crunchy salad

Tonight I came in late and wanted something fast and relatively healthy - I made myself a salad with spinach, tomato, mozzarella light (rubbish - no flavour - must remember not to buy it again), pinenuts and pumpkin seeds. I drizzed Belazu balsamic vinegar (the best in the business) and some posh extra-virgin olive oil over the top for some more flavour as the mozzarella tasted of nothing at all. It was nice though, and looks pretty colourful, don't you think?

Turkey tamarind

Last night we ate turkey stirfry with brown rice and tamarind sauce. I marinated the turkey in a jar of Bart's tamarind paste, the juice of a lime and lots of finely chopped garlic and ginger while I cooked the brown rice. Then I started some tenderstem broccoli off in a wok (just the thick, hard ends of it) before adding the meat and its marinade, then later on the stirfry veg, the tops of the tenderstem broccoli and some extra baby spinach leaves. It was delicious, and we each had a pot of leftovers for lunch today - even cold it tasted good. I normally have prawns when I cook tamarind, but turkey was tasty too.

Brunch at the Living Room

We met some friends for brunch at The Living Room in Islington. It was a bit confusing as they had a breakfast menu (10am - 5pm) and a brunch menu (12pm to 5pm). I had eggs florentine, which were nice, the eggs were runny, but the hollandaise sauce was a bit much. One egg was eggy enough for me. I ate the lot though, then felt a bit funny, and as if I needed another flavour in my mouth - fast. One of my friends had chosen eggs florentine too - she felt the same, so we ordered a dessert each. She had rhubarb crumble and I chose warm chocolate cake.

When it arrived I thought, oh dear, it looks like a treacle tart out of a tin - I hate it when places put cake on their menu, then give you some sort of a chocolate pudding. it didn't taste of much, but and at first I thought it was a bit chemical and not very chocolatey, but I carried on regardless. I'd already asked them to change my diet coke as it tasted of chemicals, only to be told it was Virgin cola and everyone says it tastes a bit funny. They kindly swapped it for some sparkling water for me. After a few bites of my pudding I realised they'd given me treacle instead of chocolate sauce, then a few more bites later, I noticed the pudding was more treacle than chocolate and it dawned on me (eventually - it was a Sunday morning) that I had the wrong pudding. I felt like I'd eaten too much to send it back, so I finished it - then felt sick as it really wasn't very nice. And because I realised I'd just eaten £4.50 worth of pudding that I hadn't even wanted. Pretty rubbish. Stupid Sunday brain. And, to top it all off, I saw people eating food that wasn't on the brunch menu, and realised the lunch menu had been available all along - a bit disappointing, as I hadn't really wanted eggs after my fry-up yesterday anyway. Oh well, c'est la vie.

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.

Tonight's sausage supper

Yay, I've caught up! This was what we ate tonight - Sainsbury's Taste the Difference Toulouse sausages, with olive oil/garlic mashed new potatoes (the new favourite, again) and tenderstem broccoli. I added grainy mustard and ketchup to my plate too - you can't have sausages and mash without ketchup, and mustard adds a certain kick. A fairy garlicky meal - but a good and filling one. I couldn't even finish my potatoes, and that doesn't happen often.

And another veg stirfry - yawn...

Hmmm, I've had a lot of stirfries recently. This was another one, a quick veg one on Wednesday night before I went out. I also dipped some mini wholemeal pittas in fresh tomato salsa while I decided what to eat. I constructed a stirfry sauce with a dash of sherry vinegar, grated fresh ginger and soy sauce. I would have put garlic in it too but I was too lazy and rushed to get the chopping board out. Nutritious - look at all that spinachy stuff.

Seafood Salad Supper

Oooh, yes, a seafood salad. I can't remember which night we had this, but it was sometime this week, maybe Tuesday. I put some mixed seafood together with onions, veg and salad in a marinade of lemon juice, garlic and olive oil and we had it on a bed of leaves. Nice and colourful.

Another turkey stirfry

This was good - we'd eaten a load of crap like crisps and pistachio nuts when we'd come in, so we thought we'd have a proper load of veg and the rest of the turkey for our main meal, without rice or noodles as we couldn't be bothered to cook them. We used an M&S stirfry pack - it was pretty luxurious, if that could ever be an appropriate adjective for a stirfry pack, with spring onions, strange oriental green leaves, baby corn, mangetout, courgette, red pepper, and much, much more. No beansprouts meant it seemed posh, as there was no apparent filler, but it did all shrink down to not very much.

Turkey and green veg stirfry

This was a turkey and green veg stirfry that my boyfriend made for us last Saturday for lunch. It was really good - I hadn't had
any dinner the night before and I needed something big and nutritious. I don't think you can really see them, but we had egg noodles too, and it had a sort of oyster sauce. Very nice and filling. The veg included leeks, broccoli, a green pepper, an onion and a couple of turkey breasts.

Friday = egg day

For breakfast, at least. I think I could have difficulties digesting eggs more than once a day. Eggs are funny - they're one of those foods that sometimes, inexplicably, make me feel sick as a dog, and other times they sort me out and stop me feeling sick as a dog. They're great on a hangover, but occasionally they can make me feel queasy even if I haven't caught sight of any booze for days. Strange. And, obviously, they're a great food - anything that's a key ingredient in cakes and baking must be pretty great. And they come directly from the hen - animal to plate, there's not much that can be done to muck them up, I hope.

But, anyway, having eggs for breakfast truly sorts you out for the day. We've been eating yoghurt, blueberries and sugar-free museli for breakfast recently, which feels like a healthy way to start the day, but we'd run out of yoghurt by Friday, so we realised it was a day for eggs. We each had two soft-boiled eggs with soldiers (which were spread with bovril - bovril toast and eggs is a fantastic combination, especially with scrambled eggs, or as soldiers with boiled). This photo's a bit dark, but the egg looks nice. Hmmm, I think I might be having boiled eggs for breakfast tomorrow too...

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.

A satisfying pasta bake

This was another veggie meal - not sure why we're having so many of those at the moment. This was nice - we did a sort-of bake with mozzarella on the top and had it with salad. We had some sunblush tomatoes that were a bit old, so we bunged them into the sauce, with onions, lots of garlic and a red pepper, mixed the lot up with cooked brown penne pasta, sprinkled cubes of mozzarella on the top, then grilled it until the mozzarella was bubbling and beginning to brown. Why is it that by just making it look like a bake, it looks like so much more of a meal than just a pasta, veg and sauce?

I've put a photo of it in the dish, where it looks fairy attractive, and another one of it on the plate where it was a bit of a mess. Messy food is often the nicest, anyway. That's my excuse.

This pile of puke... isn't, thankfully, a pile of puke

It's a veg stirfry with thai green curry sauce. Well, Sainsbury's cheap equivalent. It was fine, but nothing to write home about - or blog about, really. I had the leftovers for lunch today. They were fine. I should have bothered heating them up, but I didn't.

Saturday night at the Vietnamese

This was the only part of the meal I took a photo of - and it was easily the best, so I'm not that sorry. We'd had some prawn crackers when we got there, then we scoffed the duck with pancakes, spring onions, cucumber, plum sauce and shredded carrot and radish (not sure why that's there, but it adds some colour to the plate). It was great. Every time we have duck, we wonder why we bothered ordering anything else. Surely it's one of the best flavour's in the world. By the time our main course arrived we were full, but we ate what we could then took the entire portion of singapore noodles home with us in a takeaway carton. It made a great breakfast on Sunday morning.

Proper stodgy food

When you get as much snow as we had today, you need a good, warming meal in the evening, with lots of fat and baking or roasting involved. Tonight we had chipolatas baked in the oven nestled around veg (onions, whole garlic cloves, pieces of yellow pepper, carrot and courgette) with roasted new potatoes and leeks in white sauce. Perfect winter food. I ate loads, but still feel hungry when I look at this photo and see the glistening fat on the potatoes. Such gorgeous flavours - proper stodgy food.

Beef stirfry with hoisin sauce

Ooh, this was good. We usually have prawns or pork, or something beginning with 'p' in a stirfry, but last night we had beef. Beef is goooood in a stirfry. We should have it more often. It feels a bit luxurious - which is funny, as it's cheaper than the big prawns we have so often. Hoisin and beef go well together too. We had leftover brown rice too, which only took a few minutes in the microwave. Very satisfying.

You'd think it was still Christmas...

It's been bloody cold today, our heating's screwed, I've had a craving for indulgent food all day and we had turkey curry for supper. And I was feeling lazy. I couldn't be bothered to make my own curry sauce tonight so we used a Sharwood's jar of rogan josh sauce, and I cooked it up with turkey, peppers, onions, garlic and a courgette - the usual veg suspects. There's enough to freeze for another night and it was quick and easy. Sometimes the ready made stuff feels so indulgent.

Oily fish on a Sunday

On the last few Sundays we've had a salad with oily fish for lunch and it's felt good. Today, we had a proper lunch so only needed a snack for supper (particularly after our mega-meal last night). So we finished off the meat and veg left over from our steak fajitas yesterday with some delicious Waitrose organic brown bread and marinated herring, for the oily fish bit. I think this Sunday oily fish thing we've got going is pretty good - it'll keep our essential oil count up, anyway.

Lasagne lunch

We went to see some friends last night and made sushi. I'm so annoyed - I didn't take my camera and they'd left theirs at work so I've got no photographic evidence. It was really fun - we made california rolls with salmon, tuna, avocado and fish sticks and sesame covered ones with the rice on the outside as well as nigiri and dipped the lot in soy sauce and a pretty vicious wasabi. We were pretty full after our sushi and a couple of spring rolls, but it was just the starter, and then we had noodles in home-made black bean sauce with scallops and prawns (fabulous - my two favourite shellfish). Then, although we were really stuffed, we all managed a bit of homemade treacle pudding with cream. We practically rolled home, our stomachs groaning, but it was such wonderful food we couldn't help but find our eyes were bigger than our bellies.

Anyway there was no need for breakfast this morning, but we had a friend coming round for lunch so by 12.30 I had to face the food. I cooked lasagne again as it seemed an easy option and we had it with salad with a mustard and garlic dressing and a bottle of fruity red wine. I'd made some more chocolate cakes on saturday to take to our friends so they did for pudding.

The best approximation of fajitas

The best fajitas are steak. There's no contest. It's just a great meal. We made ours today with onion, peppers, a courgette for some green, thin-cut frying steak, the juice of a lime, cayenne pepper and lots of garlic. They were great, as always. I'm sure they're not particularly authentic, but they're great just as they are, with salsa and flour tortillas.

Friday eggs and cake

It doesn't sound like a great combination... Thankfully it was eggs for breakfast and chocolate cake for an afternoon pick-me-up.

We had scrambled eggs for breakfast - a Friday treat. It really set me up for the day and I was barely hungry at lunchtime. I met my boyfriend for lunch in a Soho Thai restaurant but I was meeting someone in the afternoon and so I avoided all the great-looking garlic or curry dishes, unlike my boyfriend who had a sizzling dish of chili and chili squid. The smell permeated my clothes and hair and made me salivate like nothing else - my fried rice with prawns, pineapple and cashew nuts seemed extremely bland and boring in comparison.

I'd hardly slept on Thursday night and had a resulting low energy moment at about 5.00. I knew I wasn't going to get to eat until much later so I stopped by cafe nero as soon as I could and grabbed a slice of decadent chocolate chunk cake (or something). It was pretty gross. Why are bought cakes so dry and lacking any depth of flavour? The only thing to recommend it was the buttercream, which was the bit with the chocolate chunks (not like real chocolate though) but the icing was quite stale. I had another bit of the buttercream after I took this photo, then left the rest. Such a waste - I should learn not to order chocolatey things in cafes - I just don't get why they're always so horrid...

I can't even remember what we had for supper. Oh yes, another pork stirfry with noodles and chow mein sauce. My boyfriend cooked it for me as I collapsed on the sofa after we came - perfect.

Thursday evening meal - Sedir, Theberton St, N1

We went for meze tonight with some good friends. We shared a rather boring meze for 2, which was mainly a collection of dips and ordered a few separate meze plates to add a bit of interest. The prawns in garlic butter were rather overcooked, but dipping bread in the sauce made up for this. With flavoursome and crispy turkish sausages, a plate of halloumi, some goats' cheese, a plate of strange d0g-turd shaped meatballs in a bland tomato sauce and a very nice dish of mixed med veg in a tomato and garlic sauce, we had plenty of taste sensations. It was fine, but seemed quite pricey at £70 for four, with only one cheap bottle of wine and a couple of beers, a sorbet for pudding and my ice-cream.

I hadn't ordered ice-cream for pudding for at least 15 years and when it was the only thing appealing on the dessert menu, I thought I'd give it a go, for purely nostalgic reasons. The chips in the mint choc chip definitely weren't chocolate - and the wafer stuck in the middle was the usual cardboard texture, but I really quite enjoyed it and made sure the dish was clean.