It has been irking me beyond measure ever since I saw an episode of Desperate Housewives when Bree van de Kamp was baby-sitting Lynette’s kids, and she somehow expected more respect for the fact that she had made cookies “from scratch.”

This is quite some admission. We should be shunning Wisteria Lane’s very own domestic goddess for the tacit admission that she sometimes uses shake-and-bake rather than dishing out the kudos for making cookies from scratch.

I mean cookies! Nothing too tricky about cookies!

I have just been making bananananana bread from scratch, and the whole house is alive with the smell.

My ill-gotten eBay profits have been squandered this month on a knock-down breadmaker which should be delivered shortly. Making bread by hand is not terribly difficult, but it is rather messy. Hopefully the breadmaker, complete with with timer and last minute fruit-adding-in-device will be clean and efficient. And an added incentive for timeous awakening.

It has been irking me beyond measure ever since I saw an episode of Desperate Housewives when Bree van de Kamp was baby-sitting Lynette’s kids, and she somehow expected more respect for the fact that she had made cookies “from scratch.”

This is quite some admission. We should be shunning Wisteria Lane’s very own domestic goddess for the tacit admission that she sometimes uses shake-and-bake rather than dishing out the kudos for making cookies from scratch.

I mean cookies! Nothing too tricky about cookies!

I have just been making bananananana bread from scratch, and the whole house is alive with the smell.

My ill-gotten eBay profits have been squandered this month on a knock-down breadmaker which should be delivered shortly. Making bread by hand is not terribly difficult, but it is rather messy. Hopefully the breadmaker, complete with with timer and last minute fruit-adding-in-device will be clean and efficient. And an added incentive for timeous awakening.

We’ve just eaten the healthiest meal we have had for ages. Too much of the working week is spent grabbing whatever’s nearest, and in Chesterfield, that means pizza (the fantastic Lambarellis), Chinese (occasionally), KFC or chips. Or something instant from Lidl.

Tonight, we had pork steaks in cider, fried with onions, carrots, peppers, apples, garlic and mushrooms, with a spoon of wholegrain mustard and served with wholegrain pasta. Pudding was a blood orange and normal orange, and half a melon, all chopped up and doused liberally in sherry.

Yum! And all 5 portions in one meal.

Off to Scotland for a few days tomorrow. Only the second time I’ve ever been north of the border. Not that I’ll have much time to sightsee from Dunfermline!

I have been thinking, however, that next time I’m fortunate enough to get an extended break like I took driving round France last summer, I shall do the same in Scotland. I’ve a yen to visit some of the more remote islands as well as the mainland.

Last week, I went to Ikea to buy fancy kitchen storage jars. I’ve started buying pulses and stuff in huge, hugely cheap 2kg bags. Unfortunately this means leaving open bags of lentils on the worktops. And lentils get everywhere.

So, I went to Ikea to buy jars to put things in, and came back with a shelf load of large jars and some matching smaller ones. Big jars full of colourful lentils and red beans and so on look smart enough to have out on display, freeing up some cupboard space.

Only I bought too many jars. I figured ‘can’t have too many’.

Today I found myself buying more, different pulses, just to use the jars up.

Anyone got good chick-pea recipes? I thought not…

I made strawberry jam this evening. It’s just now cooled enough to sample, and it’s wonderful. It’s set just enough to resist the knife, but loose enough to close back over the hole in the jar when you’re done. It’s such a lurid colour that I’d have assumed food colouring was involved somehow, if it hadn’t been for the fact that I’d made it myself exclusively from fruit and pectin-enhanced sugar.

The initial plan was actually to make bramble jelly, but I didn’t find any blackberries. I drove almost to Leicestershire, found a layby and footpath, but no accessible berries. This is frustrating. There must be thousands of blackberries nearer here than that going unpicked. I just don’t know where to look. More frustrating still is that from my house, I can see brambles heavy with fruit, but they’re in a private garden I can’t get into.

I suspect even getting free fruit (which I didn’t with the strawberries) it’s going to be difficult to make jam for less money than it costs to buy. But it tastes good 🙂

Money has been really short over the last few days because of some large sums of money we’ve had to spend on the new house: down payments for the mortgage, the estate agent and the solicitor. Vast wads of cash that only represent small deposits. A mix up with jobs means I didn’t get my full salary this month either, so it’s been a bit of a juggle. And of course my savings are untouchable because they’re going to form the deposit on my house.

The last week, I ran out of cash completely, and wasn’t able to take any more out of the bank or my credit card without going over limits and incurring large fines.

So rather than the haphazard shopping for today’s meal that I usually do, I’ve been restricted to cooking from what’s in stock. Usually we have some frozen meat in stock, but we ate it all before the money ran out. So I’ve only been cooking from staples. Basically, that’s been pulses and lentils, bought in very large quantities from the cheap Asian shops in the neighbourhood. A kilo bag of lentils lasts a very very long time, even when you’re cooking from it every day. Storecupboard ingredients have included canned olives, canned tomatoes, red lentils, green lentils and white lentils (urid dahl). I keep a small-change pot on my bedside table which I’ve been raiding for pennies to buy onions and carrots.

I’m not, and never have been a veggie, but I have lots of friends who are. I can do reasonable veggie and vegan cooking when I need to. We’ve been eating dahl, Greek olive and potato stew, lentil bake.

I still miss the meat.

Money turned up in my bank account this morning, firstdirect alerted me by text message, so as soon as I got in from work I went to Sainsbury’s and bought sausages.

Since Paul’s tooth surgery he has to eat mashed up smooth stuff. So I asked the wise people of cix:/gourmet for some suggestions, and Helen posted this fabulous Roasted Tomato Soup recipe.

ROASTED TOMATO SOUP

Ingredients
4 tbsp olive oil, plus extra to serve
1kg plum tomatoes, halved
1 onion, sliced thinly
2 fat cloves garlic, halved
2 small sprigs each fresh thyme and basil
1 tsp caster sugar
1 litre vegetable or chicken stock or water
2 semi-soft sun-dried tomatoes
1 tbsp barbecue sauce

To serve:
Small clusters cherry tomatoes on the vine
Some small leaves fresh basil
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

1. Heat the oven to 220C, Gas 7. Pour the oil into a roasting pan and heat until almost smoking. Carefully tip in the tomatoes, onion rings and garlic, then mix into the oil. Top with the herbs and sprinkle with sugar and seasoning.

2. Return to the oven for 20-25 minutes, stirring once or twice during roasting, until nicely caramelised.

3. Remove and scoop into a saucepan. Bring the stock to a rolling boil and pour into the pot. Return to a boil, add the semi-soft dried tomatoes with the barbecue sauce and cook for 5 minutes.

4. Strain the vegetables, reserving the stock, and blitz the solids until smooth, gradually adding the stock back in. For an extra smooth texture, rub the mixture through the back of a sieve with a ladle. Check the seasoning. Cool and chill.

5. For the garnish, heat a little olive oil in a frying pan. Snip the tomatoes on the vine into clusters of three or four and fry them, still on the vine, for about a minute.

6. Reheat the soup to serve and pour into warmed cups or small bowls. Top each with a cluster of pan-fried cherry tomatoes and any pan juices drizzled over. Scatter with the basil leaves.