A time to end...

After 6 months of blogging my dinners I'm going to stop posting on this blog. It was a useful tool for me for a time, to motivate me to make good dinners for my family, and I got a few new ideas along the way. But I think a blog should be way to make your real world life better, not worse. So when this blog stopped being a fun and useful tool and became a burden, "I need to post! Ahhh!" type thing, I knew it was time to stop.

Thank you for all my readers, followers and subscribers, especially those three who have been clicking through every day for the last 2 and half weeks even though there haven't been any fresh posts for that long.

I am working on how to archive my 6 months of dinners, for now you can access them here still. I will occasionally post exceptional dinners on my other blog, thethingsthatilove.blogspot.com.

Thank you, and good night!

Curry to go

Friday night take out.

Nat got Chicken Masala (bottom). It was alright. I got a lamb in spinach gravy (bottom - forgot the name of it). It was alright. I realised I like my curry sweet, because this one was not!

Vegetable Marzetti

I set out to make something I thought the kids would eat, since we're all just getting our appetites back and have tender tummies. When I started eating it I realised it was pretty much Marzetti but with veges instead of meat.

I cooked the pasta and then stirred the sauce through. To make the sauce I literally just put all these ingredients in a pan: can of tomatoes, diced onion, crushed garlic, salt, pepper, peas, grated carrot, chicken stock cube (so technically not vegetarian), tomato paste, water. I let that reduce down for a bit then added cheese.

It was great. But would probably be nicer if you took the time to saute onions and garlic and be thoughtful about your other ingredients as well. But as it was, chucking it all in worked pretty well too.

Midnight Spaghetti 7 (with a twist...)

I added sliced and diced ham, white wine vinegar and "Cream for Cooking" (a new product, thank you James at The Food Show for the free samples!) to the sauce, and omitted the chili. It was nice, but I was FAR too heavy handed with the cream!

Fresh Terakihi fillets with homemade chips and salad

... a la Nat. He's great at this meal.

Lasagna

Sorry, no photo, I knew I said I wouldn't do this anymore, but just in case any of you really care to know, I won't be posting for the next week because we're going away. But we're taking a lasagna that will last us around 3 days, so there's something for you. Back to posting (semi) regularly again in a week!

Pizza 3

This is fast becoming a fave. I make it as often as I feel I can justify.

Nachos 3

Quick, easy, delicious. Don't forget the sour cream.

Zinger Burger, Zinger, Zinger Burger

*Blush* Honesty's the best policy, right? I felt like I deserved it.

Bean Salad 2

Too many cookies during the day again today made me feel like something light. I ended up having poor mans bean salad - a can of four bean mix with dressing of equal parts vegetable oil, white vinegar and sugar. Missing chickpeas, corn kernels, chopped, blanched, fresh green beans, diced capsicum.

So if you want the REAL, family recipe bean salad, then put it all in. It's a winner!

Cookies and Vegetable Curry

Seriously. I ate so much dough and so many straight out of the oven (you know, "testing") I decided to eat a full dozen (or so) and make it a meal.

But I fed the kids something decent. This DELICIOUS vegetable curry. When I ate it earlier today for lunch I kept hoping that the next chunk would be chicken, even though I knew it wasn't. But it was good. My base sauce: a can of tomatoes, coconut cream, cashew milk (made by blending cashews in water. I don't know if other people do it, but I know that's how you make almond milk so I gave it a shot), regular milk. Then a ton of spices that I'll never be able to replicate, but it was good. Yummo! So glad there's leftovers!

Tomato and Basil Spaghetti 6

Still good on the third day :).

Pizza 2

My sister and her kids came for dinner tonight. Pizza night!

Pizza Base - for 2 pizza's (I think this is from my mum's JOY of Cooking cookbook, with some of my own modifications)

3 1/2 cups of flour

1/2 cup semolina (or just use 4 cups flour, I do all the time)

1 Tbsp of yeast in

1 1/3 cup of warm water

2 Tbsp oil

1 tsp salt

1. Add yeast and oil to water and stir briefly. Leave for 10 mins or until foamy.

2. Mix all ingredients.

3. Knead.

4. Optional: Rising time. The dough can stretch to make two, cookie tray sized pizzas even if it doesn't have time to rise.

5. Roll out on a greased tray, turn up edges and add toppings.

6. Bake at 200 degrees Celcius for 15 (no rising time) -25 (risen to twice the size) minutes or until done.

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Pretty simple and easy! Can anyone tell me how to insert a degrees symbol on here?

Savoury mince and veges

I thought about just calling this "dinner" but I've learned from experience if I can't give something a definite name then it's not going to be good.

And this was good. Even though it's a bit-of-a-mess looking. I was focussing my energy somewhere else today.

Chicken Drumsticks

a la Jamie Oliver. Cooked with potatoes, tomatoes (meant to be cherry tomatoes), garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper and chili flakes/chopped chili. And there are meant to be basil leaves, I used dried basil. Really you shouldn't make that substitution unless you absolutely have to. So simple and so delicious!

We had some other veges as well but they were freezer veges and didn't look good on the plate, so didn't make it into the photo shoot.

Stir fried vegetables

I'm really not making anything that flash lately, am I?

Spaghetti Pie

This is a good one. A friend made it for Erika post-partum baby #2 a year and a half ago, and I happened to be in the right place at the right time. It's been included in my family meal arsenal ever since. Don't give it a miss just because it's a bad photo.

Spaghetti Pie

500-600g Vermicelli

50-75g butter

2 small/1 large egg

1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

250g cottage cheese

Prepared tomato sauce

Grated cheese

Cook your vermicelli in salted water (I used regular spaghetti in the photo above. But vermicelli is just so much nicer for this). Cook your tomato sauce how you like it (mine: oil, onion, garlic, mince, mushrooms, Worcestershire sauce, beef stock, salt, pepper, dried mixed herbs, canned tomatoes, tomato paste). When vermicelli is cooked, drain and immediately put in the butter, egg and parmesan cheese and stir to mix. Press the vermicelli into a dish, cover with the cottage cheese, then the tomato sauce, then the grated cheese on top. Bake in oven till heated through.

Tortilla Pizza 2

This has got to be the fastest meal start to finish.

Pan-fried Duck Legs

Nat spent his last voucher from Christmas yesterday on luxury food items that he will lord over me as he consumes them one by one over the next FOREVER. He's one of those. He makes things last for AGES.

Tonight he made duck legs with his own invention of berry sauce and salad. Looks good! But I wouldn't know how it tasted.

Pasta Salad 2

My secret to a good pasta salad: Paul Newman's Balsamic vinaigrette. I use that and mayonnaise as my dressing and it always turns out well. I just throw in whatever pasta I have on hand, anything else that looks like it could work, and stir through the gold. But actually another tip I have is to stir through little cubes of cheese and eat the salad warm. Some cheese will be melted and some not and it's just a nice surprise every now and again while you're eating it to get a little cheesy bite.

What's in this salad? Penne - cooked; oil, onion, garlic, ham, mushrooms, salt, pepper - all fried in a pan; tomatoes, spring onions, cheese - all fresh/raw/uncooked; corn - cooked separately, mayonnaise and Paul Newman's Balsamic vinaigrette. Delicious!