Am v.busy commuting. Buying basic lunch in London town could be v.expensive. £5 a day x 5 days a week = £25 a week x 47 working weeks = £1,175 a year. Ouch. Trying to be good. Preparing lunch in advance requires planning. Decide to revisit own book (not one from auction). Think husband bought it from work book club years ago. Is a revelation.

Have discovered the joy of SEC = The joy of Slow Economical Cooking

Is marvellous. Chop up ingredients. Bung them in slow cooker. Switch on. Stir. Done. Makes lots. Is good value.

Have not been v.adventurous until recently. Mainly made beef casserole. Not really followed recipes. Husband gets bored with beef casserole every day for a week. Is starting to look like beef casserole. Must make different stuff. Must be more to life than beef casserole.

Ultimate Slow Cooker by Sara Lewis

Look through book. See nice recipes. Don’t have all ingredients in house. Photograph recipes on phone. Take phone to supermarket. Buy everything on list. No excuses. Much to be said for taking shopping lists to shop.

Make many things from book including this salmon chowder. Doesn’t go quite according to plan. Have no idea what fennel looks like so buy dried stuff. Fail to realise chowder is several stage process. Decide am v.hungry. Decide not to use slow cooker. Cook in oven instead. Doesn’t make much difference. Is well lush. Use fish stock made from cube. Not sure if this is right. Don’t cook enough fish to make fresh stuff.

Also make parsnip soup with chilli and stilton. Need lots of parsnips to make 625 grams. Will be well parsnipy. Have to add turmeric and cumin seeds to spice collection. Hope I use them again. Have to cook off parsnips, apple and spices first. Turmeric makes everything go nice colour. Oh dear. Needs to go in slow cooker for 4-5 hours. Is not good. Is already 6pm. Put that in normal oven too. Make stilton butter. Use stilton left over from cheese board at Christmas. Hope it’s ok. Can’t tell if it’s new mould or old mould. Enjoy making butter cylinder. Little time to chill. Bung it in freezer. OMG. Is best soup ever. Just so sweet and spicy and lovely and… words don’t do soup justice. Can’t wait for husband to get home. Stand there watching whilst he tries soup. Am like child bringing painting home from school. Must get praise. Husband has said in past I often add too many spices to things. Wait for verdict. He loves it. Yay. Think it’s best soup have made. Ever. Makes 5-6 portions. Take some for lunch.

Am on a roll. Also make smoked gammon & mixed bean chowder. Just need to think about it in advance. Have to soak gammon and country soup mix overnight. Drain country soup mix and cook with other ingredients. Put in slow cooker with gammon (gammon joint too big so use remainder to make gammon and poached eggs for breakfast at weekend – v.nice). Husband says it smells good. Gammon literally falls apart in to smaller than bite sized pieces. Take some round to neighbours Mick, Ann and Rob. Wondering if they find it strange me always popping round with random food samples demanding feedback. Hope not. They like it. Rob says he could taste cloves. Suspect he ate cloves. Did warn him about cloves.

Still don’t anyone who has remoska I can borrow. Sigh. Still can’t cook from book 16  ’cooking with the remoska’. Still not keen on idea of buying one - costs £140. Maybe fate will intervene. Maybe I’ll start interweaving it in conversation with random people. ‘Hello friendly postie, how are you today? You look like someone who enjoys hearty winter meals, do you have remoska?’ Hmmm. Remoska will not defeat me. Is just a blip in quest to cook through books. May find out more about person who owned books later on. Maybe there’s a name in one of books. Maybe I’ll track down original owner of books and they’ll have remoska but have since memorized all remoska recipes which is why they got rid of remoska cooking books. Probably. Sounds like a plan. Will just be patient. Until then. Next book.

Book 17 / The Book of Yoghurt – An International Collection of Recipes by Sonia Uvezian / Yoghurt Muffins

Like yoghurt. Don’t do too much with it though. Buy big pots of it in effort to be economical. End up throwing half of it away. Have never heard of book. Was published in 1978. Doubt anyone else in whole world owns book. Is very interesting though. Discover that ‘the mountain folk of Bulgaria and the Caucasus (where a large number of centenarians also exist, including the oldest people in the world) live long and healthy lives for several important reasons and not just because they are yoghurt lovers.’ Wahoo. Must mean long life is partly attributable to yoghurt. Throw out the anti-aging cream ladies, enough with the zumba… copious amounts of yoghurt here we come.

Book is packed full of yoghurt related recipes. Never realized how versatile yoghurt is. All 162 pages of it. With few pictures. Some pages have three recipes on. Could make persian yoghurt cheese with cucumbers. Or chilled senegalese soup with yoghurt. Or ghivetch. Not feeling adventurous. Need cake. Decide on yoghurt muffins. Sound tasty. Sieve and mix dry ingredients. Combine wet ones. Add to dry ingredients. Stir until moistened. Look at mixture. Looks like wall paper paste. Has same texture as wall paper paste. Eugh. Convinced it’s a recipe for wall paper paste. Need more wet ingredients. Hmmm. There’s only one egg in it. Add another egg. Is much better. Divide mixture in to muffin cases, not patty pans as specified. Not sure what patty pan is. Cake tin? Not keen on lining tin with mixture. May never get it off. Put in oven. Cakes rise well. Topple slightly. Keep close eye on them after frequently getting distracted and burning cakes. Leave to cool. Look good.

Try one. Tastes of nothing. Zilchio. Nada. V.boring. Terrible. Gutted. Waste of ingredients.

NB. Still ate all 12 though during week as had no other cake.

Enjoying admiring books on new book shelves. Have new problem. Keep being tempted to buy more. Is addictive. Went in to charity shop to deposit size 12 clothes that no longer fit (need to take inspiration from overweight cat Hiro – has managed to lose 0.25kg in 2 weeks despite catching and eating the odd cheeky mouse – vet says he can stay on current diet plan for next month) 10 minutes later still standing there looking at second hand Rick Stein classics. Opportunties keep presenting themselves. Is not like I’m looking. Mary-Anne Boermans from Great British Bake Off fame will be selling big stash on her website – v.temping. If only I had more shelves.

Book 15 / Buying and Cooking Vegetables by Mary Norwak / Simple Mayonnaise

Is confirmation owner of books loved Sainsbury’s. Is mostly book about information on vegetables. With illustrations. Appreciate illustration of fennel. Wasn’t quite sure what fresh fennel looked like. Read that ‘a few years ago, it was only possible to buy vegetables in season… now thanks to improved methods of cultivation and skilled buying from home and overseas growers, Sainsbury’s are able to offer most vegetables throughout the year‘. That’s fine. Book was written in 1980. Think our attitudes have changed. V.much encouraged to buy fruit and veg in season now.

Not sure what to make. Has some recipes for all veggie dishes. Farmer neighbour pops round. Is going through cooking phase himself. Has made veggie crumble with artichokes. Try crumble. Is very tasty. Calls me next day. Asks if I’m ok. Say yes. Says artichokes gave his guests bad wind. Nice. Google this. Seems common. Decide not to make all veggie dish. Think I’ll try mayonnaise. Not made it before. Like it very much. Ate a bit too much at university. With chips. And cheese. Discover it’s very simple. Understand why it’s fattening. Huge amount of oil and and egg and other seasoning. Not that cheap to make either. Mix egg with seasoning. Doesn’t make paste as recipe described. Blends well though. Gradually add oil. Looking good. But yellow. Is mayonnaise meant to be yellow? Decide posh homemade mayonnaise must be. Put into new jar bought from supermarket. Take round to neighbour Dave’s house. He likes it. Says it tastes less acidic than shop bought stuff. Take this as compliment. Serve with chips made from sweet potato. Lovely. Not sure how long it will keep for. Mum says until it goes green.

Next book: Cooking with a Remoska (or not, v.worried, still don’t know anyone who can lend me one, can not fake remoska, can not pretend slow cooker is a remoska, book is not ‘cooking with a slow cooker’)

Was doing v.well. Was cooking from one book a week. Then had to stop baking (husband and I both getting fat on cakes). Then went on holiday for 2 weeks. Then Christmas happened. Was very disorganised. Was still scanning photos for relative’s new digital photo frame on Christmas Day. Then work got v.busy. Then found out cat weighs 5.5kgs and has to go on diet (hasn’t affected ability to cook but has been life drama occupying potential blogging time). Enough excuses. Have to get back on track. Now have book cases which just house all 130 cook books (+ 20 or so we had before auction). V.excited books on display and not strewn over worktops/kitchen shelf/in cardboard boxes.

Fewer life dramas + new bookcases + eating some cake again = more cooking time.

Have not been totally bad. Have made some stuff from new recipes. Was inspired after holiday to US to make American style pancakes. Recipe says they’re fluffy. Oh boy was this mixture fluffy. Was also delighted to get book by Nick Coffer for Christmas (have decided am allowed to receive more books as gifts – can’t be helped – but won’t buy any more for time being as book cases can’t hack pace) and have since made this banana cake. Was well delish, v.moist, think I got distracted though as slightly burnt top. Still trying to track down person who had cheeky nibble before I took pic.

Book 14 / Burnt Cakes and Other Offerings. A Taste of Burrowbridge / Rumblethumps

Is not really a book. Is a collection of recipes made by a school. Don’t think my school ever did this. Start flicking from back. Children give quotes about their mum’s cooking. These are my favourites.

‘I love fish and chips – mummy cooks it all by herself, she gets it from the freezer’

‘My mum makes lovely sketti bolognese’ (love the word sketti)

Wonder where Burrowbridge Primary School is. Suspect it may be in Hampshire like Botley Mills was. Google school. Is in Somerset. Read further down google to this article. School is to close in March! Number of pupils has fallen to just 12. In shock. Either book is really old and lots of pupils used to go to school or book is not that old and pupils’ mums are v.g cooks and managed to come up with 59 pages worth of recipes. Oh dear. Didn’t see that coming.

Flick through booklet. Includes recipes for ‘wiener schnitzel’, ‘gerald’s athelney eels’ and ‘Beryl’s chocolate sponge’ among some classics like pumpkin pie and prawn cocktail sauce. Opt for something have never heard of but looks relatively simple: rumblethumps.

Mix all veggies together, cover with cheese and bake till golden. Is v.easy.

Nice enough way of serving veggies. Husband says it’s ‘ok, tastes like veggies with cheese’. Bit of an alternative to bubble and squeak. Next book is ‘buying and cooking  with vegetables’. That’s ok. VERY WORRIED about book afterwards. Book after is ‘Cooking with the Remoska’. Have had to look up what ‘remoska’ is. Is cooker from Czech Republic. Don’t have one. Know Lakeland sell them. They’re £104. Ouch. Have looked on ebay. Still sell for a lot second hand. Remoska may be brilliant. But not sure it’s investment purchase, and don’t really have cash post-Christmas. Have asked friends. No-one has remoska.

No remoska = no blog post = blog failed at book 16

Help.

Veggies topped with cheese