TARRAGON & THYME

  As planned, we paid a trip to the Butchers and got stocked up on our meat supplies I hope for the best part of 10 to 14 days, but we will see how things go. I managed to find some very nice Rib Eye at the Butchers which was hand cut to the the thickness I required.  Not particularly big, but they look as though they will have a lot of flavour.  I just hope OH likes them.  They are for his birthday meal tomorrow and I shall cook home made chips, fried onion, fried button mushrooms and maybe do a cauliflower and broccoli garlic bake to go with it.  Will see what the birthday boy wants with it.  I will also make some Creme Caramels which are his favourite pudding and a Lemon Self-Saucing Pudding. I then prevaricated as to what joint we were going to have for tea today.  I was a tad extravagant but none of it will go to waste.  I bought a small leg of lamb and also a one rib piece of beef.  Since we got home we decided that we were not up to a ...

Today started off with me watching the new cooking series on ITV at 11:40am with Raymond Blanc OBE.  It was on right after James Martin.  I have always liked Raymond Blanc as a cook as he has always stayed true to tradition and using the best ingredients possible.  A French man showing the UK how to do things when it comes to food and going to the extreme of setting up his own Restaurant Garden which still supplies the restaurant to this day.  When he first started doing this it reminded me so much of the way in which my grandparents used to live with growing their own and making the best of what they had.   I really enjoyed the new show, the recipes were simple but stunning.  His guest today was Angela Hartnett MBE, and it was lovely to see the two of them working in the kitchen together. You can see they are very good friends. I have been quiet today as OH gave me (Chef) the evening off tonight by ordering a take-away for a change.  It is not of...

It is the last day of January 2021 a month has gone by into the New Year and we are still under restrictions, but I am trying to use my time wisely and concentrate on things generally.  As well as my everyday life, some of which I write about on this blog, there are other things going on in the background in readiness for other things to happen.  It is the way I operate, do things a little bit at a time and collect things together in readiness for said project.  I do the same when I am stocking things up in the pantry, buy a couple of things here and there when I can, and get a nice little stock of items together a bit at a time. I like my lists, they track my progress or not so much progress and give me focus on what I have achieved (when I am feeling blue and rather unconvinced that I have made progress).  Or confirm to me that yay, I am on schedule and that things are more than okay.  So back to my lists I am returning.  In the past I have recorded these...

 I have had to wait in for most of the day for a delivery of the new work top for the sink area of the kitchen. They eventually came around 4pm.  Think we were last on his list, but everything has arrived safely and is ready for OH to get on in the kitchen, once I have cleared the sink area. So really I have not been able to do much by way of things because we were listening out for the driver to deliver.  In this house, we cannot hear if anyone goes to the front door.  We do not use the front door in any event and I have had to put a notice up on the front door asking people to call at the back.  The work top is massive but now it is up to his highness to sort things out.  However, I do not think that will be straightaway as he has ordered some other cabinetry around the sink area.  The worktop is quite nice and should go well with the units we are having.  It will be lovely and clean which is the main thing.  We are having white tiles to go...

  The colour of these oranges lightened my soul when I saw them and they are a particularly good batch of Sevilles with the skins being near enough perfect.  I managed to get hold of 4kg of Seville Oranges yesterday with which to make my home made Marmalade.  I have calculated that I need about 20+ jars for home use plus some extra for making up Christmas hampers for this coming Christmas.  So initially I am starting with the 4Kg and will probably buy some more to make up Vin d' Orange and also Seville Orange Curd.  I will also try and get some prepared pulp into the freezer so that I can make another batch later on in the year if needed. I am hoping to start this tonight so that I can complete it on Saturday.  If I do not get to it today, it will be tomorrow and will get made on Sunday. Please see my previous post on Seville Oranges and Marmalade making. Orange Marmalade There is also this post which gives a lot of links to making other preserves out of Se...

When in Waitrose yesterday, I managed to pick up two of my favourite gardening magazines with a bonus of 10 packets of seed with each magazine. I am speaking of the Kitchen Garden Magazine in the first instance the March edition. These are the seeds that came with that magazine. I also bought the Grow your own magazine.  March edition again. And these are the seeds that came with it. I have some other freebie seeds that I have recently obtained elsewhere as well.  What I need now is a reasonably mild dry day so that I can get out into the garden and start to get rid of the rubbish.  In those bad gales we had a while back my greenhouse (lightweight one) lost its cover and plant pots have been blown about a bit.  So I need to get stuck in so that I can make the greenhouses ready for getting some plants on the go a lot earlier than I managed last year. I have to wait in for a delivery today, but once the worktop for the sink and the handles are delivered I should then b...

 We managed to get up early this morning and so were able to go off and visit the fish man.  It was extremely foggy when we left out and particularly so over the fens just outside of Peterborough with the big wind turbines suddenly appearing out of the mist like ghosts.  As we travelled on, the mist started to clear a bit and was a lot clearer by the time we got to the fish man. As usual he had quite a nice selection of fish and shell-fish. He even had Conga Eel steaks, which did not appeal to me whatsoever. We are avid fans of  most fish and shellfish though.  With my auto immune conditions from what I understand fish, shellfish and chicken or other poultry are quite easily processed in our systems than red meats.  I therefore try and have as much fish as I can.  We haven't had any fish for the past two weeks so it made a real change to be able to get some today. We came away on the shellfish front with some Crayfish, Cockles, Crevettes, a Crab (for m...

Not what I had intended but I guess it is called going with the flow. I had planned on having the remains of the Lasagna warmed up mid-day but when it came to it I was not hungry OH was.  So basically I have switched things around a bit to suit what we are actually doing through the day. OH got a fry up as he was hungry.  A bit spoilt I think. His breakfast consisted of two Toulouse sausages (garlic ones), three rashers of bacon, some fried mushrooms and two fried eggs. I cannot always face a breakfast of this magnitude and am quite happy with a bowl of cereal such as Muesli or Granola with milk, or a pot of yogurt (homemade of course) with some fruit. So tonight's tea is the remnants of the Lasagna and for pudding a Marmalade Bread and Butter pudding served with cream.  Only a small one, but I needed to use some old bread up and this is a nice simple way of doing it. Here is how I made the Bread and Butter pudding Ingredients: Enough Stale bread to fit your chosen dish f...