For the love of sprouts

A bit of a bonus blog today! Not the ultimate flapjack, more the ultimate sprout...

I'm on a mission to convert all sprout-haters with this dish, which we've enjoyed (hugely) for lunch this week. It's so good, we had it twice!

1. Get over-excited in the vegetable aisle and grab a very large bag of Brussels sprouts. I had 750g here, and that fed two of us twice - serves four, indeed!

2. Make sure you have enough cold, cooked rice for however many you are feeding. I use brown basmati and use a handful dry per person. Add cold water to a thumbnail's depth, slap a lid on, bring to a boil then simmer for 20 minutes. Turn off the heat and leave to steam, for at least 10 minutes. Either eat straight away or cool quickly and store in the fridge.

2. Gently cook a little tub of pancetta cubes in a large non-stick pan or wok until they release their own fat. When the fat is melted, add a small, chopped onion and soften it in the fat. If you are after a vegetarian option, you could cook a chopped red pepper with the onion, in a tablespoon or so of olive oil until they are lightly caramelised.

3. While the pancetta and onion are doing their thing (or before you start if you are hyper-organised) trim off the outer leaves then shred the sprouts really finely; I use a big, sharp knife to do this but I suppose you could use a food processor (a knife is slower but easier to clean!)

4. Add a teaspoon or so of frozen chopped red chilli, or a pinch of chilli flakes, or one small finely chopped red chilli to the pan, cook for a few minutes, then add the sprouts.

5. Turn up the heat and keep everything moving about so it cooks but doesn't burn. You can add a tablespoon of oil (olive oil or coconut) or a knob of butter if it looks a bit dry. Keep cooking until the sprouts are cooked, no longer squeaky raw, but not too charred.

6. Add the grated zest of half or a whole lemon (for two or four people, respectively) then add the rice and keep stirring and flipping until it is heated through.

7. Add a squeeze of lemon juice and a twist of black pepper, then take off the heat and quickly stir through grated Parmesan - 15g for two people, 30g for four. Serve immediately and enjoy!

I defy anyone to hate sprouts after eating them this way. I can't abide soggy boiled sprouts, but I could eat them like this every day.

The good the bad and the inedible

Seems like the culinary bad form that started before Christmas continues unabated. But I digress! The good this week includes:

• this little chappie putting in another star appearance:

(as I said last time, more details later!)

• getting an awful lot of the To Do list accomplished, including my own piano practice, exercise, stretching and yoga, a daily gratitude list, keeping on top of the housework, fixing things around the house including the Girl's school bag (not buying another one!). Why this sudden rash of efficiency? The new toy! Apps! Who knew? Well, everyone else it seems. 

• It has been very funny teasing Mr "what would anyone need an iPad for" when he pinches the new toy to play with spotify and check the weather and the tv schedule...

• getting all this lot of fabric swatches for just £3

• spending time playing and arranging same. I'm going to stitch them all together into a giant patchwork and make a "door" curtain for the bottom of the stairs (which open straight into the living room). The lengths we go to do get a bit of privacy to do some shoulder stands without people laughing...

Never mind that the last time I did patchwork I made enough to make a big pair of curtains for the Girl's room and a cot quilt, and swore never to do it again. But that was before we knew it was Girl and it was just Bump and the memory has obviously got a bit hazy.

• collecting this lovely assortment of bits on my desk. I think I need a goal, target, some sort of forward thinking instead of randomly collecting bits of stuff. Something like deciding to make something, anything, using all the bits that arrive in any one day. Now that would be a New Year challenge...The pile has since been added to with some parcel packaging paper - dutifully smoothed out and folded, with what intention? To paint? When?! Do it now Girl!

• 16th Night Crumble

I think we've the fixings for one more. The dregs of the mincemeat, the dried up block of marzipan, the frozen cranberries. Hooray! (NB we don't usually put sugar on top, someone forgot to put it in the crumble mix but wouldn't listen to me when I said it would be OK without).

And the bad?

• Having a list with 19 things on it this morning. 19!! That's crazy. Thank goodness for the new toy to keep tabs on everything. Admittedly some of them only take 5 minutes, but they are usually the most important for health and sanity and the most likely to get dropped in the past.

• Straight back into the new term with a new time-sucking activity aka Moodle. In the long run I can see it will make things easier and save a lot of time. But for now? I'm not exactly the best when it comes to filing systems (see my Twitter profile) so to let me loose with something that involves doing exactly that with all the teaching resources and links I could possibly need...it's getting ugly.

• The other great time-sucking activity aka the new toy...sigh.

And the inedible?

• Tonight's dinner. I thought I would scale up the "fish in a parcel with leek and carrot ribbons and white wine" idea and just cook enough for three in one big covered dish. Don't Ever Do This. It did not end well. Even the Bokashi wasn't sure and had to be persuaded. Luckily there was pudding...

Apart from the crumble mojo (which is mostly Mr G's) I do hope the culinary skills return before tomorrow evening: I'm attempting lemon posset...now there's a word that always sets the Girl giggling for some reason!

Chasing my tail

Nothing new there then!

Why is a half-term "holiday" busier than a normal week?

Maybe it's something to do with the presence of a Small Child who actually isn't that small any more...

I started the week with all sorts of good intentions, including finishing my pencil bundle:

But that's as far as I've got.

I read a book about pencil sketching while waiting to donate a pint of blood last Tuesday.  I got all inspired and even called in at the shops on the way home to buy some more pencils (ahem, like I didn't already have any...). 

So much for that then.

We did make it out to our favourite Sunday morning place though, and stopped a while to smell the Daphne:

and admire some magnificent fungi

And the past two days I have cleared away all the dead things from the garden.  (By dead things I do just mean stalks and twigs and lacy old courgette stems and six-foot dried fennel stems, nothing more gruesome than that...)

It's still cold, but there is hope - little buds and green bits poking their noses out of the ground despite the frost lingering in the shady bits i.e. all of my back garden - I found a wonderful disc of ice on the top of the Girl's green bucket...

Tomorrow we are off to see this exhibition minus the Small Person.  I'm sure the Small Person would very much enjoy a trip to London and a museum, but I'm also sure the Small Person's attention span would be shorter than mine and Trouble would ensue and it would end in tears and grumpiness (from both of us).

Finally, this evening I've been particularly busy with some heroic kitchen action:  I looked in the fridge earlier and discovered eight pints of milk that was all about to go out of date.

So far I've made a toad-in-the-hole, custard, cheese sauce, a mammoth rice pudding, 30 drop scones, a pint of yoghurt and a ginger cake...was there anything else I could have done?!

Maybe it's time for a cocoa...