Posted by kathryn in Miscellanea

• A different type of taco: I like this idea from Spice and More about using lettuce cups instead of taco shells. Add salad, diced tomatoes, cheese and whatever other toppings you want and then roll them up in lettuce leaves. Delicious.
• Baked apricots: A simple idea, but such a lovely way to use dried fruit in winter – Wendy from A Wee Bit of Cooking bakes dried apricots in the oven with water, a bit of sugar and crystallised ginger. You could cook enough for a few days, store in the fridge and eat warm or cold. I reckon they’d be lovely on a bowl of breakfast porridge.
• Christmas commercialism: According to Alex Renton at The Guardian commercialism at Christmas is nothing new. But it’s the historic Christmas menus in the article which most fascinated me – apparently “in 1206 the shopping order for King John and his court, holding Christmas at Winchester Castle, included 1,500 chickens, 5,000 eggs, 20 oxen and 100 pigs”!
• Choice food reviews: I’ve been looking through the review and compare section of the new Choice website this week. They have useful summaries of some of the issues around basic foodstuffs, covering nutrition, production techniques, taste. Reviews include tomatoes, milk, feta cheese, potato products and so on.
• “Poshed up baked potato”: Girl Interrupted Cooking has posted a lovely simple dish for stuffed pumpkin. Onion and garlic, breadcrumbs, cheese, fresh herbs and mustard are mixed together; stuffed into half a pumpkin and then baked in the oven. She describes it as “poshed up baked potato” which is just perfect.

11 December, 2009