Indian Summer
It's been glorious here for the last few days, and this coming week is set fair too. Looks like we may get an Indian summer. So unfair with all the children going back to school, if indeed they can go and their school hasn't been closed due to rotten airy concrete.
The garden is looking great, lots of flowers still in bloom. The hydrangeas have been wonderful this year, pointing huge blooms to the sky, not dangling them downwards as in previous seasons.
My daughter has a big garden that she took over from an old lady when she bought the house. She has lots of plans for it, and I've got to take a lot of cuttings to help out.
MASSES of Red Lentils
A couple of weeks ago, I was cruising round the internet, looking at supermarket sites, Amazon and bulk sellers, looking for the cheapest way to buy red lentils. I use a great many of them, in all kinds of things.
I came across Wilton Whole Foods, who I'd not heard of before. Got a massive bag, 25kg, for £46, which works out to a bargainous £1.84 a kilo, (and don't forget that's TWO average supermarket bags) plus an amazing value 62p to deliver them.
My cookery group is coming tomorrow, and I know at least 1 person would like to share in the booty.
I'll be making coconut dal, flatbreads, nuggets and lentil ragu and lots of soup, which is my favourite soup, with curry spices in it.
Brownies Made With Cocoa
I have been trying to avoid as many UPF's (Ultra Processed Foods) as possible and I was pretty fed up when I discovered that my best brownie recipe used chocolate that has emulsifiers in it.
Looking for alternatives, I discovered that ALL chocolate has emulsifiers in. On trying to find out why, it is because a few drops of emulsifier will give the same mouth feel as using cocoa butter, which is more expensive. So that explains why the only chocolate I could find with no emulsifiers in was very expensive - cocoa butter isn't cheap!
So, I Googled making brownies with cocoa instead of chocolate. Found what I thought was a good recipe and tried it. I took them out of the oven early as they looked cooked through rather than fudgey, and they were extremely dry. Didn't get wasted of course, a good splosh of almond liquer saved the day.
So I looked at the recipe and tweaked it. Next try was chocolate cake texture around the outside, uncooked in the middle. Hmm, what next.
Then I thought the problem might be that there wasn't enough mixture for the size of baking tin, so looked at my own recipe for quantities. Then upped the amount of a few ingredients and thought, hang on, that looks very familiar. And yes, I'd ended up back where I started, with my own recipe but using cocoa instead of chocolate. Well I never! I thought that using cocoa, which is dry, instead of chocolate, which is moist, would need different quantities of the other ingredients.
So, if you want to make brownies with the recipe above, using cocoa instead of chocolate, substitute 90g of cocoa for the 200g of chocolate - that's all you have to do! Who would've thought it!
Incidentally, I always thought that cacao was just a posh way of saying cocoa, but apparently not. There are many differences, the main one being that cacao is made from unroasted cocoa beans. There are even variations between different cacao and cocoa. The less processed the better as far as the anti-oxidant content is concerned.
Cacao tends to be quite a lot more processed than cocoa, so I've bought some cacao and my husband says he can taste the difference. He says it's more mellow, with a deeper flavour, with more nuances.
I'm lucky to be able to experiment with these things.
What I've been making in previous Septembers
Curried Pumpkin and Coconut Soup
I'm now beginning to look at soup for lunch more than cold things or salad. Here is one of my favourites, with seasonal pumpkin
Filled Pitta Bread with Carrot, Lemon & Soft Cheese
A super simple filled pitta bread, filled with a mixture of grated carrot, lemon zest and juice and soft cheese. It is very tasty and would work without the lemon if you don’t have any, but it really does make a big difference to the flavour, especially the zest.
Home Made Sloe & Apple jam
From September onwards in the UK, the hedgerow plant blackthorn (Prunus spinosa), or sloe, produces fruit in abundance. Known as drupes, the deep purple fruit have stones that are large for the size of the fruit.
When sloes are cooked, they have a deeply plummy flavour, but if you try one uncooked, your mouth might feel it will be dry for ever – they are spectacularly astringent and sour
This gorgeous jam makes the most of any sloes you find in hedgerows
Bees Wax Wraps
Ever wanted to make some beeswax wraps? I had a go a while ago and was very pleased with how they turned out, especially the sandwich bag
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've finally completed the e-book from the Stretch A Chicken To Last A Week series. Took me absolutely ages to finish it off!
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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