See those Runner Beans, there?

They are our runner beans, they are.

~pride~

Well, I should really say that they are hubby's runner beans - as he slaved over a hot shovel in order to get them planted, gave them a climbing frame to romp over and legged it out into the garden to stop the blackbirds trying to pull them back up again!

Forgive my excitement and pride, it’s just that we’ve never grown vegetables before and everything hubby planted is something of an experiment to see whether it will come to anything.

To begin with, we realised that the runner beans had real, honest-to-goodness lovely green beans on them!  I know, I shouldn’t really be surprised, but what a result when we honestly had doubts that anything would do even remotely what it was supposed to.

We ate them with our shop-bought pie on Sunday.  For me, the pie paled into insignificance beside their lovely freshness, greenness and beautiful sweetness.

To think, they were growing on the bean vine just an hour before we ate them.

~happy sigh~

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"Health in a bowl" : I bow to thee, Anthony Worrall-Thompson

I think the "Health in a Bowl" is about the only meal to have stayed where it was planned, this week!

If I was to tell you that I was more than a little nervous about delivering this dish to Hubby and Son & Heir, it would be understating the case by a factor of thousands.

For starters, Hubby isn't a great fan of broth-type soups.  Neither is he a fan of dishes which contain a large amount of vegetable matter - unless it's a vegetable curry.  Son & heir, well he's a verging-on-teenager, so putting anything before him other than a pizza, fried breakfast or meatballs, is verging on culinary suicide.

However, I am a fan of vegetable matter and I am a fan of broth-type soups.  I am also a fan of trying to improve our diet.  So, in the face of these monumental odds, I sallied on forth with Anthony Worrall-Thompson's "Health in a Bowl".

If you look at the ingredients list, you'll understand my nerves.  It begins well, with some thick cut ham and chicken stock.  However, the challenge begins there - pearl barley, Puy lentils, onion, carrot, parsnip. swede, thyme, bay leaf, parsley, new potatoes, savoy cabbage, leek and red kidney beans.  Yep.  In the one bowl.

You can't begin to imagine (or maybe you can! lol) how odd it felt to be just loading up the saucepan with ingredients at 15-minute intervals.  Nothing was fried beforehand, nothing had to be oven-baked beforehand.  Just boil up some stock and start adding stuff.  Weird.

I tasted the stock after I'd added the ham (or gammon, in this case) and was pleasantly surprised.

In went the pearl barley and the lentils.  Apart from the lentils turning the stock an interesting colour (*cough* - try "dirty dishwater"), everything was fine.

I'll admit to having a serious wobble about the success of this venture after I added the onion, carrots, parsnip, swede, thyme, bay leaf, parsley and a whole heap of black pepper though.  The smell of the raw onions heating up on the stock was a bit stomach-churning.  However, I'd chosen to use a red onion as I felt their innate sweetness would be helpful as opposed to the relative coarseness of a standard brown onion and the smell soon turned from "oooer, gak!" to "interesting!".  I tasted the stock again just before the 15 minutes were up and boy, but it was good.

From there, the addition of the other vegetables just added to the flavour of the stock, which became sweeter and gained depth as it cooked along.

I served the stew (as that is really what it is) with a loaf of pumpkin seed & carrot bread, which was absolutely gorgeous and complemented the mix of the stew beautifully.

As for reactions, well, Hubby said it was "alright, but he wouldn't race to have it again" and "after the first few spoonfuls I was looking at it thinking OMG, I've got all that to go yet".  He found the flavours dull and boring.  Surprisingly, he was relatively okay about the broth part.

Son & heir said he definitely wouldn't have it again, but I noted that he ate his entire bowlful without once asking whether he could stop.  This is a very definite measure of whether he can tolerate whatever he's got in front of him.  For sure, the yummy bread helped, but as he ate all that first and was left with his bowl of stew, I am left thinking that he didn't dislike it as much as he wanted me to know.

As for me, I adored it.  If it wasn't so blinking filling, I'd have been back at the stovetop heating up the remainder!  I loved that you could taste every single ingredient as an individual entity, as well as they're fitting so well with each other.  I loved that the only fat that we ate was what was still attached to the ham (and I trimmed it to within an inch of its life), the spread that went onto the bread and whatever was used in the bread when it was baked.  I loved that something so healthy was eaten by everyone - it kind of makes up for the fish & chips!

I can imagine that, made with a smoked ham hock, this recipe would be unbeatable - provided you really enjoy your vegetables!

"HEALTH IN A BOWL" (or Ham & Vegetable Stew)  Serves 4
based on a recipe from Anthony Worrall-Thompson.

Ingredients :

450g thick cut ham or gammon, chopped
1.2 litres chicken stock
2 tbsp pearl barley
2 tbsp Puy lentils
1 medium onion, diced
2 carrots (or a handful of baby carrots), peeled and diced
1 parsnip, peeled and diced
a quarter of a swede, peeled and diced
1 sprig or half a tsp thyme
1 bay leaf
1 sprig parsley, chopped
1 tsp ground black pepper
200g new potatoes, quartered
a quarter of a small Savoy cabbage, shredded
200g tin red kidney beans, rinsed & drained.

Method :

1.  Make sure the ham or gammon is trimmed of all fat, then place in a big saucepan and cover with the stock.  Bring to the boil and skim off any scum that has risen to the surface.

2.  Add the pearl barley and lentils and bring back up to the boil, reduce the heat and simmer for 15 minutes.

3.  Add the onion, carrots, parsnip, swede, thyme, bay leaf, parsley and pepper.  Stir to combine, then bring back to the boil, reduce the heat and simmer gently for a further 15 minutes.

4.  Add the potatoes and leek and bring back to the boil.  Simmer until the potatoes are just tender, which should happen inside of 15 minutes.

5.  Add the shredded cabbage and the red kidney beans and bring back to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for a further 3 minutes or until the cabbage is tender.

6.  Decant into warmed bowls and serve with a tasty bread, for dipping.

 

Money -v- Health

How do you write a food blog, when you've not had any "interesting" dinners to write about?


That was the quandary which beset me this morning.  You see, thanks to my having taken a day off sick in the last couple of weeks, my wages were reduced because I don't get sick pay.  Add to that several other factors like new school items, new car items, approaching birthdays etc. and we find ourselves temporarily completely strapped for cash.


Our menu list, this week, has consisted of :


Tuesday : Cornish Pasties, potato waffles and baked beans.

The pasties were the supermarket's own, because you just can't produce home made for the same price as the supermarket.  When you're buying for price, not for quality, these things make a huge difference.  The waffles we had already in the freezer, so no expense there - and the same with the baked beans, which are a storecupboard staple.

Wednesday : Pasta Bolognese

Good old Bolly.  What would we do without it?  To make things marginally more interesting, we tried the "cooking in the oven, on low, for 2 hours" (the sauce, not the pasta!) approach.  Hubby was cooking, but he reported back that it simply made the sauce watery.  Apparently he had to put it back into the deep frying pan and reduce it like heck, to make it palatable.  I have a feeling that perhaps we had it on too low, as it tasted good for it's long slow cooking and so would be worth doing again - but at a temperature high enough to burn off the water instead of it accumulating in the sauce.

The good thing, price-wise, about Pasta Bolognese is that a) we could use whatever pasta we had leftover in the cupboard (a mix of Fusilli and Penne, as it turned out) and it requires little more than an onion, some garlic and a few tomatoes in the way of fresh veg.  Unfortunately, fresh veg for every meal is what totes the price up.

Thursday : Pizza

This was of necessity, as we had to attend son's Parents Evening at school (where he's doing fantastically well, thank you for asking) and would be back too late to start cooking in a big way.  We had Asda's new "Loaded" frozen pizzas and very nice they were too.  Hubby and I always cheer ours up with the addition of snipped chilli and a little extra cheese for all three, but the basic pizza (triple pepperoni) was a marked step up from their bog-standard pizzas, which have deteriorated to the point where we can't face them any longer.


Friday : Sausage Casserole

At last, we're coming into the land of vegetables.  Hubby was cooking again, as he had an idea he wanted to explore, involving half a bottle of red wine.  Apparently it didn't quite come off as he had planned, but as I didn't know what he was planning, it seemed a very tasty and creditable sausage casserole, using swede and carrot and accompanied by some green peas.  Gosh, but it was good to see something green on the plate!

Saturday : Tuna Pasta Bake

This is again a strategic choice, as son often has friends who want to stay over for tea and so gain a bit longer to play.  Good old tuna pasta bake is usually accepted by everyone and also doesn't require the addition of fresh veg, which keeps the price down.  Again.

Sunday : Cottage Pie with carrots, broccoli and green beans with Rhubarb crumble for dessert.

At last, some proper vegetables, to prevent us all getting scurvy.  LOL  In truth, all this meal requires for us to buy is the mince, potatoes and broccoli as everything else we either had frozen (beans), in the fridge (carrots) or as a storecupboard ingredient.  The rhubarb would have come from Ruby - the plant in the garden - but for a friend supplying us with some from their giant plant!


Monday : Sausages, hash browns and baked beans.

Oh dear.  Well, we're shopping again tomorrow - which is about all that can be said for this meal, except for the fact that it only cost us the price of the sausages, as we had everything else in already.

We budgeted £60 for the entire week's shopping and came in under budget - not by much, but every little helps.  I can't help feeling that we under-achieved somewhat where the style and quality of the meals was concerned and that perhaps we could have done better where the inclusion of vegetables, and the exclusion of high-fat products like the pasties, were concerned.  However, it looks like we're all going to get fed - and that's something that was looking dodgy there, at one point!

We've got another week of super-austerity to get through before we can begin look at things other than sausages and mince.  I suspect we may very well be thoroughly fed up with both these things, by then.  However, I shall investigate options and recipes for the future, for when this situation attacks us again - as I am sure it will, if the current Government has anything to do with it!