29 February - veggie curry

Another veggie dish tonight, this time a Southern Indian vegetable curry from Anjum Anand's Indian Food Made Easy . It had lots of yummy veg - potatoes, carrots, courgette, green beans and cabbage - and plenty of spices, but somehow came out a bit disappointingly bland. At least it felt healthy though ...

31 July - halloumi, curry and greengage jam

On a lovely hot summer Sunday, we lazed around and had a late lunch of fried halloumi and warm tomato salad.

Yesterday, Tris had brought back a big bag of greengages from the French market in town - part of the Bristol Harbour Festival. Unfortunately, lots of them turned out to be split, so needed using quickly. After a bit of online searching, I found a very simple recipe for greengage jam and decided to give it a go - having never made jam before.

• Put 750g of whole greengages in a large pan with 150ml water and a whole vanilla pod. Bring to the boil and simmer gently for 30 mins until really soft.
• Off the heat, stir in 650g sugar and a tiny knob of butter (c.8g), stir and return to the heat.
• Boil hard for 10 mins and skim off the stones that have risen to the top.
• Keep boiling for about another 10 mins, remove the vanilla pod, allow to cool a little, then spoon into sterilised jars. This amount filled two standard size jam jars and two smaller jars.
  

I wasn't sure initially whether the final result was a bit runny, but once it had cooled properly, it had set to a nice jammy consistency and tasted really rather good. I'm not a big jam eater, so I might have to think about giving at least one of the jars away, but I'm sure we'll get through the rest.

Tris was in the kitchen this evening, cooking up a really good lamb curry from Anjum Anand's Indian food Made Easy. We had it out on the terrace with some beans from the garden cooked up with ginger and spices. A great end to the weekend!