Three years since I stopped working [ mainly due to the Conservative governments ridiculous introduction of IR35 ] at Sky and this time I definitely can’t say I’m still retired. I’ve been doing some bits and pieces for Jason Coope which has been on the whole quite good fun. Ignition is a great tool, Docker and Traefik are excellent fun and Liquibase is quite a good bit of code but does have a few quirks that have been giving me sleepless nights.
Anyway, in keeping with April 1st being the day that I kinda retired I’ll continue making something not particularly healthy for breakfast.
When I was young and at Primary School my Mum was a Schoolteacher and so couldn’t pick me up. Fortunately Nana Molly lived a few hundred metres away from my school and so after I finished school I’d walk over to Nanas and she’d make me my “tea”. Dinner was often “Lobbies”. Meat, potatoes, onions and other veg in a gravy. Some call it potato hash, some call it scouse. We called it lobbies. Anyway, quite often Nana Molly would also make jam tarts. They were amazing. Highlight of my day even though it was just shortcrust pastry with some jam in it.
I recently had some pre-rolled shortcrust pastry that was past the use by date so I had to do something quick. So I picked up some sausage meat from the local butcher and made some posh sausage rolls. I had some left over pastry and we had some jam in the fridge that had been there a while and this is the end result.
The third from the right was made without using a pastry cutter. Dunno what I was thinking
As you can tell from this blog I’ve been a bit of a layabout for nearly three years now. I’ve got stuff done – just not any paid employment. Well all that changed recently when I started doing a bit of work for Jason Coope to help him out with a few bits and pieces. I got paid. Paid some actual money. So the first thing I did was buy an Ooni Pizza Oven. My friend Aggy raves about his pizza oven and Amelia and I recently had a shockingly horrifically bad pizza takeaway. So I thought I’d make my own. We already have the Kitchen-Aid food mixer that can kneed the dough for me. We have the funky GBBO Neff slide and hide oven that does a 40deg dough prove. So all that we were missing was the thing to cook the pizza in
Gas powered thing of beauty
So after watching a few YouTube videos and reading a few blogs we were off making our own tomato and garlic topping.
Then we fired up the oven with annoyingly a new bottle of gas because the gas we have for the barbecue has a different connector.
Then about 60 seconds later we had our first totally home made pizza. Better than that piece of shit we bought from Sahara’s in Ormskirk [ ooops, I accidentally named them ].
Yeah, we’re one of them families that likes a bit of pineapple on their pizza!
I’m currently tracking how many pizzas we make and working out how much it’s costing us per pizza. But I can already state quite definitely that the quality is better than any take away pizza we’ve had for a long time. My dough making skills aren’t quite there yet but I’ll keep watching videos to try and improve.
Apparently yes I can. My darling daughter bought me a Crimp-it tool for making food related stuff. I initially meant to use it to improve my pastie making crimping finish – but I think it’s a bit big for pasties. I need a Crimp-it mini!
Anyway, the day came that I had a leftover Sunday roast and some wraps…so what is a man supposed to do?
Mushy peas, ham, stuffing, chicken and carrots…in a wrap
Pop it in the Crimp-it tool, microwave it for a bit until the edges of the wrap seal and then remove it from the Crimp-it tool and carry on cooking in the microwave.
I love a good Yorkshire Pudding and since I had a bag of good sausages left over from a recent butchers trip I decided to knock up a Toad in the hole with proper sausages for Em, Oli and myself – and a vegetarian Toad in the hole for Amelia.
Turned out pretty well I reckon. Tasted good too – but not so great trying to eat leftovers next day by microwaving it. Batter does not take too well to microwaving
