Destitute Gourmet

Now I am aware that I have mentioned Sophie before on this blog, that is Sophie Gray aka The Destitute Gourmet

When Ben was little, say about 1 or 2, I was at the library trying to find some cook books to give me some inspiration. I came across some by Sophie. Of course after having them at home and reading them cover to cover and wanting to try several of the dishes, I treated myself to one of the books.

She covered a whole basic idea of creating a menu and only shopping for what you need rather than random, she also explained about essential items in your pantry and luxury items.

I fell in love, here was a simple thing to put into practice that could save me time, thinking time and money!

Ok so it took me quite a while to get things organised, but to this day we still have a menu, when I remember to follow it, and we also have a printed shopping list broken down into weeks and only having things on there that I need to buy for this weeks menu.

I have also had the awesome pleasure of attending one of Sophie's Demonstrations, or more to the point I ended up as a helper in the kitchen for 5 hours with Sophie. It was awesome fun, but very tiring but I learnt so much.

She showed us how to make pizza as one of the dishes she made and  how to raise the dough in the microwave. I still make my pizza like that and it still works everytime.

I still have several dishes that I use from the cook book and they go down very well with my young family.

So I was very happy when a best friend brought me another Sophie book for my birthday a few weeks back. There are some great looking recipes in there too.

Ben's school is also looking at having Sophie down for a demonstration next year sometime, thanks to me. I was involved in organising the one I helped at, so know what is involved and how much fun it can be, so gave them the information and helped them investigate what they needed, sadly we were unable to get it organised for the end of this year but are still hoping for sometime next year.

Will I go to it? Hell yes, and I will tell all my friends and my mum too.

So imagine my surprise when I came across a blog for Destitute Gourmet, and she even posts some lovely recipes on there too, so will be keeping an eye on that too.

She has also put out a book about common sense living, tips on being sensible with how you live and what you do and don't need. It is very interesting reading and again very practicle, so practicle in fact that my best friend still has my copy of it and swears by it!