I have just been doing my meal planning for the week and this week, I shall be trialling some recipes from Miss South’s book, Slow Cooked.

The book is packed with delicious sounding recipes and I’m pretty sure some of them will cost out to our budget, or can be adapted so they will.

Tomorrow, I will be making bread, yes, bread, in the slow cooker. This is a first for me, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it turns out. I shall use the dough I keep in the fridge. It already has plenty of gluten developed, so I shall  just shape it, and pop it in.

Then, during the week, I hope to try garlicky tahini chicken (probably using peanut butter so it costs up), baked apples, caramelised onions, apple butter, maybe pumpkin butter as well. Also, garlic and herb lentils with goats cheese, slow cooked sticky pork belly (not sure that will cost up), potato and olive stew with preserved lemons, scotch broth, sweet potato, spinach and paneer curry and finally, Ghanaian peanut soup.

Looking forward to this! I need to do all that while sticking to my calorie limit too this week. I’ve eaten something out almost every day this week, such a hard life I have!

Today, and every Friday, a group of friends, including myself, meet up for a coffee and a chinwag. One of our number had a birthday recently, and today, she took lots of us out to lunch at one of Heathfield’s many eateries. We went to Pilio, a Greek restaurant. The reviews on Trip Advisor are amazing. I had meatballs stuffed with olives and very nice they were too. I had never been there before, but I shall be back. It opens in the evening too, not just as a cafe in the daytime.

We will be doing some more kitchen work this weekend. The electrician has put in most of the wires for the new lights and sockets, DP has to put the insulation all around them, and we may even get some plasterboard up on the ceiling too. So spicy pumpkin soup, already done and in the fridge, and slow cooked bread for lunch tomorrow.