Pancake Day Flop

This week it was Shrove Tuesday and I really wanted to join in with everyone else across the country who were having pancakes. Dad is a fan of pancakes so he readily agreed to buying the pre-mixed batter and lemons. I was really looking forward to joining in. Yet on Tuesday when it was finally Pancake Day we had such a filling dinner that we just didn't want any dessert, even if it was pancakes!

So our Pancake Day was postponed until Thursday (yesterday) so we had a sort of Shrove Thursday! The excitement at trying them had not diminished and I happily helped mix up the batter. Dad cooked them and flipped them. He then put it on the plate, added lemon juice and a bit of sugar and rolled it up. Now it was ready to try!!

I have to be honest when I saw it all rolled up my first thought was "that looks a bit greasy" and the smell of it cooking had not exactly been the most pleasant cooking smell I have ever smelt! But thanks to Felix these little matters no longer make me gag or put me off trying new things. So with my spoon in hand, I broke off a piece and ate it.

It was not the most enjoyable experience. In fact I thought it was disgusting. It was very sweet and at the same time the lemon juice made it taste very sour. I had another few mouthfuls which considering I didn't like it, was a huge achievement as previously I would have stopped eating after the initial mouthful (if I had even managed to take a bite!). However the extra mouthfuls just confirmed my original thought... disgusting. It had a funny squishy texture and it smelt like a Yorkshire Pudding and tasted like a Yorkshire Pudding with sweet stuff on it. It was wrong. I love Yorkshire Puddings with a bit of gravy on, particularly Aunt Bessies. They are all puffy and crunchy. But these pancakes were a bit soggy, a bit greasy and just not nice.

I was disappointed not to like them, but then you can't like everything you try. They are also not one of the foods I could eat even if I am not a fan. These are firmly in the no thank you, I don't like them column. So Pancake Day is one day I will not be celebrating in future!

Homemade Smoothies and Soups!

As any of my friends or family will tell you cooking is not one of my best features. In fact they would probably go as far as to say I can't cook. I would disagree. I am a TERRIBLE cook!! Don't ask me to cook your dinner if you want to enjoy it and actually be able to eat it. I can mess up even the most simplest of meals and I have zero patience in the kitchen. However I am not bad at cutting up certain vegetables like carrots or parsnips, and I make a gorgeous Bovril on toast. I am also very good at laying a table. At Christmas my main contribution to the meal is laying the table, complete with candles, table decoration, crackers and napkins. Sometimes I also contribute by washing up or at least drying up. So me and cooking have never been a good mix.

The problem (and my excuse) is that as someone with SED food held absolutely no interest for me. If I didn't have to eat because of hunger pains I would not have eaten at all. So the idea of spending ages slaving over a hot stove to make a meal held no appeal. I couldn't see the point. I was not interested in eating the finished thing, so why would I want to cook it? As a result my cooking skills are very limited. "Put on baking tray and put in oven until you are certain its cooked or until its burnt and goes in the bin, while you have a sandwich instead", was about the style of my culinary exploits. Even after seeing Felix and my relationship with food began to improve, I never expected my cooking skills to improve nor my interest in it. I fully expected to have to force myself to learn how to prepare and cook the new food I was eating.

So imagine my surprise when I found myself wanting to make my own smoothies and soups! I knew that shop bought smoothies were not really that good for you as they were frequently targeted in the press for being full of sugars and other hidden nasties. So I didn't want to try them as it felt like making my weight issues worse instead of better. So I became obsessed about making my own smoothies. I had already spent 2 months lusting after a juicer after seeing a demonstration of one on television and being shown how you can get more nutrients into your body through juicing, and as I am still struggling with certain vegetables and fruit I thought this would be great for me. However juicers are extremely expensive and way out of my price range. Then in the January sales my Dad managed to get hold of one for £20. Result! Except it wasn't a juicer.... it was a smoothie maker!

After a bit of research I discovered the smoothie maker was probably better for me as juicers apparently remove the fibre from the juice, whereas the smoothie maker leaves it in. So I began to start researching smoothie recipes and began experimenting! Our only successful attempt so far has been the Banana and Apple Smoothie which contains 1 dessert apple, 1 banana, half a cup of orange juice, a cup of ice, and half a cup of whole milk blended together until smooth. It was very nice, and as my Dad said it would make a lovely drink for the summer. Its also very filling! We do have other ingredients waiting to be tried including root ginger (very good for your stomach and digestion and is a natural antibiotic) a bag of mixed frozen berries and some grapes (although we ate the Grapes instead!). Unfortunately life again got in the way and due to a few weeks of tough finances we didn't buy the ingredients for the smoothies to cut back on costs. For example you need whole milk for the smoothie but we have semi-skimmed milk for normal use, so its an extra not an essential. Buying dessert apples instead of normal apples, buying extra fruit to use etc, its just not been cost effective. However as soon as we can we will buy the extras again and continue experimenting with the smoothies.

Once we started with the smoothies I discovered I could also make soups in the smoothie maker too, as long as I didn't put in hot stuff. I could blend all the content up before hand and then cook it in the saucepan. I was so excited! I was really getting into this cooking lark! So we decided to try a root vegetable soup (potato, carrots, parsnip, swede and onion) and to give it a bit of taste we used a chicken stock instead of vegetable. It went well (we had to buy a set of scales to measure out the veg quantities!) but we ended up with a huge pot full! We cooked it and ate it. It was quite thick which was nice and ok but needed something else in it to give it a bit more flavour. Since seeing Felix I am no longer than keen on bland food, so the soup lacked the kick for me! I am now trying to work out what else I can add to give it more oomph and also looking for other recipes to try.

This is very similar to what our soup looked liked. Didn't have it with brown bread though!

Suddenly we are buying smoothie makers, weighting scales, a mini grater for grating root ginger, buying root ginger (!), and looking at what other equipment we need in the kitchen!! I suddenly know stuff like the fact root ginger is good for digestion etc, or the vitamins in certain veg and fruit. I am also now obsessed about making our own stuff to avoid putting in all that artificial rubbish into our bodies!!! What is happening to me! I won't buy a Chinese ready meal because I want to make sure the veg is fresh, the rice is decent and the meat is cooked well with no artificial sweeteners or additives! I also now read the ingredients of tins, packets etc! I use to do this to check there was nothing in it I didn't like, now its to make sure what's in it is good for me!!

So I have also tried smoothies and homemade soups and will continue to add them to my new diet/lifestyle. I am also apparently turning into a bit of cook! Still can't believe this is me! I even suggestion to Dad we could make our own crumbles (not for me, but for him. Sweet stuff still holds little appeal for me and I don't want to encourage unhealthy stuff in my diet!). Dad reckons next step will be writing my own cookbook! Oh dear!

Christmas Red Cabbage, Savoury Biscuits and Bovril!

As part of my recovery I was really looking forward to Christmas as it was the first time ever I could look forward to the food! I had listened to others getting excited about the gluttonous season and all the lovely things they were going to eat, while I never had any interest and certainly couldn't join in. But Christmas 2014 was going to be different, thanks to seeing Felix in the summer. I already had a list of all the things I wanted to try over the festive season and I couldn't wait! Unfortunately life didn't quite agree with my plans as it decided to make money extremely tight, so we had to be a bit more careful about our Christmas food shopping. We still had nice food, I just had to rein in my list of foods to try!

I was never going to have Brussels Sprouts and even now that's one traditional food I am happy to avoid! However I did have a piece of roast parsnip with my carrots and petite pois peas, which I ate although I found it very sweet and not particularly nice. However its good for me, so I tried and since then whenever we have had a roast, I have had a piece of roast parsnip. Still not a fan, but I can at least eat it. I also wanted to try some red cabbage with my Christmas dinner. Up to now apart from peas I have not had much success with green veg and I still don't have any interest in trying actual cabbage. But for some reason I wanted to try red cabbage! And I did! We got this pot of red cabbage and apple from Tesco and I am proud to say I ate roughly one and a half tablespoons of it! It was quite nice, reminded me a bit of beetroot, probably because of the vinegar-ish taste. (Now it may well have had vinegar in it, I am not sure!). I couldn't eat any more than I did, but I am really proud of myself for eating what I did. Haven't had it since, but that's probably because I see it as a Christmas food! Its also very likely that I liked it because it didn't taste anything like cabbage or greens!

I was also looking forward to tasting different cheeses and savoury biscuits. Unfortunately we didn't have the budget to get many cheeses so we just stuck to the ones we like, although we did get a bit of Brie. I was planning on trying this but when my uncle tasted it on Christmas Day he said it was disgusting and not a good example of Brie. It was a very cheap one, so clearly price does sometimes matter. It will be back on the list for next time, when we can afford a slightly better version! I did however get to try some different savoury biscuits thanks to a Jacobs selection box of biscuits! So as well as the usual cream crackers and my favourites water biscuits and chedders, I also tried various other crackers. Some I liked, some were ok and some were vile! I also tried Tuc biscuits which I absolutely loved both on their own and with a bit of Cathedral City or Krackerbarrel Cheese on! Definitely will be having some of these again!

These were about the only things I tried over Christmas. I had hoped to try some different nuts, but the budget only stretched as far as peanuts and I was also hoping to try some different savoury snacks but again crisps and biscuits was as far as the budget stretched. Likewise with the drinks, although we do still have a couple of bottles of Schloer for me to try (red grape and white grape). I did try orange juice and lemonade (my Dad's current favourite drink). It was ok, but I am still not a fan of the acid orange taste.

The biggest and most immediate addition to my list of foods is Bovril on toast. Of all the things I thought I would like Bovril was not even on the list!! But for some reason one day I got the idea in my head that I wanted to try it. My Dad likes it but had not had it for a while so a new jar had to be bought. The only jars available were big jars and Dad was concerned it might go to waste if I didn't like it. He really didn't need to worry! We are already a quarter of the way down our SECOND jar! At first I only had very light dots of it on my buttered toast as it was quite a strong taste to begin with. But gradually I added more and more. Now I like a nice spread of it! In fact I LOVE Bovril on toast. Its become my most favourite snack. If I am feeling naughty I will add a piece of cheese on top and then its absolute food heaven for me!!! I never thought I would feel that way about food! I have it most days for lunch at the moment, so I am a bit worried I am becoming addicted to it! But apparently Bovril is very good for you, so its not the worse thing I could be eating!

I really get excited about food now. I never thought that would be possible for me. I also still can't believe the willingness to try new stuff and the curiosity of what foods taste like. We were watching a programme yesterday which included a segment about Wild Boar sausages, and I wondered out loud what they tasted like! Its really not me, but I am loving the new me! More soon!