Now, here’s someone who knows about that! I’d show her photo, but she has disabled linking, but do go and read the piece.

Mirrored from the Tribe.

As it’s a bank holiday weekend here, we decided to splash out on a Chickie! from the wonderful T L Norman on Princes Ave. Pe picked up a 5.5ln bird on Friday morning, and we roasted it on Saturday, with potatoes, and fennel and carrots from the veg box.

Yesterday, we had cold chickie!, and wondered what to have with it. I surveyed the contents of the fridge, which included a celeriac (of which I am not unduely fond), and an elderly sweet potato. A quick google brought forth this rather nice recipe for a celeriac and sweet potato puree, which Pete made, and it was lovely.

We didn’t eat all the puree, so in a rather courageous fusion recipe, we have made a pie filling out of cold chicken, the left over fennel and carrots, and the puree. It is about to be enrobed in puff pastry from the freezer (life really is too short to make puff pastry) and we shall consume it with some spring greens.

It smells OK …

The chicken carcase has gone into the freezer to make soup, and the rest of the cold meat is in a bowl in the fridge – it might be enfreezered too, as we are away next weekend, and have a lot of veg to eat up.

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

So – 2/3rds of a huge jar of roasted red peppers. Opened. What to do?

Finely chopped an onion and about three cloves of garlic, and fried them off in olive oil, then added a slug of red wine and deglazed the pan. Sliced up the peppers and threw them in till they were warmed through thoroughly. Liquidised it in batches, then “cleaned” the goblet with about a glass of water and added it to the sauce; it made enough for at least two meals for us, and possibly three.

I cut up a thin leek into thin rings (we have just started a veg box again, so there might be interesting (or not :) posts re that soon). It went into a pan with some olive oil, and was fried until just caramelised. There were some chickpeas left over from the tagine, so I added them, some seasoning, and some torn basil leaves from the pot on the windowsill at the end. I could have taken some chilli, I think, but was really delicious eaten with fusilli pasta, and I shall freeze the rest of the sauce today. So nice we shall have it again, and possibly again after that.

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

I bought a *huge* jar of roasted red peppers for something – not sure what, either our big party last year, or our camping break in Wales. Whatever it was for, they didn’t get used, and have languished in The Cupboard Under The Stairs for many months, next to the big jar of sun dried tomatoes; no, don’t know what they got bought for either.

One day last week, I popped into the local CoOp minimart – sadly, it is not nearly as local as the local Sainsburys minimart. and I much prefer it, but I happened to be nearby and popped in for some bits. They had packs of four chicken breasts at half price, so I snapped up a couple of packs. And left my beautiful bunch of irises on the counter, but never mind.

I made a chicken and chickpea tagine with five of the breasts, having put the chickpeas in to soak a couple of days before, and then cooked them in the slow cooker on Saturday while we were Morris dancing in Malton. The tagine is dead easy – brown the chicken and put it in a pot (slow cooker for me), add sliced onions and garlic, and Ras el Hanout spice mix fried off a bit, some dried apricots, about 1/3 of the jar of roast peppers sliced up, a lemon or two halved and squeezed and hurled in the pot. Bit of water and left alone for a few hours. Was lovely.

The other three chicken breasts were roasted off in the Remoska with seasoning and olive oil, and stowed in the freezer for … well, whatever. Pasta or stirfy or something, but all eight would have made far too much tagine.

As for the rest of the peppers – that’s for the next post!

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

Beautiful. And makes me roar with laughter every time :)

Mirrored from the Tribe.

A few people have (very kindly) enquired as to how Igpuss is doing on his new regime and, to tell the truth, we don’t know.

He was doing absolutely great on the two injections a week for his arthritis, and then as soon as we dropped him to one a week, as directed, it all seemed to go bad again. Also, it didn’t help that he decided that he’d really not have the jabs after all, thankyouverymuch, which means he has to be stalked and stabbed while he’s asleep.

We’ve settled on one every five days for now, which seems to be helping him, and see if we can stretch it out over time.

In other news, Henry has a cold, and is spluttering and sneezing all over the place, but he’s still eating, so I don’t worry too much.

Mirrored from the Tribe.

We did a bit of desultory work on Good Friday (heathens that we are), went to Beverley on Saturday to collect new! pasta! dishes! (as one of our beloved and venerable ones broke last week), and a few other places for chores. I photographed loads of stuff for eBay and got it listed during the free listing weekend.

We picked up a nice piece of lamb in Morrisons, rolled with gremolata, so had that on Sunday with roast veg – quite delicious. Other than that we did absolutely nothing, apart from trundling down to the Minerva in the rain on Monday afternoon, in an attempt to do some dancing out with Rackaback. It really was remarkably wet, but we gave it a go when the torrents eased off a bit. After that, we came home to home made sossidge rolls, and an utterly appalling Nick Cage movie, Knowing. It was so dire, we turned it off after about half an hour.

This morning, I had a diabetic review at the surgery; I was expecting a lecture, as I have been far from well-behaved, lifestyle-wise, over the winter, but my levels are down to 7%, I have put on only a kg, and everything else is tickety boo. Next blood test is July, when they’ll test for thyroid as well, as I am suffering occasional night sweats, and I am so far past menopause that it cannot possibly be that. So all in all, quite pleased with that.

Mirrored from kestrel.org.

I don’t know why I’m not writing much here any  more – lots of posts in my head, but actually putting fingers to keyboard seems beyond me right now.

Yesterday, we (as in Rackaback) did our first proper dance out of the year, down by the Minerva pub in Hull. It’s a nice space, on the old docks, and there were a few people around. I rattled the bucket and people actually paid us (possibly to stop), and we had lots of compliments too. It was an ideal time to test out my purple suede boots – sheepskin insoles and two pairs of socks, and they were dead comfy. But they do make me look like Nanny Ogg …

Last weekend (not yesterday, but the one before), we took ourselves off to the badlands of North Lincolnshire. An all to brief stop in Louth, which is a lovely town, but they hide the long term parking, and then down to Mablethorpe for fish and chips by the seaside, and a long walk along the prom. Beautiful day, and it was most enjoyable.

And that’s it, for now.

Mirrored from kestrel.org.

In a fit of madness, Rackaback have decided that we’ll Morris Dance a Mile for Sport Relief on Sunday 25th March 2012.

So we’ll be up at Sewerby Hall at Bridlington, in full rig – facepaint, sticks and bells. If you’re in the vicinity, come and laugh at us. And if you feel like donating a fiver, well that’d be ace.

http://my.sportrelief.com/sponsor/rackaback 

Mirrored from kestrel.org.

I have a couple of posts I want to write, but haven’t got round to them yet.

But I did want to note something, to save me having to look it up elsewhere. I stopped smoking.

On 2nd November 2005 :)

Mirrored from kestrel.org.