Tomato, Mozarella and Basil Tart

Summer took so long coming, and is now going fast! But even though there has been a definite autumn nip in the air, you probably – like me – want to cling on to the last vestiges of summer and don’t want to spend hours over a hot stove.

This is a really quick simple meal to put together. Try and find some really ripe tomatoes for this to get a lovely juicy summery flavour. Serve it with a salad, and that’s probably all you need.

Tomato, Mozarella and Basil Tart

(Serves 4 generously)
Fridge to table time: <30 mins

You will need:

  • 320g sheet of ready rolled puff pastry
  • About 5 medium sized ripe tomatoes
  • 250g mozarella, grated
  • ~10 fresh basil leaves

Method

  1. Put the oven on to 200 C and grease a baking tray thickly with butter or the tart can tend to stick which is annoying – particularly as it is the lovely crispy bits of pastry which to my mind are one of the best bits.
  2. Score the pastry gently with a knife all the way round the outside, about 1 cm in from the edge, but be careful not to cut all the way through.
  3. Chop the basil leaves roughly and scatter
    over the base of the tart.
  4. Wash and slice the tomatoes and arrange in
    one layer on the pastry, inside the scoring.
  5. Sprinkle the grated mozarella evenly over
    the tomatoes, again keeping inside the
    knife marks.
  6. Cook in the oven for about 20 minutes at 200.C
    until the pastry is crisp and both pastry and
    cheese are golden brown.
  7. Serve with a fresh herby green salad. You can sprinkle with parmesan to add an extra cheesey taste.

What’s your favourite meal that reminds you of summer?

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Lemon Raspberry Ripple Ice-cream

What do you think of when you think of summer? Sunshine? (of course) Beaches? (naturally) Wimbledon? (yes) Sandcastles? (maybe) Ice-cream? (Definitely YES).

Well, this year we have been seriously short on the more standard summery things like sun, heatwaves, sandcastles and swimming, so in desperation and to remind myself that it really is summer, I thought some lovely creamy ice-cream was in order! And this is a great combination – the lemony ice-cream is surprisingly sweet, but is beautifully counter-balanced by the slightly tart raspberry ripples. And you don’t even need an ice-cream maker to make this.

The recipe for lemon ice-cream came from my Mum and has been a family favourite for years. Raspberries have always been one of my favourite fruits and the combination of lemon and raspberries is particularly good – hence the addition of the raspberry ‘ripple’.

Lemon Raspberry Ripple Ice-cream

(Serves about 8 people)

You will need:

  • 600mls double cream
  • zest and juice of 3 unwaxed lemons
  • 225g caster sugar
  • 2-3 tablespoons of icing sugar
  • 200g raspberries

Method

  • Whisk the double cream and 225g caster sugar together in a bowl until thickened – if you’ve got to the stage of soft peaks that’s a bit too far.
  • Add the lemon zest and juice and mix again briefly.
  • Make the raspberry puree. Crush the washed raspberries in a sieve and push as much of the juice as possible through the sieve using the back of a spoon, into a bowl. Throw away the seeds. Add 2 tablespoons of icing sugar to the raspberry juice and stir until dissolved.
    (This is probably the most time consuming part of the recipe – puree-ing the raspberries and sugar in a food processor before sieving cuts down a bit on the effort involved!)
    When you’ve made the sauce, taste. It shouldn’t be too sweet, but add more sugar if you wish.
  • Pour half the cream mixture into a freezer container, then about quarter of the raspberry puree – then more cream – and more raspberry. There will be about half (maybe a little less) of the sauce left over.
  • Make ripples through the layers using a spoon or knife stirring gently through the mixture.
  • Freeze overnight.
  • You’ll need to take the ice-cream out about 20 minutes before you want to eat it. Serve with more fresh raspberries and the remaining raspberry sauce.

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More Homemade Pizzas

There is absolutely no doubt that homemade pizza tastes better than shop-bought ready-made pizza! At least in part because you can tailor it to your liking. But it is time consuming to make and not the sort of recipe that you are likely to want to make after a busy day.
But I tend to do quite alot of preparation for evening meals at the weekend so there is a minimum when I get home from work – so I was interested to see that you can apparently put pizza dough in the fridge – or even freeze it for later.

So after some research on the internet, I’ve been experimenting to see what works best. And many pizzas later I can now report the results of our family’s researches. (As you can imagine the children were delighted with the idea of ‘research’ into pizza!)

So what’s the conclusion?

  1. Keep dough in fridge:

    A blog from Smitten kitchen suggests making the dough in the morning and letting it rise in the fridge all day to eat at night.

    Result = this wasn’t a success for me (although I loved the look of the pizza they made). The dough didn’t rise in fridge (even though I left it 24 hours) so I had to warm it to room temperature and let it rise – not bad pizza but not quick
  2. Freeze the dough:

    Make the dough as normal, let it rise, knock back and then either
    – freeze the ball of dough in a freezer bag, or
    – roll out into pizza bases, separate each with a layer of baking parchment or tinfoil, wrap carefully and freeze.

    Result – These work fine in that the pizza dough doesn’t seem to suffer too much from freezing. Freezing in a ball is better as the rolled out bases seem to get a little soggy as they defrost and are difficult to get off the baking paper without injury.
    But, again the pizza dough needs to be warmed to room temperature before cooking which takes time and again takes this out of the category of ‘convenience food’.
  3. Part bake the pizza bases:

    Alternatively some people recommend par baking the bases.
    Make the dough as normal – let it rise and knock back. When ready roll out the pizza bases as thin as you wish them to be. Cook for 3 minutes at 220°C or higher if your oven will go higher (the kitchen units either side of mine seem to get a little warm and glowy if I put my oven much higher than this). Cool on a wire rack and freeze – again stacked between layers of baking parchment / tinfoil and wrap well before freezing.

    Result – For convenience this is the one that works the best. When you need them, take them out of the freezer, cover with sauce and toppings and cook at 220°C for 10 minutes or until the crust is golden and cheese is bubbling. Now that really is convenient home-made food!

And talking of sauces, here’s the recipe for a simple sauce for your pizza.

Simple Tomato Sauce for pizza

Ingredients

  • 1 small onion, chopped finely (optional – not classic pizza but I like the taste)
  • 1 can chopped tomatoes
  • 1 tablesp tomato puree
  • 1 teaspoon dried oregano

Method

  • Fry the onion in a little oil until soft and translucent
  • Add the other ingredients and cook for 5-10 minutes until the sauce has thickened a little
  • Spread sauce on pizza bases – put on less than you think you need – pizzas loaded with topping really do become soggy and don’t cook well.
  • Add anything else you wish, mozarella, grated cheddar, shredded ham, we’ve even used up sliced camembert, goats cheese, roast peppers etc etc, and cook in the oven for about 10 mins at 220°C until cheese is bubbling and crust is golden

Enjoy!

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Homemade Pizza

(If you’re busy, the best meals are, of course, those cooked by someone else! This post is written by our teenage Guest Blogger. If you have ever been put off making homemade pizza as it seems too complicated and difficult – don’t be! You can freeze the dough too – although we’ll let you know next time what the best way to do this is. But if you have some made-ahead dough you can get a meal on the table in almost the time it takes your family to find the take-away menu!
Here are the instructions for making the dough, and the next post will be all about sauce, toppings and how our newly frozen pizza dough turned out when defrosted!)

I don’t know about you but I really love baking!
It takes a couple of hours but there are loads of ways to shorten this and the results are almost always good. There are lots of different ways to bake bread, with loads of different techniques, so I figured I would go down to Flavours (our local cookery school) and see how they made the bread. It was a really great day but coolest of all were the results…

(ahem…)…PICTURE!!!…

We made all sorts of different types of bread in different styles but the one I’m going to talk about is the pizzas we made. Now, I have to be honest here, baking bread does take a while (probably about 2 hours 20) but what’s great about pizzas is you can make the dough beforehand and freeze it or refrigerate it depending on how long before the meal you’re making the dough. Then you can just take it out, put whatever topping you want on it, and cook it. You don’t get any complaints either, because everyone can choose exactly what they want to go on it. Voila! Great crowd pleaser!

We have experimented with the recipe, to find one that suits us – a hungry family of four who like thin and crispy (unsalty) pizzas.

Ingredients (for the dough):

(Updated 28/02/13)
(makes four large thin and crispy pizzas)

  • 400g Strong White Bread Flour
  • 1 teaspoon fast action dried yeast
  • 1 teaspoon caster suger
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • ¾ teaspoon salt
  • 260ml tepid (hand hot) water

Method:

  1. Put the flour, sugar, yeast and salt into a bowl, stir to distribute evenly and make a large well in the middle.
  2. In a jug mix the tepid water (hand hot – i.e. if you put your finger into it it doesn’t feel hot or cold) with the olive oil and pour into the well.
  3. Using a fork or spoon bring the flour in gradually from the sides stirring it into the liquid. Keep stirring, drawing large amounts of flour in until it is just about mixed together.
  4. Leave to stand for 5 minutes (this allows the dough to become less sticky)
  5. Tip the dough out onto a board / worktop sprinkled with flour, and knead until it begins to form a smooth elastic dough. This will take about 5-10 minutes
  6. Oil the bowl lightly. Place the dough back in the bowl and then cover the bowl with clingfilm and place somewhere warm to rise. It will probably take about an hour to double in size.
  7. Once the dough has risen, knock back (= punch it down) and turn out onto the work surface again and knead again briefly. Allow to rest for 10-15 minutes – this makes it easier to work with.
  8. I’ve used this dough for pizza or focaccia
  9. If you’re making pizza:

  10. Cut the dough into four equal pieces. Flour the board and stretch or roll out the dough with a rolling pin into a circle, rectangle or whatever shape you want, to whatever thickness you like. You can do this by hand if you like, but try to keep the pizza base an even thickness all over. We like a fairly thin dough.
  11. Add your toppings and cook – see next post.

For Foccacia:

  1. Roll out the dough and place in a baking tray. Spread the dough out across the bottom of the tray using your hands. It doesn’t have to reach the edges.
  2. Leave in a warm place for about 20-30 mins to rise again
  3. Once risen, mark the top by pushing your fingertips gently down into the dough – you want a fingerprint about every 5 cms or so
  4. Drizzle the top with oil. Scatter over salt, fresh chopped rosemary, and grated cheese – and a twirl of black pepper
  5. Cook in the oven at 220°CC for about 10 mins or until golden on top
  6. Cut into squares and serve

And here’s the finished result!

We’ll let you know in the next post what we did for pizza sauce and how the dough freezing turned out.

 

 

What’s your favourite pizza topping??

 

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Jubilee Apple and Lemon Cupcakes

There is something out-of-this-world-delicious about a good apple cake.
They used to serve Dorset Apple Cake sometimes in our work canteen, and it was a real treat if you could get down there to find that (i) they were selling it that day, and (ii) there was some left by the time you got there!

And then Disaster Struck.
They changed suppliers – and the new supplies of Apple cake are definitely Inferior.

What could I do, but try and create my own recipe – and I have to admit that I’m rather pleased with these.

They don’t claim to be the same as the Lost Apple Cake but actually I think (although I shouldn’t say it) these may be even better than the original. Perhaps it is because they are cupcakes rather than a whole cake, but there is quite a high proportion of apple in them which makes them lovely and moist. With a hint of lemon and cinnamon and with lashings of lemon drizzle icing over the top, they are pretty irresistible! They don’t keep for long – in fact I have to be honest and say that I don’t know how long they keep for as we’ve never managed to keep any for more than a couple of days! – but I’m sure you could keep them for longer.

Whatever – here they are – with a patriotic touch. What could be more English than apple cupcakes decorated in red, white and blue to celebrate the Jubilee?

Jubilee Apple and Lemon Cupcakes

(Makes 24 fairy cakes, or 11 cupcakes)
Fridge to table time: about 45 mins by the time you’ve iced them

You will need:

  • 125g butter (I put in microwave for a few secs to melt a little)
  • 125g soft brown sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 150g self raising flour
  • 1 teasp of baking powder
  • ½ teasp ground cinnamon
  • zest of one lemon
  • juice of ½ a lemon
  • 2 apples (I used Braeburn apples) – peeled and diced small
  • Juice of ½ a lemon
  • about 4 tablespoons of icing sugar

Method:

Cream butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy.

Add two beaten eggs and mix in well.

Slowly add the flour, and the next 3 ingredients, stirring them in well.

OR: (If you’re short on time) Put the first 7 ingredients in a food processor and whiz until mixed.

Then:

Peel and dice the apples. Dicing the apple does that mean that you will end up with little chunks of apple in the cupcakes which give it a lovely moist texture. If you grate the apple or chop it too small in a food processor the apple seems to ‘disappear’ which isn’t what you want at all.
Put the apple in a bowl, add the lemon juice and mix together – to stop the apple turning brown if you take longer than you thought to finish these.

Add the cake mixture to the apples and mix all together

Line the cupcake / bun tins with cake cases

Fill each about ⅔ – ¾ full. Ideally you want to end up with a small gap between the top of the cupcake and the cake case so that the icing doesn’t drizzle off the edge!

Cook at 195°C for 15 – 20 mins for fairy cake size and a little longer (24 mins) for cupcake size – until they are golden brown on top and a cocktail stick pushed into the centre of the cake comes out clean.

Cool on a wire rack

Icing:

Squeeze the juice of half a lemon and add to a bowl containing 4 tablespoons of sifted icing sugar, and mix together gently. Taste! And alter according to how you want it
– more solid or sweeter – add more icing sugar
– more lemon-y or runnier consistency – add more lemon juice

Pour / spread the icing over the top of each cupcake – decorate with grated lemon zest / union jacks / as you wish – if you’re able to keep the children’s hands off them for long enough to finish this!

Happy Jubilee!

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Creamy Chicken and Tomato Pasta

Do you ever have those days when you get home and really don’t want to have to cook supper?
In the ‘Olden Days’ when all I had to worry about was me, I’ld have cracked open a bottle of wine (perhaps not literally…), put my feet up on the sofa and thought about eating something a whole lot later (ahhh – those were the days…). But that’s difficult to do when the kids are hungry and clamouring for food! So it is – of course – best to just knuckle down, ignore the call of the sofa and get on with it – hoping for a peaceful, wine-slurping moment later in the evening!

This recipe is one for just such a night as that – simple, easy and above all quick – it should be on the table in 20 minutes from fridge to table, without alot of stress. Even better – its one of my children’s favourites, so it feels like you’re giving them a treat!
I hope it works for you.

Creamy Chicken and Tomato Pasta

(Serves 4)

Ingredients

  • 1 x 380g pack of chicken mini-fillets
  • 300g cherry tomatoes
  • Chopped fresh herbs (such as thyme, rosemary, basil) or 2 teasp of dried mixed herbs
  • 1 dessertsp olive oil
  • 200g pack of soft cheese such as Philadelphia cheese
  • 400g pasta

Method

  • Put a large pan of water on to boil, and cook the pasta
  • Heat the oil in a pan and fry chicken gently over a medium heat with the herbs
  • Halve the cherry tomatoes and add to frying pan with the chicken
  • When the chicken is cooked through, cut into small chunks
  • Once the pasta is cooked to your liking, drain and return to the saucepan
  • Add a 200g pack of soft cheese to the pasta and stir through the hot pasta until cheese is melting.
  • Add the chicken and tomato mixture together with the juices, to the saucepan and stir once again
  • Serve at once
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Banana Bread

I know there are lots of banana bread recipes, but my family seem especially keen on this one. The preparation for this is about 10 mins, and then you can sit back and put your feet up for an hour or so while it cooks, before enjoying beautiful, melting banana bread straight out of the bread maker (or oven)!

It’s a good recipe for using up over-ripe bananas – in fact, its best made from those that are a bit past their best.

You will need:

  • 225g plain flour
  • 100g soft brown sugar
  • 1 dessertsp baking powder
  • 1 teasp ground cinnamon
  • pinch of salt
  • 2 medium eggs
  • 100g butter, softened (I usually give it 30secs in the microwave)
  • 1 tablesp milk
  • a few drops extract of vanilla
  • 4 medium / 3 large ripe bananas, broken into aproximately 1 inch chunks
  • 150g raisins

Method – if you have a food processor…

Put the first 4 ingredients into the bowl, and then add all the rest apart from the raisins. Whizz until mixed.

Pour into a bowl with the raisins and mix well.

..if you don’t have a food processor

Stir the butter and sugar together in a bowl, until creamy. Add the eggs and continue stirring until well mixed in.

Then add the vanilla, milk and mashed bananas and stir well.

Gradually mix in the flour, cinnamon, salt, and baking powder. Stir well. Finally mix in the raisins.

banana bread mix

I usually cook this in the bread maker. You should follow the instructions for baking in your machine. Mine suggests lining the bottom of the bread-making tin with a layer of baking paper so it will turn out easily when done (take the mixing paddle out first!). Pour in the mixture (which as you can see is fairly gloopy), and then bake in the bread maker for 1 hr and 8 minutes.

If you don’t have a breadmaker, then cook the bread in a greased 2lb loaf tin at 180.C for about 1 hr to 1hr and a quarter (a skewer poked into the middle should come out clean if cooked).

And then all you have to do is eat it!

banana bread

It usually gets eaten as soon as it is anywhere near cool enough. If you try and slice it then it’s all gooey and crumbly (as you can see!) but it tastes delicious with butter melting on top.

banana bread 2

The problem is – it doesn’t last long!….

banana bread board

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Fresh Tomato Pasta Sauce

I guess this is a rather strange picture for a recipe – but I can’t imagine that my picture of fresh tomato sauce would be any different from anybody else’s! (And don’t you think that fusilli looks like an old fashioned helter-skelter close up?)

Anyway – I had some fun with photoshop. At least my children think its cool. My eldest has suggested trying to animate it – now that would be a challenge! But maybe that would be going a bit far …….. ?

I was going to put this recipe in an earlier post, but somehow got distracted (blame photoshop). It is one of the quickest I know, and rewards the surprisingly short time you spend on it with a very tasty result.

Its worth trying to use really ripe tomatoes. Serve it with crusty french bread and a green salad.

Here’s the recipe – I hope you enjoy it – Oh, and here’s a picture too!


Fresh Tomato Pasta Sauce

Serves: 4
Fridge-to-Table Time: <20 mins

Ingredients

  • 1 red pepper
  • Approximately 12-16 ripe medium tomatoes, depending on how hungry you are
  • olive oil (~2 tablesp)
  • 1 tablesp balsamic vinegar
  • A bunch of spring onions (optional)
  • 200g feta cheese
  • ~10 fresh basil leaves
  • Pasta for 4 (fresh makes this quicker)

Method

  1. Fill a large saucepan with water ready for the pasta. Cooking the pasta is probably the rate-limiting step with this recipe so get that on as soon as you can.
  2. Wash the vegetables.
  3. Turn the grill onto high and then deseed and roughly chop the pepper. Put the pieces in a roasting dish and drizzle with oil.
  4. Place under the grill for 3-4 minutes whilst you get on with preparing tomatoes. Keep an eye on them just to make sure they don’t start to singe.
  5. Quarter the tomatoes, and slice the spring onions (white parts only).
  6. Put the pasta into boiling water when ready.
  7. Remove the peppers from grill. Add the tomato halves, spring onions, a little more olive oil and balsamic vinegar and stir all together ensuring that everything ends up spread out evenly over the tray in one layer. Return to the grill for another 7 minutes or so until the tomatoes soften.
  8. Meanwhile, chop the basil leaves, chop/crumble the feta into small pieces and mix both together.
  9. When the vegetables are ready remove the tray from grill. Mash the tomatoes a little using a potato masher to release the juices. Scatter over half of the feta/basil mixture and return to the grill with the heat turned off, just to keep warm whilst the pasta finishes cooking.
  10. Drain the pasta and serve with sauce, with the remaining half of the feta mixture to scatter on top, warm crusty bread and a green salad
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Chicken and Leek Soup

It’s been a strange year, hasn’t it? I was taking photos like this, of all the autumn colours only a couple of weeks ago, when we should have moved gradually into winter ages ago!

Now – almost overnight – we’ve got forecasts of SNOW! (Yes – I’m one of those people that thinks that Christmas is not Christmas unless there’s snow – even though I doubt they had snow in Bethlehem…..). But I have just checked the ‘Santa Snow Checker’ (yes, there really is one) and he says that there’s only a 10% chance of snow where we live. Here’s hoping…

Snow or not, it is definitely COLD and these sorts of icy days make me think of lovely thick warming soup – and this soup will warm you right down to your toes! Serve it with hot crusty bread and it’s a meal in its own right. It’s a good way to use up leftover cooked chicken – or I guess you could try turkey, although as we’re not turkey fans I haven’t tried that – let me know how it turns out if you do.

Chicken and Leek Soup

Serves: 4-6
Fridge to table time: 30mins

Ingredients

  • Approximately 300g cooked chicken (or whatever you have left) – diced
  • 1 onion – chopped small
  • 4 leeks (approximately 500g – white parts sliced thinly and washed (or buy ready sliced – much easier!)
  • 2 medium potatoes – chopped small
  • 50g butter
  • 750mls vegetable stock
  • 250mls milk
  • 100g frozen peas

Method

  1. Melt the butter in a large thick-bottomed pan.
  2. Add the onion, leeks and potato to the pan and stir till they are all covered in butter. Turn down the heat, cover the pan and leave vegetables to cook gently for 5-10 mins till soft.
  3. Add the vegetable stock to the leek and potato mixture. Bring to the boil, season and simmer for 10 mins until the vegetables are cooked. Remove from heat.
  4. Puree only half the soup, leaving the rest unpureed so that the soup ends up with lovely satisfying chunks of vegetables in it.
  5. Put soup into a saucepan with the chicken pieces and peas. Bring to boil and simmer for 3-4 mins until the peas are cooked. Season and serve with warm crusty rolls.

Hope you enjoy it!

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What’s in Your Freezer?

My freezer is dead.
Or at least dying.
Or perhaps something is killing it??

Anyway – its stopped working three times in the last month. The trip switch just clicks off in the middle of the night and we come down in the morning to a quiet, non-functioning freezer, dripping in the corner.
It’s a big freezer – taller than me and I’m tall – so it can store alot. So there’s a lot of food to eat suddenly – we are poorer but our neighbours seem to like us…

So – I now have to start again. Which made me think – what should a respectable too-busy-to-cook cook have in their freezer?
Or even – should I have a freezer at all? Yes, I confess I did wonder that (fleetingly).

You only have to turn on the TV to see yet another celebrity chef rummaging through their vegetable patch or tripping through the market looking for lovely fresh ingredients. And there is no doubt that really fresh food can taste delicious! But for for mere mortals like me who do the internet shopping once a week and have been known to find things at the bottom of the vegetable drawer that have been there so long they are virtually unidentifiable – then freezing has alot going for it!

what should you freeze2

So – what should you have in your freezer? I read an article once in which some celebrity said that he kept paint brushes in the freezer. I’ve never quite managed to work out why one might want to do that (thought I’m sure there was a good reason?) so I don’t think I’ll put them on the list. I’m more of a use-the-freezer-to-keep-food-in sort of person myself!

So – I came up with this list of the Top Ten Things to keep in my freezer:

  1. Frozen veg – peas / sweetcorn etc – for those times when you need to produce a meal but its been days since you’ve had the chance to get to the shops for anything fresh
  2. Frozen chopped herbs – garlic and ginger, although you can get others. A packet lasts forever and its a really quick and convenient way to add herbs to things
  3. Ice-cream – ordinary for the kids and a nicer variety that you can use as an emergency pudding if friends drop in
  4. Bread – sliced bread that you can toast direct from the freezer for breakfasts and part-baked rolls, or those breads / rolls that need a bit of cooking before eating for sandwich lunches.
  5. Ice – because it is nice in drinks, although maybe not so much at this time of year!
  6. Semi-skimmed milk – in plastic bottles! Although they can make a terrible mess in the freezer if – like me – you forget to freeze them upright and the top pops off. Also – its not really a last minute solution as it seems to take longer than you ever thought possible to defrost – and if you start using it too early or forget to shake it before using it all the watery bits come off off first
  7. Butter – for emergencies
  8. ‘Take-away’ – I freeze one of those ready meal take-aways you can get from the supermarkets, for those nights that you don’t feel like cooking or like driving out to the take-away
  9. One or two meals that I’ve cooked before and frozen when I’m feeling efficient – and also some that can be cooked directly from the freezer
  10. and for number 10? I don’t know – perhaps I should think about the paint brush?

What have I forgotten? And what do you have in yours? – please let me know.

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