* Hot Smoked Salmon Kedgeree Stir Fry

I LOVE Hot Smoked Salmon. I have a hard time not eating it straight out of the fridge, with only my fingers for garnish. You can't disguise the fact that you've just raided the fridge and helped yourself to a rather large flake of the stuff, because it's quite strong smelling in it's smokiness. So I leave the fridge foraging for when no one is home and the windows are wide open... and for when I've locked the cat in the garage. If I don't lock the cat in the garage he comes charging in through the cat flap at the first whiff - meowing "CHRISTMAS" at top volume.

This Hot Smoked Salmon Kedgeree Stir Fry was born of a want for kedgeree and pure unadulterated laziness. I can't be bothered to cook up a storm most mornings and I want my first meal of the day to take as little time as possible to prepare so that I can stuff my face in a leisurely fashion and enjoy a pint of coffee whilst I wake up... plus - I don't like egg white. Kedgeree usually involves egg of some description. Boiled, poached or fried depending on the person cooking it. I honestly wish I could stand the texture of egg white because I would love to try Eggs Benedict or Huevos Rancheros but after 44 years it just ain't gonna happen. So I tend to stir a whole beaten egg into my kedgeree as a substitute and it works better with the stir fry method than any other...

... and there's that whole need for speed thing...

* Coconut Prawn Curry {Hairy Dieters}

Although I've always been on the voluptuous side of voluptuous, I have never really had a problem with my weight until I hit my fortieth birthday a couple of years back. All of a sudden it mattered. Oddly (or not) I have always struggled with my age... always... right back as far as the age of twenty four (many, many moons ago *sob*) when Neil bought me a bunch of flowers the day before my twenty fifth birthday because "You seem a bit bummed out about your birthday tomorrow".

Sweet.

He hasn't bought me flowers since. His excuses vary from "It's been so long, you'd wonder what I'd done wrong if I did"... to "The only flowers you'll be getting from me will be on your funeral wreath".

Wuuuuv. Twuu wuuuuv. 

I digress (what's new?)... in December last year I started up with Weight Watchers Online for about the fourth or fifth time and it lasted until Christmas Eve (ish), which is what I'd more or less expected - because I have the attention span of a rabid gnat when it comes to following any sort of plan... plus Christmas. Really. If you expected any different you seriously haven't been paying attention. I am offended. So... any weight that I lost before the Christmas period I gained back with big brass knobs on and a side of Christmas Pudding.

I've considered trying 5:2 again, Rosemary Conley, calorie counting... stapling my face shut. I've bought both of the Hairy Dieters Cook Books in a bid to inspire myself into Thindom and as yet, have only cooked the one recipe from them. This one. Coconut Prawn Curry. It's pretty scrumptious. So I thought I'd share it.

I have actually lost a couple of pounds this week, simply by walking the dog a bit further and a bit more often... I got up this morning to discover she'd placed a "Do Not Disturb" sign beside her bed and she's hidden her leash.

I'm tempted to shout "Walkies" just to see if she bites me.

* Cheesy Tuna Quesadillas

I've been making tortilla wraps stuffed with just about anything I have left over in the fridge - that needs eating up - for years. I've only recently started to cook quesadillas as an alternative, and I'm falling in love with them, though I've yet to find a way of stopping the chorizo ones from oozing orangey red oil down the front of whatever top I'm wearing... those ones involve a lot of strategic chin placement and mopping up.

Quesadillas have become an almost permanent lunchtime fixture of late because none of us like shop bought bread, and I keep forgetting to load up the bread maker until I'm hungry and it's too late. This is probably also the reason that I like such hearty soups, because they don't really require bread... there's one on the stove bubbling away right now, and even though I'm writing this and thinking "I must get a loaf in the bread maker in a minute"... it ain't gonna happen.

In another ten minutes -when I've finished updating etc - I have no idea what my brain will be doing. I know it well enough by now, to know that the mere fact that it has considered the possibility of making bread... is going to convince it, that it has, in fact, gone through the entire process of loading up the bread maker with the necessary ingredients and turned it on.

In four hours time it will be completely dumbfounded by the fact that there is still no bread cooking in the bread maker.

This is when it will have a light bulb moment... It will then promise to do better next time... make my feet walk into the kitchen towards the bread maker... spot the washing blowing on the line... get meowed at by Archie because he's decided he wants feeding.... feed the cat... wander back out of the kitchen... then four hours later...

Rinse and repeat.

It's incredibly hard work being me.

* Creamy Seafood Stew

Oh. My. God... was this gorgeous or WHAT!

I wish I could take full credit for it, but I found the basis for the recipe in one of my Good Food magazines from "waaay back when", on an evening a few weeks ago when I had nothing to do but peruse recipes and drool on relevant glossy pages.

We don't eat much in the way of fish, and I was deliberately looking for inspiration along those lines when I saw this and decided it was worth a try. Honestly, I thought it was going to be a bit ordinary and maybe a tad bland because it just seemed a little bit too simple to be anything else.

I did tweak it a bit, because the portions didn't seem to me, to be quite right - but I kept the flavours identical.

It.

Was.

Scrumptious.

I'm going straight out to buy another bag of seafood, so that I can cook it again at the next available opportunity.

* Corn and Shellfish Chowder

The sun is shining - for now - and I wasn't in the mood for anything too heavy for lunch, so I made chow-dah! It was also a good excuse to use the three cobs of corn that I'd bought because they'd screamed "BUY ME!" as I walked past them outside the greengrocers yesterday.

I did try to leave them there, but the guilt was too much for any one loan food shopping addict to bare - so I succumbed. Which was fun. Especially when I had to literally beg the fridge to allow to me wedge something else inside it.

Anyway... back to the "I didn't want anything too heavy for lunch..." 

To me, anything that doesn't have bread of any kind with it, isn't heavy. Even if you can cut a soup with a knife and use it as sandwich spread - it isn't heavy. Eeeeven if you can serve it up with an ice cream scoop in perfect little chow-dah balls, reminiscent of your mum's mashed potato in the 1970's... it isn't heavy.

It's soup...

... how can it be heavy?

Thankfully, this soup falls just shy of being able to stand your spoon up in it.

* Smoked Haddock Chowder

I've been going through my freezers just recently, in a bid to work out what we have that needs to be used up before it evolves... like the lone bratwurst sausage that has been a member of the family for the last five years (at least) - I couldn't possibly make use of it, but it did deserve a far better funeral that it got. We named him Billy and consigned him to the bin. 'Bye, bye Billy Bratwurst.'

I did - however - find lots of perfectly usable food. Mostly fish and chicken. I always have loads of chicken in all it's guises, and I have a tendency to buy fish because it's good for you - then not use it. I'm the only one that truly likes fish pie, and that's been about as inventive as it's got over the past few years. Though I'd like that to change.

I was going *out with the girls* on Saturday night, and thought a filling soup would do the trick before I went. Not enough to bloat me out, but enough to line the stomach for the vodkafest that was to follow. Well that was the plan...