Saturday

It's cold, dark, probably dismal, but I don't care!  Friends are coming round for lunch, people I haven't seen for a while, and I'm all excited about it.

Looking round the room, oh, drea!  It's not going to be tidy right now, not with spare room stuff piled up, but I think it could be better than it is, so a quick tidy up is in order.

As they are coming for lunch, I dithered about what to cook and decided comfort food in the shape of cottage pie or something similar would just fit the bill.  With that in mind, I wandered out to the shed and brought in two packs of mince before going to bed.  On Friday morning I started preparing the mince for the slow cooker and realised I had defrosted pork mince, not beef mince.  Doh!

Never mind, I did the necessary with the frying pan and piled it all in the slow cooker to simmer all day long.  I used carrot, onion and celery, cumin, coriander and cinnamon, chopped tomatoes and tomato puree, stock, lentils and oats and some salt, pepper and balsamic vinegar and as an after thought I threw in some dried cranberries (no idea why, it just seemed like a good idea).  The resulting goo is quite tasty and I've decided that I will serve it with pasta (home made) with parmesan on top and garlis bread on the side.  A right mix up but I reckon it will taste well OK.
I need to saute some mushrooms and peppers and might also add some red wine and frozen peas too and boil it all off.  It'll be a right conglomeration but I reckon it will be more or less OK!
Casual, that's me!!

I hope it's not too bad because it's going to provide the basis of several meals through the week too!

And now I need to start getting things ready!
Have a great day.