Last night's dinner - Recipe

Last night was the last night of September. I had been eating and cooking (and tweeting and blogging about) some organic foods, thanks to Waitrose and their Organic Month ideas.

They have recipes on their website if you need inspiration but last night I decided to do my usual cooking method of 'just cook it - only wimps need recipes' and it was surprisingly tasty.

I use pasta a lot so this was a fairly normal recipe for me.



Here is what I did

Ingredients
Waitrose Organic Fusilli
Waitrose Organic Passata
Onions (cut roughly into chunks)
Courgette (sliced)
Bacon (streaky)
Organic Sunflower oil
Organic Italian Herbs
Olives (Sliced)
Organic Sweetcorn
Cheese (grated)
Salt and Pepper

I put the pasta on to boil and lightly fried the bacon and onion in some sunflower oil. When the bacon and onion was nearly done, I added the sliced courgette and put the lid on the frying pan until the courgette was soft.

In a third sauce pan I added the passata and the sweetcorn and sliced olives. I added the fried items once they were done, and some of the grated cheese and some herbs, salt and pepper. I stirred and heated this sauce for five or ten minutes.

When the pasta was soft I strained it - added it to the pan with the sauce and stirred everything together. I spooned the resulting mix into a casserole dish, put the rest of the cheese on top and popped it into the oven for 20 minutes to brown...just  leaving time for the washing up and a beer.

Delicious.

It would work just as well with tuna or quorn in place of bacon, or even just leave it out altogether.

More Pasta Recipes with Waitrose 

Small Changes in my shopping basket - organic additions

When Waitrose asked me to try some small changes to make a bigger impact, by adding some organic things to my shopping list, I was happy to help. I have bought organic meat in the past as I don't like the idea of the routine use of antibiotics etc in my food. And of course organic vs chemicals doesn't just affect the consumer, if affects nature too, the entire food chain. I like to buy organic fruit or veg when I can but it's easy to forget that other things have chemicals pumped into them too to increase the yield (and in the west, more often, the profit margin) so I was interested to look at all the other things in the Waitrose store that fell into the 'organic basket'.

I already mentioned that I bought a really nice organic wine, helped in my choice by the extremely pleasant and knowledgeable wine staff. But I also bought organic fruit juice (delicious!) organic coffee (fair trade too and I have bought this before so I know it's good) and organic tea bags (Clipper - unbleached bags, I am impressed with the strength and quality and may permanently switch from my usual Assam).

I bought organic sugar (how can I forget that's a plant too!) Organic milk (I really think I should try and only get organic milk - it makes sense if I like organic meat!) ditto eggs.

I added organic tinned sweet corn, herbs (no one wants to eat leaves that are sprayed with chemicals), and organic tomato passata , and organic pasta - I plan to make a pasta bake from those ingredients, with some cheese on top.

I had some jam and some really tangy and tasty organic orange marmalade too, it seems that I don't think about processed foods or fruit and veg used in recipes so much, so I shall be thinking organic where I can in future. I may not be able to afford to buy totally organic but small changes...

What could you swap for organic in your shopping basket?

Stuck for ideas? Check out Waitrose's excellent organic inspired recipe selection here 

An interesting read on the current news about insecticides can be found here

Disclaimer - I was sent some vouchers towards the cost of my organic purchases but all thoughts are my own

Organic September - Pancakes!

I was asked to help Waitrose celebrate Organic September. Waitrose are supporting the Soil Association's 'Small Changes, Big Difference campaign'.

They challenged me to add some organic products into my daily menus. Luckily they sent me some vouchers to help with the change. But I was pleasantly surprised to find that not all the organic options cost more, or if they did, not too much more.

This evening for example I had some Organic yoghurt, they were on offer, so that 8 pots of yoghurt were £3 (I haven't eaten all 8 yet, though they were so nice I did eat two)

But yesterday we started with a bang! Straight in with a proper treat and some proper cooking!

I love making pancakes, but I never ever measure the ingredients, well, I count the eggs but I'm not sure that is the same as measuring...I have taught DD to cook in this way too - I suspect any family recipes will have to be passed on by the 'teach the next generation' method, writing them down is hard...

So here is my recipe: I use 'some' organic flour (Duchy no less, probably ground by royalty), two organic eggs (laid by the Prince himself - Duchy again - those hens must be the most pampered in England surely?), some Organic milk, and a splop (technical term) of organic sunflower oil.

So into the pan my mix went. And then when perfectly cooked - I served the pancakes with banana and maple syrup.

An excellent start to my organic week I think. Oh and I opened a bottle of really nice Organic Italian Wine at £7.79