Salaric Cooking

For Halloween we had had a two pumpkins and so I scooped all the seeds and fibrous bit in the middle out. I then seperated out all the seeds and laid them on a backing tray. I then put then in the oven at 180 degrees C for about 20 minutes (at least that was the plan I actually forgot about them).

I removed them and they were starting to go a dark brown which gave them a lovely taste. I also ground some sea salt onto them, scooped them all into an oriental style black bowl and put them out as a snack at a birthday party.

You may have noticed that alot of bean hotch potch of various types has been appearing on here recently – this all stemmed from university days and the effort to eat on a budget and being bored of baked beans.

The origonal was baked beans bunged in the wok and pushed around until most of the liquid had gone and the beans were slightly more mushy that normal – value baked beans turned out to be perfect for this. I then found that adding mixed herbs and abit of salt and pepper made a great differnce.

Then at some point I decided to start adding left overs – so cheese and tuna and bacon and chicken and various other things begain to be added – it was then that it became a hotch potch of what ever I happened to have lurking when I made it up. The name stuck.

I always liked to add lee n perrins worchestershire suace to it but when I moved in with my hubby he informed me it contained anchovies and so he couldn’t eat it for the simple reason that he is veggi. So I then turned to tabasco sauce and about 2 years ago discovered you could by fajita seasoning which works well.

My brother makes a version of these baked beans that blows your head off – he calls it Flamey Davies Beans.

Rescently I discovered that there are other typed of bean other than the retched workhorse – Baked Beans. This is a releif as my father will not eat baked beans and so I have had to carfully look around for a version he would eat. The supermarkets currently have a huge cariety of tinned bean and so I have simply gone out and spent £30 on beans, lentils and the like and am happily experiementing.

At some point I will get on to bean salads but for now I will continue recounting how to make various hotch potches!

Hotch potch is a term used in my family to denote a mix and match of things that could be seen as a bit odd or heath robinson or very patchwork and thrown together – not sure if they are real words and don’t really care – enjoy your beans – they are good for you remember! (well it says it all over the tins!).

One of the things that I find great about catering for my scouts halloween parties is that I can just rename things to body parts and suddenly you have spooky food!

Cheesy puff balls can become eyeballs Cheerios = small intestines Onion rings = large intestines Hulled sunflower seeds become flies Squares = dragon scales Any long crispy think becomes witches fingers Bannanas cut in half = bones Red pepper slices = heart sections

The list can go on and on and all you have to do is present it spookily with little labels and the like – I also had feely boxes that contianed things like tinned spagetti and beans, jelly etc… the kids couldn’t see that it was food and you just told them it was troll brains and that sort of thing – they all had a great time and so did I 🙂

My friend Zoe posted this link on Twitter and I had to look through the whole site! The sites called Cake Wrecks and is about professional cakes going horribly and hidiously wronge. There are some amazing photographs and the write ups are halarious!

The site also features pictures of buetifully made cakes and I find myself coming up with lots of idea for cakes that I don’t have the skills to make:/ Its well worth a look.