April Book Update

This year, I'm just going to keep track of books I read as I go through the year - not worrying about how many books I have waiting to be read or anything like that. So each month's roundup will just be a picture collage showing the books I've read, with a running tally for each month. I think I'll break down new (to me) books and re-reading as well. And maybe pick a favourite each month. This could change as the year goes on... Once again, I'll set my goal as 100 books - it's about what I have time for, more or less.

So, in April: new (to me) books read: 6; books re-read:  0
Favourite Book in April: A Boy and his Dog at the End of the World, C A Fletcher

in March:  new (to me) books read: 5; books re-read:  5
Favourite Book in March: The Wolf and the Watchman by Niklas Natt och Dag

in February:  new (to me) books read: 6; books re-read:  0
Favourite Book in February: Heart of a Samurai by Margi Preus

in January:  new (to me) books read: 6; books re-read: 3
Favourite book in January:  Once Upon a River, Diane Setterfield

In April, I read:

• A couple of books from my list, both of which I first picked up because of the titles (Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World by C A Fletcher)
• Two children's books which we are going to read in year 6 next year (Pig Heart Boy, Malorie Blackman, Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer)
• Another book from my list (Warlight, Michael Ondaatje)
• A childrens' book which was in a stack in the house; this one will probably go into my classroom, next year (The Girl Who Drank the Moon, Kelly Barnhill)

Dinner, 30/4/20: Roast Cauliflower with caper dressing, potatoes, salad

Another instance of a whole roast cauliflower - this one had a caper dressing, which was very nice. Such a great, versatile vegetable!

Dinner, 29/4/20: Sausage Rolls, New Potatoes, Braised Cardoons & Celery

Vegan Sausage Rolls for the vegan... Pork Chops for the boys... Sausage Rolls for me & Sarah.

Dinner, 28/4/20: Chard and new potato curry

Recipe from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Veg Every Day

We frequently have spinach and new potato curry, often with chickpeas, but this was a nice variation, especially as we had a head of chard which needed using, and another one arriving in the week's veggie box. 

Book 30: Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer

Surprisingly, I never read this before, though I know Alex has read the whole series when younger. It's a book we are reading for Year 6 next year (and this year, on the off chance we get back to school for that final term), so I am pre-reading to help pull out vocabulary for teaching, and create comprehension questions. I really enjoyed it - want to go out and read the rest of the series now, lol. 

Dinner, 27/4/20: Lime & Ginger Udon noodles

Recipe by Anna Jones for the Guardian.

We've had this before and really enjoyed it, especially the two types of ginger (fresh grated and pickled sushi ginger). The original recipe uses soba noodles, but I've struggled to find them recently, and udon noodles work just fine.  The crispy fried tofu in this is lovely. I took the time and effort to press my tofu before using it, partly because I didn't have the firmest tofu I usually use for frying (ToFoo). We also like the radishes, and the seeds.  It's all good!

Dinner, 26/4/20: Mixed Vegetable Rosti

Again, this was an end-of-the-shopping-week user-upper supper. We basically grabbed a bunch of veg - carrots, onions, potatoes and a small handful of beetroot, which were sort of the end of the veg for the week (online shop coming tomorrow, veggie box coming Tuesday).  We grated them all up, added some flax seed and gram flour and water, as well as some seasoning and chopped dill, which I had a big bunch of.  The texture was a little tricky as I was almost out of gram flour - and if you aren't cooking vegan, the best thing to do is actually chuck in an egg or two, depending on how much veg you have - but we played with it a bit and in the end, they were really tasty.  Great to have the beetroot in there, without being overwhelming (they were quite small beetroot). We think next time we do something like this, we might just get the big old paella pan out and do it as a hash rather than trying to make individual rosti from the mix.  More crispy bits that way, and doesn't matter if they fall apart.  The topping was a garlic yogurt with crumbled feta - and Liv just had some soya yogurt with hers. Very nice. 

Dinner, 25/4/20: Vegetable Soup

This is one of those soups made from the bits and piecs in the bag in the freezer (e.g. the chunky stems of the broccoli, the middle of the veg when we spiralize, etc) and some stuff from the fridge which wanted using (in this case, leeks).  Very simple - just simmered in some vegetable stock until tender and then blitzed.  We had some nice bread as well. And I think there was some optional cheese to grate on top. (Both dairy cheese and vegan cheese.)

Dinner, 24/4/20: Two tarts

Tomato and tapenade tart, at top.  Caramelised leek, potato and artichoke tart at bottom.  Plus salad.

Dinner, 23/4/20: Kidney Bean Curry

A pretty simple curry, using kidney beans, tinned tomatoes and various spices. But very tasty.

Dinner, 22/4/20: Burgers, Oven Chips, Sweetcorn, Asparagus

First asparagus of the year in our veggie box - only one bunch, so it was just a taste for everyone. The burgers were beef for the guys and veggie for the others of us. Summery!

Dinner, 21/4/20: Pasta with Cavolo Nero

A simple pasta dish made with a sort of pesto sauce using cavolo nero (plus a little spinach and some wild garlic I had which wanted using).  Fresh bread thanks to a neighbour who went to the supermarket, and a nice salad. 

Dinner, 20/4/20: Rustic Beans & Spinach with Garlic Yogurt

This is similar to another bean stew we have and really enjoy, but this one has carrots and spinach, and a blob of garlic yogurt (either dairy or soya) on top.  Very nice, and nice to have a small change from the usual. 

Book 29: Pig Heart Boy, Malorie Blackman

Amazingly, I've never read this before, but as it's one of the texts we'll be doing next year in Year 6, I'm reading ahead and pulling out key vocabulary. Great book, really going to prompt some interesting discussions, I think. 

Dinner, 19/4/20: Roast Pork, Roast Potatoes, Chard

One for the meat-eaters tonight - Liv had vegan sausage rolls with her roast potatoes and chard, and of course, vegan gravy. We don't do a lot of meals where we just sub out the meat for something non-meat, but then again, we don't eat a lot of meals where the main focus is meat even when Liv isn't home.

Dinner, 18/4/20: Sticky Sesame Tofu

with soba noodles and some quick pickled cucumber. Yum!

Dinner, 17/4/20: Malaysian Sweet Potato Curry

This was astonishingly good. Even Geoff, who is not the biggest sweet potato fan in the world really enjoyed it, and for those of us with a predisposition to sweet potato, well...  Rich and creamy (coconut milk) and just generally yummy. A real keeper. I used a bit more sweet potato than in the recipe and two tins of chickpeas, to make sure it made enough (and because I didn't make rice with it - if you served it with rice you'd probably be ok). With homemade flatbreads. Recipe is actually from Sainsbury's Magazine - I originally had though it was a BBC Good Food recipe, but a little googling showed me otherwise.  

Book 28: The Girl Who Drank the Moon, Kelly Barnhill

A really enjoyable children's fantasy novel about a Witch, a Beast, a Protected Town, a Perfectly Enormous Dragon and various other characters.  And In Which Not Everything is What it Seems to Be. 

Dinner, 16/4/20: Fusili with tomato & herb sauce and prawns (or not)

Made a nice, fresh tomato sauce with parsley and wild garlic, and chili (of course).  Cooked the prawns separately, so that the people who don't eat prawns either by being vegan (Olivia) or by not liking them (Sarah) didn't have to have prawns. Alex and Geoff and I, had prawns.Yum.  But would have been nice even without the prawns - it was a nice sauce (so am tagging it veggie and vegan too). And had a nice loaf of crusty bread which my neighbour kindly picked up when she did her grocery shop. Yay!

Dinner, 15/4/20: Green "gumbo"

This was a really nice vegan green stew with lots of green veg in it - the recipe used okra but a) the kids don't like it and b) Sainsbury's didn't have any, anyway, so I used green beans instead. Also celery, kale, etc. The recipe called for either bulgar wheat (that whole section of packaged dry grains and beans was totally depleted in my last grocery shop) or giant couscous (which luckily I had in the house). Also nice with a little grating of cheese over the top, if one is so inclined.

Dinner, 14/4/20: Breakfast for dinner

When I was a kid, we used to have breakfast for dinner sometimes, and I remember my brother and I loved it.  This is a bit more full-English, but still. Quite a useful meal as well, as the buffet-ness of it satisfies all those people who don't eat meat, or mushrooms, or whole cooked tomatoes, or whatever. 

As for me, I pretty much eat everything...

Book 27: Warlight, Michael Ondaatje

I enjoyed this, though I did find myself slightly fumbling around in the dark from time to time about what was actually going on - an effect which was, I think, intentional. I didn't like it quite as much as The English Patient or Divisadero, but it was still very good.

Dinner, 12/4/20: Easter Roast: Merguez-spiced cauliflower with tahini and molasses

A cauliflower roasted whole with merguez spices, then drizzled with tahini & molasses and sprinkled with sesame seeds. Really tasty (from a recent Guardian recipe).  Served with potatoes and peas. 

Dinner, 11/4/20: Root Vegetable Stew with Biscuit crust

These were less like dumplings (because the underneath wasn't super liquidy) and more like a cobbler or biscuit topping, but yummy regardless.

Dinner, 10/4/20: Risotto as you like it

To please everyone, I made this with no cheese and the mushrooms and bacon cooked separately, so that people who didn't want cheese or bacon didn't have to have it, and those who don't like mushrooms could leave them out, and so on.  We also had a salad on the side.

Dinner, 9/4/20: Butter bean stew with (homemade!) pretzel rolls

Liv and Alex made pretzels yesterday - they were amazing. Will have to make sure they do that again.  The butterbean stew is one we have quite frequently (though this time it was half butterbeans and half cannelini beans because I couldn't order more than two tins of butter beans on my shopping), but we always like it.

Dinner, 8/4/20: Creole Spiced Chicken, Potato & Courgette Traybake

Dinner, 7/4/20: Bean Burritos

An assemble-your-own sort of meal - spicy tomato rice, refried beans, black beans, caramelised peppers and onions, lettuce, pico de gallo, jalapenos, various hot sauces. Yum! Shown here before being wrapped up, because once it's wrapped, it's not so interesting.

Dinner, 6/4/20: Sausages, Peas, Spicy Oven Chips

Meat sausages for some, vegan sausages for others. To satisfy the confirmed meat eaters, so they don't wilt away from lack of meat, lol. Also, there were some leftover in the freezer.

Book 26: A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World, C A Fletcher

Picked this one up entirely on the basis of the title, and liked the premise of the book (most of the people in the world have vanished, and in the small number remaining, the main character goes off in search of a stolen dog).  And what a great story - riveting both in the general (what on earth is going on in this world/what has gone on to bring them to where they are) and the specific (what will happen next, what HAS happened already but we don't know of yet, but which the narrator keeps alluding to, what will happen just after you turn the page), with an interestingly constructed Now & Then premise, essential to making any good post-apocalypse story stand up to scrutiny. A good book to pick up when there's lots of time to read, as you really won't want to put it down. 

Dinner, 5/4/20: Burnt Aubergine Chili

This is one of our favourites - my kids will even eat aubergine in this (it doesn't tastes of aubergine, but you get a lovely smoky flavour from burning the aubergine skin, plus the texture softens down to almost nothing in the slow cooking). Yum yum yum.

Dinner, 4/4/20: Creamy Mushroom Pasta

Liv made this one - it's got a vegan bechamel suace, with lots of mushrooms and herbs. Very nice!

Book 25: Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Toshikazu Kawaguchi

I liked the premise of this (a coffee shop where you can travel in time, but only for the length of a cup of coffee) and I liked the idea of the characters in the story, but the book didn't quite live up to the ideas for me - something about the writing style never quite clicked for me. I don't know if this was an issue with translation or just style. It wasn't a bad book at all, but it did lack the lyrical flow that, for me at least, makes a book great.

Dinner, 3/4/20: Curried Carrot Fritters, Spicy Fried Potatoes, Salad

A really nice recipe for using carrots - and when it's the season for young carrots with the tops on, you can use the tops in the fritters, too. If you aren't a vegan, and don't have flax seed in the house usually, I've made this with an egg in it instead, to bind. Works either way.  We doubled it which made enough for the five of us, which is not to say the boys couldn't have eaten more if given the opportunity.

Dinner, 2/4/20: Vegan Hotpot

Dinner, 1/4/20: Potato, Onion & Watercress Soup, Vegan cornbread

The soup was, again, influenced by what was in the house - wanted to do something with the watercress, which came in the veggie box, rather than just use it in salad.

First time making vegan cornbread (soya milk, no egg) - worked really well.  Not quite as light and fluffy as my usual cornbread, but great taste and very similar in texture. I used this recipe.

March round up

WHAT WAS  FOR DINNER, MARCH 2020

• 31st: Spring Veggie Pasta
• 30th: Homemade Pizzas
• 29th: Maple Glazed Salted Parsnips with Beanburgers
• 28th: Cauliflower, Sweet Potato & Chickpea Curry
• 27th: Broad Bean and Blue Cheese Risotto
• 26th: Chicken Soup with pasta
• 25th: Greek Style Chicken Salad
• 24th: Frittata with peppers & onions
• 23rd: Roast Chicken, Potatoes, PSB
• 22nd: Spaghetti Bolognese with garlic bread (Geoff cooking)
• 21st: Clementine Roasted Root Vegetables with Pan Fried Salmon
• 20th: Honey, Soy & Ginger Braised Tofu
• 19th: Leftovers
• 18th: Roasted Cauliflower & Hazelnut Carbonara
• 17th: Spinach Pie
• 16th: Cauliflower, Chickpea & Spinach Curry
• 15th: Lentil Shepherd's Pie
• 14th: Sole, Cavolo Nero, Sweet Potatoes
• 13th: Chicken Curry (Geoff cooking)
• 12th: Fend For Yourself Thursday
• 11th: Cauliflower Soup (leftovers, freezer)
• 10th: Orichiette with artichokes and wild garlix
• 9th: Asian Steamed Chicken Dumplings
• 8th: Stuffed Peppers
• 7th: Squash and pancetta risotto
• 6th: Cauliflower Cheese with Sautee potatoes
• 5th: Fend for yourself Thursday
• 4th: Roast Vegetable Pasta with Basil Sauce
• 3rd: Courgette and Onion Quinoa
• 2nd: Spiced Indian Sweet Potato Wraps
• 1st: Spinach and Ricotta Pizza Bianco