I love food. I come from a family where we start talking/planning dinner when we wake up. I rate holidays/foreign locations based on how much I enjoyed my food there – so I didn’t care for Prague but I absolutely adored Bologna. In my previous incarnation as a spendthrift, I also thought nothing of spending £30-50 on a nice meal out with a friend or romantic interest or £20 on take away. I’ve obviously been forced into frugality so have no room in my budget for such things but want to maintain my passion for food. What better way to spice things up that to start learning how to make new dishes? Last night the person of interest asked for loaded potato skins.

I looked up this recipe on my way back from work and stopped off at the grocery store to buy the ingredients: Cheddar, sour cream, spring onions, unsmoked bacon and Maris Piper potatoes (cost £6.89). I didn’t buy olive or canola oil as I figured that the vegetable oil I had at home would suffice. I’d never made these before and don’t even think I’d ever baked a potato so was pretty surprised that the baking would take at least an hour and the meal would take upwards of an hour and 20 minutes to make. Somehow, in spite of feeling pretty ill when I left work, I got energised when the music was playing and I started prepping the ingredients. I’ve never successfully followed a recipe, I get the general gist and then freestyle based on my knowledge of food, and I usually end up with something that looks like what I was aiming for.

It took me an hour and 40 minutes to make and these were the best loaded potato skins I’ve ever had. I think the sour cream and spring onions were the distinguishing ingredients as these aren’t normally included in the versions I’ve gotten in pubs. The person of interest gave it two thumbs up and we had no leftovers. With the person of interest bringing along a bottle of rose, this was an excellent date. I’ll file this away in autumn/winter recipes though as the kitchen was boiling because of how long the oven needed to be run for.