Pork and Apple

I arrived home last night carting a bag of apples, cut-price pork and spinach. Husband looked at me expectantly. "We're having experimental pork" I told him, by way of explanation. We did, and it worked surprisingly well.

INGREDIENTS:

• Pork chops
• 1 apple
• 1 onion
• Vegetable oil
• Spinach
• Pepper
• Sage
• Salt

DIRECTIONS:

~ Warm the oil in a pan. Add the onion and the apple and cook for a minute or so.

~ Season with sage, pepper and salt. Other herbs could be added too.

~ Remove from heat once onion has softened. Scoosh the pork chops about in the pan until they're covered with oil.

~ Layer spinach over an oven tray. Place the pork chops onto the spinach bed.

~ Pour the remainder of the apple/onion/oil mixture over the pork and spinach.

~ Cook for around half an hour

And in the meantime, watch a video:

What Don't You Know?

If either of these questions had been asked of me, I would have had no idea how to reply. But perhaps that's just because I haven't tried Frosty Jacks yet...

A cheeky reminder to sit back, relax and enjoy your extra hour

This weekend, the clocks go back, giving you a whole extra hour to do... well, whatever you like. Relaxation is, of course, always a good spare-time pursuit; and what better way than the one demonstrated by this gentleman:

Spicy Bean Wraps

Yesterday, we ran out of most things. Not unusual, I must admit. We had just enough ingredients to make a variation on spicy tuna wraps; a vegetarian version, with kidney beans instead. Simple and effective.

INGREDIENTS:

~ 2 tins of kidney beans

~ 1 tin of chopped tomatoes

~ Basil

~ Herbes de Provence

~ Salt

~ Pepper

~ Garlic

~ Cheddar

~ Cumin seeds

~ 1 red chilli

~ Paprika

~ 2 sticks of celery

~ Vegetable oil

~ Thyme

~ Wraps (find out how to make these here)

~ Sweetcorn

DIRECTIONS:

• Heat the vegetable oil in a pan. Add garlic, salt, pepper, paprika, cumin seeds and the chilli.
• Chop the celery. Throw it in the pan.
• Add the tins of kidney beans and the chopped tomatoes.
• Stir. Add Herbes de Provence, basil and thyme. Lots of basil, it likes tomatoes.
• Stir. Leave to simmer for a while. Stir again.
• It doesn't really matter how long you leave it, but the longer you do (within reason), the less liquidy it will be, and therefore the easier it will be to put in the wraps.
• Add the sweetcorn and stir.
• Spoon into wraps; add a slice of cheddar.
• Wrap up and eat.

Carrot & Coriander Soup

Every time I go shopping, I take a list. And every time I go shopping, I forget about the list until I am home again. This is why I frequently end up with too little sugar and too many carrots. It seems that whenever I'm in a greengrocer's shop, I assume we need more carrots, regardless of how many there are at home. This is possibly why we recently ended up with three full packs of carrots in our fridge. Obviously something had to be done, so I made carrot & coriander soup. Unfortunately, there wasn't much coriander, or many onions, or much vegetable stock, all of which are my usual ingredients. It did, however, work out better than most previous carrot & coriander soups I've made.

INGREDIENTS:

~ Half an onion

~ Two packs of carrots

~ A small amount of coriander

~ Pepper

~ Salt

~ Herbes de Provence

~ Vegetable oil

~ One vegetable stock cube

DIRECTIONS:

• Heat the vegetable oil in a pan. Add the onion and stir.
• Add carrots; if you chop these while the onion is cooking, the timing should be about right.
• Add some coriander, then some salt & pepper, then some herbes de Provence.
• Dissolve stock cube in water; add to pan.
• Stir. Leave to simmer.
• Whizz with some sort of blender.
• Sprinkle fresh parsley over the top and serve.

Because We All Love Chocolate

Rhubarb & Apple Crumble

It's been a while since I've posted, mainly because we've all had a pretty manic week in which we've lived on super noodles and instant soup. Sometimes you need the rubbish stuff, it makes the good stuff taste better.

Anyway, yesterday Husband was working a Very Long Day, so I made a crumble ready for his return.

INGREDIENTS:

~ Apples

~ Rhubarb

~ Sugar

~ Cinnamon

~ Flour

~ Butter

DIRECTIONS:

• Chop up the apples and rhubarb. Plop them in a saucepan with some water, pour sugar in (you'll need quite a lot, as rhubarb is really sour), and add a couple of pinches of cinnamon.
• Stir. Leave to bubble for about 10 minutes.
• While this is happening, pour flour into a mixing bowl. Add a hunk of butter. Rub them together until they form a sort of crumbly mixture (hence the name...)
• Add some sugar; about the same amount of sugar as flour, especially if you have a sweet tooth. Rub it in.
• Drain the excess water from the apple & rhubarb mixture, spread it out in a baking tin.
• Spread the crumbly mixture over the top.
• Add some more cinnamon as a top layer.
• Cook until it looks done.