Recipes Without Recipes

My tea tonight consisted of roasted vegetables, cous cous and hommus. A good friend first cooked this for me and it quickly became a favourite. It's the sort of the recipe or cooking style that my mother would refer to as 'Alleluia'. Which could be taken to mean, 'throw it all together and pray that it works out ok'. Mum's interpretation is somewhat deeper. Her 'Alleluia' cooking method is more about an intuitive understanding of food and which combinations work best.

Take any of your favourite vegetables, peel and chop them. Toss through some olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Add herbs and spices of your liking. I added dried chilli seeds, basil, thyme and rosemary. Cook on a moderate temperature for around 1 hour. Serve with plain cous cous and hommus to taste. Best consumed with a nice glass of red wine.

Food markets are better than the stock market

While living in London in 2005 I kept hearing other teachers at school talk about Borough Market. For some reason I never found the time to visit this market in London's south. Thankfully I was able to rectiffy this lapse of judgement when I returned to live in London again in 2007.

Apart from my mother, my nonna, one of my aunties and my future nanna-in-law, there are not many people I consider to be naturally fabulous at cooking both sweet and savoury food. I have one stand out friend though who I consider to be not only a fabulous cook but a food role model too: the lovely Netball Queen, who is one of my Erector Sisters. So it was appropriate that she was there on my first (but not last!) tour of Borough Market.

I'm not commenting on the photos as I think they speak for themselves......

Sadly I only managed to eat half this slice of cake. How I'd love to finish off that slice now though.

Scones for the Sick

Last Monday I came home from work early with what turned out to be a nasty gastro virus. So nasty was this virus that I ended up in hospital. I've felt so ill that I haven't even been able to drool over food porn, watch my much-loved cooking shows or eat anything other than jelly, boiled rice and potatoes.

Almost a week later I am just starting to get my apetite back. My mother decided to celebrate this achievement by making me some scones. It's her good friend's recipe using cream and lemonade. These scones are easy to make and even easier to eat.

Weekend Round Up

This weekend was a bit of a non-event due to the continuing heatwave (still hitting 40C here!) and the Big Day Out on Friday. It was a great day, albeit hot (43C and no cloud cover). I'll post more about it later though.

So this weekend consisted of waking up hot at my house on Saturday. Heading to Marion on Saturday afternoon where I scored an undercover park and got to shop for some cool summer work tops. The day ended at That Southern Boy's house where he cooked me a lovely bbq tea and we chilled out watching a few great movies. My Sunday has consisted of coming home and sorting out my summer work clothes to see what will work in this heatwave, running through arrangements with The Sister for her friend's kitchen tea that we're hosting in two weeks, started my second mosaic project, caught up on some long overdue emails and made a Cut Copy playlist on my Creative. My lentils are cooking on the stove, my carrot sticks are cut and I'm nearly ready to hit the sack and watch some SATC until I fall asleep.