All souped up!

13^th December 2017

Hold on to whatever keeps you warm inside.

I don’t think that quote means my red wine does it?  Anyhow at the moment the thing I’m holding onto is Night Nurse, it’s got me through the last two nights making sure I slept really well and that’s the main thing.

My meetings may have been light on numbers yesterday thanks to the snow but it wasn’t low of laughter and weight loss, handed out a few certificates, celebrated with quite a few who’d had nights out and Christmas parties and still managed to lose weight, awesome. 

I spent my afternoon in the kitchen because we’re having the hall, stairs and landing decorated so I wanted to be out of the way.  I decided to finally have a go at the curry lentil soup, I didn’t want to go and buy loads of ingredients so opened the fridge to find 3 peppers (1 red, 1 yellow, 1 orange), I diced them and 4 onions, fried the onions in a tablespoon of oil (4sp), I added a few crushed cloves of garlic too, then added 7sp of Pataks balti paste (about 85g) added red lentils (what was left in the packet which I think was about 150g), then I added some brown lentils, sorry I didn’t weigh them but about 80g or so I’d guess.  Next I poured on some boiling water with 3 vegetable stock cubes and simmered it until it was cooked, then I used my hand blender and whizzed it and I have to say it was lush.  I know it used 11sp to make but there’s a big pan full.

Next I decided to make Yellow split pea dhal using the recipe on the packet.  I had most of the ingredients and I decided to double up the recipe and take for my members to try.  The recipe for that was

Yellow Pea Dal 

Serves 2

225g Natco yellow split peas

3 tbsp Natco butter ghee (I used 1 tbsp veg oil 4sp)

1 tsp Natco cumin seeds

1 small onion, chopped

2 tomatoes, chopped (I didn’t have fresh so used tinned)

1 tsp salt

700ml water

2 garlic cloves, crushed

1/4 tsp Natco turmeric powder

1/2 tsp Natco chilli powder

Method Heat the ghee in a saucepan, add the cumin seeds and fry for 1 min.  Add the onion and fry until lightly browned. Stir in the garlic, turmeric, chilli, tomato and salt and cook for 2 mins. Add the water and split peas, bring to the boil, cover and simmer for 20 mins, until the split peas are tender. Garnish with fresh coriander and serve with Natco Basmati rice.

Whilst this was cooking I made another batch of lentil soup but didn’t have any peppers or red lentils so this time I used

Green lentils

7 onions (diced)

1 tbsp oil

2 carrots (diced)

10sp of balti paste

Hot water

The other half tin of tomatoes

Fried onions in oil, added carrots, then tomatoes and paste, topped up with water and simmered.

When both had cooked, I wasn’t overly impressed by either to be honest (the first one was far superior), I personally could taste the tomato over everything, I’m just not a fan of that flavour being the predominant taste.  I decided to mix the two pans together and whizz them all up and made a huge amount of yellow split pea and lentil curry soup and I have to say it went down very well in my meetings.  They didn’t get to taste the first one as I’ve kept it for myself, I plan to drink it throughout today to try and ward off this proper good dose of lurgy I have, I don’t feel poorly in myself, it’s just attacking me good and taking my voice now, tonight’s meetings will be fun!  It won’t be the first time I’ve managed to get through a meeting with barely any voice.

I need to use up my eggs now, got over a dozen with use by 18^th on them, I can’t believe I haven’t had eggs since last week sometime.  That’s so not like me!  Omelette for breakfast I think, could make some scotch eggs like I’ve been seeing on Facebook, or egg fried rice, it won’t be hard to use them up will it.  I’m saving some pennies not shopping that’s for sure.  I’m going to do my next main food shop a week today, until then we’ll live on what we have.  I love the idea of empty food cupboards ready for Christmas week, then buying just enough for the week, then ready for a healthy start to the new year with good healthy food.

Oh I have some leftover mash too, what to do with that today…

I could use a tin of stewed steak and top it with mash or potato cakes, I’ll think of something, but for now I need to get a wriggle on the painter man will be here in 20 minutes, I need to get the living room tidied as he’s gonna be doing in there too, once the clutters cleared he can do where he wants when he wants.  My kitchen needs painting again because cracks have appeared in the paint but I’m going to leave that till end January and then hopefully all the cracks that will appear will have done their thing by then. 

Right here’s to an awesome day, hoping for lots of rain to wash this snow away!