Food for Friendship... *warning: this post contains Grief*

Hello MrsB *waves*
This is my better half, sat in Carluccios Manchester. Meeting up with FRIENDS for Afternoon Tea / Late lunch / Hot Chocolate, who knows what else. I find a lump in my throat, when i say - i have barely cooked a thing for the past few weeks.
My daughter commented "we haven't seen the Greengrocer Lady for a while"... i suppose because we haven't needed any fresh food.

I feel griefstricken when i think that, all my cooking efforts (it hasn't been an 'effort' but a delight) of these early weeks in 2010, have involved my Nanna.

The Lemon Cheese.... The Marmalade.... The Lemon Drizzle Cake... The place where she sat when i cooked a Birthday Dinner for my dad.... who knew i would miss her this much?

I was making her Chicken Soup, that never made that journey. My food comforted her but i couldn't sustain her.

I think our regular BIG STOVE readers, will giggle with me when they know: the last thing my Nanna ate was my Lemon Drizzle Cake... and we had a big plate of it served served at her 'parade party' (as my daughter beautifully named the Wake)

I didn't cook for a while after her leaving me :(

And then i went to stay with my friend, who met me at her door with ribbons and cupcakes. We met with other friends for food and chatting and later we made a big curry dinner together. It sort of broke the Grief Spell.

I think i can cook again now, but i might have to leave the Lemon Drizzle Cake to one side for a little while yet xxx

Love.... Roast Chicken!

Ah roast chicken! What does it mean to you?
Sundays at home, warmth, comfort, family....perfect left overs (MrB loves a buttie!)
This recipe is simply perfect! Lemons, thyme, garlic and melting butter! Just the ingredients make me smile!
Buy yourself a good chicken. Of course we all know this by now and most people I know would hide their baskets in shame if they were to buy a miserable, battery raised, skinny, anaemic looking bird. But I am all too aware that there is a lot of equally miserable, skinny, anaemic bank accounts out there! I do believe however that it is better to have slightly less meat and fill your plate with the delicious potatoes, that go with this dish and lots of veggies, than to eat something that will just leave your taste buds and conscience feeling cheated!
I bought this wee chicken, who was corn fed and free range and delicious, for only £4.88! My husband joked he looked more like a sparrow, when cooked, but what he lacked in size he made up for in flavour. We were all amply fed and I will use the carcass for soup today.  Two meals for under a fiver!

So children are being entertained, classic fm is on....happy chef, happy tummies!

Separate the skin from the breast of the chicken, by wiggling your fingers up through the neck skin, just pushing with your fingers (is it wrong that I actually enjoy this process??). Take a good couple of teaspoons of butter and push into the space you have made under the skin, flatten out, over the breast of the chicken. Next thinly slice your lemons and place as many as will cover the butter and fit in a single layer. Take three or four, stems of thyme and strip the leaves, push these under the skin. Next place, a small bunch of thyme, two or three peeled (but unchopped) garlic cloves and half a lemon (slightly squeezed) into the cavity. This is your chicken finished! Place this breast side down in a roasting tin.
Now for the most perfect potatoes! I used charlotte potatoes, the little waxy, new potatoey ones! I leave them unpeeled. Cut them into halves, bite size. Scatter them round the chicken. I use the whole bag, as I have a carbo fiend to feed, but you decide how many (just let it be re stated, they are amazing!!) Place blobs of butter all over the potatoes, using about 1tbs. Scatter four or five stems of thyme round the chicken and bury three peeled garlic cloves in the potatoes.

Finally pour about 400ml of water over the potatoes or as much to come half way up the potatoes.

Cook in a moderate, 180 oven for about an hour. The water helps cook your chicken quickly but keeps it moist.  Turn your chicken at this point and give it a further 2o minutes to crisp up the skin.

Remove the chicken and let it rest, covered with a clean tea towel.

In a saucepan, melt a tsp of butter. Remove from the heat, mix in a tsp of plain flour. Pour the juices from the roasting pan, into the saucepan, whisking as you go. Leave on a medium heat. This will make the gravy, the like you never get out of a tub! It is chickeny, garlicky, lemony.......blissfully yummy! While this is happening leave your potatoes in the now dry roasting tin to crisp up slightly.
There you have it, perfect potatoes, perfect chicken, perfect gravy!
Serve with greens, a glass of cheer and good company!

Lick your plate clean!
Hope for some left overs (fat chance in our house!)

x

Nurture with Nourishment!

Food: Nourishment eaten in solid form

Isn't the word nourish moreish! Nourishment, for the body primarily. But I eat for the nourishment of my soul, my imagination and (not always advisedly) my emotions. It is so vital for a life lived well! Making us whole, calm, energised, loved that I would like to start my first post with dispelling a dangerous myth...

There is no one food that makes a person fat!

Food should be enjoyed, savoured, eaten till we are content and calmed.

So then, there will be plenty of cupcakes, peanut millionaires shortbread, greek yoghurt, cherry biscotti, jam, jelly and all things sweet to come!

However equally and indeed more so, there will be warm, fresh from the garden cherry tomatoes (a veg sweetie!!), cinnamon scented roast autumn squash,
couscous bejewelled with pomegranate seeds, fat Tuscan Bean soups
with a thick slice of warm, wholemeal soda bread slathered with good, yellow butter....X
Good whole food,
cooked by your own hands (not glove-covered ones in a factory somewhere!)
followed by a wee "sweetie" hurts no man (woman or child)!
Indeed, I promise, you will smile more from a daily sweetness after a meal, look gorgeous and be no fatter in a years time!

Nourish yourself....put good things into you and yours! (homemade popcorn sprinkled with icing sugar....one of my Australian sister in laws childhood treats!)

Nourish.....so moreish!

Love MrsB x