Adventures in my Kitchen

18 May 2022

This post comes from my kitchen,  I am a meal planner and have been for the best of thirteen years, but I am not here to convert you all to doing that too.  One of the downsides of meal planning is that it is just as easy as any other way of organising your meals to get stuck in that good old rut of always cooking the same thing all the time.  It does not require much thinking and some weeks there is not much space for that, so sticking with what you know is the best and quickest option.  Some weeks, I do have the headspace and I get the recipe books out to get inspired.  

On one such foray I came across some pages that I had completely missed in one of my books.  It was easily missed as I meal plan from my weekly veg box and if I am looking for new recipes I turn to the index for recipes that include the veg that I have to hand.  These pages I had missed would not have been included in the index as whilst they are a recipe they are more like a formula for a recipe rather than a formally written one.  

I am loving these pages particularly the one for warm salads.  You roast some veg, add some protein (cheese, nuts or pulses), some leaves such as spinach or rocket, and finally make a dressing adding some herbs.  This has become a weekly fixture on our menu, it is different every time although we usually have the same dressing olive oil and pomegranate molasses which is our new favourite.

Like so many parts of the world our energy prices have gone up considerably recently, my husband saw a slow cooker for sale in a charity shop and decided it might be a good idea for us to have one, as he was sure that it would save us lots of money cooking our food.  He didn't buy the one in the charity shop but spent several hours researching the best one to buy.  We are now the proud owners of a slow cooker, many years after many of you, I would expect, as I know that they have been around for years.  I keep finding things that it is possible to make in it and whilst I was a little sceptical that it would get used much I am totally sold now.  I can see that on those very rare days when the house gets hots (this is all relative you understand we rarely, if ever, get temperatures over about 25°C/77°F) if I do need to cook something it will be better to use the slow cooker rather then the oven which ends up making the house even hotter.  I am loving that I can prepare our evening meal in the morning and it can spend the day slowly cooking whilst I get on with other things.  On those days of the week when time is scarcer this is a huge bonus, I am finding that I often make use of the slow cooker even on days when I don't need to.  Aside from the obvious stew like meals I have also been using the slow cooker to do Jacket potatoes, roasted veg and have even cooked a chicken in it.

Years ago I created a sourdough starter which I kept going for a long while.  I stopped eating gluten for a whole year about five or six years ago and gave my starter away to a friend.  About six months ago I got one going again and it is finally maturing into a reliable and tasty starter like my last one.  Sourdough always seemed like a scary and strange process to me but it is so far from this.  I have had several conversations with a baker at a local farmers market who has kilos of sourdough starter for his business.  The tips I picked up from him through our conversations as I bought his wonderfully tasty handmade baked goods have been invaluable.  We don't eat much bread in our house so I tend to make rolls once a week, when I have the time, we are also really enjoying sourdough pizza dough once a month too, all made with flour, water and wild yeasts, how amazing is that?

I have already mentioned energy prices here whilst the slow cooker is proving to be my new best friend in the kitchen there are some things that I do turn the oven on for still.  I am maximising my use of it each time I use it and often do some baking at the same time.  As this always coincides with making a meal my kitchen gets messy very quickly as I try to minimise the time the oven is on.  I have sedimentary layers of washing up and opened ingredients from the cupboards.  There is something really satisfying about clearing that all away when everything is in the oven.  

I often have something sitting soaking alongside my sourdough starter, when it is not in the fridge.  This past month I made new batch of wholegrain mustard.  We get through a lot of mustard, I used to buy it in large pots from a food wholesaler I use.  I only order every three months so if something is not in stock it is a long wait before I can try again.  This happened to me a year or so ago, stuck without a supply and not being able to find one that was not full of preservatives in the shops, what is with preservatives in mustard?  That has always baffled me.  I turned to the Internet wondering if I could make it myself, it turned out I can and it is unbelievably easy I cannot believe I have not tried this before.  You soak some mustard seeds in vinegar for a few days or if you are like me you forget about it and the few days becomes a few weeks, after soaking you whizz it up in a blender, retaining a few seeds to make it wholegrain, along with a few spices for flavouring.  I made some and gifted it at Christmas last year.

I have also been drinking Cleaver tea.  Cleavers is that plant that sticks to you, sometimes called goosegrass or sticky grass in these parts.  Cleavers is a good cleansing herb which was often used to make a tea at this time of year to clear out the system after the winter particularly at those times when folks were self sufficient and relied on their own stores.  I am making about a pint at a time and drinking a small glass full each morning before eating.  I don't suppose it is good to drink this all the time, I have been making one quantity a week.

I also have a jar of oil steeping with comfrey leaves from the garden, they will sit there for six weeks before I strain the leaves and make a salve with it by adding melted beeswax.  I first made some comfrey salve years ago when I spent an afternoon with a herbalist.  I continued to make my own after I used up that initial jar, I also make plantain, dandelion and yarrow salves too, they also make a lovely present.  Each salve has its own uses, yarrow, made using the leaves, is used like arnica cream except it has the added benefit that it can be used on open wounds which arnica cannot.  Dandelion, made with the petals,  is good for joint pain, particularly arthritic pain, and sore muscles.  Plantain, made using the leaves, is good for bee and wasp stings, insect bites, skin conditions such as eczema, psoriasis, sunburn, itches and wounds.  Comfrey is used for burns, cuts, sprains and sore muscles, bruises and fractures.  

My least favourite housework task is washing up, the large piles of unwashed pots that are nearly always a feature in the corner of my kitchen will attest to this.  Our dishwasher broke a few weeks ago, it had become increasingly unreliable and randomly left items unwashed each time we ran it until it finally stopped working completely by spewing water over the floor rather than draining it out.  My husband has had it apart and ordered various bits for it in an attempt to fix it, we are now waiting for a part which we hope will solve everything and it can be returned to its rightful place in the kitchen, it is currently sat looking rather forlorn, and in pieces in the garage.  We did find a large ball of rather greasy looking detritus in one of the pipes which probably explained the lack of draining.  The washing machine went out in sympathy with the dishwasher a few days after the floor got an unexpected wash.  That was a quicker fix and for the moment seems to be working fine.  A machine full of bedding had to be washed twice after it was covered in detritus from somewhere deep in the machine.  I think my kitchen appliances are in collusion with each other as at the end of last week a piece broke off one the shelves in the door of my fridge which nearly sent a half drunk bottle of wine and a jar of mayonnaise onto the floor as I swung the door open.  The fridge is ancient and is looking rather sad and tired, the shelves in the fridge itself are rather cracked and distinctly saggy, one has been replaced by a piece of twin wall plastic leftover from when we made a cold frame.  We have fixed the fridge too, for now.

What's been happening in your kitchen this past month?

20 comments:

  1. Longer working hours have, sadly, kept me from spending as much time as I would like in my kitchen. This can make it difficult to cook healthy and nutritious meals some days.
    Your warm salad looks delicious. I must have a search for some recipes. X

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    1. I so hear you Jules. I have had days like that too, it is so frustrating isn't it. It is when we are busy that we most need that nourishing food too. I do hope you are not beating yourself up to much for that, we can only do our best, can't we.

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  2. It must be wonderful to be more self-sufficient. I can't say that I am making much progress with that but we do what we can. I do bake biscuits each week as I am trying not to buy things with palm oil in them.
    I do agree that kitchen appliances are in collusion!
    Best wishes
    Ellie

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    1. I totally agree that we do what we can and each person's doing will be slightly different. I would not want to make any one feel inadequate with what I share here. I hope that it inspires people to consider things to maybe do one day when it feels right to them.

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  3. I am a meal planner too! I love how it simplifies cooking. I have never had a slow cooker—your experience with it sounds very tempting. This month I have rediscovered the joy of homemade pasta. I roll mine out by hand, so it looks very, very rustic—but it is satisfying to make and delicious to eat.

    With love from,
    Kelly (Mrs. Kiwi)

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    1. Welcome and thank you for dropping by. Wow homemade pasta, I have never tried that but I am sure it is delicious, fresh pasta is always so much nicer than dried.

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  4. Now I would come to your home and do all the washing up if you would cook for me :) I don't mind cleaning at all but i'm not a big fan of cooking or baking!! But I do like to eat so I cook.

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    1. Ooh that would be a great arrangement! Yes please!

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  5. Things always break in threes in our house and quite often near Christmas! Hope your husband gets to fix yours. Well done on your slow cooker. We had one for a wedding gift over forty years ago. I still use it to cook Jersey Bean Crock but little else. I’ll have to dig it out again. Yes I’m a meal planner and once a week I get out my recipe books. It’s very therapeutic. B x

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    1. I thought I was maybe a little late to the slow cooker party. 40 years wow, I am really late! It is all too easy to forget about the things we have in our kitchen that we once used to use all the time. I have a few things like that!

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  6. I loved hearing about all the salves you make, how brilliant. And I didn't know you could make cleavers tea. There's certainly lots of it about the place. I make a loaf of sourdough every day (big eaters in this house) and yes, it always amazes me that the only ingredients I put in are flour, water and salt. I often think about getting a slow cooker and wonder if it would work for vegetarians. I imagine maybe just a shorter cooking time. I am very tempted.

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    1. Cleavers tea is an acquired taste, just saying ;). I have not cooked much meat in the slow cooker except the chicken, everything else has been vegetarian. Lots of vege stews, rice dishes and the jacket potatoes. Each time I find a recipe I ponder whether it could be cooked in the slow cooker.

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  7. We don't have a slow cooker (yet) but I can see the attraction of it. No major breakages in the kitchen, except the oven seal, which is now replaced. I'd happily to your washing up if you could do my cooking! I fell out of love with cooking a few years ago. I felt so tired of it, I more or less stopped. I am a meal planner at heart but with an opportunistic shopper doing to shopping, it never really works out. I plan my heart out if my husband travels for work!

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    1. Wow another offer to do the washing up for me, yes please I will take you up on that one. How lovely to have someone do the cooking for you. I do love cooking but there are times when I wish I was not the only one in the house who does it all.

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  8. Goodness, what a fascinating post. I loved the warm salad and had no idea that you could cook things like baked potatoes in a slow cooker. I've always wanted to get a starter for sour dough going, you have inspired me to give it a whirl. I also had no idea that mustard was so easy to make! I do admire how self sufficient you are and am terribly impressed with your homemade salves! I always find that when one kitchen item breaks down others always follow suit! Snowbird.xxx

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    1. I am glad to hear you enjoyed this post, that is so lovely to hear. Do try making a sourdough starter it is not hard, just google if you think it is not going right I am sure you will find a answer to what is going on for you, that is what I did in the early days and found it so helpful and reassuring. I too had no idea that mustard was so easy to make, I would not buy it again now, so much cheaper too which is handy. Thank you so much for your kind words, they are so appreciated.

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  9. You make me want to get in there and make stuff--but lately, I've been in the kitchen very little, truthfully. The gardens have occupied almost all my time. But that salve sounds easy enough, and I actually have comfrey in my garden and beeswax I bought last year, thinking to make salve. I really want to try making mustard too. I love mustard with a bit of crunch to it.

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    1. Salves are really easy to make, the only thing you need to make sure of is that your leaves are not damp/wet when you put them in the oil as it can make things go mouldy. My garden is keeping me busy too, it is that time of year isn't it when there is suddenly more to do and be getting on with.

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  10. I have a slow cooker and absolutely love it. I could probably be very happy with just a slow cooker and a microwave, oh and maybe a hobb. The Goosegrass tea sounds interesting!

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  11. I don't use my slow cooker nearly enough - I have done jacket potatoes once in them but not again for some reason and yet I know several people who cook a big batch in this way and then freeze them. I love the look of your warm salad which is again for some reason something I have never tried but would be great for my lunches. I struggle quite often to think of lunch alternatives to sandwiches.

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