learn how to prepare 10 excellent meals

Last week I made a winter vegetable crumble which was … let’s be modest about this … astounding. Mmm Mmm Mmm… definitely one to repeat.

My Paella’s have improved with practice too :-) I’ve defintely improved in kitchen confidence.

I made a Paella, and a Bean-and-potato pie … both without recipes, and both worked great! I’m actually rather pleased with myself :-) Although they do have room for improvement (the pie needed some stronger flavours), it’s good progress.

I made this again, Mrs. iolair and one of the iolairlets are of the opinion that it is excellent. Yay… I still want to be able to make a decent Paella de Verduras though!

So long since I posted this goal, but I made one great thing today, at long last… even though trying to follow the recipe I substituted most of the ingredients because I couldn’t find them in any shop…

So, my “excellent” repertoire now consists of one thing – Sweet Potato and Green Bean pasties. But, they worked – and went down well with my daughter as well. (My son … well, he’s just fussy in the evenings, so meh!).

I made chickpea burgers with chips, all from scratch. And they met with the approval of 4 year old Anya! Onward and upward…

This probably doesn’t count as an EXCELLENT meal, but it’s good practice and a step in the right direction.

it’s time to get of my backside and actually cook one of these things I’m threatening too. This weekend.

I’m terrible at working it around the children, though, and I have the bad habit that I don’t usually think about food until I’m already hungry. I need something where I can do the preparation the night before (when the children are in bed) and just throw it in the oven/pot to heat up without too much attention the next day.

Time to trawl the recipe books … or anyone have a suitable suggestion for what to make?

Not only something that I feel I ought to do, it would also make Mrs. iolair very happy…