for it so as a result I got it for free! I got about 5lb, which I'm guessing is one cows worth, of which the picture show about a pounds worth.. Its' quite flaky fat though in this raw form you do have to separate the fat from the surrounding membrain but it means I can make proper chirstmas pub well a gluten free 'proper' one anyway.

The other big bargain of the week was bananas! I stopped at the newest of our veg shops to buy a couple of bags of bananas to make chutney as our current favourite is banana based and spotted that while the bags were a good price they had a big heaped box full of slightly brown ones marked up for 1.99 for the box !! As the recipe calls for very ripe bananas that seemed like a plan!  In all there was 28lb of bananas in the box so that's about 7p a pound!!

Actually turns out most aren't too ripe for eating straight either so the smallest having recovered from his illness earlier in the week has been stuffing himself with them and they are great as fritters to!