I've often wondered what other people do on their weekends. In our house, saturdays often involve a fair bit of cooking, laundry, cleaning up and if I'm lucky a bit of gardening. In the mornings, the kitchen is a nice bumbly place on a saturday - baking Janey's brownies, saves buying cake! Its my chums fail safe frugal recipe and when we make it, using her original kind hand written note, I think of her and her lovely partner fondly.[Edited in for the squirrel family, the recipe! Enjoy]
Janey's Brownies (makes 24 brownies)
8oz granulated sugar
1 1/2 oz cocoa
3 oz self raising flour
2 eggs
2 tablespoons milk
4 oz butter melted
(or use cooking margarine can't tell the difference)
Butter a tray, 20cm by 3cm, or 12" by 8". Mix the dry ingredients, beat eggs and milk, add melted (not hot) butter. Combine the wet and dry ingredients with a wooden spoon (not difficult, like a muffin mix). Bake for 30 minutes in a preheated oven 180 o C (360 o F) oven, Gas 4-5. Works everytime like a charm - cost approximately £1-£1.50. Keep for a week or more in a sealed container. But not here. (!)
First off after a morning cuppa and a bit of baking and chores started (hens fed, laundry on, dishwasher on) my clattering normally wakes the family so the rest of the house slowly comes to life. I do not do this on purpose you understand, I'm merely noisy!
Once they've roused themselves, we make breakfast - crepes (again!) a popular and quite frugal breakfast here. Are they healthy, I don't know? I guess its what you put on them that changes that! I like weekend breakfasts, more leisurely.The crepe pan is well used in this house, we've joked about getting them both one when they leave home.......
Whilst we're chatting, brekkie over, I'm chopping up the last of the tomatoes to make frugal-bugal pasta/pizza sauce for the freezer - the kitchen table is well used today!
Well most of them make it to the pot eventually, I'm an enthusiastic, but messy/clumsy cook. Maybe that should be my life motto, 'she was enthusiastic but clumsy'.
I like making this simple tasty sauce, nice to have a home made hand on a busier day than today. I do alot of cooking at the weekends, to help out through the working week. Doing this today means when we've no time later in the week, we've still got home cooked food ready to go in the fridge/freezer.
It also saves us tonnes of money as we're not reaching for instant food after work. The cellist tastes it and advised seasoning, her being the pasta expert. Aparently its 'almost as good as her own hm sauce' a compliment indeed, she makes a mean pasta sauce herself. Both kids are learning to cook and are getting not bad, excellent life skills, if you can cook, you'll never go hungry.
As that bubbled away, a plan for the day was hatched. I like hatching plans around the kitchen table. The sauce will cool and we'll finish it by blending it, portion it and freeze most of it later.
More on that another time.
More on that another time.
We decide on a pop into the local town. Local flag flying high.
A meander down the street, a look in the peedie bookshop, the charity shop (a nice scarf for 20p and two pairs of jeans for £2 each, bargain!) when we were in there,
the dog went to prison.....he's often very naughty.
Ok maybe he was only 'behind bars' for about 5 minutes, whilst we were in the bookshop. He's so dramatic, you'd think we'd abandoned him on the steps of the local church forever.
Then a walk up the street again towards home, we pass a few folk we know and have a wee yarn. Back home for a chatty lunch and then a while doing our own thing. Cellist, well she played her cello another exam coming up, I gardened for a bit, the boy/manchild read his newly found charity shop book. I abandoned gardening after I'd picked the leeks, bit blowy out there even for me. Picking leeks when braced against a gale, isn't fun after all, who would have guessed.
The afternoon was whiled away by cleaning and sorting leeks, which sounds perhaps a bit dull, but I'm fascinated by plants, therefore cleaning leeks means you get very well acquainted with them. I've often wondered about leeks, so I contemplated them a while and consulted Mr Google, who else? Apparently they originated in Egypt (in their diet from at least 2000BC, who'd have known eh?) and the Romans brought them to the UK. I delve further into the life of the leek, this plant obsession thing, its difficult to avoid you know. Especially when you've an ipad at hand, remarkable little devices you know, excellent for a wee read about stuff with a cuppa when you're taking a break.
After stopping my extensive teabreak research on leeks, I'm back to the task at hand, three finished piles - nice clean whole leeks, the chopped off but usable leaves in bowl for chopping up fine later and freezing, to go in soups etc. The really yuksome bits (raggy leaves and ends of the roots and the odd slug) in a bowl to be added to the chickens 'slow cooker hot pot' of grain, they are fussy they won't eat them unless they are cooked. The nice clean leeks ready for the fridge/freezer. Nowt wasted here, not a jot.
A few more chores, everyone pitched in. I like it when the teenagers pitch in, I tell myself its good life training! The cellist noticed this sign when we were in our local town, how true eh? We do get by with a fair bit of help from friends
.....and by that I also mean family of course......
A rather fine saturday bumbling about, time with the kids/young folk, bit cooking, bit gardening, bit chatting, a few chores done then a relax - how do you spend yours?
Fancy leaving a link about your typical weekend day? If you do I'd be really interested :) but if not, don't worry, I'm just very nosey!
