I have decided it is time to get back onto the healthy eating and exercise bandwagon and try out some new and exciting recipes. When I got back from Ireland I grew an addiction to soup and that sure hasn’t stopped. As soon as I got the chance there was a pot of vegetable soup on the stove to tide me over until I decided on some new ones to try. This is my adaption to my Mum’s vegetable soup which I make with grated carrot, grated zuchinni, celery, leek and parsley as well as some chicken stock and salt and pepper to season. I have actually made at least 3 batches of this in the last 2 weeks already! Once the first pot was gone within a day or so I decided to try making a tomato soup, something I have always enjoyed but have never had a ‘homemade’ pot before. I did a little googling and decided to settle on tomato and capsicum soup. I did not realise how much effort went into this but I seasoned my vegies, popped them in the oven to cook, removed the skins (this was the time consuming part), blended it all together and wallah tomato soup! The flavour was not as strong as I imagined and there will need to be some tweaking to this recipe to get a stronger tomato flavour in the future but it was a fun new challenge. Last on my soup list was cauliflower with bacon and leek, one I have made before but it was as tasty as always, possibly one of my favourites.
In between all the soup making there has been some shopping,
a little job hunting, a job interview, my first ever day time trip to the
movies and holiday planning, yep I’m already out the door in less than a week
to head back up into the highlands when my friend arrives from home to spend an
entire week with me. I am that excited
to be seeing a face from home that this week is going at snails pace.
There have been a few other new dishes I have tried for
dinner but to be honest most of the things have been simple veggies with things
such as mustard chicken or lightly seasoned grilled fish. I will share a couple with you that I have
never cooked before and I am looking forward to perfecting them over the coming
months, the first being salmon. I know
from my many reviews on salmon over the last 5 months that I am rather picky
and love a perfectly cooked salmon that is not dry and overcooked so I was
extremely nervous to give this one a go.
I decided to do a crusted oven baked salmon but without any breadcrumbs
I needed to improvise a little and tried a crushed vita wheat type biscuit with
some fresh basil and I think it was a winner.
Served up with some fresh salad the salmon was not overcooked, big sigh
of relief. I will definitely be giving
this one another try in the near future.
Today has been a slow recovery day after celebrating my
housemates birthday last night, I even broke the healthy kick and had a cupcake
with her, so we are trying one of our favourites from our trip, mousakka. I had no clue what to do with an eggplant so
I needed to do a little research and turns out that the eggplant needs to sit
for at least an hour with some salt to remove some of the bitterness and then
grill it before layering up. So with
this out of the way I cooked the meat the same as I would for a lasagne or a
spaghetti bolognaise, making sure I added a generous amount of tomato paste to
give it that extra flavour and then covered the top layer with a delicious
white sauce and cheese. A short stint in
the oven and out came a delicious looking meal and it was damn tasty as well. Certainly one I am going to cook up for a
dinner party when I’m back home to show off some of my new recipes.
Time to get back to reading my book, I am already on to my
second, and I am really enjoying the freedom of being able to read, cook or
just pop down the street when I please at the moment, so the thought of a full
time job is far from appealing at the moment, but with the bank balance slowly
decreasing hopefully by the next time you hear from me I will have some kind of
exciting job to share with you, but until then, keep smiling xox
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