sweet nothings...

I made baked fish for our dinner tonight I couldn't find the recipe for a spanish one I have made before, so I made a Jamie Oliver one instead, throwing in a few extra ingredients.

I made a nice tomato, onion, garlic and basil sauce first. I used lots of fresh basil, and added some mushrooms and a courgette I found in the fridge. Then I put my bits of fish on top of the sauce in an oven dish, sprinkled it with some black olives and capers, and baked it for 15 mins at 220'C.
While it was cooking I made some mashed potato, and some peas to make it look pretty





It was really good!

Last night I had a little halloween dinner party for four I chose what to make, went food shopping, prepared all the ingredients, roasted my butternut squash and set the table with all the candles I could find. My very helpful and apparently multi-talented boyfriend bought and carved a little pumpkin for my table's halloween centre piece (pretty magnificent specimen of a pumpkin it was too, especially for a first attempt!) Pumpkins certainly look a lot easier to carve than a turnip, which is what I used to use when I was a kid! I can see now why they are used so much in America!

When my friends arrived though, all I really wanted to do was sit with them and catch up on all their news, so my boyfriend gallantly volunteered to make my butternut squash and feta risotto for me! (it was his own recipe I was using though, so he would make it so much better than me ) It was so sweet of him to do that for me though and I was very grateful I didn't even make my own pudding!
I bought a ready made apple pie and a tub of really nice ice cream from a fancy supermarket instead!

I really enjoyed the meal though, and it was great to see my friends again, and to finally show them round my first flat Next time I have a dinner party though, I am going to choose something which I can make in advance and just shove in the oven before my guests arrive! That way I can join in with the fun and gossip, instead of spending all my time cooking in the kitchen!

I made this lovely spicy garlicky mushroomy creamy pasta tonight for my boyfriend, as he has been all bunged up with a cold today, and I thought a bit of garlic would do him good. Also, it might help to prevent me from catching it too!!

I used two whole roasted bulbs of garlic, so I don't think there will be any vampires coming near our flat anytime soon! I have a lemon and nutmeg rice pudding cooking at the moment too, for a late night comfort pudding






rice pudding!

Tonight was the first brandy-feeding night of last week's xmas cake!
http://my.opera.com/kirstycat/blog/2009/10/15/christmas-cake
It only gets a tbsp once a week, so we took turns to feed it with half a tbsp each

really really nice! I liked this one a lot!