What's for Dinner?

Purple potato gratin with fried onion topping.

(I have a lot of vole-damaged spuds, so I’m cutting off the chewed bits and using them up right away.)

Enchilada, rice with onions and jalapenos, and refried beans too! All smothered in cheese. Mmm mmmm!

Very mildly spicy pork and chick-peas with purple sweet potato and galega cabbage.

Pork cooked fresh for once, rather than rendered-out fatty bits. We'd bought a big bag of pork scraps for 25 cents a kilo and I'd 'rescued' a kilo of nice stuff by trimming the fat a bit better. This was some of that good stuff, which I'd frozen down separately. Though it turns out the two bags I'd put it in were a bit overly-generous so I have some to cook up into something else for myself tomorrow when Himself is out. I'm thinking satay pork with rice-and-lentils. And greens of some sort probably because they're good for you. And free!

Tuesday a client gave my husband a huge head of lettuce and an enormous bag of NZ spinach (tetragonia) from his garden.
Neither of these are things we normally eat, so I did some planning and last night we had a Korean feast- pork bulgogi wrapped in lettuce (and perilla/shiso, for me at least) and a whole load of banchan type dishes- spinach with sesame oil and garlic, cabbage charred in lard with sweet soy sauce and red pepper, some sad zucchini stirfried with onions, garlic and chinese bean sauce.... and the new batch of kimchi, of course. I had 7 types of homegrown greens on the table, which was impressive!

Tonight we'll be having Korean chicken wings in the air fryer with either yakisoba or chinese noodles with cabbage (not sure yet)- I scored 4 enormous cabbages (4kg+) for 99 cents each, so cabbage is in our future....

Another wonderful Meat/Starch/Vegetable dinner at the Norton household.

Pork Chops, Russet Potato, Peas

My local butcher had a pack of smoked boneless porkchops that I had to try. I paired it up with baked russet potato and some buttered peas.

I cooked the pork a touch too much in my cast iron, but now I know a better timing for the future.

We got a wild hair to make tlayudas. These are smaller than authentic ones but we have to decide if we want to dedicate the space in our great room that a new, large press would take up.

We haven't had burgers for a while so picked up a couple of kilos of brisket, minced it all and packaged up some 250g portions for future meals (baked rice, stuffed peppers/zucchinis, bolognese, cottage pie etc)

Combined the rest with a couple tbsp plain yoghurt, paprika, salt, fresh thyme, garlic and ground black pepper. Sometimes I add a dash of mustard powder and Worcestershire sauce.

Formed patties and free flow froze them.

Kept two out for dinner served with cheddar cheese, gherkins, homemade pickled beetroot, fried onions, avocado, tomato, oven baked chips and salad.

Couldn't finish my dinner so saved 1/3 of the patty and some salad for my lunch the next day.

today is my daughter's birthday, and yesterday was a slow day work-wise, so I spent it in the kitchen. I made four types of cookies for her to eat/take to work/take to school (ginger sparkle, peanut butter choco bars, oatmeal raisin, and double dark chocolate GF flax brownies, which sound nasty but are the best brownie i've ever had) and had a pot of beans on the hob to make pasta e fagioli. Used the hot oven to make a rustic italian loaf too. Got some nice local-ish country-style parmesan type cheese to eat with it.
Sunday my husband was sick and we spent the morning at urgent care getting himself looked at. Came home and had a boring Sunday, so decided to do something about the fish in the freezer. Small-ish white ocean fish (no idea what kind), too small for whole steaming/baking but not really suited for anything else. I separated the meat from the skin and bones and made kamaboko, a project I've been considering for years. The meat is pureed with an egg white, salt, sometimes some starch, and then formed into logs and steamed for half an hour.
Tonight I'll make some rice and miso soup and we'll slice them and try them out. For a while in Japan that was my breakfast every day, with a smear of mustard or wasabi alongside.

We had a Chinese meal tonight, chicken with cashew nuts with home grown asparagus and sliced duck breast with pickled mustard greens and steamed rice.

Froze leftovers for a weekday lunch.

Hamburg Steak with Onion Gravy

This is a comfort food my grandmother would make when I was young that I now enjoy making today. Hamburg Steak is made by combining ground beef with some breadcrumbs and spices. You sear each side for around four minutes and then remove the patties. Cook down some onions until soft and then add some stock and flour to form a gravy. Return the patties to the pan and let it simmer for around fifteen minutes.

It is delicious over a bowl of rice which is exactly how we had it for dinner.

Broccoli “beef”.

We spent the weekend away and last night I had a hankering to cook.
My mother in law gave me two huge (pound-and-a-half) blocks of okinawan tofu, so i sliced it up, threw it in the air fryer to get dryish, and made chinese home style tofu (with peppers, carrots, chilis and a brown sauce).
i also did some garden work and had to pull out several good-sized shiso plants to make space, so i made two shiso dishes- a chinese stir fry with cucumber and shiso (with red pepper and soy sauce) and a japanese one with charred onions and a sweeter sauce.
i also found half a napa cabbage in the fridge and that got pan-charred with some chinese chicken boullion granules, sesame oil and salt. it's amazing how flavorful cabbage can be.
tonight my husband plays soccer and i usually craft and skip dinner. today i found tomatoes on sale everywhere, though, and bought 12 kg to make passata for sauce in the future. i may water bath can it, since my mother in law also gave me a bunch of large jars. dinner will be whatever fits well with sauce making!

Roasted sesame green beans, mashed potatoes with portobello gravy, two vegan roasts, cranberry conserve. Apple pie and ice cream is waiting till later and maybe till breakfast.

Alas, Canadian Thanksgiving was over a month ago, so we had homemade spaghetti sauce over drill bit noodles.

Just use your imagination!

Our girls are producing at least 6 eggs every day and although there are 4 families in the co-op, there are more than enough to go around.

So dinner tonight was a quiche with caramelised onion, sharp cheddar in a homemade shortcrust pastry.

Plenty left over for lunch tomorrow.

Frito pie! Third and final night of chili leftovers.

I sliced and baked a Kombocha squash and used a Japanese dressing recipe with it, called Sesame Ginger Dressing.

The dressing was super easy to make, tasted lovely on the squash, and I think would taste equally great on a baked potato or a salad.

Recipe here: https://www.loveandlemons.com/sesame-ginger-dressing/

The only problem was that I didn't have Tamari sauce, but it suggested soya sauce was an OK substitute. We've since picked up Tamari sauce as it sounds like a good one to have in the cupboard - less salty than soya, and a byproduct of making miso paste.