Oh. Oh, how superior I was. I politely grimaced at mid-week steak and I’m sniffy at round-cut carrots. I imagined that our Lee Family Dining Experience was far more sophisticated…we eat moules! On a Wednesday!
But the reality has turned out so different. I wanted to roll out a whole month of smug house-wife cooking, say ‘no, really, barely more effort than opening beans’, when people marvelled at how I find the time, the energy, the sheer determination to deliver three lots of veg and selected lean proteins with restrained carbs.
Was I mental? I fear I’ve asked this before. The whole month so far has been a litany of pasta, pasta, pasta, broken up by supermarket frisbee pizza and twice-a-week chip-runs. The chip man actually sees me coming and starts my husband’s scampi. The freezer is jam-packed with leftovers, but even opening the door makes me feel defeated and inadequate. There’s only one bolognaise portion, so whoever gets the chicken casserole will moan, or there’s the chicken tikka, but I put too many chillis in, so whoever eats it will cry all night and be afraid of morning.
So. A lesson learnt. I’m a Country Housewife Ordinaire, not a woman who de-frills scollops at the drop of a hat. In light of such a realisation, I’m going to present tonight’s dinner, with the thought that actually, it’s not too bad. It’s Fridge-Bum soup (again), but when they all groan and make sick noises, I also have a tray of home-made sausage rolls. Ha. So no huff-storming, because all three of them have a sausage roll fetish, and these ones are good.
The soup, for anyone interested, was 3 wizened parsnips, four small sweet potatoes, 3 cloves of garlic, five ridiculous (home grown) onions, 4 speckled carrots. I roasted that lot with olive oil, salt and snipped-up rosemary, for 50 min on 200, then blitzed it with a pint of chicken stock (cube), and a slosh of white wine, slosh of milk. Sounds a bit grim, but I love it. And it’s bright orange, which always cheers me up.
So, right. Tomorrow. I will NOT stagger into the chippy.
Oh! And celery. In the soup. Even the leafy bits, which you shouldn’t, because they’re bitter, but hey-ho. Crock-pot was full.
Carlie Lee 