This time of year, part of the evening ritual is chopping some firewood and lighting the slow combustion stove. I’m not a huge fan of winter but I do like the stove. It’s a lovely old Rayburn we bought second hand about 20 years ago, probably half a century or more old. It warms the house, the hot water, the dinner, and the rising bread all at the same time
The dessert version of these is easy, but the healthy lunchbox version is a little trickier. It is still easy enough, though, to be within the bounds of the Muesli Bar Challenge rule: easy enough for busy parents and even kids themselves to be bothered actually making, routinely, for daily school or work lunchboxes.
All these healthy ingredients make up for the fact that, unusually for my lunchbox baking recipes, I think these go better with white flour. They are still good with wholemeal, but there is something about fluffy lemony lightness that makes a midwinter day bright!
There are a million recipes for pizza bases on the internet. Making your own base is easy and pretty foolproof, (much more forgiving than making bread) but it does need an hour and a half or so for the yeast to work.
Pumpkin soup is so simple, and everyone has their own version, that I hesitated to post this. But pumpkins are so very much in season here that I thought it worth a reminder.
These are steamed muffins and they have a texture a bit like a steamed pudding. So they survive well in the rough and tumble of lunch boxes.
This pumpkin and chick pea curry is a good one – tasty, easy, healthy, low fat, using the pumpkin and the chilli, and also the other seasonal glut of the moment – lemons. It also has turmeric in it, and the more I hear about the health benefits of fresh turmeric, the more I like using it.
I worried a little about this week’s Muesli Bar Challenge. Scones are not that sweet – I often think their main attraction is as a vehicle for cream and jam. But I needn’t have worried. They didn’t make it to school. I dropped them off to the reviewers at the bus stop, and they were immediately unwrapped and devoured.
It’s getting a bit cold now of an evening for barbeques, but my partner still loves fishing. Fish soup is a great way to make a dinner party of the catch, and using the whole fish – head, bones and all – I feel like an ethical predator.
The jumping off point for this recipe was Stephanie Alexander’s adaption of Claudia Roden’s adaption from a Middle Eastern classic that uses whole boiled oranges.