It's not all about the benjamins

It's been a bit of a red letter day chez Glutton. I've had an uncharacteristically successful day in my other life as a PR supremo/dogsbody and, best news of all, darling GluttonBoy's new job has been confirmed. Now darling GB is much more brilliant than he thinks and due to a horrible mix up not of his making found himself out of work in the middle of January.

He currently works in food retail (lucky for gluttons like us) an, luxury food not being an especially robust sector currently, it's taken him a bit of a while to get a new role. Actually, only six weeks but it is a bit of a confidence-sapper.

Why am I telling you this? We've had to be super-clever and keep a beady eye on expenditure lately, which isn't easy for those of us of a greedy disposition. Luckily, the slow cooker has been earning its keep and we've cut down massively on waste, which is a good thing from lots of perspectives. And while it will take us a few months to get back on a firm financial footing, I'm going to try to keep up some of the good habits. It's not as if we've eaten crap, or beans on toast. But if we've had a roast it's been pork belly rather than leg of lamb. And that kind of food is actually delicious if cooked in the right way. So, from me to you, here's some really obvious tips on saving money while still being a greedy glutton:

• Forgotten cuts of meat - pork belly (actually not that forgotten at all but worth banging on about how delicious it can be. Mmmm, crackling), pork cheeks (even if they do look like testicles), brisket, lamb breast, chicken thighs, chicken wings.
• Big packs of veg seem cheap, but they only are if you'll genuinely use them.
• Big shops, not small ones - right next door to Glutton Towers is a Tesco Express which I started popping in to on a daily basis, rather than getting a big shop from Sainsburys. Of course they only stock the most expensive cuts of meat (chicken breasts, steak, steak mince) and perfect veg in multipacks. None of your economy nets of mis-shapen courgettes here. Some weeks I get our weekly shop down to £50 for two, including ground coffee by the truckload and a fair bit of meat. A strict shopping list is the key!
• Go veggie for two days - makes a fair bit of difference to the food bill/planet/your colon
• Embrace the basics range. Ok, I won't buy basics mince or sausages. But canned tomatoes, cleaning products, chicken wings, vegetables, jelly(and I'm going to share a jelly delight with you later in the week) noodles, soft cheese (only if being used to stuff a chicken breast), ground coffee, stock cubes are fine. There are probably loads more and it is often just a packaging issue.

And with that, I'm off to celebrate with a steak and a bottle of sparkles.

Lots of love

GG

An update

So, who ever said 'the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there' probably didn't realise just how right he was. And that person had not just had a butterscotch Angel Delight.

Now, it's not as if I haven't had one in years. I probably have one every few months. But intoxicated by the excitement of buying 3 for £1 in Poundland I've have been literally whipped into a frenzy. And you know what, it isn't as nice as I remember. Much more watery, much less butterscotchy and also, I notice, much more prone to kind of melt into a sloppy, separated mess which, to be frank, puts me in mind of what happens when the cat eats something she shouldn't.

I also notice you no longer need to put it in the fridge. It also doesn't get so solified with whipping. Has something changed? I can only assume that namby-pamby food fascism has led to some fairly fundamental structural changes. Well whatever that chemical was, that has been taken out, I'm calling on Kraft to put it the fuck back in. You can make Smarties those new boring, less bright colours. You can make orangeade less orange. You can make pink shrimps less pink. You can even call cigarette sweets 'candy sticks'. But don't mess with Angel Delight!

Until next time

GG

You can't escape your background

So food is a strangely politicised element of our lives. Where you shop, what foods you buy - all means you are judged, put in a demographic group, assumed to have certain views or beliefs. Waitrose Woman is, after all, very different from Tesco Mum. Or so shops/politicians would have us believe.
I am, and always will be, a Sainsbury's Girl. It's were, largely, we shopped when I was a child, it isn't the cheapest or the most expensive, and in the main I think it is nice. I know Tesco is a bit cheaper, Morrison's is closer and Waitrose has better quality, but it will always be Sainsers for me. But that doesn't mean I'm not partial to a Findus Crispy Pancake or too. And this is where it all goes a bit strange.
If you think back to when you were a child, we all ate some odd food. My mum was a bean-loving hippy who didn't like us eating shop-bought cakes etc. But I still remember eating KFC and Angel Delight. Even people who were taken on holiday to France and given Fruits de Mer as children remember the odd bit of yellow breaded on their plate. But, if you listen to a bunch of thirty somethings now, you'd think Fish Fingers were only enjoyed ironically and sausages were always gourmet.
So I say, it's time to reclaim the reconstituted. And I don't mean reformed ham that hasn't seen a pig in years or Barbie-shaped turkey bits. That's just plain wrong. But the foods that seemed exciting and futuristic. That your cousins-who-were-allowed-fizzy-drinks would have and we would sometimes have on special occasions. Because food wasn't always Finest, hand-reared, sourced from Tuscany. Once it was just food.

My list would include:

Viennetta - but only the original flavour
Angel Delight - I'm sure you used to be able to get more flavours. Peach for one. And raspberry...
Those chocolate mousses that had swirls of cream on top.
Smash
Potato Croquettes or Noisettes
Frozen mousses that took ages to defrost
Tinned fruit cocktail. In syrup.
Findus Crispy Pancakes
Tinned ravioli

The theme seems to be: canned, frozen or will keep for years. Bliss.


Until next time

GG

Entertaining in Peckham

So we're firmly in our new flat and I have to say, we've been cooking up a storm. The kitchen may be tiny, but it's constantly in use. And it makes me wildly happy to know that MY kitchen is the heart of MY home. Or our home, really.
January is always marmelade month. I start full of enthusiasm and then, halfway through chopping peel finely, I start swearing never ever to make it again. This year was different. I made it. And I ate it. And I loved it. Sorry if this is old news, but the bitterness underneath the sweetness is a real pleasure. Not easy, not obvious, but definitely pleasing.
The girls came over for sunday lunch. And, as Glutton Boy would surely say, I bit off more than I could chew. With a veggie amongst the four of them, our meals tend towards the meat-free side and are, it has to be said, ever so slightly competitive, in a good way. Lovely Plenty from Mr Ottolenghi, while complicated, didn't let me down. We ate:

caramelised garlic tart with wensleydale cheese (hate goat's cheese) which was sweet and shart and soft and crispy and savoury and also looked quite fancy-pants.
Beetroot wedges with a relish of roast red peppers and slightly spicy tomato. I forgot to swirl in the greek yoghurt but it looked super-beautiful and jewelled pink and red. Was also sweet and sharp and I could have eaten it all day
Onions stuffed with tomato and feta - looked like little roast testicles but pleased to report tasted all lovely.

Now I recognise that proper food writers have lots of ways to describe their food and usually 'lovely' doesn't get used that much. But I'm not a proper food writer and it was lovely.

Pudding was a Baileys tiramisu - thanks Nigella! (was also lovely).

We've also had people over midweek (which I never normally do), and that's been a different kind of fun. The slow cooker has been invaluable for this - an all-day bolognese, all meltingly umami-ish and savoury seems to hit the spot well. And, I've discovered a lovely (oops!) easy pudding courtesy of Carnation, which I'll share with you:

whip 1 can Carnation condensed milk with 150ml double cream until thick ish.
Add the finely grated zest and juice of four lemons. Whisk again until proper thick.
Spoon into little glasses and chill.

Yummo.

I'm serving this next week, but making some meringue nests to pipe it on to, get me. It also occured to me that if you made a cheesecake-style biscuit base of gingernuts, this would make a nice filling for it. There. A little gift from me to you.

The meringue nest people are getting meatloaf to start. Stuffed with eggs, wrapped in bacon. No graces in Peckham that's for sure.

And Vicky B would say (who is a long way from meatloaf and condensed milk), in love and light...

GG

In which GG learns about slow food

This Christmas, darling Glutton Boy gave me a slow cooker. I'd been mithering about buying one for ages but two things had put me off: 1) I am a bit OCD about leaving things on 2) I have a very small kitchen. But on the understanding that slow cookers are designed to be left on for 12 hours I feel relatively comfortable with it. And I've already cooked in it - lamb shanks cooked in pale ale. And delicious it was too.

So this got me thinking about what sort of cook I am - I'm not the sort of cook that has a million hot pans on the go, that when people come round I'm plating up towers in the kitchen. And I don't know anyone else like that either. I am more of a shove-it-all-in-the-slow-cooker-and-pour-myself-a-gin kind of girl. Which is by far the better in my view. How much nicer to spend time with people I've invited than to stress that the souffle hasn't risen properly. Really, who needs that kind of stress?

And a slow cooker lends itself to the sort of cheap and delicious food I love. The mainstay of the Jewish sabbath is a casserole called a cholent. My grandmother cooked this as does my mum and she leaves it in the oven all day. It's a slow one so you don't have to do any work once the sun sets. Brisket, carrots, potatoes, butter beans, stock. Sometimes pearl barley but I find it sucks up all the moisture so not brilliant in some ways. And it is absolutely delicious in its simplicity. Plain, tender and nourishing in all kinds of ways. How lovely to come home from a crap day at work and find a dish of loveliness bubbling away on the counter top. How much would that make you feel that someone was looking after you, even if that someone is really you.

I have loads of people coming over in January as I've just moved house and I am planning a succession of slow-cooked delights. Pig cheeks, a good chilli, a daube of beef, oxtail for the more robust of stomach and adventurous of spirit. And, another blessing for January, a really economical way to cook.

Cheap, tasty, uplifting. Much like GluttonGirl herself.

Much love
GG

The ties that bind...

It's blindingly obvious and been said before, but food is so much more than food.

I have a group of four girlfriends who I've known for years. I met one at university when I was 19 and the others were friends of hers. We used to see each other all the time and take turns to cook madly good dinners with ridiculous amounts of wine which more often than not ended up with us flashing our knockers at the neighbours.

As time has gone on, we've seen each other less - one has had a baby, two of us are married and two live with their partners, so life is very different to how it was when we first met. We've been through all kinds of terrible boyfriends, houseshares, jobs and for the last seven years, whatever else has been going on, there has always been Christmas dinner at Sharmin's.

Sharm is an amazing cook and a brilliant convivial hostess. There are pressies, drinks galore and bags of laughing. Boys are most definitely banned. This year we broke with tradition and held it during the day and it lasted around 8 hours. And it did my heart good to be with these girls who have known me so long, round a table, sharing a brilliant meal. If we didn't do Christmas at Sharm's, it wouldn't be Christmas.

So that's the holiday spirit - people you love, being together, having fun, sharing news. It's like a Hallmark card come to life but I won't apologise for that.

So thank you ladies, for another brilliant Christmas.

GGxx

In which I am quite tired but also quite exhilarated

If you had to put together a bunch of stressful things that are inadvisable to do in roughly the same time period, they might look a bit like this:

buy your first flat and move house
Christmas
make cakes for friend's wedding
make cakes for boss's party
snow

Stupidly, I have done all these things lately. GluttonBoy said of me this weekend 'if you die before me, your gravestone will read 'she bit off more than she could chew.'

Let me explain - in early December we moved into our first flat - the finding and buying of said flat and the moving processes was so stressful I almost called it off. And then we were plunged headlong into Christmas, which due to family stuff is always a tiny bit on the fraught side. And I had been hired to make 80 wedding cupcakes for a dear friend's wedding on the 20th. That's fine, I thought to myself, I have the Sunday before to bake/ice. Except my annual girls' Christmas beano was then scheduled for the Sunday. And on the Saturday I agreed to make 80 cakes and deliver them to Camden. And then it snowed so there were no cabs and I don't drive. So much, so hellish.

But, when I saw the wedding cakes on the stand I felt unbelievably happy and proud it was all worth it. And I had a brilliant time with the girls for Christmas. So now, is just Christmas to cope with.

And actually, I love Christmas food. Not just the big day itself, but almost more the peripheral days. GluttonBoy always wants the same Christmas eve dinner - salmon, new potatoes and hollandaise. Smoked salmon, scrambled egg and bucks fizz for breakfast, the constant mince pie/quality street grazing and best of all in my book - the boxing day neverending gluttony.

I'm not at home this year for Boxing Day and neither is GB, but we've decided to make the 28th (our first full day together of the Christmas season in our own flat) a late Boxing Day. On the menu (or rather in the fridge) will be:

Sausages - rolls and in blankets
Cdld meat - turkey, ham, beef
Cheeses - english, french and boursin
Pickes and chutneys
Some fruit for the sake of appearance
Christmas cake (once I get round to making the bloody thing)
I would even go so far as to make vol au vents and potato salad

There will also be drinks galore, enough to ensure a low-level fuzzy head all day. And Mad Men series 2 and 3 which I intend to watch in full.

Christmas is suddenly looking up!

Much love

GG