Roasty toasty things that have kept the January blues at bay
Roasty toasty things that have kept the January blues at bay
And habits which I hope to continue into February.
Hello!
Let me start by saying this is weird… I’ve been blogging for nearly 20 years but I’ve never written a blog post that was going to send - verbatim - as a newsletter. It’s a slightly weird hybrid for me. But I’m easing myself into it.
A hearty January
I think there are a few reasons why January hasn’t been blue for me - a big one being that I’ve laid off the ‘Gram. But as is always the way, I have a break from it, I think “this is nice, not worrying about that beast of an app that you put so much effort into and get nothing back from” and then feel refreshed, and decide to tackle it again.
Also though, I’ve been busy doing things which make me feel good. Not things that I did because they make me feel good, just things that I’ve wanted to do and have now realised, they’re the things that make life a bit sweeter for me. I don’t know if it’s turning 40 or just moving further away from a hectic few years but I feel a lot more observational of what works for me. And I want my kids to see that in themselves sooner rather than later. But I digress - things in January were:
Trying recipes (but crucially, not just because I wanted to make Reels of them)
Reading. Reading ALL the books. Walking around with a book in my hand all the time. So much so, that if I do happen to put it down, my 2 year old knows where Mummy’s book is when I ask him to fetch it. Whenever I find I’m the least stressed or the most “present”, I realise it’s when I’ve had a good book on the go.
Being creative. I mean kid level of creative - nothing ground breaking, but I tie dyed some scrunchies with my 6 year old at the weekend. Neither of us really like the look of how they turned out, but it was something different to do. Number #1 in this list goes with this.
Cooking lots of good stuff. Which yeah, is another repeat of #1 but I mean they weren’t just recipes, I was making food for my kids which I knew was full of goodness.
Sorting and tidying. I’m an organised person trapped in a messy person’s mind. I love being organised and tidy - but I’m not naturally. But this month I’ve sorted out a couple of cupboards and feel amazing for it. I now keep eyeing up which drawer is next. Ends up it only takes an hour or so to sort out a little drawer but if I do that in a week, the productivity buzz just carries me along for the next few days, feeling great!
Stopping to listen. Like really listen to what my 9 year old is blabbering about Minecraft or the very, very long story my 6 year old is telling me that should be 10,000 words shorter. You’ve gotta force yourself to do it sometimes (or at least I do), but they notice and it pays off I think. I actually enjoyed being in the park on Sunday. I don’t think that’s every happened before.
Doing things that I’ve wanted to do for ages but hadn’t gotten around to. The first one being, cooking celeriac. I know that might not sound that exciting, but I’d always been curious and even though I might not bother again in a hurry, it made me feel good to have ticked it off my life to do list!
I would like to say #8, I got lots of sleep. But any kid of mine doesn’t like sleep until they’re 6 years old, and as I’ve got a 2 year old, I’m going to be tired for a while longer yet.
All the good food
As I mentioned above, I made celeriac soup this month. It was softer and therefore easier to cut than I was expecting - I thought it was going to be knife-slipping dangerous to tackle like swede but it was fine. And wasn’t as tricky to peel as that knobbly exterior might lead you to suspect. I used this recipe, which included a hazelnut crumble on top (which I’d recommend, although I didn’t let my youngest have it). Overall… it was fine, but didn’t set our world on fire, so we won’t be doing it again unless someone gifts us a celeriac. It was also quite stodgy - see pic below - I think if I’m going to do this a lot I need a decent blender.
I went on a bit of a soup mission actually and did:
My fave Mary Berry Soupe à la Reine - which is curried parsnip soup. Mine is in an old Mary Berry AGA cook book the lovely lady we bought our house from left us, but I’ve found it online here. (I’m never sure if I can/should repeat recipes - in that blog post they say it’s “their take” on it, but it looks exactly the same to me.)
As above, but I didn’t have enough parsnips so I did it as parsnip and sweet potato.
As above, but this time with just sweet potato!
Cauliflower cheese soup - the 2 year old loved it, us adults thought it was fine, middle kids didn’t like it. I put cheese in it rather than cubed it on top.
Roasted red pepper soup, which I saw on Instagram. Basically slice up a few red peppers (I did 4), throw in whatever else you’ve got hanging around - I used a couple of sticks of celery, a couple of leeks… can’t remember if I included a carrot or not, an onion and some garlic. And then roast that in the oven until it looks cooked / soft / not burnt. Then blitz it, and then add some stock and bring it to the boil. By “stock” I mean 2 vegetable OXO cubes in just over a pint of water. The “proper” recipe might have had you combine the veg and stock and then blitz, but I was doing the veg on Friday night whilst the oven was on, and then combined it into soup on Sunday when we were going to eat it.
The joys of soup is that they’re relatively good from a Weight Watchers point of view, relatively quick as home cooked meals go, and you feel righteous for feeding them to your kids. If they have chips or beans or toast for tea, then who cares, you threw some veg in a pan earlier and blitzed it so they’ve had their nutrients.
Next, I made a recipe my friend had cooked for Supper Club which was the most awesome vegan lasagne. Mine wasn’t vegan, as I didn’t make my own pesto (I do not have time for that in my life), and I used normal milk and butter. There was no cheese!! Other than what was in the pesto. But it was the creamiest tastiest thing I’ve had in ages - it’s now officially my favourite meal. Going forwards, I’ll be considering the following for all my pasta cooking:
My kids love a simple tinned tomato, onion and garlic sauce - now I’m going to be adding black olives and capers before I blitz it. I love capers!
Add 150g of cashews to your white sauce, which you’ve boiled for 10 minutes before hand. WOW. Honestly, who needs cheese when you’ve got boiled cashews? That sounds sarcastic, but it’s not - cashew bechamel is amazing.
Add some dollops (I think the recipe say “artfully drizzle, but for me it was dollops) of pesto between the layers of your lasagne.
I’ve studied the photos she sent me of the recipe book and I’ve found it’s The Worlds Best Pesto Lasagne by Bosh. The exact recipe isn’t on their website, and I don’t feel I can copy it to here! But hopefully the tips above are still useful.
I also tried cooking “clean cakes”, which again was something I’d wanted to try for a while; my husband bought me a book, by request, years ago but nothing really appealed at the time. Now, loads appealed - but having used it I don’t think it’ll be something I’ll do frequently. “Clean” cakes refer to using natural ingredients and not having refined sugar in them. But as a result they’re quite time consuming and VERY expensive. Honestly I think I spent £20 on ingredients to make one batch of oaty bars and some tahini shortbread. I’ve now got some arrowroot and Himalayan pink rock salt left over, but still, it was quite an outlay. (Which I did because it was something I’d wanted to try for ages.) My overall advice if you’re looking to try some healthy baking would be:
Buy nut butters (although I haven’t worked out the costings) because I made my own and that made it take a lot longer.
Read the recipe in advance and dry your nuts - if you’re making your own butters - before you have an hour free to make the cakes, so you don’t end up having to do it the following weekend. (I learned my lesson from this and was very pleased that I read the tie dye scrunchie instructions with my daughter at 8am so we could see we needed to get on with it so they could cure for 8 hours and be washed and dried in time for school the next day.)
I think drying the nuts for a long time (I had them in the nearly-turned-off aga so basically an airing cupboard type of warmth for a week) helped make them quicker to grind into butter, as when my husband made peanut butter it took him 1.5 hours! Whereas my cashew butter took about 10 minutes. Different nuts take different amounts of time though.
Be aware that it gets expensive.
There’s lots of clearing up. The way I bake anyway.
All those nuts are NOT good for Weight Watchers. But they are good for you. (Unless you’ve got a nut allergy.)
Recent read
On the topic of ALL the books - my first book of 2024 was Matthew Perry’s Memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing. You can read what I thought about it here.
The Substack Bandwagon
If you signed up via MailChimp when I announced (rather a grand word, “announced”, but it’s kinda accurate I guess) that I was starting a newsletter, then I’ve moved you over to here and am closing down my MailChimp account? Why? Because I think Substack is heading for it’s moment in the sun. And that might be shortlived, and it might be a partially clouded sunshine moment compared to TikTok or anything owned by Meta, but I figured I might as well try and ride along with their crest of a wave. Lots of Instagrammer’s seem to be heading over here and I think it’s because everyone is tired of the Algorithm Monsters. With a social networking like the gram, you work your socks off to get Followers and then it’s just down to a Black Box of code whether anyone see’s what you’ve been working on. Meanwhile with a newsletter, provided people whitelist your emails so they don’t go to spam, you know people who have said they want to see your stuff, see your stuff.
Anywho - that’s not interesting unless you’re into how the Internet works (which I am, as my day job, but I don’t expect other people to be). That’s why I moved it from the beginning to the end of this newsletter / post.