Cooking with Your Own Produce

Tonight's meal was a real mish-mash but hugely enjoyable for all that.

We had shop-bought Scottish mince burgers (good quality) with cheese on buns, home-grown new potatoes and shop-bought salad. We finished with home-grown rhubarb crumble.

Growing our own produce has become something we experiment with every year. I normally try growing tomatoes and watch in despair as the plants wither, but the tomatoes remain! This year we have grown them hanging upside down and it has been a great success, but they are still green at the moment.

Potatoes were a first for us and they have been very successful. We grew them in bags which had flaps near the bottom to harvest the potatoes. They are delicious when eaten so fresh.

Finally we bought two rhubarb plants and have put them in far too hot a place. They are surviving and providing us with rhubarb. It needs quite a bit of sugar but was very nice to be eating our own rhubarb. We will also look forward to blueberries from our own blueberry bush in a pot later on in the year.

What have you tried growing this year?

Healthy Cooked Breakfast

I don't do it very often, but sometimes, it's the weekend, you've been lazing around and before you know it, it's 10.30 and you haven't had breakfast yet.

Now you can just get out the frying pan, but to fry everything up just isn't healthy for you and you will feel sluggish for the rest of the day.

So try finding lighter ways to cook the basic ingredients with less or no fat.

What Makes a Great Cooked Breakfast?

Bacon - grilled not fried
Sausage - best is Quorn or Vegetarian sausages, but you can buy half-fat sausages now which leak very little fat. Oven cook them for about 40 minutes for the best results but can also be grilled. Quorn sausages cook a lot quicker.
Tomatoes - oven cook for that deep flavour
Toast rather than fried bread
Mushrooms - can be cooked in spray oil and dill
Eggs - forget fried, scrambled is better for you.

With a little forethought and planning, you can have a cooked breakfast that will really set you for the whole day.

What are your tips?