Cookalong
Next month the Cookalong group I'm in are doing retro recipes. I've been looking at old recipes and can't decide what to make. I think I'll dig out my 3 volume copy of Delia Smith's Complete Cookery Course and have a look at that - it was, rather unbelievably, written in the 1970's!
A stereotypical 1970's menu would be prawn cocktail, steak and chunky chips, Black Forest gateaux. I couldn't take the steak, the prawn cocktail isn't what would work in the group, and I don't want to make cake!
This month we did comfort food, I did our mushroom lasagna. There are 11 people in the group and each month we each bring a dish for that month's theme and everyone tastes each recipe. I don't need any dinner that day!
I'm accumulating lots of lovely recipes that I want to make again. We have a WhatsApp group, so they're all saved safely on there. Quite a few of them are frugal enough for here, and are on my very long list of recipes to write up!
Selecting Books
The u3a book group I'm in met up this week to choose our books for 2023. We each had to choose 3 books we wanted to read, that we hadn't read before and that cost £6 or less.
We met at a garden centre this time, this is unusual for us, it's normally at a members home. We were a noisy group and may have driven other customers away - oh dear! We enjoyed a lovely lunch and discussed which one of each members choices we would read this year.
Some of the many books we will be enjoying are
Dear Life by Alice Munro
The Reading List by Sarah Nisha Adams (my choice)
Still Life by Sarah Winman
and Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
I spent most of an evening finding and buying the years books online, plus I may have bought a lot of the other, unchosen, ones as well! My husband keeps threatening to build more bookcases, but we really don't have the room for any more!
Do you have a Remoska?
There is a lot of talk now of cooking fuel costs and where you might have put the oven on without much thought before all the price increases, now many people are more wary and are exploring cheaper options.
The Cookalong group discussed Remoskas and 2 members bought one and are very enthusiastic! They are a Czech product, exclusively imported by Lakeland. Expensive to buy, but they are very cheap to use.
I visited my Mum, who lives in Northampton, who is visiting my brother in Maidstone. I gave my Remoska to my brother ages ago, but he isn't using it. So I brought it back home with me, enthused by the buzz in the Cookalong group!
I'll be (re)exploring what to cook in it over the next few weeks
A friend in the choir I sing in, and also a member of Cookalong, was saying that she doesn't have a slow cooker, is thinking of getting one, but doesn't want another gadget she may not use, so what did we make in ours, if we had one.
So I'm lending her my copy of Slow Cooked which has lots and lots of lovely things to make in a slow cooker.
Well, this week, I seem to have been talking about u3a rather a lot. I do enjoy everything I do with them, and have made lots of lovely new friends. So if you are of an appropriate age, check out your local group, you might like it!
What I've been making in previous Januarys
Couscous Snacky Lunchtime Bites
These little couscous snacky things are great kept in the fridge to have one or two when a hungry moment strikes. Or include them in a lovely salad lunch or dinner. They would be great in a packed lunch too, for both children and adults.
Smoking Hot Brazil Nut Butter
Brazil nut butter is difficult to find in the shops and you definitely wouldn't find this version! The hot smoked paprika in this version gave it quite a hum of warmth. If you don’t want that, use sweet paprika instead. If you like it really hot, add some more. Taste it and adjust to however you like it.
Savoury flapjacks, fragrant with rosemary, caramelised onions and sweet chilli
I was on the hunt for a savoury flapjacks recipe one day. I Googled, as you do, and absolutely every single recipe I found had cheese in it, and carrots. By the tenth recipe, I was thinking s#d this, I’m going to do one without cheese or carrots. So there!
Red Lentil Pate
A delicious and versatile pate – add a handful of any cooked or raw and grated firm veg and whizz them in to ring the changes. So leftover garlicky roasted veg grated raw carrot or swede, fennel or cauliflower, or even finely shredded cabbage
I published an ebook for meal plan 1 in August 2021 and am delighted that many people have thought it was worth getting. I repriced it again in June 2022 and it was still holding on, even in these scary times. Now we are in September and prices have shifted again and
I've managed to get my head around WooCommerce so I can feature it on the blog and you can find it here.
I was busy recooking, photographing and updating the recipes for Meal Plan 2 and putting them into an ebook as well. The meal plan was first written in 2013 and still prices up, which is fabulous and that is finally complete. The book is done now too, prices seem to be stable enough to do it.
I'm well into creating an e-book from the Stretch A Chicken To Last A Week series, hope it won't be long before it's finished. Got a couple of images to take, which means cooking the recipe, and 1 more recipe to write up.
Do come and say hello on the Fantastically Frugal Food Facebook group, or the Sensational Slimming Sustenance group. I'd love to see you. Lots of useful tips, recipes and ideas. The over 17,000 membership are brilliant, brimming with talent.
And don't forget Thrifty Lesley, where there are 800+ recipes of fantastically frugal food and many weekly meal plans. And Cheap Family Recipes where you can find all kinds of delicious things that don't cost much, with two family monthly meal plans.
I've also got a few YouTube videos up, not many yet, but I'm planning to do more. I've done a couple more, need to edit them now. So much to do, so little time!
With all best wishes, until next time
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