Saturday 11 January 2020

Making Meals in my Kitchen

I grew up eating my mother's homemade food. It was rarely anything fancy but it was good and filling and nourishing and there on the table every day. Now I cook for my own family. The food I make isn't that fancy either but it's fresh and wholesome and there on the table every day. 

This past week there was one roast dinner and lots of salads among other homemade deliciousness. I planned out our meals for the week, substituted what I did have for what I didn't have, shopped for what I needed and made the most of the ingredients I bought. Nothing was wasted; the compost bin got the peelings and my enthusiastic Labrador "supervisor" got the tidbits with roast chicken and leftover gravy being one of his favourites ... among his many favourites!

A lovely roast dinner.

On the one cooler evening we had this past week, I roasted a whole chicken (I had one left in the freezer that I did not cook up for Christmas lunch) with lots of roasted vegetables and made pan gravy from all the goodness stuck to the bottom of the roasting tray. We had leftover chicken wraps for lunch the next day too. Yum!

An oven baked frittata filled with roast veg.

From the leftover roast vegetables, I made an oven-baked frittata for dinner the next night. It stretched to lunch, accompanied by a summer salad, the following day.

Mmm ...  Macadamia & Mango Rice Salad

Salads are on our plates often during these Summer days. They are quick to make, full of revitalising colour and healthy goodness, taste amazing and there's always leftovers if you make a big enough bowlful to begin with. 

This Macadamia and Mango Brown Rice Salad is full of flavour and crunch! I bought the mangoes and raw macadamia nuts from Aldi and I have enough of both to make another big bowlful of this over the coming weekend. Besides roasting the macadamias and cooking the rice, there's very little else other than chopping up some fresh veg, throwing in a handful of currants and whisking up a two-ingredient dressing. So simple and so good!

Macadamia nuts roasted in my oven.

I roasted beautiful macadamia nuts for the salad while I was toasting a batch of homemade granola. Granola, or toasted muesli is so simple to make and so versatile. I added dried cranberries and chopped almonds and shaved coconut to this one. My husband loves coconut-everything (me, not so much) but you can add in your own favourites be it coconut or dates or dried apricots or pecans or sunflower seeds. That was breakfast taken care of!

Toasty homemade granola.

While the oven was on, I baked a lovely lemon slice using more of the rolled oats I bought for the granola, a tin of condensed milk I had in my pantry and some lemon juice I had in the freezer. I should have photographed that slice before putting it out for afternoon tea because it was gone before I remembered ... and I don't think the aforementioned Labrador had anything to do with that!

Meg
















21 comments:

  1. You must be pleased with your meal planning and no food wastage, your roast chicken and veggies and salad looks great. Well done you are off to a great start.

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    1. I go through phases of meal planning, Kathy, but I hope to do it more consistently during the year as I find it helps keep grocery costs down.
      Meg:)

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  2. Please could I have your lemon slice recipe. It sounds lovely and I have everything needed to make one.

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    1. Hi Cherie. The recipe for the lemon slice is here on my blog. If you go to Categories on my side bar and click on slices then scroll down, you'll find it there. Meg:)

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    2. Thanks Meg. I will have a look

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  3. You are a good cook! Looks delicious! Andrea

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  4. I love old fashioned ‘plain food’.
    I too was raised on simple home cooked meals every night, and my mum worked full time, and still managed it!
    We had a slow cooked roast lamb this week too, it was delicious. It’s taken me my whole cooking life to perfect roast lamb, for something that is supposed to be so simple, it can turn out tough or dry if not cooked well. I still can’t get a roast chicken just right though, I can never get it to taste as nice as the roast chicken I buy from our local Spar supermarket, so I usually buy it from there. More practice needed I think!

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    1. I'm not always successful with roasts either, Cheryl, but I think homemade gravy makes up for it! Meg;)

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  5. Wow, everything looks so delicious. Your post made me hungry. 😃

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    1. Thanks, Nil. I often myself getting hungry when I see all the different foods others make too. There's some yummy stuff out there! Meg:D

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  6. It looks yummy, Meg. I wish the cockatoos would leave our macadamia nut trees alone but they just knock them off and leave them on the ground. Grrr!

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    1. Pesky cockatoos! We get them here too, Chel, but their favourites in our garden have been the passionfruits and the sunflowers when the seeds are ripe in the centre. Meg:)

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  7. It all looks so delicious Meg, and isn't there a great sense of satisfaction when you cook from scratch, use leftovers so there's no waste.....and share a little too with your 4 legged friend.

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    1. There's always tidbits for Sir Steve dog, Nanette. I just wish he didn't like to lie right across the front of the refrigerator! Meg:)

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    2. Making sure he doesn't miss out 😊

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  8. Such nourishing and tasty food. I love meal planning I find it cuts out waste food, saves so much time both in cooking and shopping and means that we can eat seasonally. Thank you for the link to your lemon slice that sounds delicious.

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    1. The lemon slice is lovely and easy to cook. I cut most of the sugar out of the base/topping mixture when I make it now because the filling is quite sweet.

      I find too that meal planning saves time and money in the long run. I just have to be more consistent with my meal planning...perhaps there's a goal for this year! Meg:)

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  9. Wow, you have been cooking up a storm! What a dedicated homemaker you are.

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    1. Thanks, Stephanie. The kitchen can certainly look like a storm has gone through if I make several things at once:D
      MegXx

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  10. Love simple home cooked meals, and Meg, yours all look delicious!

    xTania



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