#ConfinedAToZ challenge - N, O and I'll have a P please, Bob

 Goodness, it feels like forever since I've posted, mainly because I've been cooking the same things in rotation for the last few weeks. Exciting kitchen adventures feel like too much of a stretch at the moment. Having said that, I was chuffed when I realised that I could do a post to fill in the next bit of the #ConfinedAToZchallenge. They may not be exciting, but they begin with the right letters of the alphabet, damn it, and in these very blah times that's a sense of achievement right there. I finished with M last time, so miraculously I'm starting with 'N'.

N is for Noodles - or Noddles as I keep wanting to type, and really, I think it should be Noddles.        

We had a roast chicken last weekend, and as well as the chicken dinner itself, we've had a chicken curry, a stir fry and sundry sandwiches out of it. But in answer to this challenge I made chicken stock with the carcass and that turned into chicken noodle soup, with the noodles in question being broken up fettuccine from a packet that had been lurking at the back of the cupboard for ages - almost an archived ingredient in fact. Anyway, I just kept adding liquid to the chicken soup through the week and I got five days of lunches out of it, which is pretty good. So between three main meals for two, sandwiches and five soup lunches for me, it was a very productive chook!

O is for Omelette

The omelette was also about using up stuff lying around in the fridge. I had a couple of shriveled mushrooms that looked like I should be administering the last rites rather than cooking them, a solitary piece of prosciutto hiding at the back of the fridge cheese drawer and some left over roast spuds from the aforementioned roast chicken dinner. I bunged all those in the frying pan to colour up and so the mushrooms could look a little more lively, added four beaten eggs and seasoning, browned the bottom on the hob and then put into the toaster oven for 10-15 minutes to set and brown on top (god, I love my toaster oven).  Not the most exciting dinner in the world, but it did the trick for a snowy teatime when I didn't want to cook.

P is for Puddings (and apologies for the very silly joke in the headline - when you're my age the Blockbusters pee joke is obligatory :)

In this case the puddings are of the Yorkshire variety and were made to go with the roast chicken (I feel like I'm this chicken's agent, I've mentioned it so often...). The husband is the YP maker in this house and very good at it he is too. He usually makes them in a muffin tin and once cooked they freeze beautifully, so only need to be defrosted and heated when needed. However, we discovered we only had one YP left at the bottom of the freezer, so a new batch was needed. 

Everyone has their own recipe for YPs, so I'll not insult anyone by posting a recipe, but for reference he uses the BBC Good Food one and always gets good results. Having said that, when we peeked at them we decided they needed another couple of minutes and of course we got distracted and five minutes later they'd got a little bit burned around the edges. However, I have to say, it didn't stop them tasting good even though he's made prettier ones.

Oh, and if anyone wonders why my cooling rack has a big hole in the middle, it's because it's actually the draining rack from the sink because I was using my one small cooling rack for something else. See, cooking is like buses, you don't need to use your cooling rack for ages then two recipes that need it come along at once.

That's it for now. Hopefully I won't be as long posting again - although having said that, the next letter in the challenge is 'Q', and I hate both Quorn and Quark, and I don't think Quince is an option at the moment, so I'll see what happens with that letter when I turn my mind to it.. In the meantime, I hope everyone is staying safe and well.