Caroline's Culinary Creations: The price of convenience (or "Blame the packet!")

I have to admit that sometimes, love cooking as I do, it's nice to have a day off, and either get the hubby to cook (see previous post) or have something leaning towards the convenience meal... and one of those semi-convenience meals that we do sometimes have is pre-cooked mussels in a sauce that you just have to heat up and serve with bread and a salad. Or chips. I have done a grand tour of the different packets of mussels in sauce and found one in particular to be the best, garlic butter sauce is better than white wine, though I've mixed two packs of garlic to one of white wine successfully. Anyway this week we tried mussels in a Thai sauce. I was really looking forward to them but they were a bit boring if I'm honest. Not terrible but any means but a little bit of a let down.

And that is the problem, I can't even have a day off without subjecting my family to second rate dinners. However, my lovely teenage daughter, sometimes wise beyond her years, just said "Hey Mum, it was a packet dinner. It's not you. Blame the packet!!" And I felt better.

On a happier note, since the last blog there have been lots of successful new recipes, including new potato, blue cheese and rosemary (tomato-less) pizza; sausage, macaroni and bean stew with greens; jerusalem artichoke risotto; and today's pudding, sparkling rose syllabub.

There's a story behind the syllabub. One of my two blue recipe wallets (see cookery book heaven post for more details) was very bulging and got to the point where it would hardly shut due mainly to the amount of cuttings in the pudding section. So I decided to get a new expanding wallet in a delightful shade of pink and sub categorise my puddings, as it was getting difficult to find specific recipes. On Tuesday evening I sat happily at the kitchen table with the radio on and a cup of tea and went through them all, dividing them up into tarts, flans, hot puddings, mousses, fruit, chocolate, cheesecakes, roulades, merigues etc. I only managed to discard four out of over 130. One recipe in particular caught my eye and I kept the recipe out to make this weekend. It was very simple but turned out really well. Start with 100ml of sparkling rose wine, I used a Spanish Cava Rosado, zest and juice of a small orange and 75g caster sugar. Mix together and leave for fifteen minutes. Then add 300ml chilled double cream and whisk to soft peaks. Divide among glasses and top with sliced strawberries and orange zest and serve with the rest of the bottle of wine. I did add just a sprinkling of edible glitter on the top too, to make it sparkling in more ways than one...