A Belated Resolution

The UK and Europe have been scandalised by the appearance of horse meat, in varying proportions up to 100%, being passed off as beef in supermarket ready meals, especially in the cheaper basic ranges.  Fortunately, we do not eat that many ready meals or supermarket beef burgers. 

While I realise that horse meat in itself does no harm in the diet, I am not very happy at the thought of eating horse.  Maybe it’s because both B and A had horse riding lessons for a few years when they were growing up.  In fact I remember B wanting to be a show jumper as a career, until I explained that it wasn’t really a career choice unless you were wealthy enough to own your own land and horses, and then maybe, if you were good enough.

So, my belated resolution is to cook vegetarian, two or three times a month, using a vegetarian cookbook, rather than just cooking without meat – tinned beans, vegetarian cheese and free range eggs are very versatile.

My first recipe was taken from Sarah Brown’s Vegetarian Cookbook, which I bought from a charity shop quite a few years ago, and checking the blurb it was first published in 1984, so there are no links.

I produced Broccoli and Walnut Bake – a main course.  It consisted of the vegetable and nuts, plus onions, garlic, and mushrooms layered between mashed potatoes and served with a creamy mushroom sauce. We enjoyed this recipe so I will be making it again.

In the meantime, I shall be searching through the cookbook to find a different dish so that I can build my repertoire!  And I shall have to try some photographs of the results - perhaps.

February is flying by

February is two thirds gone and I haven’t made time to post on the blog.

Well the month is flying by and I seem to be spending a lot of my time helping F with sorting through his research and playing catch up with my Open University Maths Course.  I am enjoying the work but I can’t seem to dedicate enough time to keep up with the pace.  The good thing about the course is that the tutor has the knack of explaining things clearly – that helps when the books are a bit obscure.

So I cheated for Shrove Tuesday – we had pancakes - but for the first time I can remember I used ready made sweet pancakes, tinned red cherry fruit pie filling and ready made ice cream a copy of the pancakes they serve at the Little Chef. They were ready with no effort and of course I didn’t have much clearing away and washing dishes.  They tasted quite good, but next year I shall be going back to making them from scratch.

Also – good news – my car got though its MOT with no real problems, so that makes it legal to keep on the road for another twelve months.  It has 102,000 miles on the clock – a mere junior compared to some Audis I have read about!  They garage suggested I might consider new number plates, but I like the antique ones they already have – original to the car so I shall be keeping them.