The big freeze...

Until last week I was still swimming in the sea without batting an eyelid. Now the autumn storms have arrived. The dusty roads are puddles again and the rain seems to have sent the message to the ferns to turn rusty brown. Scilly changes immediately once the autumn arrives. It's suddenly much quieter although you still see happy visitors lying with their backs on warm rocks enjoying the seclusion of a beach to themselves. 

It's time to start filling the freezer too. The last of the apples I used to make jam with have been sitting waiting so I made them into apple sauce and froze it into portions ready for crumbles, granola and roast pork. Blackberries are all bagged and frozen and the herbs in the garden have all been picked and frozen or made into jellies. I had a basket full of mini butternut squashes leftover from the Food Festival  so this week I decided to make my winter soup base. I make it every year- a really basic vegetable soup with a freeze into portions and then add things to so I don't get bored. Ideas to add to this one include...

* Toasted nduja (you can stir through or just place on top)

* Add coconut cream and  1tsp of thai red curry sauce

* Add leftover chopped vegetables and shredded chicken from a roast dinner

* Fry some pancetta and stir through then crumble in some Cornish Blue cheese

* Or spread it on to pizza bases as an alternative to tomato and top with crispy chorizo, goats cheese and fresh rocket

Winter Soup Base.....(serves 16 portions) 

12 mini butternut squashes or 4-5 larger ones

2 small white onions

2 tbsp olive oil

4 garlic cloves

4 pints of chicken stock

In a large pan put the finely sliced onions and oil on a low heat and cook until soft. Add the cubes of butternut squash (about the size of a 10p piece) and continue cooking for around 10 minutes. Add the stock and crushed garlic and bring to the boil. Boil until you can cut through the squash pieces easily. 

With a hand mixer blend until smooth. Leave to cool and portion up and freeze. Use within 6 months. 

Looking around the allotment this week I've realised there's still a lot of life in it. I've been spending so much time thinking about the winter and how to look after it once it starts getting cold that I've forgotten there's still meals there waiting to be cooked....

Unfortunately some people haven't forgotten... (note big caterpillar sizes holes.)

Going back through my garden diary I've realised some of the first inhabitants were the fruit plants. Blackcurrants, redcurrants, rhubarb and strawberries. The only fruit bearing plants have been the strawberries which have rarely made it out of the allotment.

But the blackberry hedges around the allotment have provided enough to keep me going.

Blackberry Jelly Cumbles (Serves 4).......

250g frozen blackberries

3 sheets gelatine

75g caster sugar

25g/1oz butter

55g/2oz plain flour

25g/1oz brown sugar

Put the gelatine in a bowl of cold water until soft. Put the fruit and sugar in a bowl with a splash of water. Once melted boil for a couple of minutes.

Leave to cool a little then push through a sieve with the back of a spoon letting the juice flow into a bowl.

Pour the juice back into a pan and add the gelatine. Put over a low heat and stir until dissolved. Leave to cool for 20 minutes. Pour into four glasses.

Put in the fridge and cool overnight.

In a bowl mix the flour, butter and brown sugar into crumbs. Pour on to a lined baking tray and bake in a 180'c oven for 15 minutes until golden. Leave to cool. Sprinkle over the jelly.

It's like two puddings in one!

A load of pollacks....

I've never been very daring at the fish counter. Stop. Before you say "but you come from an island" actually we never ate fish at home. In fact the first time I was forced to eat fish was at a very posh meal I had to go to when I was eighteen. I remember looking down at the starter of avocado and prawn mousse and I thought What. The. Hell. Is. That?

I focused my mind and swallowed each mouthful one teaspoon at a time until the person sitting opposite me whispered "You hated that didn't you?"

I vowed then I would have to train myself to like prawns so if I ever was in a situation like that again I would get through it (minus the grimace!)

Now I love prawns and avocados and I've added a few other fish dishes into my diet. In fact apart from shellfish I think there are very few I don't like.

Pollacky Pasta Sauce.....(serves 2)

2 tins chopped tomatoes
1 tbsp tomato puree
1 small onion
2 sticks celery
2 garlic cloves
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp mixed dried herbs
1 handful fresh basil
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
200g chopped pollack
100g chopped fresh fish (I used smoked haddock and salmon)

Finely chop the onion, garlic and celery and cook over a low heat. When the have softened add all other ingredients apart from the fish and basil. Leave to boil on the low heat for 20 to 30 minutes stirring occasionally.

Add the fish and stir into the sauce carefully. Leave to simmer for a further 10 minutes until the fish is cooked through. Stir through the basil.

Serve with pasta with some grated Parmesan over the top if you wish.

I made twice as much sauce so I had some extra to freeze and use for pasta another day.

PS. Pollack is great for a sauce like this because it holds its shape so well so you get nice big steamed chunks instead of it falling apart.

Muffin top....

Skinny Banana Muffins....(Makes 12)





310g Self raising flour
a pinch of bicarbonate of soda
a pinch of salt
170g demerara sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
50ml sunflower oil
150ml skimmed milk
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 mashed bananas

My other half declared earlier "I think the bananas might be about to turn". About to? I think they are doing circles. I would normally make banana and chocolate crumble cake or banana loaf with them but the enormously chubby love handles say I've made them once too often.


So I decided to go for a low fat version. With my rough calculations I think these are about 180 cals each...trouble is, when I took them out of the oven they smelt so amazingly good, I ate two!

Sieve all the dry ingredients into a bowl. Add the vanilla and give it a good mix.

In another bowl mix the egg, milk and oil and mix into a rough batter (this is more of a fold actually with a metal spoon.)

Use spray oil on a muffin tray and put a heaped spoon of the mix in each hole.

Bake for twenty five minutes....then try and stop yourself eating them! (I've had to pop mine in the freezer!)

PS I've lost 11lbs in two weeks, so it's working!

Sweet little thing...

Every year my work holds a Present Aid sale where listeners donate unwanted Christmas Presents and we sell them for charity. I've just come home from manning one of the stalls. It's amazing how generous people but also what people don't want. I've bought home a food processor, a casserole dish, 2 pots of body butter and some kind of stomach exerciser thing!

Remember the stewed plums I made earlier this week. Today I ate them with some yoghurt and it was delicious.

Butchers stew........

I went to the butchers at Callenick after work to try and get some inspiration for dinner. There were two ruby red beef steaks sitting on the marble slab and I realised how few stews I have made this winter. Stews are a dieters friend so I made this boozy little number...

Beef and Rattler Stew.....(Serves 4 or one girl and one hungry man!)

500g stewing steak
3 celery sticks
4 carrots
2 small red onions
2 cloves garlic
5oz mini chestnut mushrooms
3/4 pt beef stock
A few splashes of worcestershire sauce
3/4 pint Rattler cider
1 heaped tbsp plain flour
pepper

Trim off all the extra fat from the beef. Chop into pieces the size of 50p pieces. The beef I bought was so amazingly tender, it was like slicing butter. Spray a pan with olive oil and add the chopped celery, onions and garlic. Lower the heat and soften the vegetables. Turn the heat up and add the beef. Brown it.

Once it has a lovely brown colour, add the stock, cider, worcestershire sauce and carrots and boil for 2 minutes. Sieve in the flour and give it a good stir. Now you can either pop it in a casserole dish in a 150'c oven for one hour or place a baking tray on top of the saucepan and pop it in the oven. I don't have a casserole dish so had to make do.

After an hour take out of the oven and serve with brown rice and cabbage. Yum.

Plum pudding....

Cornwall feels a bit like Narnia this morning. The white witch has been defeated and the snow is beginning to melt. Shoots of grass have started peering out of the blanket of snow like a sleepy teenager fighting dawn. Crocus' have even nervously started to glimpse at the winter sunshine wondering whether it is safe to come out yet.

It's a bit like my insomnia. I feel like I am finally starting to see the sunshine again after two long years of frosty sleepless nights. The acupuncture has been amazing leaving me with just one restless night a week. And it's had a massive impact on my decision to lose three stone this year. I'm moving more. Eating less. Appreciating food more.

Baked Plums with Custard Marscapone (although I have them with low fat vanilla yogurt!) Serves 2

4 plums
2 heaped tbsp brown sugar
125g marscapone
1 egg (separated)
1 vanilla pod
1 tbsp caster sugar

Pre heat the oven to 180'c. Slice the plums and remove the stones....(why is this so difficult? Plums seem desperate to cling on to their stones!)

Place in a baking tray and sprinkle with the brown sugar. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes.

Take the egg yolk and in a small dish whisk with sugar until light yellow. In another bowl whisk the egg white until firm. In ANOTHER bowl (sorry washing up haters) put the marscapone. Mix in the seeds of the vanilla pod and egg the egg yolk. Mix together. Add half the egg white and fold in with a metal spoon. (Throw the other half away). Take the plums out of the oven and serve with the marscapone custard.

I still had loads of plums left so I popped them in a saucepan with 4 tbsp water and 1 tbsp sugar. Bring to the boil and pop in a bowl in the fridge. Serve with yogurt or any left over marscapone.

A winter salad to alleviate the snow blues....

We've been up since dawn, noses pressed against the window, hoping it will snow like this again....

Remember you can see loads of Cornwall in the snow pictures here including an aerial video of snowy Cornwall.

Although we should be eating hearty stews and shepherds pies I wanted a salad last night. A warm, comforting salad as crisp as the ice underfoot. Next winter I'm going to try and have a steady stream of salad from the garden.

Chicken and Ratatouille Salad (serves 2)

1 bag of mixed salad leaves
1 handful basil leaves
1 red pepper
1 yellow pepper
1 handful cherry tomatoes
1 red onion
2 courgettes
2 handfuls penne pasta
1 handful green olives
2 chicken breasts
olive oil
balsamic vinegar
1 pinch sugar
salt and pepper

Put the mixed salad leaves in a bowl. Chop the onion, courgettes, peppers and tomatoes and place in a baking dish. Drizzle with olive oil and roast in a 180'c oven for 20 minutes or until slightly charred. (I cheated because I had a glut in the summer and had roasted a frozen loads of vegetables, so I just popped them in the oven to defrost them)

Rip up the basil and chop the olives roughly and add them to the salad leaves.

Pop the penne pasta in boiling water and boil for 5 minutes or until soft.

Roll the chicken breasts with a rolling pin to make them thinner and cook them on a griddle for 7 minutes on each side.

Slice the chicken into strips. In a bowl mix 2 parts olive oil to 2 parts balsamic vinegar and mix. Add the sugar and salt and pepper.

Add the roasted vegetables and warm pasta to the leaves and with your hands mix in the dressing. Place a good sized pile on each plate and top with the chicken and a few more basil leaves.

Skinny dipping....

I know that most people dread going back to work after Christmas but I've got a secret. Sssssshhhh.... I'm glad to be back. I like the routine of getting up at the same time, coming home at the same time. I like seeing my work friends again....

And in the same way I like getting back to normal foodwise. I like fruit and yoghurts instead of biscuits and chocolate coins. But before I tell you about my new healthy eating regime, here's what I did on Sunday.....

On Scilly we don't have any real woodland so I'm fascinated by them. Intrigued by the creepiness and the way the plants engulf everything around them.

We went to Tehidy Woods on the North Coast......

It was such a lovely day. Despite that we only saw one other couple...

I got completely disorientated. Luckily my other half has inbuilt GPS!

Then we jumped back in the car and drove 5 minutes up the road to the coast....this looks up to Perranporth and Padstow.

Anyway back to the healthy eating. I'm sure many of you are trying to think of ways to cut down on calories so over the next few weeks I'm just going to be blogging low fat, low calorie meals.

But I promise you one thing, they will be yummy! So it's goodbye Christmas sandwiches (farewell festive ham) and hello poached eggs and marmite on crumpets....