Tomato and Basil Spaghetti 2

Spaghetti for the boys.

I boiled veges to stir the sauce through for me. It was gross.

Overstuffed Omelette

The fillings: onion, ham, mushroom, tomato, cheese, peas, corn.

The "omelette".

Steak and mushrooms

Nat's dinner and photography

My dinner and photography

I think steak is the #1 meal since I've been posting. I'll have to check that. Tonight we had beef porterhouse steak with mushrooms. Nat's creamy, mine not creamy. Asparagas and salad for me, rice and salad with the carrots separate for Nat. And the kids had their own meals as well because steak for 2 is enough let alone 2 and 3/4.

Burrito Salad

While the boys ate their burritos, Sadie and I just had the fillings without the the tortilla, so more like a salad.

It was delicious. And I didn't really miss the tortilla.

Chili 2

I'm at my parents place tonight, and Mum made chili. Very similar to my chili a couple nights ago, minus some of the spices because Mum found her spice jars empty when she went to add them, and minus the things that I put in that made it taste like spaghetti sauce. And minus the garlic. They don't have garlic here.

Pickled Pork, Roast Chicken, Chinese Chicken, Spaghetti Bolognaise

BIG family dinner tonight. Fantastic. Sorry no camera. But check out the spread:

Pickled pork
Roast chicken
Chinese chicken
Spaghetti Bolognaise
Bean salad
Green salad
Roast potato, red kumara and orange kumara
Broccoli
Carrot and celery sticks
Lentil soup

Dessert:
Trifle
Chocolate cake
Brownies

I made the cake. It was a hit. SO good.

Chili

I made chili tonight. It's been kind of a warm day today, so I guess it's a bit weird to have chili, but it's what I saw when I looked in my cupboards.

Quick and Easy Chili

3 Tbsp olive oil

1 onion

5-10 cloves garlic

250-500g beef mince

1/2 tsp ground cumin

1/2 tsp dried oregano

1/2 tsp ground turmeric

1/2 tsp dried basil

Chili powder to taste

3 Tbsp dark vinegar

1 400g can chopped tomatoes

1 400g can chili beans

1 400g can baked beans

Chop the onion, peel the garlic. You can see in this photo I had mushroom as well. I wouldn't recommend it. The mushrooms made it taste more like a pasta sauce with beans.

Heat a large saucepan or pot. Add olive oil.

When heated at chopped onion.

After about a minute crush in you garlic (or add chopped garlic if you don't have a crusher).

When the onions are starting to turn translucent...

...add the mince.

Brown the mince then add your spices and vinegar (I use the same spices as Obama's family recipe, but I don't have wine vinegar, don't want to use up my balsamic in this, and so used malt vinegar. I think any dark vinegar will do the trick).

The turmeric makes it a bit yellow.

Cook for 3 minutes then add tomatoes, chili beans and baked beans. My chili beans were actually "salsa chili beans" so they had large and small kidney beans and corn in a chili sauce. It was also medium rather than mild, and my kids are sensitive to chili so I only added a tiny pinch of chili powder. Remember chili gets hotter as it cooks. You can also see that I added half a bottle of pasta sauce that I had in the fridge that needed to be used. I wouldn't recommend doing this either. It makes it taste a lot more like pasta sauce with beans rather than chili.

Simmer gently for 20 minutes or longer to thicken it up, making sure you stir it because it will probably stick.

You can see in this photo the different colour of the chili in the plastic bowls for my kids.

I added cream to theirs to cool down the temperature as well as the chili heat. Just be wary if you do this it will make the chili a bit runnier, but it's really tasty.

You can of course season with salt and pepper if you think it needs it, but mine didn't. Probably mostly because the can of chili beans pretty much flavours the whole thing.