I cooked a chicken (but forgot to take any photos)

Good evening my lovely readers,
Well I am cream crackered! It's been a busy couple of days and (don't tell the pain management ladies) I haven't been pacing at all. I've managed quite a few things that I'm really proud of. I drove on my own for the first time in months yesterday, I went to yoga, I did a shop, I went to pain management and today I cooked a whole chicken!

Mr Lardshow's parents have come down for the weekend for the first time so I am in a house full of Lardshows and meat eaters, the cats are in heaven! So after much debate about what to cook for them we decided on a roast chicken. Up to this point I have got away with just cooking pieces of meat but today I bit the bullet (not the chicken) and had a go. After trawling through my cookery books I found a nice simple recipe from the voluptuous Nigella. Mr Lardshow was dispatched to a good butchers and bought a high quality free range chicken. Hopefully the chicken had a happy, clucky life.

The happy chuck was popped in the oven with lemon, potatoes, shallots and a whole bulb of garlic sliced in half with some olive oil, thyme, salt and pepper. Lots of mathematical doings were done to calculate how long it needed to be in the oven but in the end I opted for going and having a bath and leaving the responsibility of the chicken to Mr Lardshow. As Baldrick sort of used to say 'I had a cunning plan'!

So, by the time I got out of the bath the chicken was done and all we needed to do was put the Yorkshire puddings in, warm through the mash and steam the veggies. Dinner was done! As is now the norm, I spend all of dinnertime staring at people's plates quizzing them on whether the meat is cooked and hoping it tastes ok. Tonight though I had the added bonus of Mr Lardshow senior constantly offering me random bits of chicken to taste for myself...I declined!

Anyway dinner was a success, our bellies are full and we've collapsed onto the sofa to watch the end of the tennis.

It's nearly bedtime now, I'm really tired and I REALLY want to have the energy to go and see the Olympic Flame in Lichfield. I want to be a part of it in my 'Official Team GB' hoodie in spite of the pain. Cross those fingers! Night Night all xBx

Throw It All In Pasta

Hello my loves,
I'm still amazed every time someone says they've read my posts. It's truly doing wonders for my spirit. Thank you for continuing to read my ramblings (I fear this post may be very rambly)
So I'm struggling with my pain today, I've just taken some extra painkillers, I don't know why it takes me so long to take extra ones when I'm feeling worse. Silly. Stubborn. Girl. Yesterday's cooking was difficult too. Pain was bad and I found doing everything really heavy and hard. At one point I tried to empty the dishwasher sitting down...it didn't go well...
Anyway to the point of this post. As I was cooking tea last night it dawned in me that I really do cook like the three amazing ladies that inspired and taught me how to cook and bake. These wonderful women were my two great aunts; Aunty Topsy and Aunty Lena and of course my Mum. We were and are 'chuck it in cooks', we look at our food, we work out what will go together, what needs using up and then we add a good pinch of hope for the best! I can still remember shelling peas and slicing runner beans at the breakfast bar with them, I can still only peel potatoes with a knife, just like they taught me to.
Since allowing a meat eater into my home and his meat onto a shelf in the fridge (I know, GASP!) I have had to start working out what goes best with the meat that he likes to eat and also what we can eat together to make my cooking days easier. So far so good, according to Mr Lardshow who is always very complimentary (He's not daft, he knows the correct things to say) but I do struggle with not being able to taste what I'm cooking for him. As he eats his dinner, I sit there waiting for him to say it tastes horrid, or that I've put lavender in it instead of rosemary...I did do that once with Cath, Jo and some new potatoes.
And so to last night's offerings, chuck it in pasta. I like my pasta nice and simple. Tomatoes, basil, cheese and wholewheat spaghetti. That's it. (There are no pics of mine being cooked sorry, I was struggling to cook at that point of the evening and couldn't cope with doing photos too) Mr Lardshow likes his pasta a bit spicier and with MEAT! So I started his off by frying some chorizo and then adding some beef meatballs, the smell of this was not pleasant to me but it sent Finn into an outstanding display of excitedness, I do wish he had a volume switch sometimes!

Next I gradually added the veg, got to get those 5-a-day's into him somehow. I love chopping up veg, sometimes the knife has to be taken off me when I get a little bit too excited while chopping up the veg scraps for the compost bin.

Once all the veg has softened I add some tomato paste, cook it out and then I add a good splosh of passata. Once this has come to a nice simmer I turn all the hob rings off and go and collapse on the sofa until Mr Lardshow comes home. I try to get everything cooked and ready early in the day when I'm feeling 'good'.

And here's the final dish, nice and simple and gone in under 10 minutes!

Is anyone still reading? I'm cream crackered today, hope I feel a bit more awake tomorrow as it's Pain management course day and I really want to get the most out of it. I'm wondering if it would be acceptable to lie on one of the beds as soon as I walk in...

Ooh just as I was about to post this the phone rang, I stupidly answered it! Another bloomin cold caller, this one is offering me a grant. Does he want me to go back to university? Sadly I can't ask him as I've put him on hold under Finn. I've just checked, he's still on the line after 3 mins 43 seconds...I wonder if I can do better than my personal best which was just over 9 minutes! OOF cold callers leave me alone!