Vegetarian Chilli con Carne

Since the success of the vegetable stew, made with a chicken casserole spice mix, I have been buying packet mixes far more often. They're useful because the recipe is printed on the back and very easy to follow with few, uncomplicated ingredients, and despite the fact that they usually include meat, the actual packet mix is normally vegetarian. During my weekly shop I discovered that the Schwartz mixes were 2 for £1, so I had a sift through to find the ones marked vegetarian and came home with a chilli con carne mix and a shepherd's pie mix.

A recipe AND an ingredient all in one!

Slow-Cooker Curry Experiment

The end result was bright orange and delicious

Because of my mission to empty and defrost the freezer, I haven't been cooking and freezing anything lately. Meals have been whatever I can get together quickly; risotto a couple of nights, sausages and salad in burger buns on others, until I have reached the point where my freezer now contains three almost-finished Quorn packets of various types, some broccoli, some bread and the last two pieces of spinach quiche. The trouble is that with term in full swing once more and my new schedule involving very early mornings but not much earlier nights, I'm not managing to cook dinner before I fall asleep. Last night I found myself eating a Graze box as my evening meal, after a lunch of salad leaves between mayonnaise-smeared bread, and I decided it was time to get sorted.

Ode to a Faithful Blender

Alas, alack, I think my dear blender is dead. It perished whilst valiantly attempting to blend up a large quantity of leek and potato soup for the vegan dinner party. Farewell, good friend.

You have served me well, Philips blender

Store Cupboard Eating

My new year's resolution to attempt a new recipe every fortnight has not been going very well. I haven't cooked anything at all for some time now, because I'm making a desparate attempt to empty my freezer so that I can defrost it, and to avoid buying more food when I have so much stored already.

Representative contents of brown bags shown

As a result I've been eating a lot of rather samey meals. Mostly spinach quiche, which whilst being delicious was also huge. I haven't yet got bored of eating it, but I suspect that with another three portions to go I might well be glad when it's finally finished.

Snacking

It's Tuesday and I have almost finished the bunch of radishes and two packets of cherry tomatoes which I bought just a few days ago. I've been snacking on them every day, alongside a packet of ginger candies which sadly I finished this morning. Off to the market I go again to stock up on more healthy snacks! I don't have any weighing scales but my waistline confirms that this is working, albeit it very slowly.

A Morning Stroll to the Market

This morning I woke up at 8am to sunlight streaming through the curtains. I had set my alarm for 9, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was ready to get up the first time I woke - unusual for me.

I spent my usual hour faffing around and then I strolled into town with a mental shopping list: some dice (for a language game in my ESL lesson), a bottle of oil for my pile-of-rust bike, a pair of scissors and whatever vegetables looked interesting at the market.

I love my market veg stall. There are several different stalls which are at the market on most days - one serves the local restaurants, so imports a lot of hot-housed stuff from London, one sells glossy packaged vegetables which probably were flown in from abroad, and one prides itself on sourcing locally-grown produce, often things grown in their own allotment. You can probably guess which one I go to (hint: it's the latter).

Collecting New Recipes

I'm gaining a reputation for being a keen cook, which I think is awesome - I look back to when this blog started and I can see how much I've improved as a cook (my food is almost always edible!) but it's pretty nice to have other people acknowledge it too. I guess it is fairly easy to impress other students, who as far as I can tell mostly live on a diet of frozen pizza and filled pasta, but more valuable to me was hearing my mum telling my stepdad about the impressive array of meals in my brother's freezer. Of course as said brother kindly pointed out, she didn't know what they tasted like - they might be disgusting. Thanks for the vote of confidence, kiddo.

Let's not pull any punches: that's a lot of books.

Anyway, because my family know I like cooking I have become the repository for unwanted recipe books. I'm certainly not objecting; reading cookery books is one of my favourite activities these days and I already have quite a few of my own. Unfortunately, most of the recipe books were unwanted due to a lack of storage space. I don't have any storage space either.