The competetive spirit... or not.

Last weekend I came second in a pudding competition, for the second time.  I'm not really a very competetive person.  I applied to go on the tv show "Come Dine With Me" a while ago and got down to the last twenty for the local episode, but no further.  When I watched the programme I realised I had had a lucky escape... I didn't think much to the food or the people... but I would definitely have won if I had been a contestant due to the low standard of the other participants!  I wouldn't want to go on "Masterchef" as I would never want to make cooking a career, it would be too much pressure, the hours are dreadful and I would stop enjoying it.  Family and friends can forgive the odd disaster (see a previous post - What could possibly go wrong?) but paying customers probably wouldn't.  I am considering "The Great British Bake Off", though I would have a lot to learn, it does look like a lot of fun, and I DO love baking.  We will see.

Back to the pudding competitions.  About six months ago, my Mum told me about a pudding competition that was being held in her village for the first time.  The idea was to raise funds towards a new village hall.  People would make one or more puddings and bring them along to the village hall where members of the public would taste as many of them as their stomachs could handle for the princely sum of £3 and then vote for their favourite by means of a marble in a plastic cup. The pudding with the most marbles would then be declared the winner and it's creator would receive a silver trophy (donated by a kind benefactor).  Tea and coffee would be included. 

I telephoned the organiser beforehand to check I would be eligible as I didn't live in the village.  I was.  I also wanted to check what their definition of a pudding was.  She said "anything that you would like to eat for pudding".  So I made a raspberry rose tart and a coffee, chocolate and mascarpone torte and duly turned up on the day, putting my identity underneath the serving plate as requested.  There were sixteen puddings, some of which were totally consumed.  The village hall was packed with willing tasters, and £190 was raised.  When the winners were announced, my raspberry tart actually came bottom with no votes (I think the base was too hard, but it did taste nice) but the torte came second, losing out by one vote to a banoffee pie.

Having said I'm not competitive, I was a little bit miffed.  Banoffee pie does taste nice, true, but doesn't involve much skill (tinned caramel?), and was "thrown together" in the words of its creator; whereas my torte involved lovingly piecing together eighty morning coffee biscuits soaked in kahlua and strong coffee, with coffee butter icing and grated chocolate in between each layer, and enveloping the whole thing in vanilla mascarpone cream decoarated with chocolate stars.  Ho Hum.  There is always next year.

Last weekend, a similar event was held by the opera group I sing with, to raise funds for the production. It was organised in exactly the same way, we had twenty-two puddings entered and it raised about £120.  This time I made a Mars bar cheesecake and a strawberry and mascarpone swiss roll, and the cheesecake came second.  The winner this time was my personal favourite, a raspberry and white chocolate meringue roulade, though I also loved the chocolate orange profiteroles, which happened to be made by the same person.

Interestingly, in both competitions there were duplicate entries.  The first one had two tiramisus (that IS the plural, I checked, wondering if it was just tiramisu) and the second had two bakewell tarts (one with jam, one with mincemeat) and two bread puddings.  One of the bread puddings looked like a burnt brick but actually tasted fantastic, and not burnt at all, it was slightly chewy but in a good way and tasted much better than the other more stylish one.  There was a fantastic selection and a very high standard throughout and I did try ALL the puddings in both competitions, though only a very little bit of each!

View from one end of the table, last slice of Swiss roll in the foreground...

 

 



 

And from the other end.

 

 

The coffee, chocolate and mascarpone torte from the first competition.

 

 

After both competitions, I didn't eat anything sweet or indeed puddingy for quite some time.

 

On another note, this weekend I have (possibly rashly) invited lots of family for Christmas dinner, there might be up to sixteen of us.  Luckily, quite a few of them have offered to help either cooking various aspects of the meal, peeling spuds or having the children so they're out of the way.  I've started to get quite excited!

 

More soon, thank you for reading,

 

Caroline x

Waste not, want not.

Our council has recently introduced a food waste collection.  Reading the leaflet that accompanied the new food waste bin, I was horrified to discover that FORTY-ONE PERCENT by weight of black bin (ie non recyclable) waste is food waste.  What a waste of money, fuel, energy, water and time.

Various friends assured me I would be surprised at the amount of waste that would go in my bin once the time came to start using it, and claimed that it would be filled up on a weekly basis, but actually hardly anything goes in. According to my research the average household generates 3.2kg of food waste weekly, ours is less than 700g. And no, although I do have some OCD tendencies, I don't weigh it every week!  According to an article in the Guardian last year household food waste has reduced by 13% in three years, but is still costing the consumer the same due to inflation.  Food waste generated by UK families in a year will still completely fill Wembley stadium nine times, (rather than ten times) though, so to be honest there is still a lot of room for improvement.There are various reasons why our family generates so little food waste, and I thought it might make for an interesting blog post.

Firstly, we are a family that eats just about everything.  I was brought up to keep trying things until I did like them, and I am doing the same with my own children because it really worked.  There are foods I don't prefer, but apart from honey on toast and liquorice I don't really dislike anything.  So leftovers can be eaten by anyone, and it makes menu planning (see later) much easier.  It also makes a big difference if you have someone in the family who doesn't mind using up broken biscuits, manky fruit from the dregs of the fruit bowl and end-of-packet cereal dust.  That will be me then.

We compost at home, anything that can be composted. Peelings, teabags, fruit cores, etc, also handy for disposal of shredded confidential documents.  My parents were surprised when I started composting as I'm not into gardening and have a garden the size of a postage stamp, just big enough to grow some herbs in.  I didn't start composting to get some free compost, but rather to cut down on unaviodable food waste such as peelings going to landfill. I have actually given away my home made compost via freecycle! I don't put eggshells, avocoado peel or stones or other large fruit stones such as mango stones in as they just don't decompose fast enough in a domestic setting, so they DO go in the food waste bin, along with bones, the odd burnt toast crust and the very occasional plate scraping.

The contents of our food waste bin after two weeks: two little bags.

I often have leftovers for the next day's lunch - and it makes a change from boring sandwiches.

Plan your meals weekly and only buy what you actually need - I usually do the food shopping on Saturday mornings so I sit down on a Thurday or Friday night with a list of what will be in the Tuesday vegbox (they email it to me), a list of what needs using up in the fridge, and my recipe folders, cookery books, magazines etc and plan menus for the week, this also helps to keep costs down.  I've got a list of items we always need, the "weekly check" such as teabags, coffee, cereals, milk, fruit; and I go through that checking what we need.  I have a look at the calendar and see what everyone is doing, so I know whether we need something super quick on a particular day, or if I can indulge myself with a new recipe midweek.  Sometimes it does have to be different meals for different family members, or if the husband is going out I can look forward to having something he doesn't particularly like.  I usually have something in the freezer for emergency last minute changes of plan too.

Speaking of the freezer,  use it well. I always freeze sliced bread for my son's sandwiches and get out a third or half a loaf at a time, as we don't use much sliced bread.  Bread which does go stale can be made into breadcrumbs.  If I make a cake and cut bits off it to shape it they get frozen for the next trifle.  Also roast chicken carcases get frozen and made into stock several at a time.

Use store cupboard ingredients, but keep track of what you've got, do a "cabinet reshuffle" every few months so you don't forget what you've got.

Don't take too much notice of best before dates.  If it has gone off, you can usually tell. If cheese goes mouldy I cut off the outside and the middle is fine.  That said, check the dates when you go shopping to make sure you don't buy something that won't keep until you've planned to use it.

Apples too elderly to be palatable raw can be used to top a pork chop, my husband's signature dish is pork chops with apples and prunes; or made into apple sauce.  Over ripe bananas can be transformed into banana bread or put in a smoothie.  Past its best veg can be roasted and even put in a tart. One of my favourite books with tips for reducing food waste is Economy Gastronomy, a tie in with a TV series from 2009 (at present from £6.53 on amazon).

The love food hate waste website is also recommended: www.lovefoodhatewaste.com.

So, I challenge YOU to reduce your food waste!  If everyone just tried a little bit harder, we might fill less Wembley stadiums next year :-)

Thank you for reading, more soon.

Caroline x