Simple Italian vegetable tomato sauce

This sauce was concocted in a daydream. That daydream meant I thought of nothing else all day. So I made it as soon as I got home! A few tins of tomatoes, left over vegetables (carrot, celery, red pepper, tomatoes, mushroom, garlic cloves and Italian seasoning). All on a low simmer for couple of hours…

Pantry essential – freezing vegetables

I just can’t have a full fridge. If it looks too much, then a bulk cooking frenzy begins in earnest where I make everything into something. There is always carrots, celery and frozen peas in my house. And bagged up into portions, they make the essential ingredient to my shepherd’s pie (along with my bulk…

Hearty root vegetable mash

A great way to get kids into more veggies is by making it into something flavoursome and colourful to boot. We eat mash potatoes frequently and I just need a change. So I chopped and froze bagged portions of parsnip, sweet potato and butternut squash to boil and turn into scrummy winter mash as an…

Kitchen garden

I’ve said it before, this summer has been dreadful for fresh veggies in our garden. We’ve bee so lucky to have had an abundance of produce in the last few years since I got my eldest daughter involved in the planting and picking. But this year so far, the beans went, the carrots weren’t much…

Food terminology

I watch and read a lot of cooking shows and books from the USA, Australia and the UK. The terminology is so different because across the oceans, food and the process of cooking is simply known by other names. It took me while to work out what Arugula and Scallions were, for example. This is…

Pea and lettuce soup

Using up ALL the veggie content in the fridge before the weekend. So tonight I made another addition to my homemade soup trial. Lettuce and pea (with red onion, spring onion, chicken stock and lemon juice). So easy…

Italian chicken and Mediterranean tray bake

Chicken marinated in my homemade Italian seasoning and cooked over some courgette, colourful pepper, red onion and cherry tomatoes…

My veggie collection

I am on a massive budget / finance drive and coming back to reality after our 2 week holiday and a water bill on our return, maybe wasn’t the best time to start. So yesterday I had to do a veggie shop (with what was sadly available). A fair few spuds, a massive courgette, 2…

Chantenay carrots

This year our crop of beans hasn’t been too great; mix of unseasonable weather and either too much sun or a deluge of rain. But the tomatoes are on their way and now we have our first batch of chantenay carrots. Having never grown these or yellow courgettes, let’s see how the rest of summer…

Veggie dishes

Today we’ve gone veggie. An all out vegetarian lunch for some visiting friends and I won’t lie, as an avid meat eater, it’s been really hard. But I did make some butter bean curry with rice and a chickpea and veggie tagine. Plus a simple Greek-ish salad with feta. Devoured down with naan and pitta…