Despite the almost never ending downpour, the black skies & the constant cold, my thoughts are unwittingly turning to the summer. This was of course encouraged by the arrival earlier this week of the latest Lakeland catalogue with it's enticing photos of picnics and BBQs.

BBQs have never appealed to me. As a child they carried so much excited anticipation but the reality seemed to be waiting far too long for food that was burnt. They appealed even less when I became a mother & lived in fear of one child unsteady on his legs & the other child who viewed the world as his own personal racing track, careering into hot coals. I now actively loathe them. Where I live I seem to be the only household who doesn't feel the need to have a BBQ every weekend. Instead I tend to have laundry that stinks of BBQs & lighter fluid -YUCK!

Picnics? Oh picnics I love - loads of forward planning needed, but no nasty smells, no burnt food and the only danger I have to watch out for are wasps. And as a parent of someone following the diet you get very adept at quickly knocking up packed lunches at a moments notice. Let's face it, every time your child leaves the house, they have to have enough food and drink to meet every eventuality, including traffic jams and train stoppages, because there is no other way of safely feeding your child. So knocking up a picnic is merely an extension of this.

Anyway back to the thoughts of summer time...

Jam. That's what I have been thinking of - Jam!

4 or 5 years ago I bought myself a jam maker - fabulous machine that makes jam - all you have to do is add chopped fruit, sugar & a little water. It sorts out the temperature, so you don't have to experience 3rd degree burns getting the jam up to the setting point. It has made a HUGE difference to the boys.
 
A diet safe jam is a thing of great rarity. Not only are so few fruits safe to consume on the diet but commercial jams tend to add lots of things that aren't diet friendly. And when you make jam yourself, the jam sugar has pectin (usually derived from apples - a diet no-no). I had only found one safe jam. It was apricot flavour, cost a packet and was hard to source. So the boys mainly stuck to organic honey on their toast.

Since the arrival of the jam machine the boys are now having strawberry, pineapple and apricot jams and it has allowed me to vastly expand my baking repertoire.

As jam is on my mind, and the Lakeland catalogue has been looking beguilingly at me, I've ordered the jam jar lids (5 years of jam making and I have boxes of empty jars in the shed waiting sterilising and filling) & labels and if a couple of other non jam related things accidentally fell in to the shopping basket before I checked out, I can't really be blamed can I?

I am mentally planning out the Farmers Markets that I will be visiting for the fruit and looking forward to the week that my house smells of candyfloss - the delightful smell of strawberry jam on the boil.

Roll on Summer - I am ready for you :)

It’s cold outside, there is snow on the ground and more snow on the way predicted
– bleeeuuurggh – the Le Bretons are not snow fans, so there is only one thing to
be done, as hibernating is not a possibility & that is cook & bake comfort food.

So what’s a cooking & a baking at Chateau Le Breton today?
 
Well as the obligatory loaf of bread (I bake that almost daily), I have just removed a tray of toffee cake from the oven (recipe in the cakes section of the site), for the boys lunchboxes.
 
Thanks to some serious bargain buying in Sainsburys  I am planning on making a very large pot of chicken & pheasant casserole to have over two days. 
The chicken was on special and the pheasant was too good a bargain to miss. Pheasant is a very strong tasting meat, and is ideal to mix with chicken or turkey, as little pheasant (& you don’t get much meat on them) goes a long way in a casserole or pie
filling.

I have the pheasant roasting in the top oven and I have a large chicken, cooking away in the slow cooker. 
I am a late convert to slow cookers & I highly recommend them. I shall be adding several slow cooker recipes, mainly puddings and cakes, to the site over the next few weeks.

I’ve also added some veggies, water & seasoning to the chicken in slow cooker so that I will have a delicious stock to form the base of the casserole tomorrow. I will also be adding all the pheasant ‘juices’ that will be in the bottom of the roasting tin. Once the chicken is cooked, I will strip the meat off the chicken and throw the bones back in the slow cooker and another  litre of boiling water and cook some more just to make the stock really flavoursome. 
 
I suppose this is a good time to point out that there are no stocks or gravies on sale in the UK that are suitable for the diet. Seriously there aren’t. Almost every new member of Respectrum (www.respectrum.co.uk) thinks they have found one, but gravy/stock & diet friendly cheese substitute are not available, they are the holy grail of the diet!
So whatever stock or gravy you are using, unless it’s been made by you from scratch, I am afraid isn’t suitable for the diet & needs to be binned. That goes for any dairy free cheese too – sorry!

A comfort food day wouldn’t be complete with out a good old fashioned pudding , so this afternoon I will be using my other slow cooler –yes I like slow cookers so much and find them so useful and cheap to use that I have two – to make some delicious rice pudding, which is the ideal cold day comforter.

All that talk of food combined with the smell of pheasant cooking has made me really hungry so I am off to have an early lunch :)