Hooray! Recession is here and I can now go into to full on cheap scape mode without actually feeling cheap.

I love to scrimp. Its in my blood. Its fun! It uses all that intelligence, imagination and creativity that normally just gets wasted making money.

I read this article about a woman who survived on £1 a day for a year (after she payed her rent and presumably energy bills council tax, tampons, drugs, stylist….)  So I thought WOW! Bugger that for a joke.

But tonight I found myself in Tescos, shopping for the evening meal and I started to feel…the challenge. Could I do it?

Nope! Not in central London. But I did buy mushrooms off the REDUCED cart without feeling dirty. They were 38p instead of 78p. At this rate I can see the mountains of cash piling up before my very eyes.

But all sarcasm aside. I have a large vegetable bake in the oven which will provide dinner tonight and lunch tomorrow for me and my sqeaze. Buttenut pumpkin, Spanish onion, artichoke, garlic, cheap mushrooms, eggs, cheese, bread crumbs on top. Mmmm. Anyway, all up with a bottle of cheap Spanish wine? £9.

So four meals and plonky donk for 9 squid. Alright!

And the recession even nudged me to dry fry the seeds I scooped out of the pumkin (squish them out of the pulp so you have mostly just seeds the pulp that sticks to them will coat them. I put in a few drops of oil toward the end) and we are having them now as an awesome pre dinner snack. Served with a very expensive imported beer that Brett bought yesterday. Hey that doesn’t count!

Low fat or low carb? Which is the way to podge busting heaven?

This little dish I just invented is both. And it’s a taste sensation.

Serves 1 or 2.

You need a non stick pan.

1 Onion and some garlic (sliced)

1 big zuccini (grated)

Big hand full of grated Mozzarella cheese - its a low fat cheese.

Pinenuts

Black olives

Herbs (preferably fresh but dried thyme, basil or any Italian style herbs are fine)

Gently dry saute the onion and garlic.

When the onion starts to get a bit too dry throw in the grated zuccini which will release moisture.

When it looks soft (a couple of minutes) top it with grated mozzarella, pinenuts, black olives and herbs.

Put the pan under the grill until the mozzarella has just melted and welded it all together.

Let it cool a bit and serve!

I just made ONE scone! I felt like a scone, but didn’t want to make a whole batch so I invented the single scone recipe. And it turned out really really well! Possibly the best scone ever made.
The measurements are just dessert spoons. Of course to make x scones you can just multiply all the measurements by x.
Ingredients:

3 slightly heaped spoon fulls of self raising flour

2 spoon fulls of lemonade

2 spoon fulls of milk

1 spoon full of olive oil

Thats it!

Stir them all together lightly with a fork just until the flour disolves into the wet stuff. It will look lumpy, but don’t worry it puffs up in the oven. You should have a small wodge about the size of a peach. It should be quite a loose ball, but not runny. So you need a spoon to move it to the tray, but only just. A bit like oatmeal porridge.
Plonk it onto a piece of greased baking paper in some kind of oven dish and bake for between 10 and 15 minutes on a fairly warm setting - about 200 degrees C.

Eat it with jam and cream or just butter. I had mine with jam and Greek yogurt. YUM.

Gee wizz, I always thought those Intelligent Design advocates were a bunch of dumb bunnys, but check out this clip on Youtube. You’ll never look at christians eating bananas the same way again.

I can’t help but wonder what they’d do with a pineapple…

In case the link below doesn’t work it’s called Atheists Nightmare.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4yBvvGi_2A

This Dhal is my version of a dish I used to get from an Indian Restaurant in Sydney. It tastes just like the original (to me) although not as fatty. They probably used ghee… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghee

This makes a fair sized side dish. You must use FRESH ginger and lime (or lemon).
Bring to the boil:

• 1 cup of red lentils
• 2 or 3 cups of water

then simmer for about half and hour. They’ll be fairly smooth and soupy when they’re done.
When they are nearly done saute the following in a little oil for a couple of minutes:

• one small onion finely diced
• 6 cardamom pods
• 4 gloves of garlic crushed
• level teaspn ground turmeric
• level teaspn ground cumin

Stir it or it’ll burn! Throw this into the lentil’s pot along with:

• a thumb length knob of fresh ginger grated
• a slice of lime
• the rest of the lime juice.
• a small knob of butter
• pinch of salt

Let the whole lot simmer for ten minutes or so or until the lentils are soft and smoothish.

Delishimo!

My sweet honeybun took me to Coombe Abbey near Coventry for my birthday weekend. What a treat! It’s a twelfth century abbey that is now a luxury hotel and has extensive grounds to wander around in. We had a lovely relaxing break.

You can find loads of these kinds of places all over the UK and France on this site:

http://www.celticcastles.com/

I brought home two beautiful pine cones from the park. Their form is just so rigidly sensuous. I love them.

No matter how nice it is to go away it’s always nice to come home, back to the nest. I made an awsome lentil soup and we watched Down By Law (Jim Jarmusch).

Lentil soup recipe: Serves 2.
Ingredients

1 ‘take away container’ of cooked lentils
(I cook em up in a big batch and freeze them in take away containers or you can buy them canned)

1 onion diced.
2 teaspoons of whole coriander seeds (this is a must!)
1 fresh red chilli (or tons of chilli powder)
1 can of crushed tomatoes
1 zucchini (courgette) diced
1 capsicum (pepper) diced
Teaspoon each of dried herbs, salt and pepper. Tomato paste is good too.
Saute the onions and corriander seeds till the onions are soft. Then add the chilli and the other vegies and herbs. Stir over a medium heat till they are all smelling like friends. Then add the lentils and canned tomatoes (and tomatoe paste). Add some water if it’s all too dry.
Simmer till it looks good enough to eat (About 15 minutes)!