Back by popular demand! Well, demand from one loyal reader anyway…..

It’s been a while. A long while. Life has been insanely busy the last 18 months however, about 10 days ago, I found myself surprisingly jobless and a staring at a future with time on my hands. So, it seems as good a time as any to kick start this blog again as I can once again think about cooking, sewing and doing things that haven’t really been on the agenda for a long time. More on the job thing in ‘other news’.

Last week I had no work and the kids were still at school which is a rare treat. What to do? Well, catch up on daytime telly of course, which happened to include his Holiness JO’s Easy Christmas. One particular recipe caught my attention and so Christmas Pasta for dinner it was. This one was super easy but as usual I deviated a smidge from the recipe. First off, the local Co-op didn’t have fresh sage or lasagne (but surprisingly has ready-to-eat chestnuts?!?) and secondly, his recipe seems to be for one so I upped the sausage quantity and made up the rest. One of the reasons I love his Holiness JO’s recipes is that you can pretty much substitute everything and still have a banging meal at the end. Needs fresh mint? Just use a tsp of mint sauce. Needs sourdough? Hell, some Tesco sliced brown bread will work just as well….. you get the drift. So, here’s my version which served about 7 and really did taste like Christmas.

Rin’s JO Christmas pasta

Ingredients:

1 x pack of good quality pork sausages
1 x small pack of bacon lardons
1 x small onion (I used white rather than red as it’s what I had)
1/2 tsp dried sage
3/4 bag of Merchant ready-to-eat chestnuts
Large handful Parmesan cheese – grated
Whole nutmeg – for grating
600g Pasta (I used penne)
Olive oil

Method:

Put a large frying pan on a high heat and add some olive oil. Pop in the bacon lardons and fry until brown and crispy (I like them crispy). Squeeze the sausagemeat out of the skin into little balls (I failed at this and just broke each sausage into small pieces) and pop into the pan .

Peel and finely slice the onion. Add to the pan along with the sage.

Pop the pasta on to cook for about half the cooking time. Once cooked, drain and retain cooking water.

Once the sausage and bacon are cooked and the onion has softened, crumble in the chestnuts, and cook for 2 minutes.

Add the pasta into the pan, then carefully pour in enough pasta cooking water to just cover the pasta (I didn’t measure but if you need more, add boiling water from kettle). Let it bubble away for about 4 minutes, or until the pasta has absorbed most of the water and you’ve got a nice silky sauce, stirring regularly and loosening with an extra splash of water, if needed.

Turn the heat off, stir in the Parmesan, and season to perfection. Finish with a fine grating of nutmeg, to taste.

Word of warning: if, like us you have leftovers, do not, I repeat DO NOT leave these unattended in their lidless leftover containers if you have a dog. COD will be horrified to learn that I caught the hound sneaking pasta and sausage out of the two takeaway dishes he lovingly prepped. Did I chuck them out? Of course not – I picked out a few bits of pasta and popped the lids on. I ate one, COD ate the other. No one died. I may of course now be jobless and husbandless……. #wifeconfessions

In other news:

• So, the job thing. I made a difficult but necessary decision that after 6.5yrs the time was right for me to leave EMF. My portfolio of work had morphed and changed significantly over the past year and landed in a place that, while super exciting for the Foundation, just wasn’t right for me. I have no idea what will come next but I am taking some time to think about it, enjoy cooking, sewing and spending time with the kids, COD and the hound.
• LOD is 3 weeks off being 16. 16! WTF? She is an amazing teenager and heading into her GCSE’s next year with confidence, having done really well in her mocks. She’s had to make choices for 6th form and we’re delighted she has chosen to do the International Baccalaureate
• EEROD is 13. So, two teens in the house She is loving senior school, still doing brilliantly at school and threatening to do both art and drama for GCSEs! She is an absolute wizz at Sunday morning waffles (future recipe upcoming) and still our resident fashionista.
• ACOD is 10. So, no more single digit children in the house! She is bossing year 5 (literally – she is my child after all) and although her enthusiasm for doing ANYTHING is very very low, she bounces around with happiness and (apart from still having to be nagged to do hair, teeth and shoes EVERY F*CKING DAY) is a confident, self-sufficent kid.
• COD still works too much, but we’ve had some fabulous trips and holidays this year which has been awesome We spent 3 days working together in the Catskills which was a new dimension for us!
• We’ve had some pet upsets since I last wrote on here. Sadly both cats have now deceased. They were 14 and 15 years old so they had good innings’s but we miss them loads and it’s still weird sleeping without a warm, fluffy hot waterbottle on my feet. Fly is now 3.5yrs old and utterly gorgeous. Super cuddly and apart from the odd tendency to nick leftovers and lick butter, incredibly well behaved. We’re working on off-lead recall as that’s still a challenge but we will get there…… As I type this, my left hand is being used by a dog-shaped head wanting more attention.
• I have stupidly signed up for not one but two marathons next year. Currently my right ankle is preventing me from doing things like walking and driving without niggles so it feels like marathon training, which is meant to start this week, is not quite getting off the starting blocks. We shall see but the second one is Sept 2026 and mostly about drinking wine so I can at least train for that part!