In My Kitchen

I love to cook, good food is really important to me.  If you are anything like me you may spend a large amount of your life in the kitchen preparing good nourishing food to eat, this is a little of what has been going on in my kitchen this month.  If you would like to join in you would be most welcome, leave a link in the comments section.

When you have a growing teenager in the house there are days when the need for a supply of food never seems to stop.  It is such an important time of growth in our lives not just physically but mentally and emotionally that I have been giving some serious thought to some of the in between meals that seem to be needed here at the moment.  I remember my mother telling me that when I left home to go to university it made no difference to the amount of food she cooked, she was feeding two teenage boys.

A friend told me recently that teenage boys need nearly 3000 calories a day.  I am not a calorie counter, I have absolutely no idea of the calorific value of any food, except celery which I have always been led to believe is negative, but I assume this is a lot more than I would eat in a day.  I increased the amount of food I was cooking for each meal some time ago as I noticed his appetite was increasing, this worked for a bit but more recently I have been caught on the hop between meals on an almost daily basis by I am hungry what can I have to eat, I needed to be more prepared for those words.

So I have found myself needing to provide more snacks, mostly of the savoury variety as Cameron does not have a particularly sweet tooth, for those days when fruit, nuts or cheese and biscuits are not quite enough or have been offered one too many times.

I have found myself making many batches of an old favourite round here, cheesejacks, a cheesy/savoury flapjack from a old recipe book of mine that I bought when I first left home nearly thirty years ago.  I don't need to get the book out to make these any more as the recipe is now stored in my memory.  Luckily for me it is quick and easy, so I often make a batch when I have the oven on whilst cooking a meal.

But you can have too much of old favourites, when visiting my Aunt this summer she made us a batch of her delicious savoury flapjacks and I came home with the recipe.  They have many more ingredients than the cheesejacks so they are not a quick cook but they are so tasty they are worth the extra effort.  If you would like to make some too you can find the recipe here. All those nuts and seeds have got to be good for a growing teenager.

I was reading through one of the recipe books I mentioned last month, I love to read recipe books like any other book especially when they are new.  Call me nosy but I always enjoy having a look to see what recipe books people have on their shelves when I visit them, its a great way to find new ones too.  Anyway I found a recipe in the yellow book for savoury muffins, I make quite a few sweet muffins but had never tried a savoury one before so I gave it a go.   They were delicious, as I expected really as everything else I have tried in this book has been.  You have to cook up some vegetables and an apple which you then stir into the usual wet and dry ingredients.  The great thing about them, apart from their taste, is that you freeze them, here that equals lasting longer and a more constant supply.

Not only have I been freezing muffins but dips too, I realise that might sound like an odd food to freeze.  If, like me, you make lots at once, you can freeze it in small amounts and, provided you remember to take them out of the freezer in good time, it makes a great snack with crackers or veg sticks.  I have made my own hummus for years using the recipe from the same book as the cheesejacks.  It makes a big quantity and it sometimes feel like I am eating it with every meal for a few days to prevent it from going off, putting it into four glass jars and freezing three of them ensures that I have a constant ready supply.  When the last jar of a batch comes out the freezer I soak some more chickpeas to make the next.  Some other yummy dips we have tried recently are yogurt, cream cheese and chives, white bean, cottage cheese and pesto, and broccoli, cashew nut and lemon juice.

You might be thinking after reading this that I spend my whole time in the kitchen making either snacks or meals, sometimes it can feel like that is how I spend my time!  My weekends are usually, amongst many other things, the time I am thinking and planning our coming week, some of those thoughts are about food.  Whilst I am cooking meals, I will often be making the snacks for the coming week, but only one or two of the things I have mentioned here, not everything at once!

All these snacks I make are also great as part of meals particularly picnics, which we have twice a week year round to fit in with the things that we do on those days.  Do you make any snack type food?  Would love some more ideas, particularly savoury, so please do share......

I will leave you with the cheesejack recipe that I mentioned earlier and can be seen in the first picture.

Cheesejacks (Makes 12ish)

Butter 2oz/50g
Porridge oats 5oz/150g
Cheddar Cheese 6oz/175g
1/2 Teaspoon Rosemary
1 Egg

Heat the over to 180ºC/350ºF/Gas Mark 4

Melt the butter in a pan.
Grate the cheese
When the butter is melted, stir in the oats, then the cheese and rosemary, and finally the egg
Mix well and press into a square tin 7"/18cm or equivalent.
Cook in the oven for 40 minutes or until golden.
Cut into pieces, can be eaten hot or cold.

Printable recipe (click on the document and it will give you the option to print)