Home-grown lettuce for a quick working lunch - Tuesday, 29th July 2014

Hi there, it's me, away from the garden for a few hours, and trying to get back to writing!   It's so hard, sitting down, pruning my mind, cultivating the words and phrases I'd like to use, whereas to be up and doing garden chores - watering and weeding, planting, tieing up plants and stakes to prevent growing stems from collapsing, hoeing, digging, raking.  It's all great pleasure and being outside, getting to grips with a whole range of different activities, just such engrossing work it's hardly work at all.

So - lunch today - a quick tuna salad lunch, with a very pretty green and red salad from my garden which, I'm afraid, I don't have a name for! Hmm. must do better next year....

And here's my work-a-day lunch -

Crunchy red and green lettuce, spring onions, yellow pepper  and tinned tuna - cheap, easy and good to eat!

Last night I harvested a huge bunch of perpetual spinach and a few leaves of rainbow chard, and we put together a very cheeky home version of  oeuf florentine, which is usually made with poached eggs on top of cheese sauce and gently cooked spinach.

We were too busy to make a sauce, even though it can be made in very short order, and we also used fried eggs, sighting these on top of the spinach, and adding a good grating of Parmesan cheese on top; we served this supper with butted toast -

slightly unorthodox but delicious and speedy!

And yesterday's lunch, a friend gave me Mozzarella with home-grown tomatoes, shredded Basil leaves with a dressing of olive oil and Balsamic vinegar - it was really good!  We mopped up the dressing with buttered, nutty bread and the meal was gone in a twinkling, with no time for photo-shots.  That lunch hit the spot exactly and I was soon out in the garden again, scraping away at her brick patio.

Ok that's all for now!  Happy eating and gardening, if you can; its great exercise and ultimately productive for the hungry gardener-chef!!!

Daisy

Garden Fresh Carrot Risotto with my home-grown spinach - Tuesday 22nd July 2014.

A nice light supper for tonight, a lovely herbed vegetable risotto and thinly sliced ham for two - what could be nicer to contemplate on a hot afternoon, than a delicious supper for the end of the day.

The carrots have been grown in a cousin's garden and the spinach is simply bursting to be picked, then to be melted into my risotto and made into other light summer meals or even spinach pesto.  My chard pesto from last year has been a great addition to my eating regime, providing a tasty spread for toast and jacket potatoes and rice cakes, of course, and especially nice on the spicy chilli rice cakes by Kallo.

Oh by the way, I've tasted their caramel flavoured rice cakes and well, they are jolly nice and perhaps too nice to be eaten frequently but very good when one is feeling just a little jaded and in need of something sweet to munch on!!!

Well, supper is almost ready and its not what I anticipated, for I didn't go to the garden in time - too hot, too hot!  So, we are having the fresh garden carrots, some so tiny they are just morsels of carrot...plus fresh broad beans and Arborio rice, cooked in boiling water with a dash of salt and a gluten-free Kallo chicken stock cube and now those ingredients are cooked I've added a few baby mushrooms and a handful of diced ham, letting everything melt together in the boiled stock, while I finish writing up this post.  (I thought diced ham so much more appropriate than slices for this dish!)

So, my boiling bath method does not really constitute "risotto" as such but, frankly, it's too hot to be standing in the kitchen stirring ladles of boiling water onto my rice and veggies and seasonings; I am not one wit abashed by this outrageous behaviour, for its summer time, a time for flirting with new ideas, new approaches and new fresh garden grown vegetables!

a little knob of butter was a magical touch...!



Happy summer eating!

Daisy xxx

Saturday Supper - Saturday, 5th July 2014.

What shall I cook for supper and what's in the 'fridge for me to cook!  And this was what I found and cooked...!!!

My Beef Mince-Vegetable Stir-Fry Supper

Ingredients:

1 red onion sliced

Two tspn. Olive oil

500g. 10% fat British Beef

2 – 4 good shakes Worcester Sauce

3 good handfuls of Sainsbury’s Basics Vegetable Stir-Fry

400g tin chopped tomatoes and herbs from The Co-operative

Plus ½ cup of cold water to rinse out the tomato residue

2 - 3 tspn Morrisons Signature Caramelised Balsamic Onion Chutney

1 tspn. Sainsbury’s Wholegrain Mustard

Sea salt and ground black peppercorns to taste.

1 tspn. Soft brown sugar

How to make:

1.  Sauté the thinly sliced onion in hot oil for 5 minutes.

2.  Add beef mince & stir-fry for 5-10 mins.  Then add shredded bacon; cook mixture for about 15-20 minutes, adding Worcester Sauce to taste.

3.  Add chopped tomatoes with herbs and the cupful of water to rinse out the tin.

Add the prepared vegetable stir-fry veggies, the Signature Caramelised Balsamic Onion Chutney and Sainsbury’s Wholegrain Mustard and the sugar and cook gently until perfectly done and piping hot.

4.  Serve with chunks of warmed crunchy bread, or crisp Spicy Chilli Kallo Rice and Corn Cakes and a green salad.

A delicious meaty-veg. supper, with the subtle flavour of caramelised onions and balsamic vinegar?

Substitute Tamari for the Worcester sauce if you prefer

Daisy

ps my Sunday working lunch was my "remains of the day" for a cold beef stir-fry from last night, served on a bed of Sainsbury's Cosmopolitan Crispy Salad plus a top scattering of Aldi's Grated Mozzarella...Mmm. delicious!