This week we tried two different butternut squash and quinoa recipes. The first was a variant on a standard butternut squash risotto:

Ingredients (per person):

• 50g Quinoa, rinsed.
• 1 clove of garlic
• ½ onion.
• ½ courgette.
• 100g butternut squash.
• 1 tbs cream cheese.

Chop and fry the vegetables. Add the quinoa and boiling water or stock. Simmer gently for 15 minutes. When the quinoa is soft, stir in the cream cheese.

The second recipe came from the BBC Good Food website. I followed their recipe fairly closely - the only changes were: I fried the squash for a few minutes before adding the spices, and I used passata instead of tinned tomatoes. Oh and I threw in some cooked mince which I had in the fridge. I left out the coriander - I'm not a big fan because I find it sometimes leaves a bit of a strong aftertaste.

A couple of weeks ago I started planting some seeds in pots. I sterilised some of the home-made compost first. I filled some foil trays (the sort used for oven-ready meals) with compost, covered the trays with foil and 'cooked' them in the oven for ½-1 hour at gas mark 1. I left the compost to cool before putting it into pots. I don't want the same problem I had last year when the compost must have been contaminated with 'weed' seeds.

The pepper plants started to germinate after a week or so. Some of the salad veg which I planted on sunday have started to germinate already. Looking back at last year, by mid-march I had planted chilli, herbs and tomatoes. I must remember to sterilise more compost at the weekend and get the tomatoes started.

Normally when I make a curry, I usually fry the meat and vegetables and add the curry spices. I then add stock and sometimes tomato puree to make the sauce. Tonight I made a slight variation on the above recipe:

• Dice and fry the vegetables (eg. onion, pepper, courgette, leek, garlic)
• Remove half the veg. Place in a food processor with a splash of stock and mix to a smooth purée.
• Add the meat to the pan and fry for a few minutes.
• Add the curry spices and cook for a few more minutes before stirring in the puréed vegetables andd some tomato purée.
• Simmer until the meat is tender.
• Serve with rice or naan bread.

The flavour and texture of the sauce was much better than our usual curries. It was similar to a Dopiaza recipe where half of the onion is puréed and the other half is chopped and fried with the meat.

We seem to have gone through this week without cooking anything new or original. Today's lunch was something we haven't made before, but that was just a quick pasta meal using a tin of condensed chicken soup as the sauce. We fried some leeks and added those.

A couple of weeks ago we bought 2 bags of going-out-of-date chilli peppers - they were a mixture of red and green chillies. I dried some by cutting them in half and putting them in a foil tray. I put some of the trays in the oven, at gas mark 1, for a couple of hours. The other trays I put on the radiator and left them for a week. The oven-dried chillies had turned brown whereas the radiator-dried ones had kept their colour. I put the dried chillies in a food processor and blitzed them to make chilli flakes.

Today I decided to try to make a chilli sauce from the remaining chillies. I chopped the chillies, sprinkled them with salt and put them in the fridge for a few days. The next step was to put the chillies, 1 clove of garlic, some spices (mustard seed, onion seed) and a splash of vinegar in a food processor and blend to a purée. I simmered the purée for a few minutes before putting it back in the food processor to make a smooth paste. I added equal amounts of water and vinegar until it reached a decent pourable consistency. I've put the sauce in a jar in the fridge to mature for a few weeks before I try it.

The latest issue of the English Heritage magazine arrived earlier in the week. There was an article about Grimes Graves and when I saw the picture of a flat landscape full of hollows, it immediately recalled the book Company of Liars. There is a sequence towards the end of the book with a very similar landscape.

The hollows were very close to 'The Hermitage' which is marked on the map in the front of the book. This seems to be very close to the site of Grimes Graves, so it looks like it provided inspiration for the location.

We aren't very adventurous with our carbs, mainly sticking to pasta or rice. We don't eat potatoes very often but we sometimes have sweet potatoes. I was looking for a recipe to use bulgar wheat and found a recipe on the BBC Good Food website.

I followed the recipe reasonably closely, reducing the quantities because I was only cooking for 2. I cooked the beans last night, starting with soaking 100g of dried beans in boiling water:

• Simmer the beans for 5 minutes. Drain.
• Cook for 10 minutes in a pressure cooker. Leave to cook.

To make the burgers:

• Finely chop 1 red onion and 1 clove of garlic (or cheat and use a food processor - chop but not purée).
• Fry the garlic and onion until soft.
• Simmer 25g of bulgar wheat for 5-10 minutes until soft. Drain.
• Stir in the spices (1-2 tsp of whatever you fancy) and add the cooked onion and garlic.
• Use the food processor to mash up the cooked beans and add to the mixture.
• If the mixture is a bit soft, add some breadcrumbs.
• Shape into burgers. Fry in a little oil for 5 minutes per side.

Since the burgers were a replacement for both meat and carbs, we served them with some pesto vegetables: onion, leek and courgette, sliced and fried, then mixed with red pesto.

Bandit sitting in a kitchen roll tube. She got her name from the bands around her body.

Bandit and Phantom.

Phantom was so-called because her face resembles the Phantom of the Opera mask. Here she is, with Bandit in the background.

This afternoon we were near Leicester meeting someone to pick up some mice to replace some of ours which had died recently. The new mice have been named Phantom and Bandit. We don't have any photos yet.

After collecting our mice we drove into Leicester and had a wander around the High Cross shopping centre. I think we mainly went because Emma wanted to go to John Lewis. That was ok by me because I'd never been to one so I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I guess if you lived near one it'd be worth shopping there occasionally. We did buy some incredibly tasty dessert sauce though (Luxe Chocolate Noir with Tart Cherries).

This is a bit like a luxury version of the tins of baked beans with sausage, but using chicken and prawns instead of sausage.

Ingredients

(serves 2)

• 2 chicken breasts
• 250g (half a carton) of passata.
• 1 carton or tin of haricot beans (approx 300g drained)
• approx 100g king prawns
• seasoning (eg. stock cube, jerk seasoning, fajita seasoning)

Method

Start by bringing the passata to a gentle simmer. Add seasoning - something slightly spicy works very well. Place the chicken breasts in the passata and simmer for 15 minutes.

Add the prawns and beans and cook for a further 5 minutes. Passata sometimes thickens on its own when simmered but if you cooked with the lid on, then it may need thickening with a little cornflour.

We cooked a second new recipe this week, also inspired by the You Magazine.

• Chop and fry 1 onion, 1 leek, 2 cloves of garlic.
• Add a pinch of dried chilli and some mixed herbs.
• Add 250g of passata and simmer for a few minutes.
• Place the cod steaks on top of the sauce. Put the lid on the pan, turn the heat down, and let the fish cook for about to minutes.
• Meanwhile, boil some pasta to serve alongside.

This was adapted from a recipe in the You magazine which came with the Mail on Sunday. The original version called for almond butter and rapeseed oil but we changed those for ingredients we already had in the house.

• 250g Peanut butter.
• 80ml Sunflower Oil.
• 120ml Maple Syrup.
• 1 tsp vanilla extract.
• 200g Spelt flour.
• 60g plain chocolate (around 70% cocoa), broken into chunks.

Mix oil, peanut butter, maple syrup and vanilla extract together. Mix in the flour and chocolate. Form into small disks and bake at gas mark 4 for about 20 minutes.

This weeks new recipe was halloumi, pasta and garlic bread, which we ate on Tuesday.

• Dice and fry some red onion and red pepper.
• Boil pasta.
• Slice and fry the halloumi, just enough to soften it without completely melting it.
• Mix the pasta and vegetables together then stir in a dressing made using equal quantities of lemon juice and balsamic vinegar.

On Wednesday we had stir-fried vegetables and noodles. We cheated slightly and used packets from the supermarket. I sliced and fried a tuna steak from Marks & Spencers. It was possibly the best tuna steak we have bought. It was very fresh and had a much 'cleaner' taste than normal. I guess sometimes it's worth paying slightly more for ingredients.

Tonight's tea was baked cod (again from M&S). I cooked a simple vegetable risotto as accompaniment:

• 1 onion, 1 small leek, ½ courgette, 2 cloves of garlic, chopped and fried.
• 1 cup of risotto rice
• a pinch of mixed herbs
• 2 cups of chicken stock.
• When the risotto was cooked, I stirred in 1 heaped tablespoon of low-fat cream cheese. This is much healthier than adding a knob of butter but it gives the pasta a nice creamy texture.

Some photos of our recent hamster babies.

Click on the thumbnail to view the image

I drove down Charter Avenue today, between the A45 and Cannon Park. The last time I drove along it the road surface was pretty bad, with quite a lot of potholes. Today the potholes had spread along most of the road. The freezing weather earlier in the month seems to have taken its toll on the road surface. A lot of roads have suffered but this one seems worse than most.

We took our car for its first annual service today. When I phoned to book the service, I was told that the first service wasn't due until the car was 2 years old but I didn't feel comfortable leaving it that long. We've been happy with the car. It drives well and is reasonably economical. The only problem is an occasional reluctance to go into 1st gear but since that's a fairly minor intermittent problem it's not worth making too much of a fuss over it.

We were given a courtesy car for today. I was about to drive off when Emma noticed the glass was missing in the passenger side wing mirror. Whoever had the car last didn't report it and the garage obviously didn't check the car very well.

Our replacement courtesy car seemed to be intact though.