Bowls, biscuits and bargains

The other week I had the house to myself as Matt was away recording the songs he's written as songwriter in residence at the People's History Museum. He's even been doing a blog about it here. I picked meals that were easy to put together and that I didn't mind eating more than once!

This deceptively simple salad was so tasty. It took minutes to throw together and came from one of my Carol Vorderman Detox books. It's onion, cooked puy lentils, cherry tomatoes, fresh parsley and mint and toasted walnuts with a simple dressing made from red wine vinegar and olive oil. The herbs and the salad leaves were all 'free' from the yard as an added bonus. Also, not pictured I made a millet salad from the Candle Cafe book.

I'd decided to dig out my copy of Candle Cafe and try out some new to me recipes as I always seem to do the same ones from it. Above is a Ginger, Miso Stir Fry I had with basmati rice noodles made by King Soba. I love King Soba noodles and I hadn't seen this type before. I baked the tofu first in some coconut oil and it was super filling.

I picked up these Soja Schnetzel pieces in V Revolution a few weeks ago. I dream of the day when we can get soy curls in the UK and these turned out to be a pretty decent substitute. Like curls you need to rehydrate them for ten minutes first in some stock and then you cook them. I made the Mongolian BBQ recipe from Chloes Kitchen which was great and I've since also tried them in a satay sauce we had lurking in the pantry. The bag cost £3 and I've still got over half of it left after making four meals so it's much better value than Quorn.

I'd spotted this new popcorn flavour on social media and thought it sounded interesting. I found some at the station when I was early for a train and gave it a whirl. To be honest I wasn't blown away. It was nice enough but my heart lies with Ten Acre, now if only I could find their new strawberry flavour and cappuccino flavour anywhere. Has anyone spotted them yet?

These guys however are our new favourite crisp. Whilst the taste was great what made them even more fun was that you could pop one on the end of your finger and then keep adding more and more to have a competition to see who could get the longest witchy looking finger. Or you could just eat them of course.

I'd never heard of The Natural Biscuit Co before but when I saw them in Heron last week on 3 boxes for £1 last week and there were 5 packets in a box they seemed worth a punt. I got one box of each flavour - banana, strawberry and raspberry. They seem to be marketing themselves as a healthier biscuit choice for kids lunch boxes and my niece and nephew certainly gave them the thumbs up as well as Matt and I.

Our local Co-Op supermarket seemed to be clearing a lot of old lines the other week with some good discounts. Sadly it looked like some of the things I buy regularly from there like the Merchant Gourmet and Jamie Oliver ready cooked pouches range might have gone for good. I managed to pick up some cartons of Beetroot juice for 85p reduced from £3 and several packets of Urban Fruit which were well discounted to 70p. I'm a big fan of Urban Fruit and love them for overnight oats recipes.

The garden has been continuing to give us some salad leaves. The frisee lettuce hasn't faired well with the slugs and has pretty much disappeared but the rocket, mizuna and spinach are going strong. At the back of the yard we have a raised bed planted up with some lavender bushes, a mini rhodedendrum and various things from cuttings from Matt's mum's garden. The weather has been so bad we've not had a day where we've been free to weed it when it's not been pouring down so it's got a bit overgrown. We will sort it out but in the meantime we've been enjoying the wild flowers that have popped up. The blue flowers are Love in the Mist from seeds we put down and the yellow poppies are everywhere you look round here. Since I took the picture there's been loads more pink flowers and a different type of yellow flower and it's really nice to look out of the kitchen window and see so much colour.