Supper on 06/05/08

I was shopping in town with my daughter, and as it was a lovely day, I felt like being out a bit longer. Then I decided to wait for my husband at the station and suggested to go to our local park to have supper. I had done shopping beforehand.

As you can see in the photos, we had tortillas with roast chicken, salad and salsa sauce. It was like a picnic, and we really enjoyed it. It makes change if you eat somewhere else every once in a while, doesn't it.

Dinner on 22/04/08

I also made this dish using wholegrain pasta, hijiki (a type of seaweed), cucumber, tomatoes, tuna and watercress with Ajipon (a well-known Japanese dressing). It was sooo nice. I love seaweed!

Dinner on 22/04/08

Menu: pasta salad with roast beef

Look what I made using the leftover roast beef! I just came up with the idea of this dish thinking "I don't want a heavy meal. I want something refreshing." Then I made this dish.

I used wholegrain pasta, tomatoes, cucumber, watercress, fried onions with home-made dressing. For the dressing, I used white wine vinegar, olive oil, mustard powder and blackpepper. It was really nice.

Dinner on 20/04/08

Menu: Sunday roast

My husband treated us a lovely Sunday roast at his parents'. He's good at cooking Sunday roast; whereas I'm quite useless when it comes to cooking roast dinner. It's quite stressful to think that everything has to be perfectly planned well. I'm not good at cooking under pressure.

Anyway, it was a lovely dinner, and everyone of us enjoyed it.

By the way, most of my friends would be surprised to know that I now eat beef. I had been a vegetarian for nearly eight years (well I hadn't had beef for ten years), and when I was pregnant with my daughter, suddenly I thought "I want beef." then I started eating beef. My husband couldn't believe his eyes while I was eating a beef burger for the first time in ten years.

I eat meat every now and then, but not a huge amount every single day.

This was the desert on the night - I didn't have it though. Everybody seemsed to have enjoyed it.

Dinner on 07/04/08

Menu: coconut curry with rice

I just cooked a simple coconut curry using mushrooms, carrots, courgettes, moyashi (bean sprouts), onions, coconut milk and Thai green curry paste.

Dinner on 17/12/08

Menu: roast pork with apple, roast vegetables, sauteed potatoes, steamed broccoli

As I couldn't/still can't use a knife yesterday, I asked my husband to help me in the kitchen.

I might have mentioned it before - about my condition - here, but I've been suffering from DeQuervain's syndrome for over a month. I've been using a wrist splint which helps for this condition, but having a 3-year-old active girl doesn't help me get better. It was getting better, but she hurt my wrist, and got better a bit, and yesterday morning, an accident happened. I was in bed trying to get up. My hand was up in the air with my elbow on the bed. And then, suddenly my daughter sat back on my hand, and all her weight got on my wrist!! Ouch!! I couldn't move or talk and just curled up in pain for a while. Anyway, I haven't been able to use my right hand much since yesterday morning, so that's why I asked my husband for help in the kitchen.

Anyway, we had sliced pork to use, and I suggested to roast it. We also had lots of apples, and an idea came into my mind. Well, the combination of pork & apple isn't something new, but I just got excited thinking it would be great.

On the pork, we sprinkled some olive oil, black pepper, rosemary, crushed garlic and sliced apples on top and roast it. For the roast vegetables, we used parsnips, carrots and leek, and sprinkled some olive oil, sage and thyme.

Oh my God, the dinner was sooooo good. I was very impressed with the result.

For a pudding, we had treacle sponge pudding and custard. We didn't make the pudding - it was in a tin and by Heinz. It wasn't too bad.

Dinner on 13/12/08

Menu: Chicken soup with kelp and vegetables, rice, umeboshi puree, abura-miso, steamed cabbage with balsamic vinegar dressing

It was freezing in the house, and we couldnt't warm up all day. The heating system in our house hasn't been working properly, so I though I would make a nice soup. Yes, my favourite soup - chicken soup with kelp! I decided to add in other root vegetables which are supposed to help to warm up your body if you eat them. I just used pre-boiled chicken (we normally boil the meat to remove fat before using in soup), ginger, Chinese cooking sake, water, kelp, leek, potatoes and carrots. I didn't bother adding in salt as I thought kelp had enough salt.

I had made cheating version of aburamiso, which is cooked miso paste, tuna and sugar. We normally use pre-boiled pork for this, but using tuna makes it much easier to make it. We eat it with rice.

I would normally use leaf vegetables (e.g. pak choi) for this soup, but we didn't have any, so I made a side dish with steamed cabbage salad. Having that extra dish made it perfect combination of the dinner, I think. We had seaweed, animal protein, root vegetables, carbohydrate, green vegetables, miso, umeboshi (they both are good for your health) and vinegar (also good for your health)! A meal should be like that.

Anyway, with the help of soup including sake and ginger, we felt warm after the dinner:)