Choccy's Recipes

I'm not going to create a massive preamble because, guess what I'm a real person. Choccy is long gone to the hamster luxury resort in the sky and other hamsters have come and gone. Now we have Benny. A winter white "dwarf hamster" who loves food so much I decided to revive this blog, and create a new recipe.  It's been a good year for basil and parsley if not the veg garden. Holidays and hot weather have done some damage on the plot. But the herbs have strangely thrived.  Anyway...moving swiftly on:  Ingredients  Pasta : enough for 3. Cooked.  Walnuts - 50g. Olive oil - 3 tbsp Nutritional yeast - 1 tbsp Garlic - as many cloves as you like . I used Taj frozen crushed garlic today, equivalent of 4 cloves in a block.  Basil - fresh, a good bunchy handful. Parsley - fresh - ditto Lemon or lime juice A courgette, medium sized and chopped into approx 2cm cubic pieces.  A good grind of sea salt and your favourite pepper.  Method: Cook the cou...

You will need 3 litres of UHT milk 2 tbs natural yoghurt 3 tbs dried skimmed milk The Instant Pot I love yoghurt. It's good for my little tummy as a treat in conjunction with my diet of nuts and seeds (and occasional cake). Please let me have a lick of that yoghurt! Some people seem to make a bit of a song and dance about making yoghurt but it really isn't rocket science, actually it's microbiology and biochemistry. Lactobacillus bacteria feed on the lactose from the milk to create lactic acid. This has the effect of gently curdling the milk and making it thicker and tangier. You can make your yoghurt with full fat, semi skimmed or skimmed milk. Today I'm making it with skimmed milk in some kind of mad health kick. I use UHT milk. "Why?" you may ask. Well, the process using the I.P. can be simplified so much with UHT milk. There is no need for the sterilising boil, it's already sterile. This means no waiting for the boiled milk ...

Beany Tomato Soup Time 20-25 mins Ingredients 1 medium onion Olive oil Cornflour 1 vegetable stock cube 1 tin chopped tomatoes 1 tin of mixed beans in water Concentrated tomato puree (optional) Dried basil Oregano to garnish (optional)  Method Peel and chop your onion (tip: keeping onions in your fridge not only makes them last longer but vaporisation of the allicin oil is minimised... No tears when chopping!) Cook onion until soft in a spoonful of olive oil (extra virgin adds flavour) Dissolve the stock cube in 1/3 pint (a coffee mug) of boiling water. Add to the pan. Add your tin of chopped tomatoes and the drained and rinsed tin of beans. Add 1/2 tsp dried basil. Bring to boil, simmer for 5 minutes.Whizz until smooth, in a jug using a hand blender. Return to pan and bring back to boiling point before adding a teaspoon of cornflour (cornstarch) which has been mixed until smooth in a about 1 tablespoon of water. This will bring the texture of the soup ni...