poorly food

I felt disgusting after work yesteday. I reckon I actually feel worse than I did last week but really should be getting better now. Last night I had some real inspiration and used some filo pastry with frozen blackberries and eating apples to make this sort of strudel thing. It wasnt quite a studel like you would buy but it tasted great. I had some for breakfast today too with yogurt. Very good way to eat strudel. Shame I didnt take any photos cos it would have been a good one to put on the blog.
The main course was also easy. Especially if you dont want to eat ready meals and you are really feeling ill:Long sweet red peppers stuffed, jacket potatoes and a herby, olivey italian sauce which doubled as veggie course.
First put some scubbed potatoes in the oven for jackets, I did it at about 180degC.
Using a sage and onion stuffing mix ( yes a cheat here but I did feel bad) with about 100g of walnuts added. I sort of bashed them around so they broke but didnt actually grind or chop. Then slit the peppers longwise, take out seeds and stuff with stuffing mix. Coat outside with oil and roast / bake. Then chop onion and fry in oil, whilst frying chop a green pepper ( normal capsican type), courgette and a couple of fresh tomatoes. When onions looking clear, add some tomatoe puree, red wine ( I save ends of bottles for cooking) and lots of black olives ( pitted but not chopped). Now add the veggies to onion and wine mix. Add any fresh herbs you may have. I used basil, dill and parsley cos thats what i had but you could use anything. Simmer on low for about 10 mins whilst doing whatever else ( I fed the dogs here) and then serve it all. Very easy even when too ill to be bothered to drink wine. So I must have felt bad!!!!!!!
This was easy cos we had all this stuff in the cupboards and most of it needs using up but I suppose if I had needed to go out and buy ingredients it would have cost quite a bit. Tho the olives were in a large jar I bought in a pound shop, the nuts are from what we bought just after Xmas when sainsbury reduced its Xmas stock ( they keep till December 2008 too!) and the tomatoe puree was opened from when we made pizza a few days ago. We always have some sort of peppers in the fridge and usually have some sort of fresh herbs ever since I discovered fresh parsely has more vitamin C than oranges.

Illness

I have been reading lots of other blogs. Particularly like the Gorgeous vegan blog and Tatty House Hastings. Both make for good reading and very entertaining. Inspiring me. I still have a cold and its turned into this really intense cough now. Started to wonder if I could have a serious illness of unknown variety. Well I can think of several nasty ones where you cough alot but what is that old saying "beware of what you wish for, iot may come true!" so better not go around naming all the possible stuff I could be going down with cos really I just want to be healthy again. I intend to have a go at this Seitan recipe I have. Well its a cheat recipe cos its a kit tho it seems quite involved cos you have to make the dough then turn it into a mock meat. I shall try it tonight anyway. I have found lots of recipes for making seitan from sctatch but have never tried it. I shall do it the easy way first and use a kit.

Flu and pasta

Well spent last weekend ill with flu which sort of ruined a weekend if you see what I mean. It started on Friday ( valentines day!) when M was ill and then Saturday I went down with same disgusting illness. Not what you want at a weekend when the weather is reasonable - well for february it was nice - and anyway didnt really feel well till today. I actually went back to work on Wednesday which was seriously silly of me cos I was still ill. Havent been in this job for very long tho and worry they will find a reason to get rid of me. Or just not pay me when I was sick. I really do not know yet. I suppose I should ask but its a difficult one and I hate that sort of thing. Maybe I will have infected everyone!! Not that I particularly want to go around spreading horrible bugs but at least if they get ill they know you are telling the truth! Have eaten pasta nearly every day too since we were both not really feeling up to going shopping and we ran out of rice and spuds and all we had lots of was pasta. Lots of types of pasta but in the end its all the same really. Its just the sauce that changes. That wasnt very varied either since we had no tomatoes and had some of those stir threw sauces and pesto. Still I suppose thats why I buy them really. For the days when we either cant or dont want to do real cooking. Anyway felt pretty bad till today when I woke up feeling wonderful at 5:30 this morning. At least maybe this weekend will be better. M has this idea we will be putting up a fence this weekend. I am not at all sure about that but suppose since I am now healthy again there is no longer any excuse. Unless it rains of course. It would be great to finally get round to it so the dogs can really run. The garden is long enough that they could actually get up speed if it was secured by fencing. Oh my broad beans have started to grow. I bought 2 more propogaters and 2 heaters to stop frost. Well they are called Frost busters so I hope they work. I had to buy them cos when I took my tomatoe seeds out of the heated propogater we had an air frost which killed all but one of my poor tomatoe seedlings even tho they were in an unheated propogater in theory growing on. I was not happy. First ill, then dead tomoatoe plants. They were 2 weeks old as well so it was very sad. This morning tho I realised when I put them back into the heated propogater again ( well you have to hope) I actually managed to save one of my doomed tomatoe plants. Hopefully it will continue to live. I intend to cherish it. Anyway intend to get going with loads of seeds this weekend. Can now start off 6 varieties at once. Self sufficiency here we come!!!

Not Tuna pie

Well the internet food shopping was a great success. I bought this stuff called Not Tuna and its amazing. I made Not Tuna pie with it. Lovely. Tho it took half a packet and it is about £5 a packet so not the cheapest meal I have made. Very good change tho. You have to mix the Not tuna with water to rehydrate it. I will have to try some on sarnies with sweetcorn and mayo. To make the Not Tuna pie I added sweetcorn, a white wine and mushroom sauce, and put mashed potatoe on top. Very ok. A bit like a shepherds pie. I saw a similar idea in Tesco in their ready meals section but being a veggie I wouldnt eat fish but this not tuna is brilliant stuff. Tho in future I will make my own white wine sauce cos this was a bit flavourless and I am sure I can make better. I would use real white wine tho.

seeds and goldfish flowers

Planted some seeds last night. This time broad beans, tomatoes and peppers. Broad beens are in the greenhouse in small pots but there is no heater so will take a while to come up I would expect. The packet says they can be planted straight outside into the soil tho so they should be ok. I planted the tomatoes and italian pepers in the propogator I bought in the shed. Its very exciting. I cant wait for them to start growing. I went down to have a look at them this morning and to check they didnt need water. Whilst doing that had to walk past the fish pond. M worries lots about the fish so has a heater. The fish were clustered all round it with heads inwards and tails sticking out just like a goldfish flower. They obviously like their heater. I suppose when it goes off ( its on a timer) they just all sink to the bottom of the pond. Very pretty tho I will have to remember to take a picture to put onto the blog. I wonder if many fish pond owners have goldfish flowers! The daffodils are all coming out now and the garden is starting to look quite spring like. We even have catkins. I am not sure what tree they grow on. I will have to find out. We have 2 or 3 of them round the garden. I cant wait for the frosts to go cos we bought some seed potatoes but you cant plant them till after the frosts so they are taking up precious room on the kitchen worktop right now just waiting for spring to arrive.

Wood

We ran out of wood. We need wood to run the wood burner. Altho we do have central heating using the woodburner means the house is very warm when it is on and doesnt deplete our heating oil. It heats the entire house if the doors are all left open which is great when you are the kind of person who leaves door open all the time. I was always in trouble as a kid for not "putting the wood in the hole". Anyway we ran out of wood a week or so ago and rather than spend a fortune on very expensive wood in plastic bags from up the road we decided to invest in a large amount. So anyway bought the wood off the internet. First there was a problem with World Pay and I got charged twice but the shop were great and refunded that without any problems (well other than the fact I worried for half the night before cos they were shut when I ordered! The trouble with buying off the internet is you tend to do it at 10pm at night which is fine when it all goes well but very worrying when things go wrong!) . Its cost us £5 more than buying 40 bags from up the road but we have twice to three times the amount of wood and it seems good. Well burns well which is all that matters. Trouble was it came in a very large bulk sack and we had to wheel barrow it all to the bottom of the garden and put it into a shed. No problem with shed space since we have loads but we had to fix the shed to make it weather proof ( it had no door) and the fact the garden is really long was a real pain. Still after an hour or so and loads of wheel barrows full we had it all moved. We then fixed the shed itself with old bits of recycled wood from our airing cupboard which was about to go down the tip. Hey, reduse reuse recyle. This was really it. Nice to be environmentally friendly and even better to do a job on the cheap and surprisingly the shed actually looks quite smart. And its waterproof. Bonus! The wood turns out to be better than the last lot we had from up the road too and there is loads of it. Should easily get us thru till the summer. Had to celebrate with a nice elderberry whiskey and followed with several sloe gins. That was saturday. Had a very merry celebration on sunday too. And if you dont count the spirits used to make the sloe gin and elderberry whiskey it seemed like a very cheap and countrified weekend. Took the dogs for very long muddy walks on saturday and on sunday and they were so filthy sunday they had a bath too so we now have 2 clean-ish dogs. All in all a good weekend.

Freezer problems

In October I won a competition. Amazing cos I never win anything. I won a designer fridge freezer. Worth £900. Lovely black glass doors and AAA rated. Trouble was we already had a fridge freezer. It wasnt as pretty but was very economical ( also AA) and reliable. Anyway we ended up keeping both which was brilliant at Xmas when you have loads of food. We didnt really need it tho and have spent the last few weeks trying to decide what to do with our old one ( put it in the shed or sell it?). Woke at about 6am Saturday to this weird sound. We walked all over the house trying to locate where it was coming from. Eventually we realised the bottom ( freezer) door had just crumbled and we had bits of hardened glass all over the place. This freezer has a 5 year guarentee but I just dont think I can be bothered. At least we didnt pay for it. I would certainly never but one now. Altho I have looked at similar ones with yearning several times! My old Zanussi is much better and cheaper to buy and its bigger! Also its less noisy! The fan made loads of noise in the new one. Well still does but I have now turned it off which flooded the kitchen but it has to go now so may as well defrost! I will probably get into trouble for posting the name of the manufacturer so will just give a clue and if anyone reads this and wants to know please email me. Its a very posh looking freezer and the manufacturer starts with "G" and sounds a bit like "orange". Also they used to manufacture "Smeg". So it was a very nice looking piece and certainly "poshed-up" my kitchen but personally wouldnt waste the money on this at a future date now I have had one and would advise everyone else to think twice. I know we could get it fixed but it means taking a day off work for somone to look at it and probably another for them to fix it and in the end it just isnt worth the hassle. And we now have space for tow more cupboards which is brilliant. From now on I shall stick to less glamarous but trusted makes of kitchen appliance. Not that we paid for it but I probably would have if we had had the spare cash. Main annoyance is I will have to pay the council to take it away since it wont fit in either of our cars. So my freebie has made a mess and will cost in disposal!

Rosie

Loads has happened since I last wrote anything. the most important event tho is Rosie has died. Rosie was a yellow cockatiel. Quite small and very friendly to both humans and other cockatiels but she was not good at flying at all. I think she spent too long locked in a tiny cage before we got her and never quite got the hang of flying. She was approximately 19 years old and even on her death bed she broke the rules. We used to have 4 cockatiels. Jim died on 12 December 2007 very suddenly and without warning. He was only 12. It was a great shock to us. We got Rosie in 1996 when I told a friend it was cruel keeping her in a cage all the time and my old dog Samuel Pepys had just died. Sam was aged about 17 so he had a long life. Anyway, friend just said well you have her then! She was given to friend for young daughter by scottish grandmother and was somewhere between 2 and 8 years old. No one ever seemed to agree on that. Friend had the idea she would help to stop me missing Sam and she did. It was a very icy cold January day when we carried her home with a crochet blanket round her cage. We got Jim to keep her company a few days later and after a few months added Bill and Ben who are still healthy ( touch wood etc). So one of the childrens programs is now gone! ( Rosie and Jim. Bill and Ben). When we got Jim, Rosie sat on M`s shoulder and hid behind his head from Jim. I dont think she had seen another cockatiel since leaving the nest. Rosie was hand tamed. The other 3 are/were not at all tame really but great fliers. Anyway on Sunday night when everywhere was shut we realised Rosie had a cold. Coughs and colds are quite common with cockatiels in winter but not usually life threatening. Mind you 19 is about as old as they get when living in houses. I think its about 12-14 in an aviary. On Monday M went to Coventry to every pet shop he could to find cough mixture and most had sold out. Must be lots of cockatiels with colds! Eventually he got some and gave it to her. She wasnt too bad last night. She kept wanting fuss and I kept stroking her head which she liked. She kept kissing me and Bill ( Bill and Ben and Rosie are/were all female by the way). Dying birds usually go very quiet, stop eating and just stop moving. She ate loads, climbed all over her cage and kept harrassing me for affection. When M came in she harrassed him also. She had lost her voice but wouldnt shut up. I ended up sitting next to her all night and turning the TV off since having it on made her try to chirp louder and I was worried about her having a sore throat. Except for her old age she didnt seem at threat from death. But then I suppose in the end something has to get us all. I went to bed at 12pm. At 5am I heard her. I didnt know she had died but that must have been it. I got up at 7am and she was on the floor of the cage. We buried her at 8am with a golden privet to mark the spot. Next to Jim. Then I went to work.