So I’ve started to think about cooking again, a sure sign of recovery (I’ve also started to do the laundry too although ironing will have to be done sitting down if Ma goes on strike!). One of my favourite websites for food inspiration is Budget Bytes, the recipes are interesting and as the title suggests good for those on a budget, although lots of the pricing isn’t relevant for me and you do sometimes have to do some basic US to UK translation for some of the food and measures, the food is good.
Beth’s Slow Cooker Italian Chicken and Peppers was the ideal meal for me to start proper cooking with, mostly because it all goes in the slow cooker. However, I’ve not been doing my shopping since surgery, poor Mum has been doing it for me, we both knew that this would be the case, so when I got paid this at the end of October, I just transferred my food shopping money over to her. Which means that I don’t have any money (seriously, there 97p in my purse right now) to pop to the shops and pick up extra stuff that I might want, even if I could just walk down to the shops…
Which means that I adapted this recipe quite a bit. Firstly, I didn’t have any marinara sauce because as a general rule I don’t buy jarred sauces, what I did have was garlic, a tin of tomatoes and some tomato puree and some basil leaves (you can see where this is going can’t you?), I also never eat green bell peppers, they are unripe peppers and they give me indigestion, I used red, orange and yellow ones, finally the chicken in the freezer was a packet of mixed thighs and drumsticks which weighed about 1.5lbs, they weren’t boneless so less meat but it would have to do.
As per instructions, I intended to leave this on low for 8 hours, however, at 6 hours, it looked a bit watery (probably because of my tomato ‘sauce’, so I added another squirt of tomato puree and turned it up to high for the next hour or so.
I took out the meat, removed the skin and bones, shredded it and added it back to the sauce and peppers. It was ready to eat at that point but I decided that I wanted to eat this with dumplings. Suet dumplings to be precise. So 2oz of suet, 4oz of self raising flour, a sprinkle of dried oregano and 5 tablespoons of water. Mixed together, then made into dumplings and thrown in the slow cooker, about 30 minutes later, I had the perfect dinner for a rainy November evening.
This week was lovely because all of a sudden my foot got much better, it’s been looking better but this week it was much less stiff and much easier to walk. The really cool thing is that it has a warning system for when it’s had enough and I need to put it up, it turns red and then purple.
If that wasn’t enough excitement for one week, on Saturday, Ma and I went to Watford (in a car!) for Oli’s birthday party.
Nephew number two…well he slept through all of it and only woke up went it was time to go. No cuddles with Joe this time…
Quick and easy, chop veg, grab hummus from the fridge. Note that I didn’t make the hummus, sometimes buying is easier than making and that’s ok.
Ma and I made a bunch of rolls (
I can’t talk about last week without talking about Paris. It was horrific. the best words I can find it light of that (and Beirut and Iraq) are from godchild 5. Godchildren 2 through 5 go to a French school and were worried for family and for family of friends and E commented that the terrorists were going to meet God and realise that they broke His heart. There’s so much fear and horror and heartbreak in the aftermath of this but E reminded me and I hope you too, that we stand for something else and in the light of that I’m going to quote Ken Livingstone after the 7/7 attacks on London, I still hope that for London and I hope that for Paris too.
Nic Dempsey 