Cook-a-thon Sunday!

Today I have been cooking all day! First thing I made some salmon fishcakes, made with 300g salmon fillets, 300g mashed potato, mixed together with lemon juice, parsly and black pepper. Add a dessert spoonful of flour and a medium beaten egg, then shape into fishcakes. I made them quite small, as they were for the children. Fry for a few minutes per side. These can be frozen and reheated in the oven.

Then I made a very simple spicy chickpea recipe for lunchtimes this week. I liked this recipe because it is low calorie, low GI, veggie, vegan, wheat/gluten and dairy-free. So, fry 1 onion with 2 red chillis and a teaspoon each of tumeric and cumin. Add 2 400g tins of chickpeas and 2 400g tins of chopped tomatoes and cook for 10-15 minutes. Add some lemon juice and black pepper. Nice served with quinoa.

Next on the list it was tuna pasta for the children's lunch boxes tomorrow. Simply wholewheat pasta, with tuna mayonaise, sweetcorn and cucumber. I made enough for today's lunch too - it went down well.....

Then it was time to make some garlic and coriander naan bread to go with tonight's tea. Haven't successfully made naan before, but with the help of my bread-maker for the kneading/proving these worked out a treat! Made with white flour, natural yoghurt, water, yeast, honey, salt, black onion seeds, garlic and coriander.. then baked and then grilled and brushed with melted butter. I had a slight mishap when the first one puffed up more than I expected and touched the grill element and set on fire! But it added to the rustic flavour somewhat! We all loved these, even the children who ate them with their fishcakes!

Then I made some vegetable soup for lunches later in the week. It was a very basic recipe... carrots, potatoes, onion, green pepper, lentils, bayleaf cooked in water. Then a small amount of flour gradually mixed with about 5 times volume of milk, and then added to the pan, and stirred until thickened. When cooked, I threw in some grated cheese and seasoned.

Lastly today, I made a vegetable jalfrezi curry. This was based around butternut squash, cauliflower and chickpeas. Recipe from Jamie Oliver's Minestry of Food cookbook.

Also worth a mention is a veggie shepherds pie I made on Thursday. (Mentioned in previous post - here is a picture) This was a different version of the one I usually make, and was based on a tomato sauce with garlic, sweet potato, carrot, bulghar wheat and red lentils. The next day I had some of this sauce left over, so I added a can of chopped tomatoes, some Discovery Fajita Seasoning mix and some chilli sauce. I added a packet of mangetout peas and stuffed the sauce into taco shells and served with creme fraiche and salad.

I also measured my pumpkin today! Still very green and now 21.5cm across! I believe this is a whole half a centimetre since last Sunday... whoooot!

So that was Sunday. Very little time for anything else, other than washing pots and putting clothes away. Luckily I had a doting hubby and father at home to entertain the children!!