'Get Well Soon' Freezer Meals

We have just got back from a mad weekend in London and Kent, visiting friends, celebrating Birthdays and delivering some meals for the freezer to a very dear relative of ours who isn't well at the moment. 

We had a bit of a cooking frenzy of these 'get well soon' meals that resulted in an emergency dash into my latest thrift paradise- Poundland- for some freezer and microwave friendly tubs (8 for £1!)

I then had a bit too much fun labelling them with the coloured pens:

We ended up with a bit of a stack (vegetable lasagne, carrot and coriander soup and parsnip soup):

This got me thinking that I should get back into making more meals for the freezer, we've been so busy in the evenings lately and it would be rather nice to get home and de-frost a ready-cooked meal. I'd betting get writing this week's freezer-friendly shopping list...

Thanksgiving

As a nod to Dave's American heritage I have been doing some thanksgiving-themed cooking and craft!

We had our lovely friend Sean round for a big roast this weekend, and I made a rather tasty 'thanksgiving soup' with the leftover roasted veg and potatoes:

I then got out one of my favourite books- The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook (a gift from Dave's lovely American sister indeed) and made these very cute pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese icing:

I also had fun crafting some house moving cards for some friends who are moving in together, and for Dave's Mum, who moves house this weekend. Captain Sew was quite cooperative with the card, even if it was a bit tricky using rather stretchy (and prone to curled edges) t-shirt fabric:

This one was made using scraps of wrapping paper on card cut from a folder divider (good thrip!), very simple design but I like the colours:

Happy crafting and Happy Thanksgiving!

Pumpkin and Winter Veg Soup

This evening I made some seasonal pumpkin and winter vegetable soup for the long dark evenings which seem to be upon us now.

Ingredients:

1/2 pumpkin with seeds, stringy bits and skin removed

1 onion

1 carrot

1 parsnip

5 medium sized potatoes

1.5l vegetable stock

Salt and pepper

Method

I fried the onion, then added the rest of the vegetables, the stock, coriander and some seasoning and let it simmer away for half an hour, before blending it into a hearty, fairly thick soup.

This made lots of portions (probably about 8), which I have frozen, as you can see the casserole dish was very full, almost cauldron like! This is much more economical (and just about as delicious) as my favourite New Covent Garden Soup, my calculations make this soup about 35p per portion, compared to around £1 RRP per portion for NCG soup.

I have pureed the rest of the pumpkin for a rainy day's baking project, watch this space for some Hallowe'en themed cakes...

Man Flu Cure: Carrot and Coriander Soup

This week I thought I'd do something a bit different with the leftovers from our roast chicken and make carrot and coriander soup (this is cheating a little, as I also used non-cooked carrots... but I got a super cheap big pack of Chatenay carrots, so they were leftover in that sense!)

Once the chicken had been stripped (and the leftover meat saved for a tasty curry) I put the carcass in a saucepan, covered it with water and simmered it gently for about an hour to make some chicken stock. I then fried up some onions for a couple of minutes until softened and added in a few potatoes, a handful of coriander and a bit of seasoning.  I then added about half a kilogram of carrots and the stock from the chicken (approx 1 litre) and gave it a good stir. I let this simmer for twenty minutes or so, before I removed it from the pan, blitzed it with the blender and stowed it in the freezer for a rainy day (or probably tomorrow as I think my man-friend has a touch of the man flu!) This made about 3-4 tasty portions.