bluemoon stories

I pledged to use up the things in my fridge because to be honest I'm not always that good at keeping track of what I've got, and end up throwing things out if they've been sitting there a while.

I was going to make cauliflower cheese, but didn't have enough cauliflower, so bulked it out with leftover broccoli, used the last of two different cheeses (including a bit of leftover cream cheese) for the sauce, and topped it off with cheesy breadcrumbs made from bread crusts. Quick flash under the grill and that was about it, a cheap but tasty meal that the whole family enjoyed. And probably saved £3 or £4 by not buying it ready-made or getting brand new ingredients because I didn't quite have enough to follow the recipe. (Sorry it's not a great pic, it did taste much nicer than it looks!)

It was Diwali last week - I finally managed to persuade my dad that just because it's the Festival of Lights he doesn't actually have to have all the lights in the house blazing all night. In fact in India they make their own little miniature clay lamps using oil or ghee with the wick made out of cotton wool. This is our perhaps slightly less charming but still quite pretty version using a rainbow of tea-lights in our downstairs landing instead of having the lights on. You can't really tell too much from the picture but they lit up the whole hallway. It was very atmospheric!

Over the last few months I've been trying really really hard just to buy fish from sustainable sources with the MSC mark on it. I was really surprised to find that my formerly favourite brand of fish finger (I know, I know but I like fish fingers, I won't mention the brand but it's the one where they turned the friendly grandfatherly figure into some weird bestubbled young hunky type person which was rather disturbing)... anyway - it didn't say anywhere it's fished from sustainable sources which for a leading producer of fish goods is very below par. It's possible some of their goods are but nothing I could see at the time. So I used my consumer power to turn my nose up at them and went for Young's instead which actually makes a point on their packaging of highlighting their sustainable practices. Hurrah for Young's! Boo to Birdseye (oh no I said it... oh well) It's quite revealing too if you look at both their websites - I didn't look too deeply at either website but I found the sustainability bit on Young's in approximately 2.1 seconds. Birdseye I kept on looking till I got bored and googled Young's.

There's lots of other places to buy sustainable fish though - handy worldwide list on the Marine Stewardship Council website

http://www.msc.org/where-to-buy

I did it x2 because it had The Sign

I did it x16 saving it from the underworld