Slacker & Beef Strog.

So, it's been a bit over a week since I last posted. I will admit that I have been a little slack both in updating the blog and creating fancy dinners and lunches. 

For lunches I have mainly been sticking to a simple Thai inspired green salad or toasted cheese and ham sandwiches and on Friday made a chicken Larb (Larb Gai) to share with a friend who came over to help me clean my house a bit.

Today though, I was a bit naughty and bought lunch down at the local shops.  You see, a new seafood store opened down there last week and so I thought I'd try out their fish and chips.  I had whiting fillets, chips & a greek salad and included  either a normal tartre sauce, a seafood sauce or a garlic and herb aioli (sp?).  I went for the garlic and herb - soo yummy. 

For dinners I have been doing our fairly standard dinners of things like spaghetti bolognaise, beef curry made from a curry paste, beef mince nachos and a couple of"make your own" nights. We have also had one takeway of Hungry Jacks and I have had Thai from the Thai place near QSW&FA (Qld Spinners, weavers & Fibre artists) where I am a regular one night a week.

One of the other reasons I have not been so busy in the kitchen is because I am in Queensland Australia. And if you have been watching the weather channel lately or live in QLD yourself, you will know that it has been very hot and humid. I do not cope with heat at the best of times, and so standing in a kitchen over a hot stove or near a hot oven is not the ideal thing to be doing.  This also means that over the summer I will probably not be posting about a lot of cooking - probably more of salads or my other and first passion Yarn and knitting and spinning and things like that.  It was probably a bit silly of me to start a food blog so close to the beginning of summer!

Tonight's dinner was something I haven't done for a long long time, and that was a Beef Stroganoff.  I tend not to make this because the recipe usually calls for sour cream. As I cannot eat sour cream, this makes it difficult to make a proper beef stroganoff. In the past I have done two batches - one for me with a bit of evaporated low fat milk with a touch of vinegar and one for my hubby with sour cream. I have also cheated a little by using the beef stroganoff meal bases found at the local supermarket. They are nice but not great.  

However! I recently was going through my recipe books and found an awesome recipe for Beef Stroganoff that uses yogurt rather than sour cream. As I can have low fat yogurt and especially love greek yogurt I thought I'd give this a go. It was a success - both hubby and son scoffed it down and I really liked it too. :)

The recipe was found in a booklet called EasiYo Yogurt Cookbook that comes with the EasiYo homemade yogurt makers that you can buy from the supermarkets and places like Kmart.  So unfortunately you can only get the cookbook when you buy the yogurt maker and due to copyright laws, I am not going to risk typing up the recipe. If I had changed anything about the recipe, I would let you know, but I have done it all as directed.  So, either buy yourself an EasiYo yogurt maker, or find a friend who has one and still has the little cookbook.  I will admit that I used pre-made store bought yogurt on this occasion as I have not made up any yogurt for a while. I used the Jalna set-in-pot low fat greek yogurt.

So, that is about it for the moment. Talk To Ya Soon!

Thai inspired Green Salad Recipe

Thai Inspired Green Salad.

Serves 4 as a side dish

Serves 2 as a main meal

Salad Ingredients;

3 large cos lettuce leaves, chopped coursely

1 handful chopped coriander

1 handful chopped mint

½ - 1 spring onion, chopped diagonally

2 handfuls chopped cucumber

¼ - ½ red onion (depending on your taste)

Handful of cherry tomatoes cut into halves

Handful of crunchy fried Asian noodles (optional) OR

1 cup of cold cooked jasmine rice (optional)

Dressing Ingredients;

1 tbls vege oil

½ tbls fish sauce

½ tbls soy sauce

½ tbls lime juice

Pinch of dried chilli flakes or chopped fresh chilli to taste

½  tsp ginger paste

1 tsp caster sugar

Method:

Mix salad ingredients in a salad bowl. When just about to serve, mix dressing ingredients in a small cup and drizzle dressing over  the salad. Toss salad well. Enjoy!

Larb Salad Recipe

When I posted my Larb Moo Salad on Facebook, my friends suggested I put up my recipe on my notes page.  This I did, but now I think I might share it with the rest of the world. :)

Thai Larb Salad with pork (moo) or chicken (gai)

Ingredients:

2 1/2 tablespoons Sticky (glutinous) rice (I used Sushi rice)

2 teaspoons or so of ginger paste

500gm minced chicken or pork

2 heaped tbls chopped red onion

2 tbls fish sauce

1 tbls soy sauce

2 tbls lime juice

Dried chilli flakes to taste

2 tbs coarsely chopped fresh coriander

2 chopped spring onions

2 tbls coarsely chopped fresh mint.

 Method:

1.  In a wok or small fry pan, stir rice (uncooked)  over a low-medium heat until golden brown.  Transfer to a mortar and grind to a course powder with a pestle. 

2. In a medium bowl, combine ground chicken or pork, 1/2 the ground rice, ginger, red onion, 1/2 the coriander & mint, 1/2 the spring onions, fish sauce, soy sauce and chilli flakes & lime juice.  Mix thoroughly.  Heat a work or large heavy frying pan over medium heat and add chicken/ pork mixture all at once, stirring vigorously to keep it from sticking into lumps. cook until pork / chicken is cooked. 

3. transfer to a bowl and mix in the rest of the ground rice, coriander, mint and spring onions. 

4. serve & garnish with extra corianda, spring onion and or mint and accompany with vegetable crudites such as cabbage, carrot, cucumber, lettuce and or long beans.  I also usually serve it with Jasmine rice.

Lunch and dinner today Mon 07/11/11

The photo on the left was my dinner. Doesn't look very appetising, but was very yummy.  It is a teriyaki chicken stir fry on a bed of rice.  To make the stir-fry, I used 1 large chicken breast (sliced), 2/3rds packet of Birds Eye Thai Style Stir-fry frozen vegetable mix, 1 pkt Masterfoods Teriyaki chicken stir-fry sauce base, 2 large mushrooms, 1 medium brown onion and chopped Pak Choy. 
Even Rory liked this one!

The photo on the right was today's lunch. Another Asian Salad (am loving my asian salads!) This time I mixed up some mint, corianda, spring onion, nastursium (sp?) petals from my mums' garden & cucumber.  I then placed this mix into some baby cos lettuce cups, topped it with crunchy asian noodles, cherry tomatoes sliced in half and a few more petals.  I then drizzled some lime juice and soy sauce over the top.  Delicious!!

What I made 2 weeks ago :)

Here are some of the yummy things I have made for lunches in the last couple of weeks.


oh, crap, I've lost a photo of my pizza - oh well, you'll just have to imagine it!

The pizza was made on 24/10/11. I used a base from Bakers' Delight. It has a topping of pizza sauce (with garlic & herbs), olives, semi dried tomatoes, bacon, salami, fetta cheese and reduced fat cheddar cheese. Not very healthy, but oh, so yummy. :D



The next day I made Miso soup with seaweed and rice balls. The rice balls are made from a sushi rice mix and coated with a simple furikake.




On the 26/10/11, I cooked up myself a Pork Larb (Larb Mu) salad. This was awesome. It tasted very similar to the one I buy from My Thai Restaurant. I made so much that I had it for both Lunch and dinner that day. I can never have too much Larb. :) I served it with rice, tomato & cucumber, with a garnish of spring onion, mint & corianda.





On the 27/10/11, I made a lovely asian salad for lunch that I took up and shared with my parents. On another day I will post the recipe that I made for it. Unfortunately, I didn't take a photo of this one.

On the 28/10/11 I made myself Rice Paper Rolls and an asian salad. In the rice paper rolls was cucumber, honey soy chicken, spring onion, corianda & mint. I also mixed up a dipping sauce, but it wasn't very successful (it didn't taste all that good), so I have not remembered the exact ingredients.

So all that was about two weeks ago. Last week I did not make as much effort with my food as I was sick and ended up in hospital on the monday and stayed until Wednesday. I was pretty weary on thurs & Friday too, so didn't make anything special.

This past saturday I spent with friends (who did the cooking) and yesterday wasn't a cooking type day either.

Next post, I will talk about today's meals.... stay tuned.

New Blog!

Right, as I hadn't posted to my old blog for well over a year, I thought I'd start a new one. This one will still be about fibre crafts but will also include food type things as well. You see, I am attempting to expand my culinary skills as well as eating yummy, different & often healthy things. This is a place where I can write about what I've made and or eaten - a food diary and a recipe blog, if you will.

I was going to start writing about my recent recipes and food I've eaten, straight away, but have just remembered that all my recent photos are still on my phone, waiting to be downloaded to my computer. So I will head off now to sort all those things out, as well as make dinner for the family.

Stay tuned for the first real post. :D