Tag Archives: mustard mash

Tasty Meal, Disappointing Photo

14 Replies

Got up. Had breakfast. Saw greenfinch and two long-tailed tits on the feeders (one of the latter came and peered through the kitchen window at me), Waved Julia off to her meeting at he railway station, read emails (boring), answered comments (better) and read blogs (better still). Now I need to write.

Julia had a good afternoon at the tea room. The shopping arrived and everything was there. I forgot to order yoghurt.

Broccoli, with added steam

Last night’s meal, sausage, onion gravy, mashed mixed veg (carrot, parsnip and butternut squash) broccoli, mustard mash, worked out well, though the “onion gravy” was a bit thick and lacked liquid and flow. It was more like a splodge of onions with flavouring. It’s amazing how many ways I can get things wrong. That should be the simplest part.

I tried writing some notes whilst watching TV but it didn’t work well. The days when I could read a book, watch TV and chat are long gone. My brain is clearly closing down, though my fading hearing is also playing a part as I need to spend more effort on listening.

Finished my article on wartime cheese production last night. It’s quite instructive, thinking back, because I have become so used to a fine variety of cheese the days of cabinets filled with blocks of Cheddar had just about faded from my memory. Cheddar, Red Leicester, Double Gloucester and Stilton were, it seemed, the only British cheeses. When we visited grandparents the shops had Lancashire and Wensleydale and I used to nag my parents to buy some to take home. And ice cream from Mrs Hudsons.

Ah, nostalgia!

It looked a lot better in real life, and tasted good too. I really must brush up on my food photography. 

 

 

 

Cottage Pie

7 Replies

Inspired by the box of meals that I had for my birthday, I decided to make meatballs. That involved buying mince, which we haven’t had for over six months as part of our new healthy eating regime.

As a result, we had a very pleasant meal of meatballs, mashed potatoes and greens. I used nutmeg and chilli as seasoning and it seemed to work well to make a Swedish style meatball. Unfortunately I broke the blender whilst making the bread crumbs (put the lid on wrong, twisted and locked it all together in the wrong place). It won’t switch on and I can’t get it to release itself so I can try again. As a result the kitchen was a mess by the time I’d finished – a broken blender, the mess from making meatballs and, even worse, the debris from making breadcrumbs using a hand blender, a mixing ball and a lid fashioned from a tea towel.

No, I didn’t take photos.

However, this left us with quite a lot of mince left over. That left three choices – cottage pie, spaghetti bolognese or chilli. I suppose the title spoils the surprise.

I softened onions and browned the mince, added a stock cube, Hendersons, mushrooms and, at the last minute spinach. I was working on the principle of using what was too hand and needed using up. As I’d made a vegetable soup earlier in the day I didn’t have as much choice as I normally do, and couldn’t be bothered to chop more veg.

Top with mustard mash and grilled with a cheesy topping, it turned out reasonably well. I wouldn’t normally use cheese, but ordering food by delivery rather than shopping myself has meant we have more of some things than we need.

We had it with stir-fried black kale, because we are quite trendy. Though some of the black bits are there because I fried too much and stirred too little.

Note: this is the second post of the day. The first is here. The first one is more interesting but this one makes my mouth water.

Cottage Pie and black kale

Cottage Pie and black kale