Friday nights = Lazy nights

Friday tends to be our take out or random junk in front of the tv/computer night, and tonight was no exception. One of my childhood favourites was mayonnaise with fries from the local fast food van and I've never quite lost my hankering for them so this is loosely based on that.

• half a packet of potato wedges or 4 to 5 large potatos peeled and chopped into junks
• 2 tablespoons mayonaise
• half a teaspoon of a strong English mustard
• either 2 bacon rashers, fried or grilled til crispy and chopped into thin strips OR a good sprinkling of baco bits

Cook your potatos, mix the mayonaise and mustard together in a bowl and then add the cooked potatoes. Divide into two bowls and add the bacon and salt/pepper to taste. It makes perfect comfort food to be shared whilst snuggling up during the winter.

Refreshing Orange Lemonade

Nothing beats an ice cold refreshing glass of this. Although it's slightly lemony aftertaste makes it more of a grownup drink than one for the children.

• 6 oranges, juiced
• 2 lemons, juiced
• 1 quarter of a bottle of plain tonic water

Childhood comfort food - Bratkartoffeln

Outside the snow has been falling for the past week. The world is coated with a thick white blanket so its time for comfort food. The type that transports you straight back to safety of your childhood.

One of my staples for a quick winter supper is based loosely on a childhood favourite, Bratkartoffeln. Every saturday my mother and I would walk into town for some shopping, ending with lunch in the cafe of Hertie's department store. Each week would follow the same pattern, we bought chocolate covered dried apple slices from the deli around the corner. I got a smurfette from the toystore (with hindsight I was a weird child, in all those trips I never once bought a male smurf). Then we climbed up through the store to its restaurent at the top, where we shared fried potatoes mixed with crispy bacon and melted cheese.

As it a quick dish, I tend to "cheat" slightly by using potato wedges rather than peeling my own potatoes (lazy I know).

• half a pack of potato wedges
• 3 rashers of bacon
• 1 red onion
• A chunk of tasty cheese, I like Gruyere

Partially cook the potato wedges either in the oven or in something like a Tefal Actifry. Meanwhile, dice the onion and lightly fry in oil. Grill the bacon in the oven til crispy and grate the cheese.

Transfer the potatoes to the onion pan to finish cooking. Then chop the bacon into mix. Add the grated cheese and pop under the grill until the cheese turns lovely and gooey.

If you want to be a little decadent, you can add a fried egg to the top or if you are really hungry it goes great as an accompaniment to a good steak.

Sopa de Lima

We all link food to memories, the first time we taste something fantastic lingers. Everytime you then create the dish, the smells and flavours send you straight back. For me the first time I had Sopa de Lima, it was love at first mouthful.

It was rainy season in the Yucatan, you could set your watch by the downpour. We were staying in a tiny little hotel just outside Chichen Itza. The restaurent was a patio covered with an awning and the menu choices were limited, yet all the food was delicious. There was something romantic about sitting there with rain pouring off the canopy drinking ice cold beer.

The soup came in chipped china bowls, but its smell was captivating, so fresh and tasty. Now everytime I need a comforting chicken soup, its Sopa de Lima with its healthy burst of vitamin C I crave. Like all great soups there are many variations on the recipe. Every restaurent and family in the Yucatan seems to have their own unique spin on the dish, some use turkey, some use chicken, some add lemons. 

Over the next few dull grey winter months I intend trying a few of the them, plus adding a touch or two of my own, recreating the heat and the feel of those months in Mexico.

Marmite Cheese

Whilst wandering around Asda at 7.30 this morning, (dont ask), I happened to spot some marmite cheese lurking on a shelf. Now the only question is:

Do I need to add more marmite to my cheese on toast now, or will the marmite flavoured cheese be enough? 

My plans for 2009

Its a brand new year and time for brand new resolutions. I admit to having been somewhat slack in writing over the last few months, but this is going to change (fingers crossed). I do have an excuse, which I intend covering at a latter date but I hope that 2009 will be the year in which I actually manage not only to cook a lot more, but to blog about it as well.

I am addicted to buying cookery books and magazines. Our house groans under their weight, they prop up tables, balance under chairs and lurk in dark places. Every type of cuisine is covered and I spend hours gazing at their pictures, whispering the recipes to myself as if they were a spell (sorry to report I've failed to conjure up any three course meals yet). Cookery books are my secret pleasure, but this year, I want to work my way through them. No more bookmarking pages and thinking about it, now its time to cook and to taste rather than imagining. The plan is to pick something at random each week from a random cookery book and make it.

I still hate sprouts, even though I managed 3 for Christmas Dinner which albeit 3 more than last year still was rather unpleasant. So thats 12 months to discover why I dislike them and importantly is there anything I can do to make them taste good. Expect lots of sprout recipes, which begs the question, why does no one make sprout soup?

Im also interested in healthy eating (which has something to do with why my posting got so bad last year) as well as producing decent food when you are in a hurry. A few years ago I used to work 10 hour days and my eating habits really suffered due to that, whilst now I don't work anything close to that, I still want to work on some fast, tasty and healthy recipes for those days when you can't avoid trying to do 15 things at once.

The blog is called Frosting and Fairycakes for a reason but I haven't posted a single desert or cake recipe yet. 2009 will the year of the fairycake, lots of gooey sugary icing, chocolate cakes in a variety of guises and all the things my mother used to make on sunday afternoons when I was a little girl.

Finally my Mother gave me a Rumtopf jar that she hadn't used for years. I can already taste the sweet fruity rum which will make a delicious deserts come next winter. It takes me straight back to my childhood sitting on our balcony in Germany eating rumsoaked fruit over fresh vanilla icecream fetched from the local icecream parlour. I want to blog about both making it and my favourite childhood recipes for eating it.

Happy Halloween