Mum's away....

At the moment the big topic of conversation around our supper table is what the men in the house are going to eat next week when I'm away...My two sons (18 and 13) had a trial run last week when I went out for the evening and my hubby was away on a business trip. I'd left them all that they needed to make tuna fish and pasta but the 18 year old decided that spaghetti wasn't quite what they needed, so sent his younger brother off to the local shop for...(I'm not sure I can admit to this having come into my house and then been eaten with relish, as only teenagers and students can) okay...they had Pot Noodles. Nothing wrong with Pot Noodles, they have their place but that isn't ordinarily in my kitchen! The thing that really made me laugh was when my eldest son said 'but we didn't have any proper pasta', 'There's spaghetti in the cupboard'. His reply ....' alright it might be proper pasta but it's annoying to cook!' He said it with such conviction that I think I actually laughed my socks off! I love teenagers - no really I do, they can be hilarious and brutally honest but they are also really good fun.
So next week is going to be an interesting challenge for them all, the only thing my husband cooks is pancakes (which he does very well), the eldest son did 3 years of food tech - which apparently means he can cook anything and know it's nutritional value, and the youngest would happily exist on a diet of honey on toast and pot noodles (given a chance). This is where wots4supper comes in to its own - I know that I can't give them anything that needs any last minute preparation or complicated cooking, so I shall put together a special 'mums away' week of meals for them and just keep my fingers crossed the local shop's run out of Pot Noodles!
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Happy cooking!

The growing season is here!

Those of you who are gardeners as well as cooks will share my frustration in the weather I'm sure! I've managed to get out and plant a few seeds in my poly tunnels and the veggie beds are starting to spring into life, but it's so chilly at the moment that the last place I want to be is outside! We are still harvesting vegetables from last year though, by some miracle my chard seems to have come through the winter and the purple sprouting broccoli has been saved again from the pigeons. I bought some patriotic bunting from our local Co-op which is now adorning the brasicca cage!!They're a bit clever our local pigeons, they'd worked out that when the netting was lower they could sit on it and happily tuck in to the delicious young broccoli. I wish my teenagers were quite so keen on it...

I'm also taking advantage of a delicious glut of rhubarb in my veggie plot, and i made a delicious (even though I do say so myself) rhubarb and ginger cheesecake - very simple but really yummy.

4oz ginger-nuts, crushed
4oz digestive biscuits, crushed
4oz melted butter

1lb stewed rhubarb (cooked and cooled in its own juices with a good helping of caster sugar)
250g creamed cheese
8fl oz double cream
2 tbsp sweet ginger sauce
3oz caster sugar

First of all, make the base by melting the butter and mixing in the crushed biscuit crumbs. Press down firmly in to a flan tin and pop in to the fridge to set.

Then whisk the double cream until soft peaks from and beat in the cream cheese (you can keep whisking if you want). Mix in the sugar, ginger sauce and the stewed rhubarb - I always mix in the rhubarb a couple of tablespoons at a time and taste as I go. You want to get a good hit of that rhubarb tanginess but with a hint of ginger and its heat coming through.

If you have any rhubarb left over you can always sieve it and make it into a sauce to serve with the cheesecake or just spoon it over as it is.

Hope you're all enjoying the spring weather and I'm sure like us you can't wait for the summer to arrive!

Happy cooking

The w4s team