* Sweet Lamb and Chickpea Casserole

I'm just going to leave this here... and pretend that I have been updating this blog on a regular basis over the past three years, that my food photography skills have vastly improved (hahahahahaaaa), that I totally planned this and didn't actually just take a random photo of my cooking and think "Dammit I'm never going to remember this recipe unless I write it down... where can I put it so that I don't lose it?"

Perhaps if I slope quietly off into the ether that is my life, I'll get away with it... Not that I'm expecting some sort of hidden fan base to suddenly arrive and start crying with joy - though maaan that would feed the ego somewhat (it has shrunk in recent years to size of a small barge - it no longer has it's own seat at the table and even gave up the spare bed at some point when I wasn't looking).

This Sweet Lamb and Chickpea Casserole is the most recent recipe I have converted to as low fat as I can handle in my never ending endeavour to drop a dress size. I've probably lost the same 10lbs a million times over in the past three years. I blame wine.. and the husband, of course.

Should you stumble back across my path after all this time and decide to give this recipe a shot - I hope you enjoy it. Please excuse my less than professional photo - my camera got destroyed by sand in the lens a few years back whilst on holiday in Crete and I never bothered to replace it. I'm still working out how to get the best out of my S7's built in camera...

... and the rest of my life ;-)

* Lamb Stew with Rosemary Dumplings

It's taken me about a year to get round to cooking this Lamb Stew with Rosemary Dumplings recipe for Neil. He spotted something similar on "Lorraine" one morning, when he didn't have to leave for work until a bit later than normal and was watching what the chef of the weeks was cooking - and he said "I'd eat that".

He's been waiting expectantly ever since.

Or so I thought.

I was finally feeling a bit better yesterday (I've had a bad cold - there was self pity and everything) and had remembered to get the lamb out of the freezer but forgotten what for, when I had a light bulb moment and remembered the stew recipe from a year ago. Sort of.

So. I slaved over a hot stove. SLAVED I tell you. Stopping only to blow my nose, cough, sneeze (and occasionally fart) out of the back door in a bid to not spread my happy.

At dinner time I did a whole "Ta-Daaaaaahhh" thing. Big reveal. Aren't you a lucky blokey Neil. Aren't I super duper wifey even though I'm very, very poorly. Look what I made you.

"What is it?"

"Lamb Stew with Rosemary Dumplings - it's a bit similar to that recipe you saw on Lorraine, about a year ago."

"What recipe?"

Hummpfff... "The one where you said "I'd eat that" ".

"I say that to everything."

Deep breaths. Don't kill him.

"Right... Eat your dinner. When you're done you can say "Thank you darling, that was delicious. How thoughtful that you cooked such a lovely meal for me when you were feeling like a pile of poo." !"

He grinned at me, cleared his plate and said "Lovely darlin' ".

That's his version of a cartwheel.

* Slow Cooker Moroccan Lamb Tagine

I JUST BOUGHT A SLOW COOKER!!! Oh yes I did. I've been rebelling against this one purchase for yeeeeaars. Rebelling. Truly.

I love cooking gadgets and cooking gimmicks but until recently, a slow cooker/crock pot was at the bottom of my list. Purely because I honestly believed the only thing you could cook in it, was Chicken Chasseur.... This is because as kids, whenever we saw that mum had got the crock pot out, we knew it was chicken chasseur for dinner, and don't ask me why, but we'd spend the whole day dreading it. Possibly because mum got the crock pot out A LOT. I think we ate almost as much chasseur as we did bolognese!

I no longer have an aversion to chicken chasseur, and have in fact, included a recipe for it within the walls of this blog - however, up until recently I've had no designs on owning a slow cooker. None whatsoever. That's until I started up this blog in an endeavour to make our food a tad more interesting for us to eat - we'd fallen into a food rut. Since starting Abbe's Cooking Antics, I've spent a lot more time surfing the net, looking at what people are cooking and eating, and I had no clue that there were quite so many things that you could cook in a slow cooker... cheesecake for example (really?!?).

So, I gots me a slow cooker to slowly cook stuff in and what do I do? I don't cook a slow cooker recipe... meh... too easy... I adapt a stove top recipe that I've never actually cooked before. There's a time adapter/conversion thingy at netmums.com that converts times of oven/stove top based recipes to slow cooker temperatures and times. Brilliant.

Coincidentally, Genie at Bunny Eats Design, has invited me to join in a monthly link up party - Our Growing Edge - designed to connect food bloggers and challenge/inspire them to try new things and share the end results. I think this is an amazing idea, especially for someone like me that occasionally needs a push to experiment. I really can be quite lazy when it comes to trying new stuff. I do tend to stick with what I know works! This month's link up is hosted by Sonya at and more food and the recipe I'm submitting for it - is this one because...

It was lush.

* Lamb Ragu with Cavatappi

This lamb ragu more or less cooked itself, once I'd got everything in the pot - which gave me free time (which is new- haven't had free time since some time in 1983 - I think), to research ways in which to improve my blog. It's actually becoming a bit of an obsession, and some of the tech that you need to know in the background is above my head... so I may have to ask my baby bruvver to lend a hand - he's very, very clever. Got a smart mouth too, which doesn't help.

I'm occasionally in danger of putting the blog, before the cooking - and it's the cooking that makes me happy. The blog is to be a part of and to share the happy. Not be the happy. That made sense in my head. Really.

Although initially I didn't really enjoy the photographic element of sharing the happy, it is now becoming part of the happy (yes, I'm going to be bolding and underlining every mention of the happy... I just did it again. Because I could.) - which is okay, as long as I don't rely on it (the photograph, just in case you were lost) as anything more than a prop. I'm trying to improve my photography without spending any money that I don't have, because a decent photo is a better way of sharing the happy (hahahahaha) than presenting an image of a meatloaf that resembles a dog turd.

Not many people can see beyond the dog turd.

Anyway, if you pop in here occasionally and discover the blog looking very slightly different now and then, I'm just trying to find a better way of sharing the happy (I'm starting to piss myself off now).

Enjoy the ragu, it's too easy (and tasty of course) not to try at least once.