katsu curry from cook yourself thin

For the curry sauce:

• 1 tbsp groundnut or vegetable oil
• 1 onion, peeled and chopped
• 5 whole garlic cloves, peeled
• 2 carrots, peeled and chopped
• 2 tbsp plain flour
• 1 tbsp medium curry powder
• 600ml chicken stock
• 2 tsp honey
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 bay leaf
• ½ tsp garam masala
• Salt and pepper

---------------------------------------

1. To make the sauce, heat the oil in a small pan. Add the onion and garlic and sauté for 2 minutes, then throw in the carrot pieces and cook slowly for 10 minutes, with the lid on, giving the odd stir occasionally. You want to sweat the vegetables until softened and starting to caramelise.
2. Stir in the flour and curry powder and cook them for a minute. Slowly pour in the chicken stock bit by bit until combined (do it slowly to avoid getting lumps). Add the honey, soy and bay leaf then bring to the boil. Reduce the heat to a slow simmer and cook for 20 minutes. The sauce will have thickened and taken on all of the flavours, although you still need it to have a pouring consistency. Add the garam masala, salt and pepper, then pass the sauce through a sieve. (if you like a chunky sauce so feel free not to strain it.)

i made this yesterday
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Flourless-Chocolate-Cake-II/Detail.aspx
a couple of my internet associates are gluten free. one of them was talking about having flour-less chocolate cake for breakfast. i was highly skeptical. what is in such a thing and wouldn't it just an uninviting lump of slop in a bowl? so he hooked me up with some recipes and i picked this one to try first. it's super simple and i happen to have all the ingredients already. my motherinlaw and i are both serious chocolate addicts. i made the cake and within hours it was gone. very tasty stuff.
i swirled some peanut butter through the mix before i baked it. very good. next time i'm going to try cream cheese.

went to sainsbury's today

• diet coke, 6pack X2 £2.85, bogof
• basic yogurt .45
• choc cookies X2 £1 bogof
• loaf of bread .72

total spent £5.02
------------------
not the most exciting cooking day. husband is  having leftover meat manicotti. i have veg soup and the kid will most likely have a combination of leek soup with turkey.
i did do an apple and plum sauce: peel and chop 1 apple. peel 1 plum and chop. leave skin on 1 plum and chop. put in a sauce pot with a little water and simmer until soft. blend together with a stick blender. you can peel both plums or leave the skin on all the fruit, whatever makes you happy. i like to peel because the skin can be a little tough and i hate when a bit gets stuck in your teeth.

i also did another batch of the granola bars. they have been a huge hit.

granola bars- experimental version 2, golden syrup and more cinnamon

• 2 1/4 cup oats
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/4 cup of butter- melted
• 1/4 cup of golden syrup
• 1/4 cup of chopped nuts
• 1/4 cup of raisins
• 1/4 cup of dried apricots chopped up
• 1 small apple
• 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon

i peeled and cut up the apple. put it in a sauce pot with a little water and let it simmer until it was soft. i then used my potato masher to squash it up. i put in the vanilla, golden syrup and butter then stirred it all together. since the apple sauce was still warm the butter quickly melted

in a large bowl i mixed together the other ingredients. i just used a fork to stir everything around. i then added the apple and melted butter mixture to the large bowl. i mixed everything together- still with a fork. i dumped it out into a 9x13inch tray which i had lined with baking paper. with a spatula i firmly pressed the mix out until it was very thinly spread across the tray, it didn't quite cover the whole area but pretty close. i put the thing in the oven at 325 degrees for about 20min. i wasn't really paying attention to how long it cooked. i did the dishes. when the top was starting to get brown i turned the oven off. i took the tray out and cut the bars. i then let the bars completely cool in the tray. i gave one to my son to try and he declared them- delicious.

hi everyone stopping by for the first time today.
all the veg soup is cooking. i also decided to do a quick leek and potato soup for my son.

leek and potato soup

• 1 medium sized leek or 2 small ones chopped up and rinsed well
• 3 small potatoes or 1 big one, whatever you have around, chopped
• chopped garlic

i put the chopped garlic, leeks and potato in a medium sized pot with a little olive oil. i stirred them around and let them sauté for a few minutes.

i added some onion powder, garlic powder, dried parsley and veg bouillon powder to the pot. i stirred everything around and added enough water to cover the veggies.

i turned the heat down to low and let the pot simmer until the potatoes were tender. i turned off the burner. after the soup had cooled a bit i pureed it with my stick blender. super quick and easy

fruit sauce. i had an apple that was getting funky- in a not good way, a random pear and a plum left over from last week. i cut them all up, stuck them in a pot with a little water and cooked them until they were soft. when it had cooled a little i pureed them with a stick blender. now little kid has fruit sauce for his yogurt.

so the husband decided to save the fajitas for tonight's dinner. that means the beef has been marinating for close to 24hrs by the time i cook it. he made up the marinade yesterday and wouldn't let me see what he was doing. i know dried red pepper flakes went in there instead of jalapeños. tonight i'm going to cook the meat up with some sliced onions, pepper and mushrooms. i'm doing ranch sour cream to go with them.
ranch sour cream- dump some sour cream into a bowl and add some dried ranch powder. you know, the salad dressing powder you can get to mix your own at home. let it sit in the fridge for awhile so the flavor can develop.
for lunch today i had something different from my normal routine. i did a bake potato with sour cream, broc and cheddar cheese. we've got a load of potatoes that need using and still broc. sour cream never lasts more than a week so that needs to be used.   it was ok, something different like i said. i'm going to do a load of potato salad later which i will probably have for my dinner.

 potato salad. one of my most favorite things to eat. my mom makes some seriously delicious potato salad, i use her recipe but it never turns out as tasty. i think it's the salad dressing i use. i know it's more of a summery thing but i've got a huge bag of potatoes that need using up. i dug out 6 of the smallest ones that wouldn't be good for things like wedges.

potato salad
6 small potatoes- i use the misfit ones that i can't do much else with
2 hard boiled eggs
2 celery sticks diced
1 small onion diced fine
bottle of italian salad dressing- the oil and vinegar based kind with floaty bits in it
some apple cider vinegar
stone ground mustard
salt and ground black pepper
parsley flakes
mayo

ok, so i like to peel my potatoes before i boil them. do what you like but the potatoes need to boil until cooked but still on the firm side. over cook them and you're going to get mashed pots with weird stuff in it. when the potatoes are cooked but still firm, strain them and run them under cold water to get them cooled down quicker. this stops them cooking more while they cool. get them out of the cold water and strained off again. dump them into a large bowl. pour in a couple of good sized splashes of the italian salad dressing and about a cap full of cider vinegar. mix everything around so the potatoes are nice and coated, put in the fridge to chill for a few hours- you don't have to do that i just like to let the pots marinade and get totally cold before mixing with mayo
boil eggs. how do you boil an egg? i put the eggs in my sauce pot with some cold water. i turn the burner on and heat the water to boiling. i let the eggs boil for 5min, turn off the heat and cover the pot. i then let the eggs sit there for like 20min, usually longer because i tend to forget i was boiling eggs in the first place, oh well. when it's time i cool the eggs under cold water and then peel them. if i'm not going to use them right away i put them in a container with some water and put them in the fridge.
getting everything together. chop the veggies up and dump them in the potato bowl. i cut up the eggs- i ditch the yokes because i don't like egg yokes. you do what you like. dump the eggs in with the potatoes. sprinkle in your seasonings. if you're clever you'll mix the mustard and mayo in a little bowl before you add it to the potatoes. that way it's evenly distributed around your salad. usually i forget and end up with big mouthfuls of mustard. how much mayo and mustard? i used about 1tablespoon of mustard and 1/2cup of mayo. i like just enough to get everything stuck together but not swamped. mix into the potatoes, put into a container, cover and let chill in the fridge as long as possible. the longer it stays in the fridge the better it tastes.kind of like lasagna

note on the italian salad dressing thing: the americans will be all like- duh, laura of course the one with oil and vinegar with floaty bits, it's the only freaken kind on the shelf. well in england most italian salad dressing is this thick white shit with black specks in. it looks like paste with black pepper. the only 'proper' italian dressing i can find is kraft low fat italian, it's probably the reason my potato salad never tastes right.
oh and yes, i did eat that whole container of potato salad myself. i had it for dinner and then lunch the next day. shit is good, i'm not sharing.

now the husband doesn't eat mac and cheese, so i needed to do something for his dinner. at the store today i was able to score some cheap meat. god i love cheap meat. i found some ground beef, 500g for £1.25. i think that works out to about a pound of ground beef for $2.35. i took about an inch off the end of the block and cooked that up plain so i could mix it into some veg dishes for my son. i divided the rest of the block in half. one half i set aside for dinner, the other half i divided in half again and froze those two lumps for future use.
dinner would be a quick meatloaf.

slacker loaf
1/2 lb ground beef
1/2 small onion finely diced
1/4 bell pepper, any color finely diced
onion powder, garlic powder, s/p, bbq seasoning

so i mixed up the meat with my chopped veggies. i sprinkled in various seasoning i happen to have in my collection, a bit of onion powder, garlic powder, some mexican flavored salt- it smells smokey, black pepper, and powdered bbq seasoning. once everything was mixed up i put it in a small baking tin and banged it in the oven at 350 for like 30min. basically it's like an oven baked burger. husband ate half with another serving for eating later.
i used half of the ground beef i cooked for my son in some veggie lasagna, i chopped up the lasagna really fine and stirred in the meat. the kid ate it up.

main ingredients for all the veggies in the house soup
1/4 head of white cabbage thinly chopped
1/2 bell pepper
small sweet potato
1 onion finely diced
1 carrot chopped
1 small zuchini
2 celery stalks diced up
1 medium to large potato
couple slices of swede cubed
1 can of roman beans
1 can of chopped tomatoes
some chopped garlic
assorted seasoning- onion powder, garlic powder (1 teaspoon of each),chili powder (1/4 teaspoon), oregano, basil ( 1 tablespoon of each), veg buillon (2 tablespoons.) or 1 stock cube.
good squirt of tomato puree

i toss all the veg into a 4qrt pot, i think it's a 4 qrt pot. it's the biggest one i have. i saute everything in a little olive oil.

when things start softening up i add the seasoning. i let it cook a few minutes more. add the chopped tomato and beans. add enough water to cover the veg, usually a can and a half.

bring everything to a boil. cover and turn down to low. cook 1hr. uncover and let simmer about 1/2hr. veg should be tender when done. makes about 5 servings. great with shredded cheddar cheese on top and garlic bread.