Then, I finally ended up cleaning out the animals, to take me up until lunch. In the afternoon, Emma-therapy continued with a Sunday afternoon drive out in search of fields of  woolly baaa lambs. En route, we ended up at Bunker’s Hill Nursery, to buy a new barrel to pot up our Magnolia Stellata. Whilst there I found three lavender plants going cheap on the graveyard stand to extend our newly formed hot bed in the front garden.

All in all, today, I’ve had a lot of fresh air and exercise, rounded off with a new Slimming World recipe of Jamaican Beef Pepperpot Stew which was deliciously spicy.

Saturday afternoon was definitely hibernating weather and I tucked myself up with my book: Four British Fantasists: Place and Culture in the Children’s Fantasies of Penelope Lively, Alan Garner, Diana Wynne Jones, and Susan Cooper by Charles Butler. I actually bought this book when it came out back in 2006 but struggled then to read it’s selection of discursive essays on four of my most-favourite authors. Yesterday I was romping through its pages, and today, I have been doing the same.

I paused from my reading only in the afternoon to luxuriate in one of my annual pre-Christmas traditions: the making of the Christmas cake. Stir-up Sunday should actually be next Sunday being the one closest to my Mum’s birthday but we will be otherwise busy next weekend so I brought it forward. In the Shepherd household, it was always a family thing. My Dad would line and grease the cake tin with baking parchment and newspaper and make its little newspaper hat already for the four hours in the oven, and my brother and I would help my Mum get the ingredients all ready and ready to add into the BIG mixing bowl. And we’d listen to Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker whilst we did so.

In the new-Shepherd household we seem to have a different tradition, one that we observed today.

I set my LP of The Nutcracker playing on the record player and prepped and made the Christmas cake whilst Emma snoozed into the afternoon, and then I returned to reading in the armchair whilst the delicious aroma of Christmas wafted out of the kitchen as the cake cooked…

Easy Chicken Bake

395 calories per person / 3 Slimming World Syns

Prep time: 20 mins
Cooking time: 35 minutes

3 medium courgettes
25g extra-mature Cheddar cheese
45g sun-dried tomatoes, well drained (about 6 pieces)
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (each about 175g)
1 medium red onion, cut into 12 wedges
2 medium sweet potatoes (each about 225g), peeled and cut into 3cm chunks
2 yellow peppers, deseeded and cut into 3cm chunks
2 tsp extra virgin olive oil
12 cherry tomatoes
flaked sea salt
freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 220°C/Fan 200°C/Gas mark 7. Trim the courgettes and cut 2 of them into diagonal slices, about 1.5cm thick. Grate the third into diagonal slices, about 1.5 thick. Grate the third courgette on the medium-sized side of your grater, not too fine or too coarse if possible. You want it to be in fairly thin stands.

Scoop up the grated corvette in your hands and squeeze out as much water as you can, then put it in a bowl.

Grate the cheese on the medium-fine seeing of your grater – the same vas the courgette – and add it to the courgette. Cut the sun-dried tomatoes into rough 1cm chunks and add them to the bowl. Season with a pinch of salt and some freshly ground black pepper, then mix well.

Slice the chicken breasts into strips diagonally and combine week with the courgette mixture.

Put the sliced courgettes in a large rotating tin or dish and add the red onion wedges, sweet potato and helps peppers. Drizzle over the oil, season with the salt and lots of freshly ground black pepper and Todd together well. Nestle the chicken mixture among the vegetables, and season with ground black pepper. Bake for 15-20 minutes.

Remove the pan from the oven and disaster in the cherry tomatoes. Put it back in the oven for another 10 minutes until the chicken is cooked and the vegetables are tender and lightly browned.

Serves 4
3 medium aubergines, sliced
2 large onions, finely chopped
2x 400g/14oz cans chopped tomatoes
5ml/1 tsp dried mixed herbs
2-3 garlic cloves, crushed
6 sheets no pre-cook lasagne
salt and black pepper

For the cheese sauce:
2 level tbsp cornflour
284ml/½pt skimmed milk
142g/5oz fat free natural fromage frais
1 level tsp Dijon mustard
pinch of grated nutmeg
salt and freshly ground black pepper
57g/2oz reduced fat Cheddar cheese, grated

Preheat the oven to 200ºC/400ºF/Gas Mark 6.

1. Layer the sliced aubergine in a colander, sprinkling lightly with salt between each layer. Leave to stand for 1 hour, then rinse and pat dry.
2. Grill the aubergines with a little frylight for about 5 minutes each side.
3. Fry the onions for 5 minutes, then stir in the tomatoes, herbs, garlic and seasoning. Bring to the boil and simmer, covered for about 30 minutes.
4. Meanwhile, make the cheese sauce, blend the cornflour with a little milk. Heat the remaining milk and bring to the boil. Stir in the cornflour mixture and cook for 1-2 minutes, stirring until thickened. Remove the pan from the heat and beat in the fromage frais, mustard and nutmeg with a wooden spoon. Season to taste. Stir most of the grated cheese into the sauce, reserving a little for the topping.
5. Arrange the aubergines in the base of an ovenproof dish, spoon over half the tomato sauce. Arrange 3 layers of lasagne on top. Repeat with second layer. Add a third layer if desired.
6. Spoon over the cheese sauce, cover an bake for 30 minutes. Remove the lid for the last ten minutes to brown the crust. Serve hot with a mixed salad.

Freezer Note
This dish freezes well; cook for only 20 minutes, cool, then freeze. Reheat at 170ºC/375ºF/Gas Mark 3 for 20 minutes; increase the temperature to 200ºC/400ºF/Gas Mark 6 for 10 minutes to brown the top.

But I like quiche and wanted to persevere, and so tonight I had another go, with altogether much better results. The quantities still seem a bit weird. It says it serves 1 but this made 5 mini-quiches, which was a good serving (with salad and new potatoes for both emej and myself, with 1 left over for a lunch. The other thing is that it says you don’t have to do anything to the vegetables but I think a bit of dry frying to take out the moisture is essential. I’m attaching my amended recipe…

Ingredients
peppers, diced
onions, chopped
mushrooms, chopped
(maybe a little bit of ham if you have it)
3 eggs
150g fat free natural cottage cheese

Method

1. Prepare whatever Superfree veggies take your fancy… I’ve used peppers, onions, and a bit of ham, all cut up finely. Dry-fry them until soft.

2. Mix together the 3 eggs, 150g fat-free natural cottage cheese and season.

3. Add the vegetables (and ham) to the eggy mixture and mix well. Pour into shallow quiche tins.

4. Pop in the oven at 190ºC/375ºF/Gas 5 for around 30 minutes, or until the quiche is set and golden brown.

Tip: Serve the quiche in wedges with Free Slimming World chips on an Extra Easy or Green day, or piles of salad – ideal for lunchboxes!

As this recipe contains all Free Food, you can eat as much as you like!

Upon getting back home from work this evening I found the house smelling deliciously of vanilla; was making fudge. Not to be outdone by this creativity in the kitchen I set to making not one, but two Wimpole Coffee and Walnut cakes. One for Emma’s birthday tea on Sunday, and one for Emma to take into work on Monday. It all turned into a bit of an epic time in the kitchen, the fudge making took way longer than the recipe suggested and the cake also took longer to bake than the recipe would have otherwise have reported. Consequently by the time the second cake was almost done, Emma had already left me and gone upstairs to bed, and I was left to oversea the kitchen.

~ I was worried that I wasn’t going to have enough when I was cutting up oranges yesterday, but my marmalade making has surpassed expectations. I now have 13lbs of the stuff sitting on the side in the kitchen. If I buy some more sugar then, with the rest of the oranges in the freezer I will be able to make the same again. Should see through in any snow-ins we get this winter!

~ Made a beautiful dinner tonight, inspired by the Hairy Biker’s Food Tour of Britain, I made a delicious Somerset Chicken and (home-grown) baked spuds and cheese. Failed to download the apple and mushroom and cider and cream sauce so we have tons left over to mix in with pasta or sausages. Yum!

~ Had another review, if brief about the first 3.6 chapters of Mr Tumnal. I like Jane’s comment so much I’m going to reproduce it here…

Finally had a chance to sit down and read this! Love it so far – a very intriguing start, and as you say, twisted, but it works And Tom and Polly, 10 years down the line – this makes my shippy heart very happy

Oh, and I’ve discovered that … umm, whilst cutting slugs in half with a pair scissors is really quite therapeutic, its even more so to spear them with a tent peg and feed them to the chickens. Yum! Slug kebabs!

They cooked though, if slow-cooked, and were all all the more delicious served up with new potatoes and salad and eaten in the garden. Washed down with a cold beer, it makes a very satisfactory end to a lovely weekend.

Emma got home and for a while we were both busy in the kitchen as she set about boiling up the carcass for the soup. It was fun, the two of us in the kitchen at the same, chopping and dicing, boiling and baking, enthused with the aroma of cooking and making meals out of old meals just like grannie used to.

That said, pausing our viewing of Grand Designs briefly, Emma did succeed in dropping the seive of straining soup in such a way as it was too splash up all over her and across the top of the birthday cake. Hrmm… chicken-flavoured victoria sandwich…

I cooked two of them in the spagetti carbona. The yokes were so big and rich and yellow, and the resulting dinner really was the best yet. So, so nice.

The more I think about this, the more I feel that there is a need for my cookery show idea of recipes aimed at everyday cooking for mixed households of vegetarians and carnivores using produce that is locally sourced and packaged (or lack of…) wiith environmental considerations in mind.

Now we are settling back and watching some tele whilst we wait for the casserole to cook. Vegetable in nature, we had so much that the lid was sitting an inch or more proud of the dish, but its cooked down now. Smells yummy!

^*Makes mental note to buy a new repair kit as I only have one patch left…
^†Which it shares with the anniversary of me meeting Emma^‡
‡We are never going to be able throw out that bike!

Well, I say the door, but really I mean the handle and class plate, and thankfully the glass plate did not break. In so far as my tasty bit of beef was concerned, it didn’t stop the cooking, although negotiating a door that no long stays open (it seems that what keeps oven doors open is not some fancy spring or catch, but the wait of the glass) and getting hot pans out the oven with only the one pair of hands did prove to be a slight logistical challenge.

I’ve managed to give it all a good clean now though and figured out just how to put it all together, and the roast beef with roast potatoes, parsnips and carrots drizzled in olive oil and honey was very nice!

Ingredients
750g lamb fillets, sliced thinly
3 cloves garlic, crushed
60ml light soy sauce
80ml sweet sherry
1 tbs cornflour
2 tbs vegetable oil
1 tbs brown sugar
1 teaspoon sesame oil
8 spring onions, sliced thinly

1. Combine lamb, garlic, half of the sauce, half of the sherry and cornflour in large bowl; mix well.
2. Hear vegetable oil in wok; stir-fry lamb mixture, in batches, until browned all over.
3. Return lamb mixture to wok. Add remaining sauce, remaining sherry, sugar and sesame oil; stir-fry until sauce boils and thickens slightly. Remove from heat; stir in onion.

Serve with rice. Serves 4

Ingredients
750g lamb fillets, sliced thinly
3 cloves garlic, crushed
60ml light soy sauce
80ml sweet sherry
1 tbs cornflour
2 tbs vegetable oil
1 tbs brown sugar
1 teaspoon sesame oil
8 spring onions, sliced thinly

1. Combine lamb, garlic, half of the sauce, half of the sherry and cornflour in large bowl; mix well.
2. Hear vegetable oil in wok; stir-fry lamb mixture, in batches, until browned all over.
3. Return lamb mixture to wok. Add remaining sauce, remaining sherry, sugar and sesame oil; stir-fry until sauce boils and thickens slightly. Remove from heat; stir in onion.

Serve with rice. Serves 4