Menu 28th Sept to Oct 2nd

Well I was going to do a nice menu with several vegetarian dishes as that is the theme chosen this week by the Gluten free menu swap host BUT I went to check a few things in the freezer to finalise the menu and realised it hadn't been on for several hours! Luckily it turned out just to be the plug had been knocked but we now have a lot of sausages, pizza, prawns and other bits of meat to eat up and no ice-cream left at all :(

Have been doing some nice baking recently, just biscuits and the link including the cornflour, lemon and courgette biscuits above.

Monday - individual quiches made with the remains of the puff pastry

Tuesday - Pizza followed by plum crumble (the plums defrosted too).

Wednesday - prawn curry and rice.

Thursday - sausage and smiley faces, more crumble

Friday - pork spare ribs and vegs.

Sorry I've not been about

Week before last I went down with a bad stomach bug which rather knocked on the head any wish to talk about food! I'm fine now but very busy.. I know I've promised pictures of the kitchen but I am vain enough to want it to look it's best so watch this space and I'll try and blitz it soon.
However while you are waiting here is the inside of the fridge. Don't know about you but i love seeing what others buy :)

In other news I recently tried the tortilla from Delightfully Gluten Free and they are really easy and delish. They will certainly be a regular here in future.

Finally Daring Bakers has a lovely new home The Daring Kitchen and a new sister challenge Daring Cooks so if you aren't into baking you can join that instead. The challenge day is halfway through the month so if you want to join both they are spaced out. I shall be very interested to see what recipes get picked and I'm hoping less of them will need converting to be gluten free too !

Finally a mixer

I finally got my new mixer! I've been muddling along with a food processor and armpower but it hasn't been easy and with the baby often being in a sling currently i can't hold bowls to whip things and so forth. My food processor is really good at chopping things and the like but it's mixing blade isn't really up to much of what i want to do particularly the monthly daring baker challenges and things like bread making.

So after much consideration I have got myself a Kenwood Prospero from Argos, they had them the same price as mail ordering from Amazon or similar and I could pick up, also theirs came with the liquadiser (which they all seem to) and the food processor which many offers at this price didn't come with. Plus thiers was in silver not gloss white which most other people were offering. The Prospero is a compact version of the Chef which has a long and respected history in the kitchens of this country. I like it's triangular body shape which makes it shorter than the normal style. I did consider the Kenwood Patissier stand mixer as it's prettier and it's retro look would go well in the kitchen but the chef variants allow other attachments like a liquidiser and I don't currently have one of those either.

So fingers crossed it will allow me more chances to play... I mean bake!

New buys

Matalan - home of cheap but vaguely reasonable clothes and scoring surprisingly high on ethical issues.

They also do homeware.

Today we went to find me a new swimming costume and as well as finding one that fits we picked up a pink enamelled colander for a fiver and several Kilner jars, which are hard to get hold of and often expensive, at 2 pounds for a smallish one and 3 pounds for a large one we got several. We also got various other bits and pieces.

The colander doesn't match the units exactly, that would be amazing as they are un-usual colours but it does tone well which i hope you can see in the picture here. It is hard to get both unit colours together as this is the only area of the kitchen where they met. The pinky/purple is a more dusky, purpley colour than the colander but in the same range and the bluer colour has come out quite well in this picture.

Kitchen Cleaning

We spent a good half a day cleaning the kitchen today. One of those top of cupboards to floor type cleaning sessions. Which was very satisfying and also got rid of the bits and pieces that were threatening to stop me having any work surface left.

I even remembered to put the extractor fan filters in the dishwasher though we need to get bulbs for the lights built into that as they both blew recently. I think that is because they are on the same circuit as the socket the kettle was plugged into and that kept tripping the circuit breaker. We now have a new kettle too.

Re-organised a couple of drawers and moved all the biscuit cutters to a tin which now lives on top of a cupboard. We have a LOT of cutters though I seem to have lost most of my normal circular ones. Plenty of letters, numbers, dinosaurs, christmas shapes and ginger bread men though. Can you tell there is a small person in the house?

More worrying we seem to have lost most of our kitchen knives. We are guessing they got taken to a camping event recently and have either gone home with someone else or are packed in a box somewhere.

I think I want to rationalise the baking tins. I have some loose bottom tins which were my gran's and I really think it's time to get replacements however much sentimental attachment I have to them.

Plus a nice stand in the sink type colander. Time to see if Lakelands are still doing enamel ones in colours that will go with the kitchen.

The new Kitchen

After a year of using two camping gas rings and a table top oven and microwave we have a wonderful new kitchen. The units are two different shades of purple hence the name of this blog.

I have cooked and experimented a lot over the years but building work and a small child have cut back on that. I now want to be able to get back to cooking properly for all of us.