What kind of week has it been? Busy, as I start to get back into the swing of work. Little E still has a horrid cough, so sleep hasn’t been great generally (although we did get only our second ever sleep through the night on Monday night). Lots more slow cooker meals this week. I’ve decided that on my working days our dinner should either be from the slow cooker, from the freezer or something made of leftovers. I can save the more creative cooking for the days when I have a bit more time to play with. I also found myself with some extra berries, so raspberry muffins were made for work colleagues, and there’s either a raspberry ricotta cake or raspberry friands on the menu this weekend.

Recipes:

• Birthday party food:
  • Baby veg salad with goat’s curd (labneh) and sherry vinaigrette from Delicious magazine
  • Feta and spring onion bouikos from the Honey and Co. cookbook
  • Banana cake from Smitten Kitchen, filled with slow cooker Dulce de Leche and iced with cream cheese icing.
• Aubergine ragout from Slow Cooked
• White chicken Chili from Slow Cooked
• Baked chicken meatballs from Smitten Kitchen (from the freezer) with pasta
• Raspberry white chocolate muffins from Donna Hay
• Ricotta from Delancey by Molly Wizenberg – with this cake in mind

Without a recipe:

• Roast chicken
• Sausage bap (for dinner? yes, really)
• Pumpkin filled pasta (from the supermarket) with pesto and ricotta

Reading:

Very little this week, for some reason – lots of catching up to do this weekend.

• Slow cooker recipes for warmer weather – not all of these appeal, but a couple look worth trying
• Raspberry, hazelnut and pistachio friands – Violet Cakes
• We like writing lists of things we like – thinking I might do my own list in a future post
• Epicurious has a list of the 10 Essential cookbooks – at least for the American home cook. It would be interesting to replace some of these to make a list of British equivalents. I can think of some obvious ones – e.g. Delia Smith’s Complete Cookery Course for The Joy of Cooking.