The view from here

It is the time of year where I buy a bunch of daffodils every time I happen to be anywhere near a supermarket.  These ones from Waitrose are glorious - a fluffy cloud of yellow sunshine on the mantelpiece for only £1.99.

I have come to realise that if I don't take photographs, I don't write blog posts.  I've been cooking, knitting, writing, stitching, thinking and planning a great deal over the last few weeks, but not blogging about it. I've stayed around the house, and the house is dark, so I've not been taking photos.  But in a way this suits January, which I love for its quietness, wintriness and sense of hibernation.  I'm happy to have some daffs on the mantelpiece and a hot cup of coffee on my desk.  I'll be out in the world again soon enough.

So from my desk, my kitchen, and my computer, this is what I've been doing lately.

• Loving this panoramic photo, taken from London's newest skyscraper, The Shard: http://www.willpearson.co.uk/virtual-tour/shard-360-dusk/ 
• Adoring this blog post from the awesome and talented Teen Granny.  If my daughter ever knits a model of me, I will burst with pride.
• Thinking of a great group of women I met twelve years ago this week.  Some of them are amongst my very closest friends, and two of them have lovely blogs.  I just wish I still lived close enough to Nina that I could pop round for a coffee and eat some of her cakes!
• Cooking in my slow cooker (and not photographing the results). 
• On Tuesday I made lemon chicken: a whole chicken sat on a bed of chopped carrot, onion, fennel, rosemary and garlic, with a whole lemon chopped into chunks tucked underneath too.  150 ml of chicken stock poured over and left on low for about 6-7 hours.  Then chicken removed and the meat pulled off the bone.  We ate the veg, half the chicken and the lemony sauce with rice and peas.  The other half of the chicken will become a pie.
• Yesterday I made Indian potatoes: about 6 big potatoes, peeled and cut into large dice, along with an onion, a tin of tomatoes, a spoonful of curry paste, a spoonful of mango chutney and 100ml of vegetable stock.  Cooked on low for about 5 hours, and then stirred in 100ml of double cream before serving with naan bread, cucumber and yogurt.
• Putting all the postcards we've received this year into a tin, so that in December I can make one of these.
• Loving these two new London food blogs - The Skint Foodie and The London Review of Sandwiches.

And in between, gazing at the daffodils again.

What's for lunch?

I do struggle with solo lunches.

When I worked in an office most of the week, I took in sandwiches, bought a salad from the staff restaurant and ate my lunch chatting to colleagues. It was easy, quick and kept me feeling full all afternoon.  But now I'm at home, I find it harder.  I do still eat sandwiches sometimes, but they seem like more of a pauper's lunch when I'm eating alone.  Several people eating sandwiches is a picnic, just one person eating a sandwich is not so much fun.

Sometimes I eat leftovers, but not very often because I like variety in my meals.  Eating the same thing for lunch as you did the night before can make you feel a little bit unloved.

So there are rules for solo lunches:

• Variety is necessary
• Healthy and light is mostly necessary
• It must be quick to make
• It MUST be tasty and good; poor lunches do not make for a good day.

This is my current list of solo lunches:

• Minestrone soup (although hard to make in small, solo quantities, so does create its own leftovers).
• An omelette and salad.  Omelettes always make me want a glass of wine, but that's generally not a good idea in the middle of the day when the children are at school.
• Couscous - easy to make in small quantities.  I throw in all kinds of things.  This week it was some chorizo, pine nuts, a couple of chopped tomatoes and some chopped cucumber.
• A very basic ploughmans - a homemade roll, some nice cheese, an apple and pickle (got to be Branston).
• Scrambled eggs and toast.
• A substantial salad.  I'm getting better at these.  Lettuce and cucumber doesn't keep me going until supper, but something like a salad nicoise does.
• Anything involving smoked mackerel.  Because I love it but nobody else in my family will eat it.  Often I'll make a very lemony mackerel pate and have it with toast and carrot sticks.
• Baked eggs

Baked eggs are a new discovery of mine.  I can't remember where I found this recipe, but I love it.  A good, warming yet healthy, winter recipe.

Baked eggs for lunch

You will need an egg, plus ingredients for a tomato based sauce:

• 1 small onion, chopped finely
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped finely
• 1 tin of tomatoes
• other veg - I used a small green pepper and sun-dried tomatoes this week
• a pinch of chilli flakes if you like it hot; I do.

Make the tomato sauce.  Soften the onion, garlic and other chopped vegetables in a little olive oil.  Tip in the tin of tomatoes, and the chilli flakes if using, plus a splash of water.  Bubble for ten minutes until thickened.

Spoon half of the tomato sauce into a small ovenproof dish (save the rest of the sauce for another day - it freezes well).

Make a depression in the sauce with the back of a spoon.  Break an egg into this depression and then put the dish in the oven at Gas 6 for ten minutes, or until the egg white is set.

Eat hot, with a toasted pitta bread to mop up the sauce.

What else can I add to my list?  What are your favourite solo lunches?

Packed lunches

I make so many packed lunches, that when the school holidays start I am always ready for a break. Thinking of imaginative sandwich fillings, or sandwich alternatives, saps my energy and enthusiasm as the months go by.

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I have two great books that give me inspiration as the term wears on. Annabel Karmel's Lunchboxes looks beautiful and has loads of ideas for salads and savoury things as well as pages and pages of sandwich fillings. The Pret A Manger Salads and Sandwiches book I use for its wonderful and substantial salad recipes, although the book is half full of sandwich recipes as well. Their lentil, bacon and walnut salad with a balsamic vinegar and mustard dressing is gorgeous.

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Here is my list of favourite sandwich fillings:

• egg mayonnaise and ham ( I make the egg mayonnaise with half mayo and half salad cream, to make it slightly sharper and less sickly)
• cheese, tomato and basil - an old one but a good one
• cream cheese mixed with pesto, chicken and pine nuts
• tuna mayonnaise, with chopped sun dried tomatoes, sweetcorn and spring onions. O would eat this every day if I let her
• Coronation chicken and sliced tomato
• hummus, avocado and red pepper
• ham and sliced, sharp apple
• grated cheese and grated carrot with marmite

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Even by the end of term, when inspiration is flagging and we are all having plain old ham sandwiches far too often, our lunchboxes are still things of beauty and never fail to make me smile - even when the morning is dark and freezing cold.

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Mine is the Cath Kidston spotty roses one. O has the pink marshmallows and C has the Dalek one, which growls "Exterminate!" at me when I zip it up. G leaves too early for me to make him a packed lunch each day (to my secret relief - four packed lunches each day might send me over the edge) so the gorgeous strawberry one is a gender neutral spare, for whoever has left their lunchbox behind the previous day.

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You can get hold of other funky lunchboxes here, here, here or here.