I'm back!

Actually it's only because I can't get on Facebook tonight to post on my group there. It's called 'I know what Amy has had for tea, including pudding', and was started up by my friend's daughter. I think she was taking the piss, really, because my status was always what I'd had for dinner! Anyway, the group has about 50 members now, some of them are even people I don't know, and although it is mostly still me telling folks what I've had for my dinner (and lunch and breakfast), it's nice because anyone who is a member can post to it, and share recipes, and people do. Even my favourite author, the wonderful Gwyneth Jones, is a member and occasionally contributes.


Anyway, tonight I'm making pea soup, from my friend Tashadot's blog (Life, Love and Muffins), with homemade gluten-free soda bread. It's all on the go at the moment, so it might be awful, it might be fab. I'll let you know later, and take pictures. I'm also making a gluten-free dark ginger cake which smells divine!!

So, it's after dinner now, I can report back. The pea soup was lovely (I added some mint at Mr F-P's request), so thanks for that Tashadot. My 'accidentally' gluten-free soda bread was a success - I'll explain in a minute - and the ginger cake is effin' gorgeous!!


Tashadot said she had soda bread with her pea soup, and as I'm rather partial I thought we would too - to hell with the potential belly ache from the wheat! Anyway, M&S was completely out, the fiends, so I decided as it's quick I would make my own. 'I've got plenty of flour in the cupboard' thinks I. Well, yes, I had, with plenty of flour weevils in it! It takes me sooooo long to use flour that every time I have to buy new because the bloody weevils get it! I also had gluten-free flour mix, soya, chickpea and buckwheat flours and fine polenta (weevils only seem to like wheat, thankfully!). So I decided to try making the bread with the gluten-free flour mix (from Marks, natch). I pulled a simple recipe off the internet and followed it as if I was using ordinary flour. The result is pictured above, and it's lovely, crunchy and dense and with that slight scone flavour - it'll be fab with jam on!


I got a ginger cake recipe from the Juvela website (they make gluten-free prescription products for coeliacs) and altered it a bit to fit what I'd got. Oh my! I've just had a warm slice, the end off the loaf, and it's delicious!


So, my 2 new recipes are below - you'll have to visit Life, Love and Muffins for the pea soup.

Soda Bread

Ingredients

olive oil for greasing

250g/9oz plain g-f flour mix

1 tsp salt

1 tsp bicarb

1 tsp xanthan gum

2 tsp soft brown sugar

225ml/8 floz live yoghurt or buttermilk

Heat oven to 230/445/Gas 8

Sift the flour, salt, soda and xanthan gum into a large bowl

Stir in the yoghurt or buttermilk (I used yoghurt) with a wooden spoon, then use your hands to knead it together. It should feel soft and firm, not sticky. Add more flour if necessary

Shape into a round and place on a greased blaking sheet

Slash a deep cross in the top

Bake for about 12 minutes then turn the oven down to 200/400/Gas 6 and bake for a further 15 to 20 minutes, The bottom of the loaf should sound hollow when you tap it.

Put the loaf to cool for a bit on a wire rack, but do have some while it's still warm. Lots of butter is reccommended with this!

Ginger Cake

200g/8oz gluten-free white flour mix

1 1/2 tsp ground ginger

1tsp bicarb

1tsp xanthan gum

100g/4oz soft brown sugar

50g/2oz butter

100g/4oz black treacle

1 egg

200ml/8floz milk

Grease (and line of necessary - I use silicone so it's not) a 2lb loaf tin

Pre-heat oven to 150degrees/300degrees/Gas 2

Mix the flour, bicarb, xanthan and ginger together in a large bowl

In a small pan melt together the butter, sugar and treacle

Add to the dry mix and combine will

Whisk the egg into the milkj, then add this to the rest

Stir it untill it is well mixed - takes a bit of effort

Pour into the loaf tin and bake for about 1 hour, or until a skewer comes out clean

Leave to cool in the tin for about 10 minutes then turn onto a wire rack.

Christmas cake

I am going to make a gluten-free Christmas cake, or to be more precise, some gluten-free Christmas cakes, as I've got some dinky little pink and blue silicone bun cases I thought would look just lovely. I usually do my Mum a box of mini nice things for Christmas and was about to buy a pretty little cake in John Lewis when I remembered the bun cases. So I'm looking for a recipe quickly before I drink all the rum I bought for it!

On Saturday night I went to Hitchcock's vegetarian restaurant in Hull with the lovely Natasha and the lovely Hannah. It was bloody marvellous. I do get so disappointed by veggie restaurant food, but this was fab. The theme was English food, and there was toad in the hole, shepherd's pie, mushroom and ale pie, Yorkshire puds, roast potatoes, gravy, red cabbage, lots of other veg, cheese sauce, mint sauce, mustard and about 10 different types of pudding!

Mr F-P was a bit poorly last night and had to go to the A&E in an ambulance, doped up with morphine for the pain. Turns out he has kidney stones. It was all rather horrid - not least for him of course!

Anyway, I'll put some pics of the Christmas buns on when I make them.

Paris photos

The Louvre at night.



Football skills man.




Sunny morning, Mr F-P in Jardin du Luxumbourg.





Chat sat.





Really, the best monge.





Breakfast.





Flowers at the market in the square at the bottom of the road.





Our 'compact and bijou' hotel room...





...and the view from the window.





Chocolat chaud

Paris

Mr F-P and I went to Paris at October half term and it was jolly nice, but I have to say that despite no shortage of vegetarian restaurants, the food was pretty poor. Unless you really, really like shredded and grated raw vegetables! We stayed at the Hotel California St Germain, which was.... I have to say functional. Our room was clean, comfortable and warm (too warm!). It was also miniscule and we had to hang out of the window and peer upwards for about 4 floors to see the sky, as both windows opened into sort of ‘chutes’. But it was quiet at least!

We didn’t have breakfast at the hotel as they were charging €12 each. We found a sweet little cafe nearby where we could get a really good cafe au lait and either a croissant or bread and jam, and freshly squeezed orange juice for €6.90 each. The first morning it was so mild and sunny we were even able to have this sitting outside at a pavement table! The cafe, much to Mr F-P’s amusement, was called the Best Monge.

Our first evening we ate at Le Grenier de Notre Dame, where we’ve been a few times before, and we had the seitan steak, which is fabulous. As I am now ‘an intuitive eater’, and the portions were not only humungous but stupidly expensive, I made Mr F-P share with me, which he wasn’t very happy about. I obliged the manager by having his homemade chocolate mousse and it was lovely. Didn’t eat it all though!

The second evening we ate at an organic place very near to our hotel (the Phyto Bar), and were served much in the way of shredded and grated raw vegetables. Mr F-P was true to form and had an omelette with his, but I opted for the seaweed caviar, which was delicious, a spring roll (mediocre) and there was also a ball of some kind of nutty paste stuff which was really, really delicious, but I can’t remember what it was.

I also obliged with the homemade chocolate mousse again (aren’t I kind?) but found this one too sweet.

Night three found us in the Potager du Marais, behind the Centre Pompidou, facing more shredded rawities. Or at least Mr F-P was. He chose the tofu medallion, which was coated in almonds and was very tasty, but not only was there red cabbage on his plate (horror!), there was also, oddly, half a pear. I thought his head was going to explode! I had the seitan bourguignon, which looked unappetising, and didn’t taste of much. At this point Mr F-P said a few choice things about the quality of French vegetarian restaurant food, and vegetarian restaurant food in general and threatened, randomly, to email Jamie Oliver on our return to tell him that I am the best veggie cook in the world. We were both pretty horrified at the prices too!

Anyway, we drank a lot of cafe au laits (at €4 each a pop!!) and I had hot chocolate a few times as well, because they serve it as a little jug of melted chocolate and a larger jug of hot milk and it’s so much nicer than the stuff we get here made from powder and usually tasting of nothing much at all.

We did have a fab time, and the weather was cold and bright. We visited les Invalides and looked at Napoleon’s tomb and an exhibition of stuff from the 2 World Wars, which had Mr F-P make a few more choice comments, this time about surrender monkeys! We walked in the Jardin du Luxembourg, where the leaves were turning gold and red and orange, and we pressed our peasants’ noses up against the shop windows in the ultra posh shopping district between the gardens and the river. We went up to Sacre Coeur and watched the lights of Paris come on, and saw some juggling lads and a football skills artist.

I'll pop some more photos on here in a bit but Mr F-P needs to use the puter to send some football emails now.

I finally manged to get an outfit I'm happy with for the Sheffield FC annual dinner at Cutlers Hall. I've been looking for AGES!! I think I'd tried every dress in Debenhams, and even once bought a skirt and then taken it back. Anyway, yesterday I went in and there was an 'occasion wear' sale on, and I got this skirt and top, which I HADN'T tried before, dunno why, half price - which meant £50 instead of £100! The skirt is a 14 and the top is a 12, and they look lovely - I look quite slim in them! Of course I'll be able to wear them separately too, always a bonus. Oooh, I love netty underskirts!! I want to wear them NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Just need some new ballet pumps to go with them, and a long or three-quarter sleeved lacy short cardi now, to cover the bingo wings!). Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!! (That's the sound a big grin makes!).


Do you think black net wings with this would be a bit too much?

Gorgeous!

Found this photo in the Sunday Times magazine and thought I'd share it. It's by top fashion photographer Patrick Demarchelier and is simply a double page spread entitled 'The New Sexy' (Mr F-P said "since when was it new for this to be sexy?!"). The text next to the photo says: 'Patrick...... has started photographing bigger women. These meltingly beautiful portraits of earthily glamorous girls are fast becoming the new pin ups. Move over, skinnies: times are changing and now more really is more. Here's to the renaissance of flesh and a little bit more to hold on to'. I was disappointed that there was only one photo - I eagerly turned the page hoping for more! I've searched the net and can't find anymore of this collection of protraits, so perhaps they're not published yet. However, Demarchelier has quite famously said that skinny models are ugly naked! Go Patrick. Isn't she just heartbreakingly beautiful? Contrast her with this model..... nuff said!

Goodness, is it THAT long since I wrote in my blog?! That’s disgraceful. So, what has happened since I was here last? Well, I’ve been to Spain on holiday for 2 weeks, that was very nice, with plenty of €2 Rioja in the nearest shop! We stayed in a rented town house in Almuñecar, on the Costa Tropical. It was gorgeous, but built on 4 floors (not counting the roof terrace). The kitchen was on the first floor and the dining terrace, where we ate all our meals, on the 4th, AND THERE WAS NO TEA TRAY!

While we were there we visited Granada to see the Alhambra, which I’d wanted to see since I was about 12. It was really magnificent. And Granada was lovely, but it was TOO HOT. The whole fortnight was too hot, really, they were having a heatwave in the area.

We also got to see the fireworks to celebrate Assumption Day, on the evening before we came home, which was incredible!

What else?
I started my new job in August, and at the moment it's very similar to my old job except much busier. The real work starts on November 3rd when we start the training programme. Then we'll have 6 weeks of craziness, and then we can relax.

I went to Womad back in July with Mia, camping would you b'lieve?! Bought my own tent and everything!


Here it is!



We saw some interesting bands and some even more interesting sites. These were real fairies, of course. Even fairies drink coffee!



My faves were Babylon Circus, a French Gypsy Punk band, who not only played a really lively set wearing Horse-trader black suits and pork-pie hats in the scorching heat, but did a cookery demonstration as well! Marvellous.



Today's recipe, which I'm baking as I write, is Orange and Olive Oil cake (should have been Orange, Olive Oil and Pine nut, but I forgot to buy any pine nuts, so it's not).
4 eggs, separated
1 tsp vanilla extract
250g (9oz) caster sugar
50g (1¾ oz) light brown sugar
200ml (7 floz) olive oil - probably best not to use cold-pressed organic extra virgin. I think the cheaper, lighter sort is best really, otherwise your cake might not be too nice!
400g (14oz) plain flour (I used gluten-free but the recipe is ornery flour)
1 heaped tsp baking powder
Finely grated rind of one orange
250ml (9floz) freshly squeezed orange juice (or not freshly squeezed, can't see it makes much odds)
40g of pine nuts, or none.

Preheat the oven to 180° (350°/Gas 4).

Brush 2 22cm (8½") baking tins (round ones I suppose, it doesn't say) with olive oil and dust with flour. Actually, as I haven't got 2 22cm tins I used 1 bigger silicone one (oiled) and then made 6 buns as well.

Whip the egg whites till they're stiff.

Beat the yolks with the vanilla till it's pale and foamy.

Add the sugar, whisk that (I used my electric whisky machine thing for all of this recipe), then add the oil a bit at a time and whisk it in.

Add the flour and baking powder and mix well.

Add the OJ and whisk it all up nicely.

Gently fold in the egg whites (nearly forgot to put that bit in there!).

Pour the mix into your tin/tins/bun cases whatever (it'd make a heck of a lot of very nice buns, this recipe!) and bake for 35 minutes. That's for the 2 22cm cakes. My buns (oo-er!) took 15 minutes and my large cake took about 50 minutes.

I think I'm going to make some sort of orangey icing for it in a bit, cos I've got some home made butter I want to use up (oh yeah, I made butter the other day, did I say?).