A La Carte

One thing Sharon and I have been doing recently is cooking.  It's a hobby that adds kilograms to your mass and centimetres to your waistline, however.

Since Christmas we have made Honey Jumbles, Fruit Mince Pies and Bread (damper) which are over and above the usual fare, and it has been showing, unfortunately!!

We've been doing a lot of main courses, too, and the technique is to cook something nice that we can store in the fridge, and heat up in the microwave as required.  There are only two of us in the household, and so cooking nightly is not only an arduous chore, but also an inefficient way of doing things.  By doing it this way, we have meals for the next three or four nights from one lot of cooking which must save on energy and ingredients, and most certainly saves on time.

Probably our major source of recipes is the monthly magazine called Super Food Ideas.  We like it as it's a realistic publication that doesn't use ingredients that can only be obtained from a merchant with a yak who visits the mountains.  The things called for are obtainable at the local supermarket and fruit shop.

We have been getting more adventurous lately, however, and have ingredients such as burghul (cracked wheat) and caradamon pods.  Our spice rack, which is a three level job, and has had plenty of room in the past is now completely full.  We sort the spices alphabetically (I think this is quite anal really), and apart from Basil, the top shelf has only spices that begin with "C".  We have cinammon quills and ground; cloves, whole and ground; the aforementioned cardamon pods, cumin, curry powder, chilli powder and coriander!

We got a Kenwood Prospero mixer for Christmas and it will be used frequently with appreciation.  It came in handy today with its dough hook for making bread.  The old mixer I used to have is quite small and getting old.  It's an old Waltons Celestial rebadged Sunbeam model and would be well over forty years old.  It's enjoying its retirement.