Thursday 9 July 2009

I'm still around..and news!

I feel slightly guilty that my blogging of late has been a little sporadic and not very exciting, as some of you will know I was made redundant back in April, without warning, and thus resulted in a rather large dent in the weekly shopping bill!

However, it has been a couple of weeks in the process but I am now *very* pleased to report that I have a new job, at last, which I will be starting hopefully in the next week or two!! I am in process of completely re-training and looking forward to a big change!! I also can't wait to get back to actually affording good ingredients again!!

By nature, whilst I love ingredients like expensive aged rib-eye steaks, I also am a bargain hunter and having a lot less money has resulted in a few good and interesting dishes, which will probably become regulars here!

A favourite was a gammon risotto, made using a small Basics unsmoked gammon joint which was about £1.80, also I had some romaine lettuce that needing eating so it got shredded and added at the end, a new one on me but it tasted great and gave the risotto a little crunch!



Also a good dinner was courgettes, fried and cooked with tinned tomatoes and a tin of mixed bean, along with chillis and garlic:



Whilst it needs a little tweaking, this good value bake made from tomato & oregano ravaoli, topped with a tomato and red onion sauce, slices of Basics pepperoni and basics mozzarella, grilled until golden, will be featuring again:



Unfortunately, amongst all the good I suppose there has to be some bad - these rather attractive looking Peach Melba cheesecakes, made to a Waitrose recipe, went swiftly into the bin! Please do not ever use light soft cheese to make cheesecake, unless of course you particuarly like the taste of fruit with soured cream flavouring...However the fruit topping part was good, so I will be making again - but with the full fat soft cheese!

10 comments:

  1. (I should have stopped here first) I am so happy you are starting your new job soon!
    Looks like you have been doing loads of cooking - shame about the cheesecake, I like to use mascarpone when I make it in the individual glasses, no sour taste.

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  2. Anne this is wonderful news on your new job I am SO pleased for you!! Every dish looks amazing and so temptingly good I wouldn't know which one to try first.

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  3. Congrats on your new job-hope all goes well! Looks like you made some tasty and great budget meals!xxx

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  4. That's great news! congratulations on the new job.

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  5. Congratulations Anne! That's brilliant news! Be sure to fill me in on all the details soon girlie! I haven't been around much either, so I am on the apology bandwagon too. I love the look of your courgette, tomato and bean dish. Yum, all that needs is some crusty bread to mop up the sauce, Mmmmmmmm :P

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  6. Congratulations on your new job!

    Lovely cooking too :)

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  7. Congratulations on the new job!!

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  8. Congrats on the new job, hope it's living up to expectations LOL

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  9. Congratulations on the new job - hope it's going really well. You must be really pleased!

    I thought I'd commented ages ago, but better late than never!

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  10. You have such a lovely blog..

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Thanks for stopping by my kitchen! I love to hear your thoughts and comments on my recipes!

Anne

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