Tom Cruise has been filming some scenes for the latest Mission Impossible movie about 15 miles away from here. Doing the usual spy capers….fighting on top of a speeding steam train.
Usually he’s trying to save the world from apocalypse….
If he’s braving the Yorkshire weather then it must be a really big world threat this time. Something truly horrifying must be going down in Yorkshire. In a separate note I’m about to bake a cake.
Somebody is happy..l
Once a muppet always a muppet.
Thursday night is chip night here. When we moved into this little house on the hill two decades ago we quickly found out the real pace of village life. The ultimate highlight of the week here was the Thursday night visit from the mobile chip van. It parked in the road 50 yards from our house. Rapidly the tradition of Thursday Chip night was set. Eventually we even discovered that the new mad dog was also a chip monster. His favourite food.
A pandemic then happened.
Suddenly Hawklad was not comfortable with getting chips from the van. So we stopped being part of the chip social. But the tradition lived on. Now replaced with oven chips. A vegetarian pie for me and skinless sausages for Hawklad. And yes a small plate of chips for the mad one.
So last night was THURSDAY. Time to dine like royalty. Well that was the plan. If you look back a few months you will see a certain muppet falling fowl of the crime of not labelling freezer items. Guess what happened last night. No pies were available from the store so it was time to root around in the deepest recesses of the chest freezer. Success a fine looking pie. Maybe a mushroom one. Maybe a Quorn one.
Chips and a pie smothered in Tomato Ketchup, salt and vinegar. Result…..
The reality sweet cherry pie is and interesting taste sensation when combined with vinegar and ketchup. Heston Blumenthal eat your heart out….
Luckily the second pie found was a better fit…….
Warning this post contains some disturbing baking images.
This house had an idea. Some next level pancakes….
Not content with messing up normal pancakes let’s go a stage further. Pancake sandwiches. So what filling could we go for?
Chocolate biscuits. Carefully warmed chocolate biscuits. How hard could that be.
First Try….
Erm…. As Spock would say ‘it’s a chocolate biscuit filling Jim but not as we know it’.
After a number of other shocking tries we finally produced this….
We can officially call this a warmed chocolate biscuit filled pancake sandwich.
The message here. If keep throwing punches, you might be the worst boxer ever, but eventually one will land.
It is a beautiful planet.
What is never beautiful is my food skills. What words are more appropriate.
Abomination
Shocking
Horrible
Disaster
Dreadful
Petrifying
Well today I almost outdid myself. Nearly messed up the easiest thing. All I had to do was make strawberry jelly. The supermarket didn’t send the Jelly Cubes but that was not a major issue. I had rather cleverly put aside a packet of the powder jelly just in case.
So I came to make the said jelly. All I had to do was add boiling water, stir then put the bowl in the fridge. So I emptied the powder into the bowl, added the water and stirred.
Ok why is strawberry jelly brown coloured……
I continued to stir expected it to turn red eventually. No that is definitely brown. Now it was time to check the jelly packet. Ok ot was the same shape as a jelly packet. The same colour as the normal brand of jelly we buy. BUT the words STRAWBERRY JELLY did not feature that prominently. What did feature prominently was the words CHINESE BROWN GRAVY.
In my defence why would you put Brown Gravy in a bright Red Jelly looking packet…
Jelly is off today’s menu, Stir Fry is strangely very much on….
Oh no it’s pancakes. I have been let back into the kitchen. How can I wreck the pancakes this year. Like most things baking – they don’t come naturally to me. So this year the ingredients are ready. Carefully measured out.
What could possibly go wrong…
AND the results…..
Where do I start….
Not exactly round. Not exactly fluffy and light think putty. Either to thin or verging on a bread loaf. The taste well I thought ‘delicate, unobtrusive flavouring’ while Hawklad thought ‘tasteless mush only saved by mountains of sugar’.
So somewhere between 5 out of 10 to 1 out of 100. But here’s the thing. Pancake Day was special this year. Really special. It made the day DIFFERENT. In these lockdown times that makes it special.
A lovely, inspiring sky.
Time to be inspired in the kitchen.
It was Sunday so it was time for Stew. A vegetarian, gluten free concoction. Add Moroccan Seasoning and it should be good to go in two hours.
Yes it looked like Moroccan Stew. But that Sunday it was anything but that….
Some muppet was inspired to pick up with wrong spice bottle. For one night only I had Cinnamon Stew. Heston Blumenthal eat your heart out…
It was a shocker. I was inspired to bin the main course and feast on crisps. Cheese and Onion crisps. It’s never ending Michelin eating here.
An apple crumble. One of my apple crumbles. Actually not a bad one at all. Very tasty.
Unfortunately not all crumbles are the same. Certainly not mine. Like the one I made a couple of nights back. All seemed on track. Apples picked from the tree. Apples cored, peeled and cut into pieces. Placed in a bowl and seasoned – generous helpings of sugar added – these are sour apples. Then a fine gluten free crumble was made and applied lovingly to the pie dish. The crumble was cooked at the right temperature and for the right time. A beautiful custard was prepared. Just perfect. What could possibly go wrong.
“Dad I can’t taste any apples. In fact I can’t find any apples in my portion!”
Nonsense must be there Hawklad. Your just imagining that……
Oh hang on I can’t find any apples in my portion as well, just crumble and custard….
**** So I went into the kitchen and there on the table was the unused bowl of apples. I had made Apple Crumble Surprise. The surprise being that it contained no apples. ****
Wouldn’t it be great to fly. To just fly. No need for a baggage check in, security and long waits in the Terminal. Just to fly under your own steam, when and wherever. Given the size of my bum during these lockdown days, that would have to me some mighty wingspan to get me airborne. Buttocks like mine are the reason that they invented super sized planes like the 747 with those massive engines.
“Dad have you lost that weight you said you were going to before the summer…”
Yes I did set a goal of shedding some weight.
“You actually said it would be 14lbs which is 6.3kg’s. So how are you doing?”
I am probably about 6.3kg’s short of the goal currently…..
“So what’s gone wrong?”
I’m exercising really hard but I’m just not getting any long runs. Without the runs it’s a real struggle to get my heart rate above 100 during the exercise. But the main problem is the food. I’m having to eat Soya and some Gluten products. These just make me blow up as if I’m pregnant.
“Are you sure your not pregnant?”
Pretty sure, although we have some of your old baby clothes somewhere – just in case. Those food types just make my abdomen and face puff up. It takes ages for my system to try and process them. When the shop gets a better range of things back in, then things will improve.
“Arnold Schwarzenegger became pregnant in that movie. Look how much money he has now. Just saying……Instead of soya and gluten stuff, Dad, why don’t you just eat salads and soups…”
*******
Yes we could all do with some more money but call me a coward, not that way please…. But Hawklad does have a good point. I’ve just switched to the soya and gluten alternatives without really thinking. Salads would be far better for me. I’ve become lazy, stopped making things like soups and stews. So from today my body becomes a temple. A well cared for one. Now I don’t have an excuse, that weight has to come off now. Either that or it’s a remake of the movie Junior….
Yesterdays announcement of my new signature dish – The Pizza Cheesecake – seemed to be as popular as Trump announcing that he would be starting to model revealing beach costumes…. So I have decided to slightly tweak the dish. Just a superficial change. I’ve kept the base and ditched the rest of the cake. So it’s goodbye pizza and hello to strawberry, blueberry and marshmallow cheesecake.
It might not look much but wow it tasted good. Definitely my new dish.
Warning… if you don’t like this version of the cake then I will may be forced to model beachwear. Trust me that’s a step you don’t want to unleash on the world. The last time I took my shirt off on a beach, I was quickly surrounded by whale specialists. Buckets of water were then thrown over me until the tide came in, so they could attempt to refloat me……
It’s the Great Bloggers Bake-off this weekend. Let’s get baking. All the tremendous creations and my awful ones are appearing on Mel’s wonderful site.
Remember to send in your creations to Mel (CrushedCaramel). Maybe your entry is not baking just something for a picnic like a sandwich, drink or salad….
crushedcaramel@gmail.com
Let’s see if we can literally blow Mel’s and our wonderful judge Jeanne’s (A Jeanne in the kitchen) socks off with our creations and monstrosities (in my case).
All the great chefs of the world have a signature dish. Gordon F###### Ramsey has his Beef Wellington. Thomas Keller has his smoked salmon crisps. Heston Blumehthal has his snail porridge. So clearly I need one. After much thought. Much ‘thought means’ looking at what I’ve got in the cupboards, I may have mine now. It needs tweaking. When I say tweaking I mean it needs to be made edible……
I give you the Pizza Cheesecake. Sweet base, Turmeric whipped cream, Tomato Ketchup and Yorkshire Cheddar Cheese. With a secret spice ingredient. Would tell you but the label has dropped off that spice, so I have literally no idea….
Remember to send in your Great Bloggers Bake-off creations to Mel (CrushedCaramel). Maybe your entry is not baking just something for a picnic like a sandwich, drink or salad….
crushedcaramel@gmail.com
Let’s see if we can literally blow Mel’s and our wonderful judge Jeanne’s (A Jeanne in the kitchen) socks off with our creations and monstrosities.
A Dad trying to cope with the loss of his Partner and becoming a single parent. 