Billingsgate, 7 am. Things were closing down.

At some point in 2008, I had a brilliant idea. While I was on holiday, I would get other bloggers to write guest posts for me on my blog. I’d also force them to promote my site too because there was a prize for the guest post with the most traffic! The reward was dinner with me at Foliage in the Mandarin Oriental, overlooking the shipping containers and construction in the backyard. These were the days before Dinner and Bar Boulud. I can only imagine that those shipping containers were the early signs of what was to come.

Young Douglas Blyde won my 2008 contest and he joined me for dinner with his — if you can believe it — 5 megapixel camera phone! That was a big deal back in 2008. (Today’s iPhone 6s by comparison has a 12 megapixel camera.) Over our multi-course dinner, he ate his soup properly (away from him) and passed the salt and pepper together. He also used A LOT of big words. Big words have always been Douglas’ thing.

As part of my 50 Coffees with 50 People project earlier this year, I reached out to Douglas because I hadn’t seen him since some point in 2010. Too busy, too busy. We couldn’t find a date.

Delicious bacon and scallop butty

But there he was all these years later in 2015! At 5:30 am at Piggy’s Cafe at Billingsgate Market, serving us all bacon and scallop butties and steaming mugs of tea.  “I got dressed in the dark” he told us, when we commented on his amazing trousers.

We were there as part of an excellently organized social media event — #MuscadetMagic. A tour of Billingsgate, money to spend on seafood, and a prep session with CJ Jackson, CEO of Billingsgate Seafood School and author of Leith’s Fish Bible. Afterwards, we were shipped off to Old Street in minicabs and set loose on a prep kitchen with all of our seafood and a bountiful larder of produce. Ah, and a lot of Muscadet. A lot a lot. In fact, #MuscadetMagic had started a few days before, when this bottle of Muscadet arrived by special delivery…

I was totally down with the Muscadet elements of the day but I was a little worried about the food angle. When A Girl Has to Eat invited me to the event, I had warned her: “I just want to make it really clear. I really can’t cook. You should really consider inviting someone else if you really want to win.”

Her: “No no, you’ll be fine!

Me: “Really, I am not lying. My cooking skills are non-existent. I am not being economical with the truth here. I am really bad and my knife skills are non-existent too.”

But still, she took me on. During the day, I watched, mainly, as she haggled her away around Billingsgate, successfully securing A LOT of hand-dived scallops.

Do you know what I learned that day? Two things:

1. Opening scallops is hard work. Really hard. Surprisingly hard.
2. They call them razor clams for a reason. (Ouch!)

The Larder

At the prep kitchen, A Girl Has to Eat put me in charge of cleaning the razor clams, which sounds a lot easier than it was. I had to judge the shell (if it was broken, we had to throw out the clam), open the clam, remove the stomach, make sure the clam was still alive, and then if it was alive, cut off the top and tail. There were A LOT of razor clams. This took me forever.

While I was at it, A Girl Has to Eat whipped up a shellfish stock and cut up all the veg, the scallops and the (very in demand) chorizo. I was then put on garlic toast duty and managed to burn my hand by picking up a hot pan.  Like I said, I am not very good in the kitchen.

Our “Australian Stew”

Afterwards, we sat down for a big communal meal with the other teams while the judges tasted all our dishes and rated them. My only regret is that we didn’t make more food. We made a fairly small portion of what we dubbed  our”Australian Stew” and it was lunchtime and I was starving. (I picked up some Chinese on the way home.) Thank God for the team that made the stacks of oyster po’boys.

Plenty of Muscadet

Douglas kept the winning dishes to himself as he conducted our Muscadet tasting. We hit four wines in total, with #4 being the one that I would love to have with all my seafood and #2 as one I would consider as a more everyday kind of wine.

• Côtes de Grandlieu, Guérin 2014 (Waitrose, £7.99)
• La Nantaise Réserve 2014 from (Laithwaites £9.99)
• Les Gras Moutons 2013 from Domaine de la Haute Févrie, (Berry Bros & Rudd £11.95)
• Le Pallet 2010 from Les Dix du Pallet (Majestic, £14.99)

By the time we finished lunch and the tasting, we had been up for eight hours. At it was only 1 pm! Really, an excellent day out. Although our Australian Seafood Stew didn’t win, my thanks to Douglas for organizing #MuscadetMagic and to A Girl Has to Eat for taking a chance on me in the kitchen. And now that I’ve written this post, I’m going to crack open that last bottle of Muscadet…

The post Muscadet Magic, Billingsgate and Beyond first appeared on Passport Delicious | Solo Travel Blog | Solo Female Travel.

I now love cooking Asian things most of all. I could eat jasmine rice all day long. So no one had to twist my arm too hard when Amoy invited me over to a lovely kitchen in Waterloo to hang out with TV chef and personality Ching He Huang and watch her cook with all sorts of Amoy products. Ching is seriously one of the nicest and sweetest people I’ve ever met. I am now a HUGE FAN and I am very grateful that we all received a copy of her cookbook Wok Yourself to Health in our goody bags after the event.

Amoy is part of Kraft Heinz. Everyone thinks Kraft bought Heinz but here is what really happened. Brazilian private equity bought Heinz and slashed costs. Then the same Brazilian private equity teamed up with Warren Buffet to buy Kraft and merge it with Heinz. Boy am I glad I don’t work in Accounting or HR at either firm.

Work…I have been working a lot lately. So I have been very remiss at writing up anything about anything really, and particularly this wonderful and lovely event. The kind PRs have been knocking at my door quite frequently, gently, oh-so-gently reminding me about the wonderful event I attended on their dime. As always, I admire all the bloggers out there who can so quickly write up an event! How do you do it?? Please teach me. (The event was September 2nd.)

During the event, Ching whipped up a couple of dishes. My favorites were the popcorn chicken, a great starter that is highly addictive, and also the bacon chow mein, which although on the saltier side, is definitely a crowd pleaser. I am such your friend my dear readers because look! I am giving you the recipes for my two favorite dishes! Thank you, Amoy and Haygarth PR!

• Amoy Popcorn Chicken
• Amoy Bacon Chow Mein

I am seriously thinking about the popcorn chicken right now and my mouth is watering as I write this. Amoy has created a video of Ching going through how she made this. You should watch it and then you should make this addictive stuff for your next house party.

This is the bacon chow mein. Excellent. I will make this again. Not that I made it the first time, but you know what I mean.

And then of course, here is a lovely photo of all the things in Amoy’s new range. (I did not take this photo, obviously. It’s too good. Look at that depth of field!) What’s new to the range is Amoy’s cooking sauce pouches.  The new range features Thai Green Curry, Malaysian Laksa and a Thai Massaman Curry in 300g pouches, all made in Thailand, Suggested retail price of £1.49. Now that’s an exciting price point! Particularly exciting for someone like me who really doesn’t have too much time to cook because you know, I’m busy WORKING. (But do you know what’s even more exciting? I AM GOING TO THAILAND NEXT YEAR. Where I am going to take some time off from working.)

This was a great afternoon out. To the people at Amoy and Haygarth PR, I am very sorry it took me so long to write this up. Thank you for being so wonderful and thank you to Ching and thank you for the wonderful goody bag. I am very grateful.

The post Amoy Taste of Asia Masterclass with Ching He Huang first appeared on Passport Delicious | Solo Travel Blog | Solo Female Travel.

Miracles do happen, people. They really do.

So when Expedia contacted me about #Expediaworldonaplate, they kinda got me at just the right moment. They asked me to create a dish of my choosing, photograph it, and feature it on my site. The only catch? The dish had to originate from or be inspired by Cyprus or France. “One problem,” I told them. “I’ve never been to Cyprus. Is a trip to Cyprus included in the challenge?”

While a trip to Cyprus wasn’t included in the deal, £100 worth of products like olive oil, feta cheese, olives and baklava were included.

I ate all the baklava immediately.

And then I started thinking about what I would actually cook. Chicken is easy for me and I am a sucker for chicken thighs. All those people who love skinless, boneless chicken breasts? F*ck em. Give me the chicken thighs. The more skin, the better.

So I bought a bunch of chicken thighs and brought them home, along with some fresh garlic and lemon. I shoved some garlic cloves under the skin of the thighs, an advanced move for me. And then after slicing the lemon real thin, I placed the chicken on top of all the lemon slices. I got one of the jars of olives they sent me and spooned out 20, 5 for each thigh, and dropped them around the dish. A bit of olive oil and white wine and done. Into the oven for 40 minutes.

Out. Fantastic. My flat smelled all garlicky and lemony. Nice. Now, this is where my old self comes through. I ripped open a bag of salad leaves and placed a handful on my plate. Then I dug around the fridge until I found the 2-day old egg fried rice I knew I had in there somewhere and microwaved it for 45 seconds. I got out the block of feta and chopped it up, probably a little too perfectly. (Crumbled probably would have been better.) I dropped it all over my chicken and let it rest for a few minutes and warm up. Then, I plated everything and sat down to eat. DONE.  Classy. Nice. Too bad I didn’t have any baklava left for afters.

The next day, I polished off the leftovers for lunch, impressed by my own industriousness in the kitchen.

And the day after that, I chopped up the last remaining chicken thigh and shoved it into a pita with the rest of the feta and some lettuce. A nice lunch.

So thank you, Expedia, for your #expediaworldonaplate challenge. Thank you for the £100 worth of products and the £50 John Lewis voucher too. That was all very generous of you…which begs the question…What’s in it for you???

The post I Cooked Some Chicken for the #Expediaworldonaplate Challenge @expedia first appeared on Passport Delicious | Solo Travel Blog | Solo Female Travel.

Experiments in food continue! I have bought a SPIRALIZER on Amazon. There are many different kinds of Spiralizers. I bought the most basic kind — the black handheld kind — so I could see if I really used the thing and if I liked it. There are more sophisticated table-top ones with multiple blades for you more advanced people. Me, I’m just making zucchini noodles.

Surprisingly, courgette/zucchini in a Spiralizer tastes somewhat like spaghetti. The main difference I found was with the water content. Courgette/zucchini noodles are a lot wetter. There is probably a way around that…one friend recommended I put the resulting noodles in a colander with a bit of salt and push some water out. I haven’t gotten that far yet.

I am still working on this but basically here is how I use a Spiralizer right now:

1. Push two fat courgettes through the Spiralizer. The thing is…they can’t be that fat because then they won’t fit. And they can’t be that skinny because then you don’t really get leverage in the Spiralizer as I learned with my first batch. Size, as they say, is key.
2. Take the noodle-like results and throw into pretty hot frying pan with a little olive oil for like 30 seconds. Not a long time. If you leave the noodles in too long in the hot pan, they get mushy and even more watery.
3. Remove from heat. Add some pre-heated store-bought pesto sauce. Voila! Dinner without all the carbs! Feel the virtuousness! If you’re super-fancy, you probably make your own pesto. I am not there yet. Baby steps, people. Baby steps.

Today I am planning on making a version of linguine and clam sauce, using my Spiralizer. Check back later for details on how it turned out. I have a good feeling about this.

Got any Spiralizer recipe tips? I am all ears.

The post Look, I Made Veggie Noodles with a Spiralizer! first appeared on Passport Delicious | Solo Travel Blog | Solo Female Travel.

If you live in London, chances are, you’ve been handed a voucher for HelloFresh outside some tube station or another within the last few months. (I understand HelloFresh operates in the U.S. too.) HelloFresh is a meal-delivery service that packs up everything you need to make at least three nice meals during the week and delivers it to your door on a Monday or Tuesday morning. One of my friends has been raving about the experience so as I’ve tried to get more seriously about cooking for myself instead of eating out, I thought I would give it a try.

I am lucky that I live in a building with a porter because he was able to take delivery of my HelloFresh box and keep it in a safe place for me while I was at work. I’m not sure how people who work during the day and live in buildings without porters would take delivery. In my old building, for example, my neighbors and I had more than a few parcels stolen.

That being said, the box is light enough so perhaps you could have it delivered to work and the schlep it home on the tube or bus.

My first box came with three recipe cards and all the ingredients for three meals. My recipes during the first week were chicken with dijon mushroom sauce, smoky burritos and then pan-fried salmon with new potatoes. During my second week, my recipes were chicken paella, fish and chips, and lamb koftas with tzatziki and rice.

Here’s a high-level overview of what I liked about HelloFresh as well as some of the challenges I experienced:

Pros…

• Generally healthy recipes.
• Fairly easy to prepare. For someone who doesn’t cook much like me, this was reassuring.
• Fresh herbs with each delivery. I really liked this. They sent nice packages of rosemary, dill, parsley, etc. Fresh herbs really do make a difference.
• Very large portions. You could call this a pro or a con. I got three or four meals out of what was meant to be a meal for two.
• Decently priced. With the discount I received because I purchased on a friend’s recommendation, I spent £19 on my box the first week. That’s £3.16 a meal if you assume two meals per recipe. (But remember I got three if not four servings out of each recipe.) During the second week, my box was £39, or £6.50 a meal, which may seem pricey but remember I normally go out to eat. Just to be clear…I paid for these boxes myself.
• They use Zendesk for customer support, which is an excellent platform that prevents customer emails from getting lost and gives companies all sorts of good stats on their support levels. I am a dork about things like this. I was glad to see they have a system in place.

Cons…

• Clean-up. The paella, in particular, was a bitch to clean up. Lots of pots and pans. After a long day at the office, the last thing I wanted to do was dishes.
• Vague instructions at times. For example, for my first recipe — the chicken with dijon mushroom sauce — I ended up with a ton of watery sauce, even though I feel like I followed the recipe pretty closely. I ended up siphoning off a lot of the water, which unfortunately took the dijon with it because there was only one tiny take-away packet of dijon. Another recipe told me to boil a large pot of water, but didn’t say how large.
• Related to the above, poorly edited recipes. One recipe told me to turn on the oven, but yet nothing ever went into the oven. (Imagine my existential crisis!) The paella recipe told me to throw in one-half of the rice, but never told me to put in the other half of the rice and I knew I had to. I pointed out the oven thing to them and they were aware of it…which begs the question…why not email your customers who received that recipe and let them know of the error before they attempt the recipe?
• They forgot to send me the chorizo for the paella but by the time I realized it, it was too late. (I was mid-recipe.) The paella turned out okay, but I know it would have been better with the chorizo.
• OK, call me Judgey McJudgerson but they used basmati rice for the paella and cheddar for the burrito. (When I complained — with love — about the cheddar for the burrito, they suggested I try feta instead. BLASPHEMY.)
• Customer support: I think this changed during my subscription but while I was making my first recipe, I wanted to call and speak to someone about the dijon mushroom sauce but their phone lines were already closed. So I had to write them an email instead and didn’t hear back from them for 23.5 hours. Personally, for something time-sensitive like cooking, 24 hour response times are kinda high.
• Too much food for one person. This is one of the main reasons why I am not continuing my subscription. I just couldn’t keep up. To be fair to HelloFresh, this is not really a meal service for one. It’s meant to be for two. I just thought that I could stretch out the six meals over the course of a week.

The Verdict: My two weeks with HelloFresh made me a better person, I swear! It helped me conquer my fear of the oven, although I still wouldn’t say I am entirely comfortable. It also made me think a lot about why I don’t like to cook and I think what I’ve come up with is a different explanation than the explanations I’ve used before (laziness, not knowing how).

See…I have always been a hard worker. I tend to work long hours and I am always thinking about work. This is a bad thing about me, but probably not something that will change overnight although I am always trying and I do think I’ve gotten better over the years. For example, in the old days, I would always go into the office for a few hours on a Sunday and prep myself for the week ahead. I don’t do that anymore and I really try to maximize my weekend and relaxation time because I know I need it for my brain to function well.

What I am trying to say is that after a long day at work, the last thing I want to do is come home and chop up vegetables and meat. I am tired of working at that point. I want it to be easy. And I think what didn’t work for me with HelloFresh is the amount of chopping pre-meal and the amount of cleaning post-meal. I want to maximize my relaxation time and while cooking is relaxing for many people, it’s not relaxing for me. It’s work. I am not sure that feeling will change anytime soon for me. So I think what I need to do is find super-quick and super-easy recipes that I can make in like 10 to 15 minutes that require minimum clean-up. (I think this explains why I like making quesadillas so much. So easy! And just one pan!) If you have any recipe suggestions along these lines, please let me know because much like I know I really shouldn’t go into the office on a weekend, I also know I should probably stop dining out so much.

Sign up for Hello Fresh now.

Working at HelloFresh

For some reason, this post gets a lot of hits from people looking for jobs at Hello Fresh. If you are interested in working for HelloFresh, see their list of job openings worldwide here.

HelloFresh Box Stolen?

Likewise, this post gets a lot of hits from people who had their HelloFresh boxes stolen! (People suck.) If you think your HelloFresh box has been stolen, you should contact HelloFresh.

The post My Two Weeks with HelloFresh first appeared on Passport Delicious | Solo Travel Blog | Solo Female Travel.

Gratefulness week, Day #3! I’m still feeling it, people.

I get a lot of random emails via this blog, some more random than others. (No, I am not interested in advertising your online casino.) But every so often, the right pitch arrives on the right day.

Here is the situation. Every so often, I work from home. And working from home is weird for me from a food standpoint. What do I do? Do I cook something? What if the phone rings? Do I go out for lunch? What if someone wants to talk to me on Lync (instant messenger). For a while, I was really into Waitrose and Marks & Spencer’s meals, but I’ve been thinking a lot about preservatives and fillers and sodium lately so I’m trying not to do that. Then I went on an Itsu and Pret binge — Itsu has nice discounts in the evenings — but that got a little monotonous.

So timing-wise, Bonapeti got me at the perfect moment. I was debating the perfect “working from home” lunch when their email dropped into my  box. The e-mail was short and sweet, which I appreciated. And it started with a bang…

I’d like to get a delicious lunch/dinner delivered to you next week.  We’re really keen for you to try the new Bonapeti with our compliments.

Thank you, knowledgeable PR, for knowing how to write a pitch and getting my attention from the get-go.  You got me! I responded immediately!

And while I was working from home the other day, the Bonapeti box arrived.

And I opened it immediately…because I was HUNGRY. I was also very fascinated by the recyclable, biodegradable sheep’s wool everything was packed in.

After perusing the contents of the box, I, uh,  promptly proceeded to eat the spiced poach pear cake first. Forget the rest of the box. I wanted dessert. And it was really good. I wasn’t a huge fan of the coconut yogurt — too tart for me in that yogurt-like way — but the cake was great.

Hunger abated, I waited. (Rhyming intended.)

And waited.

And waited some more, the contents of the box calling to me, softly, from the refrigerator.

And then finally, when it was time for dinner, I helped myself to the “vine ripened tomatoes stuffed with butterbeans and feta, served with mixed quinoa and roasted cauliflower.” I don’t even like tomatoes, but apparently, if you stuff them with butterbeans and feta, I am totally okay with tomatoes! Because these were really good, and as a dinner option, the dish was much better than the Waitrose mushroom risottos and Itsu  Omega 3 Salmon Supremes I’ve been surviving on lately. I wasn’t expecting the chili in the Bonapeti dish — I should have read the menu card — so I had a bit of a coughing fit, but otherwise, I was very pleased with my healthy, veggie lunch.

Fast forward to the next morning. Breakfast. What to do? I have always been an unorthodox breakfast eater. I am not a huge fan of pancakes, waffles, cereals or eggs. (Who are these people that line up outside The Breakfast Club by the way???) I like the occasional omelette, but that’s about it. Lately, I’ve been eating jamon and grits for breakfast. Sometimes, with some random cheese. on the side. So I had the next meal — baked kohlrabi with a spiced tomato preserve and pumpkin seed gremolata — for breakfast. Although I realized afterwards that I forgot to use the tomato preserve and the pumpkin seed gremolata.

This was a nice and filling, dense and spicy breakfast dish. (I need to have baked kohlrabi for breakfast more often!) I felt virtuous too because there was a side of kale.  Given the relatively large size of the portion, I ended up saving half of it for my dinner. (Hoping to remember to use the tomato preserve and the pumpkin seed gremolata.) My other plan is to polish off the salad that Bonapeti also included in the box, a salad of quinori, mushrooms, Jerusalem artichokes and celery with sunflower seed pesto. (Given my celery allergy, I requested no celery.)

So all in all, I am enjoying my Bonapeti box. I am grateful for it! In sum, here are my pros and cons:

Pros

• Bonapeti were really good about my carrot and celery allergies. The salad has a specific sign on it that says “without celery,” which is reassuring.
• I like the  handy cards for each dish in the box. The cards outline the ingredients and the nutritional information.
• I like that these are meat-free options. I’m trying to eat less meat and eat more plants in 2015. (According to the Bonapeti website, there are some meat and fish options.)
• For me, the price is about right. I work a lot and have rationalized £10 a meal for a healthy dinner that I don’t have to do much about when I get home. Call me lazy. I call me a single professional woman who works a lot and doesn’t want to eat Chinese food all the time.

Cons

• They don’t really deliver east of West London just yet. I am in Clerkenwell, so I am still fairly central but not in the delivery zone. They delivered to me anyhow, but you should check their delivery zones before you get too excited.
• The “enjoy by” dates were pretty quick. Mine said I should enjoy on the day of delivery or the next day. The problem with my life right now is that I don’t know where I will be at any given moment. I would be afraid to order a box on Monday to be delivered on Tuesday only to find out I wasn’t going to be home on Wednesday. Thank God for freezers, I guess.
• My microwave is much stronger than their instructions. For example, the Baked Kohlrabi required five minutes in the microwave. I knew that was going to be too long. I got away with two minutes. (My microwave goes up to 1000 watts.)

The Verdict: Would I order from Bonapeti again? If I knew that I was going to be in town during the week and working long hours, I definitely would. Unfortunately, my schedule is not that predictable so it’s hard to say when I will next order a box. It’s good to know the option exists though if I need it.

Here’s the Bonapeti spiel from their press release…

Bonapeti specializes in creating impressive restaurant quality, plant-based dishes, which are delivered super-fresh and chilled to your door. There are meat and fish options on the menu too. Look out for some of London’s brightest new chef names, guesting at Bonapeti. Nutritious mains are priced around £10 and desserts from £3.50, plus just £5 per delivery. They are freshly made on the day in the Bonapeti kitchen and require just a few minutes for you to heat up. Orders can be taken for same-day delivery at no extra cost.

Big Bad Disclosure: Bonapeti provided me with this gorgeous box of healthy food at no cost. My estimate based on the prices on the Bonapeti website is that the contents of the box would retail for roughly £30 quid plus delivery. I am grateful to Bonapeti for feeding me. 

Bonapeti is offering 40% off first orders (plus free delivery) to anyone who uses the code BON201502. 

The post I am Grateful that Bonapeti Sent Me a Box of Food When I was Hungry… first appeared on Passport Delicious | Solo Travel Blog | Solo Female Travel.

I bought the Vitamix a few months ago because Twitter told me to. I wanted a strong blender that could crush ice.

Yes, I wanted a blender purely so I could make frozen margaritas.

But then the Vitamix arrived and I figured out that the damn thing was so powerful, you could make anything in it. No cooking skills necessary. So for example, for today’s asparagus and mushroom soup, I cut a bunch of asparagus in half and threw it in the microwave for two minutes. Then I threw it in the Vitamix along with a cup of chicken broth, a cup of water, a splash of whole milk, and a splash of white wine.

Then I remembered I had some leftover shiitake mushrooms and some corn salsa so I threw that in there as well.

30 seconds and some freshly grated pecorino, some salt and pepper, and three asparagus tips saved for use in the photograph, I had soup. (I did microwave it for 30 seconds to warm it up. The Vitamix is actually so powerful that if you keep blending, the soup will heat itself up, but then my apartment ends up sounding like an airport so I just use the microwave.)

Not bad if I do say so myself.

The post I Love My Vitamix first appeared on Passport Delicious | Solo Travel Blog | Solo Female Travel.

Making your own orange juice is a lot of work, but it’s so much better than store-bought. I’ve been throwing in some lemons to tart things up a bit. You should too.

Courtesy of the Breville ikon Multi-Speed Juice Fountain, a very wonderful purchase. I wonder if the TSA would have a problem with a juicer in a suitcase? Because I seriously want to travel with this thing.

The post My latest obsession… first appeared on Passport Delicious | Solo Travel Blog | Solo Female Travel.

The Victim: Me

The Damage: Nothing. This was a freebie. Vegetable red thai curry provided by Scratch. 

The Background: You might know that one of my New Year's Resolutions was to learn how to cook.

I'll be honest. This whole cooking thing is off to a VERY slow start.

But when Farleigh and Scratch contacted me back in February and offered to send me a meal kit for one that I could easily prepare within 15 minutes, well, it just seemed like a good way to dip my toe into the water. Everything would be cleaned and cut up already. I didn't need to REALLY work for my food. All I needed to do was break out the pots and pans and stir it together. (To summarize Scratch from their own Web site: We make fresh meal kits. A box of all the fresh, uncooked ingredients – chopped,washed and weighed – and instructions to cook your meal from scratch. Our food is tasty, healthy and all cooked by you from scratch.)

The first surprise: This is all vegetarian. I kinda wanted some chicken. Not a big deal. I mean, who doesn't need to eat more vegetables?

The second surprise: They want me to rinse the rice. That's not going to happen. That stuff is going straight into the pot of water.

The third surprise: That's a lot of coconut milk. How much fat is in there? I'm supposed to be on a diet. (After a little worrying, the nutritional information on the back of the package states that the whole package has just 15.25 grams of fat in it. Crisis averted. Glad that they've included that info.)

After mixing the curry paste with some coconut milk, I add all the vegetables and then throw in the rest of the coconut milk. The rice goes into a saucepan. (My mother's saucepan from when I was five years old.) I feel vaguely Martha Stewart-esque as I'm doing this, and I even put on an apron. How domestic. But the rice is not in one of those boil-in-the bag thingies (like Uncle Ben's), so I have to drain the rice in a sieve when I'm done. This means that this meal for one is going to require that I wash three dishes. (Not two, as promised in the description. And that's four if you count the bowl I ate out of. I did consider eating out of the saucepan to save on dishwashing.)

The finished product is fresh and pretty tasty. The green beans and baby corn are nice and crunchy, and I'm a sucker for butternut squash. The curry is a bit smoky and the coconut milk gives this all a nice creamy finish. I feel pretty proud of myself. And full. Even despite the lack of protein.

The Verdict: I like the concept of Scratch. I'm a busy person, and I live by myself, so if I were to buy the greenbeans and butternut squash and corn all in one go, I'd either have to buy them in extremely small amounts (so small as to look ridiculous), or buy enough to eat this every night this week. So it's nice to have an intermediary organizing it all for me. I also liked the taste of Scratch. This was fresh and healthy food, and there's a sense of accomplishment that comes from cooking this all yourself. That being said, I was kinda not happy about the washing up, which in some ways, made me wish I had actually been cooking for four. Would have been the same mess, you know?

You can find Scratch in the chiller cabinets at the Sourced Market in Kings Cross St Pancras station, Budgens Islington, the Grocery in Shoreditch 54-56 Kingsland Road, Couture Food Hall in Woolwich Arsenal, Kennards in Bloomsbury and finally Selfridges on Oxford Street.

The post Krista Learns to Cook: Scratch (Shameless Plug) first appeared on Passport Delicious | Solo Travel Blog | Solo Female Travel.