A good English fry-up...

can rarely be beaten, except maybe by steak. Perhaps I should do an English breakfast with steak too - that would be cool. This was my fry-up this morning, which we had about lunchtime, so I guess I could call it brunch. As you can see, it has a fried egg, crispy sausages and ubercrispy bacon, grilled tomatoes (drizzled with balsamic vinegar for extra sweetness) and mushrooms and onions. I put a bit of cayenne pepper with the mushrooms and onions and a small clove of garlic for some extra kick. My other half had baked beans too, but I'm not a fan of them so I didn't. Neither of us like fried bread either, or black pudding particularly, so for my taste, all the basics were here. Maybe some potato waffles or chips would have been good too - but a bit unnecessary, I think. I had ketchup on the side, of course - how could you have a fry-up without Heinz ketchup? Impossible.

Valentine's Day cosy supper in

Wow, it's been some time since I've blogged. I hate that. Everything else has just taken over a bit recently - I've got a new job, I'm working from home too, whenever I get the time and I guess it's just even harder to find the time to do this. I've not stopped eating and cooking though, so I've taken the photos of food I've eaten over the last ten days (not all of it) from my camera and I'll try and remember what, when and why I was eating...

Here's the first. This was our Valentine's dinner. It was seriously lacking some green - I think we were going to have salad on the side but we didn't quite manage it. I don't buy steak very often, but every time I do I think we should eat it every week. It's just the best taste in the world. I was trying to use a few pans as possible, so I griddled the flat mushrooms, onions and tomatoes, then kept them warm and griddled the steak. Meanwhile, the salad potatoes were simmering, then I lightly mashed them with a drizzle of olive oil and a big clove of garlic (this is fast-becoming my most used potato accompaniment - it's just so quick and easy and goes with everything). It was good. Then we had something else I hardly ever buy - chocolate ice-cream (Ben & Jerry's chocolate fudge brownie) - that was great too. I'd get bored of chocolate ice-cream if I had it every day (maybe) but when you don't have it for ages, it's even better than you can imagine. This may not have been the most romantic of meals, but we liked it.

Monday salad and stirfry

It's been a healthy day today but god I could do with an unhealthy snack RIGHT NOW. After I'd been to the gym (yes, for the first time in 2007 - it was horrible) I had a slice of toast with wholenut peanut butter, then for lunch I made a salad with the rest of the spinach, watercress and rocket and some Sainsbury's mixed salad (I like the cabbage crunch), cherry tomatoes and carrots, a raw mushroom (haven't had one of those for ages), some of the obligatory pumpkin seeds (they'll be obligatory until I finish the packet and it's a big one) and a John West tuna with a twist, (the lime and black pepper version). It was nice.

But at about 5.00 I had to have two slices of toast with peanut butter - I was starving and cold, and I fancied comfort food, but a cup of tea hadn't helped.

I had quite a late supper of tuna steak, marinated with soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic and ginger on stirfried veg with a dash of soy sauce and a dash of sherry vinegar in it to give it some flavour. It was tasty and I tried to make it more rare than I have before but to be honest I didn't really notice much difference apart from what it looked like. I think I prefer the lime and chilli marinade I've used on previous occasions, but it was worth trying. Bloody hell I'm starving. Can somebody find me a big chocolate cake please?

Sunday supper of beef and ale casserole

A casserole on a chilly day seems like proper home cooking. I think I've blogged about this one before too - it's a really nice recipe from the Waitrose website, with a bottle of Timothy Taylor's ale and balsamic vinegar. I add mushrooms, sometimes use whole shallots instead of onions and thicken the sauce with some extra flour if I feel like it. Last time I made it I used the gloriously thick Belazu balsamic vinegar (the food of the Gods - it's expensive but worth every penny - it's just sublime drizzled over a tomato salad) and it didn't work as well as before, when I used a cheap one, so I specifically bought a horrible, thin Balsamic vinegar from Sainsbury's purely for cooking purposes. This seemed to give a better result.

I left the casserole doing its stuff in the oven for a good 2 hours, and served it with lightly mashed new potatoes with garlic and olive oil, carrots and broccoli. It was lovely, and we ate less than half of it so there's loads in a pot in the freezer for another day. I was pleased - I'd bought Sainsbury's be good to yourself casserole steak with a little trepidation (I made a spag bol with their BGTY mince once and it was horrible, grisly and flavourless) but it was beautifully tender and tasty.

Christmas Eve super-salad supper

Ok, so this isn't our usual Christmas Eve supper, but as we had a big lunch my Dad made one of his warm super-salads in the evening. As it's Christmas, we followed it with cheese, of course. There's barely a meal around Christmas without cheese in this house, execpt maybe breakfast. This warm salad had toulouse sausage and chorizo (cooked with onions, peppers, mushrooms, courgettes and cherry tomatoes) marinated garlics, sundried tomatoes, and probably lots of other things from the fridge and larder. The only thing is, I'm not used to waking up feeling hungry on Christmas morning after our traditional gammon feast the night before... maybe that's why I can't sleep.

Boyfriend's Birthday Beef

This was my boyfriend's chosen meal for his birthday - organic steak with potato waffles and the obligatory tomatoes, mushrooms and salad (not pictured as it was in bowls, but as you can see we needed the green). And one of the best things about this meal was that only 2 pans were used. I love a good dinner with very little washing up. One pan was the roasting tin for the waffles - the other, a griddle. I started off with the steak in a hot griddle to get the chargrilled lines, flipped it over and added the tomatoes. When the steak was still rare I put it to rest in the warm grill (only warm as it was above the hot oven) while I cooked the mushrooms and let the tomatoes stay hot in the corners of the pan. When the mushrooms were done I served it up all with mustard butter. I wish I had the excuse to have expensive steak more often - I love it. Beef is best.