Puff parcels

This afternoon, I had a food mental block - could not decide just what to feed my lot tonight for tea. So I took a look at BBC online food

It gave me a pile of ideas of what delights to cook with the odd random ingredients I found in my fridge.

For instance I had a pack of puff pastry - I think it's great stuff, but always find myself unsure about how I'll use it! Today we made parcels for everyone (slightly different variations for adults and kids) with succulent diced turkey, spinach, onions and cheese, oh and sweetcorn as Elias is mad for sweetcorn (??!) Well they have turned out great - in fact they had disappeared from the kids plates in record time. I'm looking forwards to ours later.

It's funny how sometimes when you're stuck in a cooking rut - just taking a look around at a few recipes can spark your imagination again. I now have a mental list of other things I'm going to try or re-visit (home made rice pudding, snickers pie, cheese scones, to name but a few!)

It has also been heartening that with a little imagination and planning, otherwise cheap and fairly ordinary ingredients can turn out so delicious!

Talking of food a little more, my great friend Titi went to Costco today and asked if I'd like anything. I put in my order for a sack (yes, quite literally a sack!) of basmati rice, and box of popcorn. The rice has saved us piles of money in the past couple of years as it's better quality than the value rice you can buy at the supermarket and cheaper. Plus I'm blessed with a family of rice monsters!

I have found Costco invaluable for catering parties and other events, they do catering packs of just about anything plus you can pick up all sorts of other stuff from diamond rings and cameras to canoes! It's worth the drive to Reading every now and then. Even just for the novelty of all that in one place!