Salad days

Warmer weather brings salad and I bought some great looking ham this morning. We had to go to the shopping centre to activate our new bank cards. Yep, bank came through and we now have new cards.

Great ham deserves great salads so using Annie (thermo) I made a beetroot salad using tin of beetroot, a carrot, apple and spinach. Tasted good but the colour was not as fresh and clean looking as I wanted. The green of the spinach gave it a dull look. Then I thought I might as well make a potato salad using Annie, so I put in an onion and when that was minced I added about four potatoes cut into cubes. I intended to use Annie to cook them not to cut them. I added about a cup of water and used 80 degree heat and somewhere along the way I did press the reverse button which means it would not chop.

Hummm, except that I think I changed something which took off the reverse command. I ended up with definite mush and it tasted yuk or rather like very watery cooked potatoes, nothing like what I had in mind. I added some parm cheese but no, it had to go out in the bin. I ended up using a saucepan and doing it the old fashioned way.

Stinky potatoes

I bought a bag of spuds a few weeks ago but we don't use potatoes as much as we used to, if we have rice or noodles or corn then I don't cook potatoes as well. Anyway the bag was in the bottom of the pantry and when Warren opened the pantry this morning he was hit with a smell!

There is nothing like the smell of potatoes that have gone off. Luckily he knew what it was and quickly grabbed the bag out and found the culprit, it was only one and he washed the rest of them but kept three out that had been close to the off one.

I cooked them and mashed them with some left over dip to use that up, there was some spring onion and smoked salmon, it made an interesting mash rather than using butter and milk.

This was lunch. Some Turkish bread spread with mashed potato, add a few spinach leaves and topped with smoked salmon, half a kiwi fruit and a coffee, yummo!

5 pm and there is movement!

Its been a hot day and since about 10am, the TV has been in use. car racing and a movie and a travel doco was taken in as well as a Nanna nap.

It all changes around 5pm, TV no longer holds our attention and we emerge from the cave (house in this case) and venture outside to soak up the cooler air and give the plants a drink.

The orange tree has many many buds of new little oranges and alongside, two lemons were ready to be picked. Also lots of egg plants and herbs.

Now I just need to decide what on earth am I going to make with them. We had steak sandwiches for lunch so I was planning to have potato rosti for dinner, (no meat). Not sure how to spell that, it is a Jamie Olicer recipe with potato and carrot grated and then baked with poached eggs and peas in a creamy sauce on top. I love his way of cooking although don't use all the oil and chili that he does. I guess I take his recipes and put my own slant on them.

Hummm, think I will go and get two more egg plants (will need a knife to pick them) and add to grated potato (found that we are out of carrots).

Soup

When the weather gets a little cooler, I think of soup. I asked Warren yesterday which soup would he like me to make and gave some options. Potato and leek, pumpkin or chicken and vege. He said chicken and corn sounded good. No, I cooked the corn that we had and I didn't have any tinned corn. These days I cant be bothered going to the shops for one item so it was a no go. He then said potato and leek as we hadn't had that in awhile.

Leek sounds good but I only had onion or spring onion so I diced a large one and four potatoes and put that and some homemade chicken stock into the crock pot with the last of the bacon. For years I couldn't use stock cubes or stock powder as it gave Warren headaches, due to his gluten allergy as we now know. Pretty excited to be able to make and use my own stock thanks to a forum that I belong to, no real recipe which  I like but its chicken carcasses (I put in a bag in the freezer until I'm ready to make it and normally use two) and whatever vegetables and boil til the meat falls off the bones, cool and pour into ice cubes and bag up with frozen.

Three hours later the soup was cooked, I added a tin of carnation milk and wazzed it (Jamie Oliver's words) in the mixer to make it smooth, there was enough for three bowls.

As we were going to be out all day today and would be given lunch, a bowl of soup and a sandwich would be plenty for dinner. Two bowls in the freezer and one in the fridge.

I decided while the mixer and crock pot were out, i might as well make the pumpkin soup. Again no real recipe but I remember the first time I made pumpkin soup and so I make it similar. A big heap of pumpkin, a carrot, some more stock, a potato and a sweet potato, chilli sauce and tomato sauce and let cook til pumpkin soft. This resulted in another three bowls for the freezer. Running out of bowls so I didn't make the chicken soup, maybe I will make chicken and corn in a couple of weeks.

After a two hour train trip home tonight, it was so nice to just have to heat the soup, a chicken sandwich followed by a piece of watermelon, a quick easy and pretty cheap meal.