Bookie's food diary with photos

Lovely looking food. The pancakes look good. I make similar ones now using cottage cheese, but may give those cream cheese ones a go.


I may start trying to keep up on my food diary. Maybe I can take pictures with iPad which will make it easier time wise. Only problem is the formatting if posts, in that there doesn't seem to be any when I update do through my iPad lol.
 
Hi Britmum and thanks :)

You could do what I do with my iPhone - take pic, then quickly email it to yourself (putting a .jpg on the end of file name). Upload to Photobucket or something then paste in IMG code. Seems a lot quicker than when I was using my big camera (which def takes better pics but it's all that uploading, resizing, editing etc.). Would be lovely to see you back, I have made so many of your recipes (or been inspired by them!).
 
I remember seeing a blog somewhere (of course, I've lost the link) where someone was raving about sugar free maple syrup - it's made with splenda. Have just bought some online, will arrive within a week so will keep you posted on how it is. I'm looking forward to a pile of those cream cheese pancakes with crispy bacon and maple syrup on a Sunday morning, bliss.
 
book_lover said:
Joanne thank you! I started using my big camera, but found I wasn't managing time wise (I work full time too), so have decided to stick with iPhone pics as they are so much quicker. I think you may have been looking at earlier pics :) Stuffed pasta recipe - did I post it? I'll need to look back at the old post first...

ellie that is so kind - thank you!
Click to expand...

Yeh that's a good point as i subconsciously post my pics and food as I go along- I'm not one for doing it at the end of the day. At work so I haven't had a proper look through your thread yet- hoping I come across the recipe though :D
 
I am loving your diary hun :) Great pictures and that stuffed pasta recipe looks so good! Is the pasta uncooked before you pop it in the oven? Maybe I am looking at it wrong.

I also LOVE your kitchen, its got so much character! Can't wait to keep up with your posts and pictures, they're all great! :)
 
Have just drooled my way through your thread from start to finish! Really inspired me to get cooking some new dishes..for me the issue is just finding the time to do everything, Must make more effort :)
 
hi ladies, SO glad you're liking the thread :D

I don't have a recipe for that stuffed pasta, only made it up as I went along so here goes:

- make a tomato sauce using onion, garlic, tinned tomatoes, fry lite, and whatever else you like to add - some herbs perhaps
- meanwhile, roast butternut squash cubes (half a medium sized one perhaps) with frylite
- wilt some spinach in a pan and finely chop
- put an equal amount of cottage cheese (to squash) together with other two ingredients and blend with a stick blender (or any blender)
- take large pasta shells (uncooked) and stuff this mixture into them as best you can (it's fun!)
- you now take your tomato sauce and add some water to it so it's runnier than usual (because the liquid gets sucked up by the dry pasta) - and pour this all over your pasta shells
- take your HEA amount of mozzarella (x by how many you're feeding) and slice this and cover the bake with it
- bake in a hot oven for perhaps 35 minutes

sorry there are no quantities or proper timings, I just wing it when I'm cooking. But I'd say perhaps 180 degrees c.

HTH :)
 
Thankyou! Funny you should say that about stuffing the pasta shells- I was thinking "how on earth does she do it?!" Will deffo make it this week and let you know what I think :D
 
Joanne, I use two teaspoons - one to scoop mixture onto, the other to scrape off the first into the pasta shells - then just shove it in there as best you can :) this would be impossible with normal sized pasta though. Really excited that someone is going to cook up my invention! Let me know how it goes.

Monday 5th November (photos are rubbish today):

Breakfast: good old boiled egg with soldiers (made from the bread my daughter made). I also wanted to tell you about these delicious flavoured salts I've been using. Cornwall Sea Salt Company (or something) - I buy them when I go to Cornwall on work trips from the little airport at Newquay, but I discovered them in Tesco recently too. I really, really love smoked things, so the smoked sea salt is my favourite. But it only works with certain things - eggs is definitely one of those:

5thegg.jpg


4thsalt.jpg


Snack: muller lite

Lunch: leftover roast duck and veg

Dinner: courgette, mushroom and bacon carbonara. A colleague of mine is Italian, and we talk for hours about food! He tells me that an Italian would never put cream into carbonara (unless in an Italian restaurant for us British folk!), all you need is egg and parmesan. We tried this last night and used 60g of parmesan for the two of us, hence HEA. I only had 2 eggs to use so used the egg white too - but next time would prefer more volume of yolk and less or no white:

carbonara.jpg


Extras: it was tasting night in SW class last night - there were lots of free treats (and the butcher from Haig's who does all the syn free sausages and meat was in with lots of tasters), also the leader had made scan bran cakes so I had a few squares of those - estimate 2 syns (on her advice). Also, 2 syns let's say for the soya spread on my soldiers. Lemon greek style Muller lite thing - 1/2 syn. Gravy on my roast - 5 syns

Syns: 9 and a half
HEA: parmesan
HEB: small piece of wholemeal toast for soldiers; 1 hi fi lite rocky road (yum)
 
I've never added cream to carbonara, that in my eyes would ruin the taste. I have always used egg and a little of the pasta water. Yours looks lovely with the courgette a. I am a bit addicted to courgette at the moment, because of my vegetable spiraller. I love it.
 
I've never been a carbonara fan but then again, most of the ones I've tried have probably had cream in! another thing for me to try then :D
 
Britmum - what exactly IS a courgette spiralled? Intrigued! Do you add any of the egg white? I think opinion is a bit divided on this... I've always used a healthy blob of half fat creme fraiche - have to admit I love that too - makes it more creamy.... but this was so nice last night - also used a bit of pasta water. DH left the w/m pasta a little TOO al dente for my liking, but don't let's mention that! (he's doing so much lately).

Joanne - try it, it's lovely I promise :)
 
Your carbonara looks really yummy. That's how I make mine too. :) I also add garlic along with courgette, red onion and bacon to give it more flavour. May have to make that for dinner tomorrow night now!
 
I wanted to eat really well today, as I am losing my voice (well at least it's turning into a squeak!) and getting really sore tonsils :sigh:

Tuesday 6th November:

Breakfast - back bacon, potato rosti, tomatoes (finally the green ones we harvested have ripened inside!), mushrooms and beetroot tops (I'm just using these like spinach), with a fried egg. Truly lovely breakfast

6thbreakfast.jpg


Lunch - I made an old favourite - spicy tomato, lentil and bacon soup. Had with a small piece of L's wholemeal bread (1/2 HEB) and a light philly (bit of a HEA)

6thlunch.jpg


Dinner - we had the cowboy pie that was in a recent SW mag - but as DH did it and served up he didn't take a picture (he thinks I'm mad frankly for photographing all my food!). It's basically cottage pie with a tin of beans cooked in. Cheese on top of the mash - HEB.

http://www.minimins.com/sw-winter-warmer-recipes/294681-cowboy-pie.html

Snacks - fruit, muller lites, hifi lite rocky road x 2 (1/2 HEB + 3 syns), bag of diet crisps (5 syns)

Syns - 8

Not really much exercise today...
 
I want some carbonara now as well! Food looking amazing as usual!! How did you get into veg growing? Are there and books/websites that you recommend for beginners?
 
thanks Honey :) Let me ask my hubby for you - he's a professional gardener so I guess that has something to do with it :) We met in town (Aberdeen) and always both wanted a country life. I had lived some of my childhood in the country, DH had grown up in London... After a few years we moved out here and never looked back. We have a good sized garden and over the years we've dedicated more and more space to the veg patch. We now have raised beds built by DH and a greenhouse. So that's a lot of veg growing capacity. Problem is, it's pretty time consuming! I work full time and the first year I went back to work, we hardly managed to grow a thing... we put a lot of work in this year but the weather was awful - so much rain, everything growing into giants etc. We're also in the hills quite high up - and so there's a lot we can't grow here that you can grow down south, e.g. I think you can sometimes get away with tomatoes outside etc. down there. We can't grow most green beans... but we do tatties really well ;) Despite moaning about the poor weather we've done well in the end because we're still eating a lot out of the garden - right now we have beetroot, carrots, leeks, cavalo nero, savoy cabbages, radicchio (gone a bit bitter and not sure what to put it in - so any recs appreciated), lettuce and HALELLUJAH our first successful sprouts!!! (for Christmas :D).

Let me know how big your plot is likely to be, whether south facing or not and DH can advise! Not sure of any websites though because DH never uses anything like that (unlike me, he's not a social networker!).

Today I feel I should go into work - I'm an academic (researcher) at the Uni and because it's been such a busy time I've been having a bit of a break/working from home for last week and a half. But feeling like I should perhaps show my face today. Nothing ready to take for lunch though - which is troubling me!
 
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