September 2019 – Apricots In Manchester

Cookbook challenge part 11

Cookbook number 11 is a Slimming World vegetarian book. I lost 28lb with Slimming World and it wasn’t too painful. The plan is designed around cooking and eating normal meals, so it’s ideal for people who love food. Since loving food is what led to me carrying the extra weight (well, that and having two babies), it definitely worked for me.

If you eat meat there are lots of Slimming World options – you can have steak, roast chicken or even a bacon sandwich. I don’t eat any of those things so it’s useful to have a book full of veggie ideas. This book doesn’t include any desserts, although there are many Slimming World friendly dessert options you could make if you wanted. I decided to have a starter instead this time.

A very straightford creamy dip with roasted root vegetables to start. This was supposed to also have parsnips and sweet potatoes, but I just did carrots because of my sons’ weird aversion to sweet vegetables. The vegetables were roasted with spices, lime juice and fat free vinaigrette. I would never have thought of using vinaigrette in this way but it worked really well.

The dip was made from fat free fromage frais and lots of garlic. It tasted quite creamy – I don’t think you would have guessed it was fat free. This made a large amount of dip, but fortunately everyone liked it and asked to have it again.

The main course was this cheesy mexican bake. I did realise that this wasn’t going to work for everyone in our house as it includes not only artichoke hearts but also red and yellow pepper, celery and courgette. It does have cheese though, which usually makes everything better. It also uses tinned potatoes, which I always think taste a bit strange, but I think raw ones wouldn’t have cooked before the rest was overdone so I followed the recipe.

As predicted, this was not very popular with my sons. We quite liked it though, so a fifty percent success rate is acceptable. I thought maybe it would be a bit like having nachos, but it wasn’t of course, the sauce was quite runny. It was still tasty and had a bit of spice, although I felt it was improved by adding hot sauce. Many things are improved by hot sauce in my opinion!

If you were cooking for people who are less fussy about particular vegetables then this would make a good meal. It was filling, especially with all the dip as well and the flavours worked well.

I think the next cookbook needs to please everyone, so let’s see what I can do!

I grew some apricots! When I first planted the tree I was told that you can’t grow apricots in Manchester. But there you go, I did.

In summer 2019, I grew four apricots in my Manchester garden – my best gardening achievement. Some people said I would never get them to ripen this far north, so we’ll put that down to beginner’s luck (or maybe global warming). I mulched and fed the tree, hand pollinated it with a paintbrush and protected the blossom with fleece in the late frosts. Four fruits is not much of a reward for all that effort I know, but I was very proud. They were also delicious!

Update: Those four tasty little apricots inspired the name of my blog, website, domain name and social media handles. It’s amazing what can come from one little tree!