Good morning! Some more cooking

Good morning.  It's a grey day here.

It's back to school for the girls.  I think they have done all their homework. We had a slight panic this morning when we couldn't find Chatterbox's blazer.  I've paid for music lessons and school dinners.

Squidge's 'Learning Log' task this holiday was to design a modern sleigh for Father Christmas.

Bit of a shock to the system this morning getting up at 6.20 am. We won't be back into a routine for a few weeks though.  I start a course at a local Bible College this week and we are having the bathroom done.  At the moment we have a delightful (NOT) blue suite and regularly have leaks coming through the kitchen ceiling!  So I'm looking forward to a) having a lovely new bathroom; and, b) having a working shower!  Our shower is currently one of those hose type attached to the taps held on with cable ties.  Classy! :)

My Bible study course doesn't start until Wednesday and the chappie doing the bathroom isn't coming until Wednesday.  So today I'm hoping to get as much cleaning and washing done as possible; I also have some errands to run, like drawing some money out for their dancing lessons and Squidge's gymnastics.

Some more on my Journey into Loving Cooking.  On Saturday I made a beef stew in Guinness.  It wasn't to a recipe, and I couldn't taste the Guinness, but it was pretty tasty.  I think next time I do stew I will attempt dumplings.  I will look up how to cook in ale and still be able to taste it.

Anyway, I had some...stew 'juice'? 'gravy'? 'roue'? left,  I put it into the fridge and used it on Sunday in some homemade mushroom soup.  Again, not from a recipe.  I chopped up the mushrooms very small, added some water, milk and some cream cheese.  It was very nice with bread.  It could have done with being slightly creamier, but as I didn't do it from a recipe I think it went well.

Homemade mushroom soup

Sunday evening I made some pizza dough and then the girls and I made some pizzas.  They were delicious.  Except I used Cheddar cheese which is a bit too greasy for pizza I think.

My pizza dough is doughing...it grew to twice this size

I have since watched a video to see how to make one's pizza circular :)

Presentation could be better, but it was yummy!

I've learned a few lessons:
1. Use recipes more for success!
2. Don't put the dough to rise in the bowl that you used to mix the dough, when I took it out there were dried bits of dough stuck to it.  But it wasn't a big problem.
3. I need to start meal planning.  I do plan meals at the moment, but because I don't do a great deal of cooking from scratch I need to be more thorough to make sure I have all the necessary ingredients.

I think I'm doing well so far.  I've not burned down the kitchen yet. :)