Yummiest Breakfast Scrommelata Evar

I have discovered the ultimate in morning luxuries - eggs scrambled with cream. Mmmm...

Ingredients:
2 slices bacon, diced
leftover roast veges, about 1 cup
1 garden-fresh tomato
3 leaves chard, shredded
about 1 cup diced capsicum, mushrooms, etc
2 eggs, fresh from the chooks
2 dessertspoons cream
1 tbsp parmesan
1/2 tsp onion powder (in lieu of onions)
black pepper
1/2 cup grated Cheddar (optional)

Saute the bacon, then add all the veges (chard and tomato last) and cook til chard has just wilted and everything else is nice and soft. Beat eggs and cream together with the Parmesan, and season.Pour over the veges, tilt pan to spread evenly, and cook til set on the bottom. Sprinkle over grated cheese and put under the grill til top is set. Serve on toast, and prepare to swoon.

Bacon Muffins

This recipe (with some judicious editing - the idea of making muffins with cream of mushroom soup nearly made me barf) Woz Not Bad.

Beef, Beans and Greens

Mmmm...must go and buy some navy beans tomorrow. I have a hankering to make Boston baked beans, and also to make this stew with the chuck steak and kale I now have hanging around.

Curried Sweet Potato Soup

1 onion
1-2 tsp green curry paste
1 large sweet potato
1 carrot
1/3 cup red lentils
1/3 cup ground almonds
1 small tin lite coconut milk


Cook. Then blend. Then eat. It's yummy!

Random recipes

Made this recipe for sweet and sour dipping sauce tonight. We had DIY rice paper rolls (which would have been rather more successful if E and then B had not dropped the packet of wrappers!) for dinner.

I want to try this recipe for Green Tomato and Apple Chutney this week. I am requesting apples from the trees on the way to riding school tomorrow, so I don't have to experiment with expensive ones! *g* I do probably need to buy more brown sugar, vinegar and sultanas, though.

Sage and Garlic Bread

250g wholemeal bread mix
1.5 tsp dry yeast
2 tsp dried sage
large pinch salt
3 tsp garlic
1 tsp honey
150mL tepid water
milk for glazing
poppy seeds

Put bread mix, yeast, sage, garlic and salt into a large mixing bowl. Add honey and water, and mix together to form a dough.

Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface until smooth and elastic (about five minutes). Place dough in a greased bowl, cover, and leave in a warm spot until dough has doubled in size.

Knead the dough again for a few minutes, then roll it into a long thin sausage and form into a circle. Join the two ends by moistening with water. Put it onto a greased baking tray, cover with a clean teatowel and leave somewhere warm for about 30 minutes.

Brush with milk and sprinkle with poppyseeds before baking in a preheated 200C oven for about half an hour. Eat warm and spread with butter!

Roast Vegetable Quiche

1 sheet shortcrust pastry
1/2 sweet potato
equivalent weight in Queensland Blue pumpkin
2 small onions, cut into eighths
1 small orange capsicum, cut into thirds
~1 tbsp pinenuts
1/2 cup grated cheese (mixture of cheddar and parmesan)
2 eggs
1/2 tub silken tofu
~1/2 cup milk
1 tsp egg replacer
2 tsp crushed garlic
slosh balsamic vinegar
black pepper

Dice the sweet potato and pumpkin and toss them and the onions in oil. Plonk in a roasting tray and stick in the oven at 210C for 30-40 minutes.

Put the capsicum pieces cut side down on another tray and roast likewise. When skins begin to blacken, remove and cover with a clean teatowel. When cool enough to handle, remove skins and roughly chop flesh.

Grease a square flan dish and line with pastry. Cover with a square of baking parchment and add baking beans. Blind bake for ten minutes. Remove parchment and beans, and roughly spread roasted vegetables over pastry base. Sprinkle with pine nuts and grated cheese.

Combine eggs, milk, tofu, egg replacer, balsamic vinegar, garlic and pepper in a food processor and whizz until smooth. Pour over filling and bake at 200C until cooked through.

Apple Chutney

Now I'm all fired up about preserving, I think I need to trial this recipe.

Collard Greens with Bacon

A new experiment from the Farmers' Market. I've read about collard greens for years without ever seeing them for sale, so of course I had to buy some to try. Googling for recipes brought up a number of common themes and some variations, so I zipped up to the shops for bacon, and ended up throwing this together as an accompaniment to fritatta.

1 bunch collard greens, stems removed and leaves shredded
1 small onion
1/3-1/2 cup bacon, diced
1-2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 tsp brown sugar
1/2 tsp paprika

Saute the onion and bacon together until the onion is cooked. Add garlic and cook until fragrant. Add greens, vinegar, sugar and paprika and stir together, cover and sweat over a low heat until greens wilt and are just beginning to change colour (you want to keep them green). Serve as a side dish, and lament that there wasn't twice as much!

This quantity fed E and me, but next time I will buy two bunches as I probably ended up with about half the quantity of leafage as in the average supermarket bunch of English spinach (as a comparison).

Menu Plan 1 Dec - 7 Dec

Saturday 1 Dec
leftovers

Sunday 2 Dec
leftovers

Monday 3 Dec
Roast Chicken
(sweet potato, potato, pumpkin, carrot, broccoli, green beans/steamed veges)

Tuesday 4 Dec
Risotto with Roast Vegetables, Spinach and Fetta
(pumpkin, sweet potato, spinach, onion, fetta)

Wednesday 5 Dec (B horse riding)
Tuna Pasta Bistro
(cheese sauce with tuna, and your choice of broccoli, red capsicum, carrot, peas'n'corn, SDT, etc)
Apple Crumble with Flaxseeds

Thursday 6 Dec
Lamb Curry(?); greens with coconut
(onion, potatoes, peas, sour cream; greens in season, onion, green capsicum)

Friday 7 Dec
Fritatta
(Onion, potato, SDT, olives, red capsicum, anything else left over)

Apple Teacake

We just tried out this recipe.

Cream of Mushroom Soup

Mmm, yes please! Recipe from Elise's Simply Recipes blog.

Minestrone

The purchase of yummy Italian bread and lots of vegies at the Farmers' Market this morning required the making of minestrone this evening.

1 onion, diced
1 leek, sliced thickly
1 carrot, diced
1/2 head broccoli, cut into small florets
1 (very) small red capsicum, diced
1 tbsp crushed garlic
1 tub tomato paste
1L water
1/8 green cabbage, finely shredded
1 bunch pak choi, finely shredded (or use spinach or silverbeet)
1/2 zucchini, diced
1 tin cannelini beans
1 tin kidney beans
black pepper and basil to season

Saute onion, leek, carrot, broccoli and capsicum until beginning to wilt. Add garlic for a minute until fragrant. Add tomato paste, and gradually mix in water. Season. Bring to the boil, lower heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Add cabbage, pak choi, zucchini and beans, simmer for five minutes until heated through, and serve with grated cheese (preferably Parmesan, although I didn't have any tonight) and Italian bread.

We've been eating pretty crappily this week because I've been too tired to cook most nights, and I can just feel my body radiating gratitude at me for all those yummy vegetables right now *g* Maybe I'm a food snob, but I can't believe that some people eat the kind of processed crap we've been subsisting on this week all the time, and think that it constitutes real food...

Easy Meals

Things in cupboard/freezer:
Butter chicken sauce x 2 (need diced chicken x 2)
Rogan Josh (need diced lamb)
Laksa (need meat, tofu or nuts, and noodles)
Pita pizzas (need salami/ham in freezer)
Frozen chicken x 1
Fish fillets

Things to buy and freeze in meal sizes:
Greenhills beef order (split with mum and dad)
Ham hock (for pea and ham soup)
Noodles for stir-fry, laksa
Shredded ham, sliced salami

Things to buy for the cupboard:
Stir-fry in a can

Things to cook and freeze:
Mexican Beans
Spaghetti sauce, veg and meat (freeze as is and as lasagne)
Pumpkin Soup [made 1 batch 11/10]
Dhal [made 1 batch 11/10]

Kidney beans, chickpeas and lentils for easy meal bases

Cakes and biscuits

Yum!

Tonight I flung together a meal which turned out to be amazingly yummy. Part of it was due to the specific ingredients - we bought new potatoes from the farmers' market last time we were there, and served them as simply as possible - boiled in their skins with butter, pepper and salt. They were utterly magnificent. Anyone who goes to the local farmers' market, you must buy potatoes from Glenn na Meala Farm. They are so delicious that they have even convinced the EDoD that she likes potatoes, an astonishing feat! They also have the advantage of being super local - the farm is only ten minutes drive away from our house :-) I also used eggs from our own chooks, and olive oil from another very local producer, but the rest of the ingredients were generic supermarket/greengrocer products and sourced from God knows where... *sigh*

Vegetable Fritters

1 onion, finely diced or grated
1 zucchini, grated
1 carrot, grated
salt
1 cup corn kernels
1 cup grated cheese
1 clove garlic, crushed or finely chopped
salt and black pepper to taste
2 large eggs
2-3 tbsp wholemeal flour
oil for shallow frying

Grate the vegetables into a colander, sprinkle with salt and leave til the juices release. Rinse and tip into a clean teatowel, squeeze until dry. Add corn kernels, grated cheese, and garlic and mix together. Stir through wholemeal flour til the vegetables are coated (add more if necessary). Beat eggs and seasoning together, bind mixture with egg, and put in the fridge for half an hour, unless your family is starving to death, in which case just be careful in turning them as they won't stick together as well. Shallow fry and serve hot.

Chickpea Couscous Salad

7-8 sun-dried tomatoes (not packed in oil), shredded
1/4 cup currants
1/2 cup frozen peas
2 tsp butter or margarine
1 cup couscous
1 cup boiling water
1 tin chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 stick celery, thinly sliced
3 tbsp olive oil
1-2 tsp balsamic vinegar
salt and black pepper to taste

Combine tomatoes, currants, peas, butter or margarine and couscous in a lidded container with the boiling water. Stir quickly, cover and leave until water has been absorbed. Fluff with a fork, and microwave for 30 seconds or so if the couscous is still slightly soggy. Turn into a large serving bowl with celery and chickpeas. Beat olive oil and balsamic vinegar together then pour over couscous mixture and stir thoroughly. Season to taste.

Kitchiri

Another yummy lentil recipe made up on the fly... Kind of an Indian risotto without any cheese.

Ingredients

1/2 cup brown lentils
1 cup Arborio rice
1 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 tsp black mustard seeds
1 tsp each ground cumin and coriander
1/2 tsp chilli flakes, or to taste
salt, to taste
1 cup diced mushrooms
1 medium carrot, diced
1 cup frozen peas
1/2 cup sour cream
4 hardboiled eggs
sweet chilli sauce

Saute onions until translucent. Add garlic and spices and fry until fragrant. Add lentils and two-three cups of water and cook until lentils have softened. Add Arborio rice and vegetables (except peas) and continue to simmer gently, adding more boiling water as liquids are absorbed. When rice is almost tender, stir through peas and sour cream and continue to cook gently until rice is soft but still slightly nutty. Serve topped with quartered hard boiled eggs, and sweet chilli sauce.

Chicken and Quinoa Soup

Beth and Katy both devoured this soup when I made it last week, so the recipe is a definite keeper. We had roast chicken for dinner tonight, so I decided I would make this soup again from the leftovers (and I'm actually motivated to make stock from the carcass tonight since I can think of an immediate use for it).

Chicken and Quinoa Soup
1/3 cup quinoa, rinsed
2 cups water or chicken stock
1/2 small potato, grated and finely minced
2 Brussels sprouts, finely shredded
1/2 cup cooked chicken, diced
1/2 cup corn kernels
1-2 tbsp cornflour dissolved in water
oregano, black pepper and salt to taste

Boil the quinoa and the potato til the quinoa's "tails" are beginning to loosen, then add the rest of the ingredients and cook until quinoa is fully cooked. Pour in cornflour and water, and stir until soup thickens (add more cornflour and water if soup seems to thin after five minutes or so). Serve to pickiest eater and watch her scrape her bowl clean.

Next time, I will add finely chopped broccoli florets and increase the amount of potato, which appears to be undetectable.

Basic Biscuit Recipe

I want to do some biscuit baking with the munchkins, but I don't have a basic biscuit recipe which I like. Here is one I found to experiment with.

Food Down Under Basic Biscuit Recipe. Is awesome. We made it this afternoon and iced it and sprinkled it with 100s and 1000s (K's job), and I have tried very hard not to eat all of them immediately. They are kind of shortbready but not gritty - very nice!

Cup Cakes!

Katy and I decided to try out this recipe this morning. We made a quick trip to the shops for sprinkles and mini M&Ms to decorate them with, because I was feeling decadent! They look beautiful, having just come out of the oven, and we are waiting for them to cool down before we decorate them.

ETA: This is now my official white cake recipe - they are delicious! K lost interest in decorating them and I got a phone call while I was in the process of doing the rest, so some of them don't have sprinkles because the icing had hardened by the time I got to them. Oh well. Still yummy.

If there are any left for you this evening, Beloved, let alone B when she gets back tomorrow night, you will both be very lucky *g*

Sour Cream Apple Muffins

Another new recipe. Since I am always on the lookout for the perfect muffin recipe, I must write down every variation of every recipe I try :-) My version looks like this.

1 cup wholemeal plain flour
1 cup white plain flour
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup white sugar
1/4 cup ground almonds
1 1/2 teaspoons mixed spice
2 eggs
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup melted margarine
1/2 cup milk
1 heaped cup baker's apple
1/2 cup sultanas

Combine dry ingredients. Stir through baker's apple, breaking into smaller pieces. Measure margarine and sour cream into a jug; add enough milk to make liquid up to 1 1/2 cups. Add to eggs and beat thoroughly. Combine with dry ingredients. Cook at 180C until cooked through (I forgot to adjust the oven temperature after the last recipe - the recipe I used said 400F for 12-15 minutes).

Made 12 large and 17 mini muffins.

ETA: unfortunately these were not very nice. They were certainly deliciously moist, but there wasn't enough sugar to disguise the taste of the fats. Next time I will adjust total sugar to 1 cup.