Gardener’s pie; banana cake and custard

Pretty much straight to the food today, so no hyperlink needed: just scroll past paragraph one to find a recipe (or at least a link to one).

This week has been a tiring one: I should have given myself more time to recover from Monday’s hospital visit, but things just keep getting in the way, sometimes through no-one’s fault but my own. I did cancel the introductory video call with the second charity I had contacted about volunteering when I realised the thought of it made me to cry (not because there’s anything wrong with the charity, just that I’m tired and in pain and can’t face anything as challenging as the work they need done), so that’s one less thing on my task list.

But then I discovered some very overripe bananas that had been pushed to the back of the fridge shelf; mum wanted to throw them away but to me they were clearly perfectly ripe for being turned into banana cake. I used this recipe, from the BBC Food website, and made it even easier by just chucking everything in one mixing bowl and stirring until it was combined. Then into a Pyrex cooking dish¹ and, 50 minutes later, we had cake.

The cake wasn’t fantastically flavourful – the mixed spice must be past its best as there wasn’t a hint of it in the cake despite using more than stated in the recipe – but it was crunchy on top, with a lovely light crumb. It was good warm with ice cream, but equally good cool on its own. Not a bad way of disposing of blackened bananas, really.

Before that, as a main course, was a dish that might or might not be my own invention – I honestly can’t remember now. Gardener’s pie is a slightly fancy name for veg in cheese sauce topped with sliced potatoes and baked. It’s a wonderfully versatile dish: you can use any veg and any cheese you like or have sitting around. This one was half an onion, a slightly soft carrot, and some frozen peas, in a white sauce flavoured with the hardened end of some supermarket cheddar and a bit of English mustard (today’s top top for you is that a small amount of mustard brings out the flavour of cheese in savoury recipes), and mum polished it off, scraped up the remaining cheese sauce with a spoon, and declared it “pretty yum”, so that’s a definite win.

Overall a decent day on the food front, if not quite as much as intended on the relaxation front. Tomorrow is choir practice day for mum, and the start of ship research day for me, taking advantage of the resulting hour or so of quiet. It would also be the start of millionaire’s shortbread day, except I already did that this morning. It makes for a very nice breakfast in place of an overripe banana, if not exactly as healthy an everyday choice. Would banana cake be any better for tomorrow, do you think?

1. A cake tin being another item on my list of things I need to get for mum’s kitchen. ↩︎