Boston Baked Beans on Sourdough Toast.

Okay, that sounds like something only dear Nigella would think up to call beans on toast, but it happens to be the truth. If you remember (those of you who have been reading long enough) that way back last March or April time I started a sourdough starter and began learning how to make my own sourdough loaf? Well I haven't really updated since, but I am thrilled to say that the same sourdough starter is still alive! That is about 7 months and counting, still as healthy as can be and producing great bread. As for me, I think I have improved no end since those first loaves and am knocking one out about every 5 days or so. This was yesterdays offering:

I really do love making it and I really enjoy the 'dark' taste of sourdough loaves and especially the wonderful toast it makes and the starter is almost like a pet. (for those of you unsure, sourdough is a bread made without yeast but using a starter which is kept alive by feeding with flour and water, it then produces it's own natural yeast)

Yesterday I decided to make my own baked beans to go with the bread. Why? I hear you ask. Is there any point in toiling in the kitchen to make something which is perfectly good out of a tin? Well the only (and rather inadequate) answer I can come up with is why not? The ingredients are very cheap, I know what  has gone in them when I make them myself and who know, they may just be nicer than tinned ones.

Okay, so maybe you don't want to undertake them if you are busy, not really because they are complicated and make you spend much time in the kitchen, they really aren't, but they do involve soaking the beans 24 hours before and then cooking them before you even start the recipe. Not hard, but you can't be spontaneous and 'want them now'.

Anyway, what were the results?

Well they certainly look like baked beans but they were incredibly tasty. Now I have nothing at all against tinned baked beans, a great staple and wonderful to have in, but having tasted my own, these ones definitely do have a more 'natural' taste to them and I can taste what went in them, which is always a nice feeling (which was really the beans, water, tomato puree, cloves, dark brown sugar, garlic onion, mustard and smoked bacon, salt and pepper)

So in conclusion, if I can be bothered I will definitely make them again, they taste great, it makes loads (I reckon the equivalent of 5 tins), they freeze well (apparently) and can be done in the slow cooker so are cheap to cook (as it happens I did them in the oven today through pure impatience because I wanted them for lunch. There again, if I can't be bothered, I have tins of them in the cupboard :-)

Virtually fat free carbonara

2 recipes in a row! It's interesting, but this months frugal drive has made me use my imagination and get cooking new and interesting things again.
Today's recipe is for spaghetti carbonara. Now I love this, but very very very rarely have it because it is rather fatty, using plenty of cream in the sauce.
Well here is a version that is guilt free as it is virtually fat free and still tastes as good - in fact, I would challenge anyone to tell the difference.
The secret is Quark. For those of you new to this product (probably most of you know it already, but it's new to me) it is a naturally, completely fat free soft cheese, yet has a deliciously creamy texture.

So here is the recipe for one:

Mix half a tub of Quark with one egg and plenty of black pepper.
Put on some spaghetti to cook.
Fry an onion, a chopped up clove of garlic, add some chopped bacon (remove the fat) and then some mushrooms and then remove from the heat when all well cooked.
Drain spaghetti, add the quark mixture to the onion mix and then add the spaghetti and toss to coat and season well.
That really is it.

You could add some parmesan and serve but it was good enough without any. Delicious and guilt free carbonara.

(Has anyone else noticed that on Blogger at the moment posts are taking hours and hours to make it onto the reading list?)

Pizza with a difference

I don't generally like pizzas. Perhaps I should qualify that, I don't generally like pizzas unless I have made them myself. Bought pizza bases are thick, doughy and rather unpleasant things and I would rather give them a miss personally. I like my pizza bases to be thin and crispy and fresh with a crunch.
Fortunately pizza bases are one of the easiest things to make in the world and my recipe is split into two with one half of the dough wrapped and in the fridge for another night. They are cheap, lovely real frugal good (depending what you put on them) and don't have to be unhealthy because they don't have to be loaded with fatty meat and cheese.
It was with great interest that I watched a River Cottage episode the other day in which Hugh made a simple pizza with no tomato on it. I admit I have never tried this, just usually knocking together a quick tomato sauce, a few veggies and a sprinkling of cheese on mine. This recipe looked like it could go either way, could be incredibly dull, or tantalizingly stupendous. It was - STUPENDOUS.

There are only 4 main ingredients for the topping: onions, spinach, pears and blue cheese.
and 3 minor ones: nutmeg, olive oil, chilli flakes.

Here is the recipe.

Basic pizza base recipe - makes 2 pizza bases, one of which does a large appetite like mine for a main meal

250g strong bread flour
5g salt
5g quick yeast
up to 180ml water.
2 tbs olive oil

Form the above into a dough (you may not need more than about 150ml water to get the desired consistency, but use your noggin) and kneed for 5 - 10 minutes, it really doesn't take long to become stretchy. Leave to prove for an hour and a half approx.
Split in half and roll out one half to make as thin a pizza base as you can manage. If you are not using the other half wrap in film and store in the fridge and use in the next could of days.

Meanwhile while it was proving fry one onion, chopped into rings, until the rings are soft and golden colour and cook some spinach in a tiny amount of water and squeeze out the water after. The original recipe called for some fresh spinach, but I rarely have this in as it is pricey here, I used frozen spinach and about 2 or 3 block is enough.

Peal and chop the pear, pouring on a little olive oil and a shake of freshly grated nutmeg on it, I also added a few chilli flakes.

Get the oven on to it's hottest.

Assemble the pizza: spread the onion and the spinach on the base, arrange the pear over that and then dot with some blue cheese (I used a cheap stilton, but anything would do) here and there - don't need tons of it. another spinkling of olive oil and some ground pepper and you are good to go.

Bake for about 10 to 15 minutes, depending on your oven, until crispy and gorgeous looking.

Frugal Living UK - back to basics.

November is here and I have to get a bit serious with myself, bad habits have become every day occurrences and it has to stop.
I have become used to handing over my card, not for frivolous purposes, but for every day stuff, but without being aware of what is in the account, this is partly due to the unstructured way in which self-employed people like myself are paid. If you have only ever been in a salaried job, just imagine how tricky it can be when some months nothing comes in at all and other months lots comes in and other months in dribs and drabs. How sometimes you have to chase up payment and don't get a penny until months after you did the work. I would love to be paid a monthly salary rather than lumps now and again, I would love to be paid if I am sick and can't work, I would love to be given pension contributions, but sadly self-employed people get none of these things, sure there are benefits, but definite minuses.
Anyway, to get back onto the point, before I was side-tracked there, I have let things get away from me and it has to stop.

So today I went onto all my online bank accounts to see how serious the situation was and it is not great, not dire, but not great. Last friday I had to spend yet another £140 on my car (gasket blown and lightbulbs replacing) which has not helped the situation. I will be back on track if I can spend only a maximum of £100 on everything (food, toiletries, household, petrol etc) in November and the same in December. A lean Christmas? no, just a well thought out one.
It's a challenge although I know many people (some of you included) who live on less than this so not that serious a challenge. I have a freezer packed full of stuff, I have a lot of knowledge and resources to fall back on looking at cheap recipes etc. The petrol could be tricky, but the car is full and I hopefully can get through most of the month on what I have if I don't take any long trips (exempt from this challenge is having to travel to London for work towards the end of the month - there is no way around that expense and I have just to budget separately for it)
So today I did what I used to do but have got out of the habit of doing: I made a meal plan, a shopping list and took £100 cash out of the bank.
Oh what a joy it was to be back in the supermarket with a structure, order and plan to what I was shopping for, I had forgotten how easy it makes shopping, how satisfying to spend so little, what a great feeling it was.
I spent just £9 on a weeks food (might have to top up buying some milk). Yes, I have a lot of things in the freezer, but even so, it just took some imagination and get out of ones head the idea that each meal has to be something 'special'. Home cooked, cheap food is always special, just because tv chefs like us to think we should be eating bloody pheasant croissants or cod roe curry doesn't mean we have to.
So the challenge is set, let's see if I can achieve it.
The irony is that because I have structured my week, I will probably end up eating even better than usual.

Beautiful weather today, done an hour and half gardening and that on top of the 2 hours I did yesterday has tidied it all up no end. I believe the rest of this week will be wet, so it was good to get it done today.

Books Books Books......part 2

The last post was about books and in a round about sort of way, about a new bookcase I built.
But it got me thinking about the power of books in my life as well.

Some books are a diversion, some books are like old friends that you know are always there when you want to see them again, some books are a bit of nonsense, but make you smile all the same and some make you sad, but in a good way. Books are there, often at bad times (and I've had a few of those of late) and can be cathartic, can be enough to take your mind off troubles for a few hours.

Some books conjure up associations and memories with certain people, or certain places, or certain times in our life.

And some just pass through our lives, seemingly unnoticed.

I have memories of certain books. I remember reading Pet Semetary by Stephen King, when I was 14 or 15. I remember I was in my bedroom and listening to some music at the same time as reading the last chapter of the book. There is a chilling final sentence, as his wife, Rachel, recently buried comes back from the dead as something murderous, It reads something like:

'In a gravelly voice, full of dirt, "Darling", it said.'

That isn't wholly accurate but it was something on those lines. I remember as I read them a really weird thing happened. The tape I was listening to get chewed up in the machine (remember how that sometimes happened) and started playing all wrong. It sounded like something from beyond the grave itself had got into the machine. Rather funny now, but at the time it really freaked me out! One of those moments you don't forget when timing is everything.

Other key books that I associate with moments are Jane Eyre, which I read when I was about 16 for the first time. I couldn't believe how fantastic it was and stayed up until about 2 in the morning when I started it, reading and reading - just one more chapter. For anyone who only knows this story from one of the many (in my opinion) very poor TV or film adaptations, I urge you to read it.

The book I have probably read the most times is probably a very strange choice for most people. It is called The Magic Cottage by the recently deceased author, James Herbert. I have probably read this book 15 times over the last 30 years. Why? What a strange choice? you may say. It is something to do with a) the couple moving from the big city of London out into the countryside, in the middle of nowehere (seems this idea might have been in my head for way longer than I thought), their relationship and, of course, the Magic, with a capital M. Even though it all goes wrong, it never has failed to captivate me.

I keep short stories and ghost stories by my bed, for those times when I may wake up in the night. My favourite author of short stories is Katherine Mansfield. Each one is a gem in its own right. Often nothing much happens, it might describe a day out at the beach, but always, there is a real beauty in the way she creates characters, so quickly. I can imagine there is quite an art to scaling a story down to just a few pages, not one that many authors have and I can think of none better at this particular art.

I still have my shelf of Enid Blyton's and occasionally reach for one and read it, can be done in about am hour and a half. Such memories. I will never understand why she is given such a hard time by teachers and parents. She was singly responsible for starting my off on my love of reading and that is worth everything. Maybe her language is limited and so is non-educational, but should reading only be about education when you are a child? Surely not.

If I had a list of only 10 books I could take to a desert island to read over and over for the rest of my life, these would be them:

Katherine Mansfield - collected short stories.
Charlotte Bronte - Jane Eyre
James Herbert - The Magic Cottage
Victoria Clayton - Running Wild
Agatha Christie - Hallowe'en Party
William Thackery - Vanity Fair
Barbara Erskine - Midnight is a Lonely Place
Donna Tartt - The Secret History
Stephen King - The Shining
Charles Dickens - Bleak House

Covers most bases and women authors seem to win, 6 to 4.
Have a go yourself. It is hard. What is your favourite book?

Books, Books Books..............

As I may have mentioned before, I have a love affair with books. I have hundreds of them, too many to count. Over the last 40 years I have collected many, many and although I buy very few these days unless they are 1p on Amazon or found in a charity shop, I still love browsing them.
Many people have a different attitude to books, reading them once and giving them to charity (for which I am eternally grateful), and much as I have nothing against this - each to their own - I am a collector of them and am happy to re-read most of them over and over again, which is why I don't throw them away (obvious exceptions are books that I didn't enjoy). In my youth, I had three bookcases crammed full in my bedroom, which I left there when I went away to Music College. The time came when my parents wanted to clear the room and because, being a student, I didn't have room for them, most of them went to charity - something I am still sad about 20 years later, as there were some gems that I have never had again. I have never made that mistake since.
I love the feel of them, all sitting together on a shelf - Stephen King, squashed up against Daphne du Maurier and Howard Spring, with the tiny Collins Gem Book of Card Games at the side, (I am not terribly organised with them, enjoying the higgledy-piggledy nature of them) - all containing their own stories, their own people, just waiting to be brought to life when I reach to get one down. For some reason that is why an e-reader doesn't appeal to me. Yes, they are useful and mean you don't have to store books, they are light, easy to take a whole library away with you, yes, there are plenty of advantages and I have tried reading a book on one (my mother's), but to me they don't have the soul of a book. I love turning the pages by hand, I love the paper with the nice font written on it, and the feel of a book. I even love the way they all look together on a shelf. If I ever have any money (unlikely) I would convert my garage into a library with floor to ceiling bookshelves on every wall.
As it is, I have books crammed into every space.

In the bedroom, here you will find a real mix, comedy, thriller, murder mystery, romance, horror.

By the bed, all the books I may reach for in the night if I can't sleep, usually short stories and ghost novels.

In the spare room, on the right is my collection of the complete Agatha Christie in beautiful hardback edition (£25 on e-bay - bargain) and classic novels, and on the left a real hotchpotch.

Oversized books are in the kitchen, mostly cooking and gardening, a bit of DIY and anything else too big to fit elsewhere.

Even one of the kitchen cupboards has recipe books crammed next to jars of pasta and rice.

Jane Austen stands behind the day's post.

So it was that the time had come for me to find a new place for the piles of books that had developed around the house that had no home yet. I decided to build a new, small bookcase yesterday, to slot nicely in the hall and hold small sized paperbacks.

Total cost - £12

Bought enough wood, measured it out to fit precisely and screwed it together and put a nice, decorative front onto it.

Stained it dark oak, so that it matched the other colours in the room, then polished with a good wax polish.

And problem solved.

I am delighted with it, very low cost, and now these poor souls have a home. What's more, they are in order (for now).

Of course there is still no room for any more books that may just find their way into my home. Oh well, I am sure I will find another spot when the time comes......

New purchase

I have been thinking about one of these for a very long time as it is recommended by so many of you, so I went to Argos today and got myself a Mini Oven. Seems perfect for heating a meal for one without wanting to put the big oven on. It was £40 but I had a £10 voucher from someone, so it cost me £30. I had a perfect spot for it above my large oven too.

So I tried it tonight, was a little worried that it might not come up to par, but no need to fear, I waited 5 minutes to heat up, but it was hot before that and I chopped up some potatoes to make wedges and put in a chicken breast. They were cooked beautifully and in slightly less time than the big oven. The power is 1300 as opposed to my large oven which is 2000 so it is uses about 40% less electricity which is good news. So now, when I am making a small meal just for me there is no need to wait for the big oven to heat up and to waste all that space. Hopefully the money I shelled out for the mini oven will come back to me in money I will save by using it.
I will look forward to trying other stuff in it now.