In My Kitchen, September 2017

This month's peek into my kitchen starts with a daffodil that Sylvia picked from our neighbour's garden a few weeks back.  It was a bright patch in a rotten month.  I can't say that I am sorry to see the end of August.  We had lots of illness - Sylvia hung on just long enough to go to school camp before coming down with the virus.  Lots of sniffles, coughs, aches and shivers.  Finally at the end of the month, our stereo seems to have died.  Just what we need like a kick in the head!

Here's a selection of what was needed to get through our patch of illness.  Ginger beer, peaches in juice, jelly, cold and flu tablets, tissues, good books and winter woollens.  There was very little cooking or baking.  After a few days of toast for dinner, I made pea soup and then a few days later thought it tasted off.  So I binned it.  Then I had a tinned soup which also tasted off so I am not sure if it was just my taste buds.  My mum brought us up some soup and curry to keep us going.

I spent quite a bit of time just resting and reading when I wasn't sleeping in the afternoons.  I highly recommend the Call the Midwife memoirs by Jennifer Worth to anyone who has watched the tv series (or even if you haven't).  It is the tales of life in the East End that the tv series was based on.  I also enjoyed a P D James novel, Cover Her Face.  It was a little outdated but P D James writes so well.

There were some casualties of our illness in the kitchen.  I really loved this Damona vegan brie that I used in my Avocado, rocket and brie scone.  So soft and melty when warmed up.  Then I got sick and could not face the rest of it.  I wrapped it in its paper wrapper in the fridge and when I returned to it a couple of weeks later, it was covered in mould.  Very disappointing.

These purple sapphire spuds that I used in my vegan pasties were also ignored in illness.  I had intended to use them in a favourite chickpea, potato and tomato stew.  By the time I got around to finally making the stew last week I had to throw out the last few potatoes who had even more impressive sprouts than in this photo.

I did get to use some of the purple potato in these fritters.  They also had carrot, almond meal, nooch and lime juice.  I fried them up one lunchtime at home with intentions to have leftovers for work sandwiches.  But again, due to sickness the mixture never got used.

Crackers are a great small something to eat when you have lost your appetite.  We haven't eaten lots of sweet food lately.  (We didn't even manage to get through the doughnuts that were brought home from the Donut Fest.)   We did get through quite a few crackers.  Sylvia really loved the Margherita Pizza and Nacho Cheese shapes.  I preferred the latter shapes.  I liked the idea of the cheese and rice crackers but sadly Sylvia was not a fan.  And I like the cracked pepper and sea salt crispini but did not enjoy them as much as Always Fresh's Hommus Crisps that I mentioned in last month's In My Kitchen post.

More unusual in our kitchen is any fancy peanut butter.  I usually have it 100% peanuts.  This dark chocolate and sea salt crunch intrigued me.  It isn't really sweet and is a nice change to my regular peanut butter.  However I think I would have a little less of the sea salt flakes, given that I don't usually eat peanut butter with salt in it.

This unicorn birthday cake was almost another casualty of illness.  My sister ordered it for my niece Stella's birthday.  Isn't it gorgeous!  It is every little girl's dream cake.  I took home a few pieces.  Luckily I put these in the freezer for when we are feeling in a cake sort of mood.  They are still there waiting.

And lastly, today I made my regular overnight sourdough bread.  Some nights it just does not rise.  This morning that dough was left for a good 11 hours but still did not rise as much as it usually does.  The nights are still chilly.  I had a friend's dance party to get to so I made one loaf and cut the other half of the dough into 6 pieces and made bread rolls.  I baked a couple on a tray and the rest in a casserole dish for 20 minutes and then on a tray for another 20 minutes and they were lovely, though quite crusty.  (And better than the ones on the tray that were baked less.)  They weren't much quicker to bake but could be eaten quicker than the hour I usually wait for a loaf to cool.  I ate one for dinner with leftover mac and cheese in it.  It was that sort of night.

I am sending this post to Sherry of Sherry's Pickings for the In My Kitchen event, that was started by Celia of Fig Jam and Lime Cordial,  If you would like to join in, send your post to Sherry by 10th of the month.  Or just head over to her blog to peek into more kitchens.