Minnie's Soup Kitchen

What a month it's been! The spouse celebrated a milestone birthday and had surgery five days later. I've continued to bake at a frenetic pace in preparation for an event I'm hosting to mark International Women's Day . I wrote a poem about reading an anthology of diary extracts ( The Assassin's Cloak , edited by Irene and Alan Taylor ). I re-joined the gym (but haven't been exercising there). I completed two panels of a throw I'm knitting. Oh, what a busy woman I am. Just as well there was an extra day in the month.  On the savoury front, I made: ￫ a sausage, bacon and onion casserole using venison sausages from our local butcher (recipe from Fiona Beckett's Sausage and Mash ). Delicious.  ￫ toad in the hole using sausages with black pudding from the nearby German store (recipe from Bridget Jones' Complete Comfort Food ). I love toad in the hole and the batter recipe was glorious!  ￫ vegetable moussaka (also from Complete Comfort Food ). Not ...

Cabbage Patched with Pork Banana gingerbread I first made French cabbage soup ( The Soup Book recipe) in October 2012 and on checking my blog entry I see that I was not impressed with it. I made it again last week but this time I served it with fried slices of pork steak which I had coated with sun-dried tomato paste. It was a good combination: the tomato paste helped to disguise the blandness of the soup. Medley of Gingerbread, Muffins and Chocolate Slice Baking is still my favourite activity. I recently made Paul Flynn's banana gingerbread - a favourite in this house for many years. Sometimes I make things because I have an ingredient I want to use up before its expiry date. For example, a packet of muesli has been languishing in a cupboard so I made muffins with it. They weren't too sweet and were well received both at home and at work. Muesli muffins Next I was under orders from a colleague to make something nice for her before she gave up goodies f...

Over the land is April  Coconut and pine nut cookies Over the land is April, Over my heart a rose; Over the high, brown mountain The sound of singing goes. Thanks to Robert Louis Stevenson for the title of this entry. April activity This month I made Chetna Makan's coconut and pine nut cookies. Distracted by something, I left them in the oven a little too long. Even so, I quite liked them but I'm not sure that my tasting audience was hugely impressed. Easter bark with Smarties I haven't bought a copy of Good Housekeeping for a long time so I treated myself to the April 2017 issue. There were lots of tempting chocolate cake recipes but I opted for the fairly straightforward Easter bark recipe . I made two batches: one with the suggested chopped mini eggs, the other with chopped up Smarties. These were very much appreciated by my tasting audience. Sometimes I have to remind myself of why I started writing this blog: to encourage...