as it happens, i grew tired of soup and english breakfasts (i do still make soup on mondays to have for dinner, along with cheese, ham, and bread, during the week; and i hope to cook a full english now and again).
so i turned to cas clarke's "quick and easy cooking for one" (
ridiculously cheap, btw), which
nou had recommended i got. i picked 3 dishes and spent a good couple of hours buying the ingredients i was missing.
i ended up being unable to find sun-dried tomatoes (even the temple that is m&s failed me), so i improvised (i know, crazy, right?) and grilled a couple of small tomatoes instead. this is how the final product looked (after around 20 minutes, 5 more than what the book said, due to said grilled tomatoes and my lack of practice in chopping things up, particularly parsley):
it was very tasty, and i'm very pleased with the results. stay tuned for the following episodes!