One of the very good things about living on my own is that I never have to consider anyone else when it comes to dinner.  This is also one of the very bad things as most of the time it means my dinner consists of toast.  Not plain toast, you understand – I have a variety of spreads in the cupboard – raspberry, marmalade, chocolate spread, marmalade, marmalade.  I have a lot of marmalade.  Sometimes I’ll push the boat right out and throw in some scrambled egg, beans, or cheese into the mix.  I know how to live life on the edge.  I have good intentions.  I have ‘stuff’ in the freezer, but I usually forget to take it out.

And honestly, I don’t have the time or inclination to spend more than a few minutes cooking when I get home from work – I’m either leaving for yoga or upholstery or I’d rather just get on with something more enjoyable than 30 minute of cooking that Norman will fight me for and will have disappeared at the same speed as the toast anyway.

I’ve realised recently though that despite the varied colours and flavours, this probably isn’t adding up to a balanced diet and could be contributing to the fact my skin is looking pretty terrible and that most of the time I feel like a zombie.  So I thought I’d give actual cooking a go.  You know….something involving my one saucepan, one frying pan, and possibly a wooden spoon or two.  I used to cook, and there was one meal that took very little effort but involved meat, a vegetable and not even a crumb of toast.  So I set to work on chicken a’lorange, my style.

I put on some rice and cooked mushrooms, turkey (it was all I had in the freezer), threw in some marmalade (I couldn’t completely ignore the jam cupboard) and plopped in some crème fraiche.  Which promptly separated.  I assumed I’d just not added enough so plopped in a bit more.  Funnily enough, that separated too.  I checked the best before date:  the 15^th.  I added some more (didn’t someone once say that repeating the same action, expecting a different outcome was the definition of madness?).  The contents of my pan looked…well I won’t say, but it wasn’t good.  I looked at the date again.  The 15^th…of April.  Ok, so that was probably the issue.

I didn’t want to waste everything though – I was cooking enough for two nights and that just seemed wrong.  So I popped the whole lot in a colander and gave it a good wash under the tap :o)

I made a crème fraiche variation with a bit of cream cheese (I scraped the mould off first) and milk, put the washed turkey, mushrooms and marmalade rind back into the mix and hey presto!  Dinner was served.

Now do you see why I stick to toast?

I did buy some broccoli last week.  I’m not really sure what to do with it so I cooked it last night (it was going a bit funny looking) and I’m planning on a broccoli and cheese on toast extravaganza tomorrow night.  It’s not that weird, is it?  And at least dinner will involve a vegetable.  And not a drop of crème fraiche :o)

And in other news, I spotted this yesterday:

I can’t work out if it’s a joke, but I like the fact that someone is trying out names on it.

‘Archibald?  Gerry? Jemima? Oh, give me a clue….’  :o)