Shoshiplatypus

My first prep was actually on Monday. I have decided to try and cook a nice big meal on a Monday, to use up anything that is left, and to make more room in the fridge for when my grocery order is delivered on Tuesday.

This time, I adapted a Madhur Jaffrey recipe I have had for a while for chicken korma. All I wanted was to make the sauce element of this dish, and to add the left-over roasted veggies and a few carrots and mushrooms.

Here are the ingredients for the sauce.

In the white container on the left, is pink Himalayan rock salt. Next to it is a jar of veggie sauce I made last week, and beside that, in the two milk cartons, is vegetable stock. The one on the left contains what is left of the ginger stock I made several weeks ago when I skinned a load of fresh ginger for the freezer, boiling up the peelings in some water. Lovely gingery flavour!

I adapted Madhur Jaffrey’s recipe a bit. I omitted the cream/yoghurt and used some of the home-made veggie sauce from the Mason jar. I also used whole almonds rather than flaked almonds, mostly because of the cost, but also, using whole almonds, you end up with a lot more nutrition than with the blanched ones. My high speed blender is well up to the task of blitzing whole almonds, but for a normal liquidiser, flaked almonds might be kinder!

I also omitted the oil, preferring to dry-sauté the onions and other veggies. With a good non-stick pan, you don’t need any oil. You sauté over a high heat, and when the food begins to stick, you deglaze the pan with a little water or stock, and stir frequently.

Here’s the finished dish, served over a bed of boiled brown rice. Not all that beautifully arranged, I grant you, but it tasted jolly good! Definitely a recipe do do again.

Moving on to today, Tuesday. My grocery delivery arrived as scheduled, and the first job was to sort through everything and wash the fruit. Here is all the fruit I bought this week.

Moving on to the veggies.

All the veggies prepped and bagged, ready for the week.

You will see that I’ve reined myself in a bit this week and didn’t buy quite so much stuff! I sorted out the two boxes of button mushrooms, putting the smaller ones uncut into their flour sack cloth, and for the larger ones, I sliced them.

Prepping the soup. I have got quite a lot of veg stock in the freezer, so this time I decided not to make more, but to make soup instead. Usually I use all the trimmings to make stock, but for soup, it is probably better to use better quality bits. I therefore used the cauliflower leaf stalks as always, and added an onion and my usual collection of vegetable powders, and some herbs. This time I also added some smoked paprika. I also put in a sweet potato and various other bits and pieces I had lying around. As I did this, it grew and grew until it outgrew all my mixing bowls and had to be tipped temporarily into the washing up bowl. I gave it a good stir with my hands so that everything was evenly coated by the powders etc. Because it was so much, it wouldn’t all go in the pressure cooker, so I cooked it in two batches, and carried on with other jobs while my Ninja Foodi was doing its stuff.

The photo shows the first batch still in the Foodi pot after being pressure cooked, and on the left, the next batch ready to go in.

Soup, anyone?

That will keep us going for ages! Later in the evening I raided my stash of storage boxes and I think I’ve now used all of them except for the ones without lids. (Why do I keep such useless things? Time for a clear-out!|)

I also did a big tray of roasted veggies which looked lovely when I took them out – unfortunately I didn’t remember to photograph them.

The final clear-out of last week’s supplies came together nicely for a substantial and delicious supper. With the rush of getting it all on the table and calling my hubby before it got cold, I didn’t remember to photograph it. Same old story… I chucked the remaining roasted veggies in a big bowl and added various other ingredients – vegetable powders, herbs etc., and tipped the rest of the veg sauce over it and stirred it in well. Five minutes in the microwave was long enough for it to be piping hot, and I served it over a bed of what was left of last night’s boiled brown rice. It was very tasty.

I did adapt the recipe for the sauce a bit – it was Chef AJ’s Yummy Sauce pepped up a bit with some balsamic vinegar and some faux parmesan to give it a slightly cheesy flavour. It was very tasty and good. I also made up a quick salad of the remaining Romaine (pun intended) lettuce, diced cucumber, rocket and baby spinach, topped off with the last lot of vinaigrette  that I made several weeks ago – it wasn’t a terribly interesting recipe so I think I shall delete that one! I also added a dash of my home-made raspberry vinegar.

All is now cleared away, and by the morning the containers of soup will be cool enough to put in the freezer.