Sick kid at home today, again. Not much you can do about strep throat, except wait for the antibiotics to kick in, and the coughing, feverish, contagious part to be over. The upside is that I have company while working from home today. And a mini-me assistant.
A very simple lunch was requested by my lovely helper. Whole grain sourdough bread, slathered with natural almond butter, served with raw red peppers, and spinach leaves. Here’s to getting back to healthy.
This week has been a write off as far as getting any work done… PA days, sick kids, doctors appointments, and I could go on, but I won’t. So! Three people (with very different ideas about delicious) home for lunch today. How to make one meal that everyone will eat and enjoy? Salad rolls is one of my favourite answers to that question. A bit more work than I usually put into lunch, but worth it for the fun.
To start, whip up some peanut sauce. For this one, I fried some chopped garlic and onions, added some chilli powder, water, brown sugar, and natural peanut butter. Let it thicken, then cool a bit, Â stir in fresh lime juice and set aside. Cook rice vermicelli, and set it aside to cool. Julienne your favourite fillings. We had carrots, yellow pepper, cucumber, lettuce, and avocado. For protein, I thawed out some pre-cooked shrimp, and for a flavour zing, there can never be enough fresh cilantro. All of this goes in the middle of the table. Bring a bowl of hot water, big enough to immerse the rice paper. Put them in one at a time, and when soft, pass them out to the assemblers/eaters. The kids get to pick their own fillings and have a blast making all sorts of unconventional ‘rolls’. My daughter likes to make ‘noodle purses’, while my son excels at ‘everything mash-ups’. No matter what the shape, it was all delicious.
I have a hard time eating salads sometimes. It bugs me when one mouthful is all greens, and the next one is all tomatoes or what have you. Perhaps I have issues, but I want to taste everything, in every bite, without having to perform a circus act on my fork to get it all into my mouth. For those reasons, this salad rocks, my, world. It is also a great way to use up odds and ends of veggies from your crisper.
In my crisper, I had purple onion, zucchini, mushrooms, carrots, red pepper and mixed greens, but feel free to put anything you want in. Chop it all up super fine and add the secret ingredients that take this salad from meh to awesome… Avocado and cheese (I used extra old cheddar), both diced finely. Mix everything up with some freshly ground black pepper, and I swear you won’t even notice this salad has no dressing. Try it. Really.
Leftover rice pasta really really sucks, but it can be made tolerable if you cover it in water, nuke the living crap out of it, then drain it well.
Tomato sauces are not often my pasta topping of choice but I found a new one that has rocket in it! They call it arugula, but I know better. Really really tasty sauce, and a pretty colour too. Good enough to make me forget I was eating crappy reheated rice pasta. Topped with Parmesan shavings.
For many years, I complained that no one in my home loved to eat lamb. I always made something else, so that dinner would not go uneaten. Well, the grass is always greener let me tell you. My three and seven-year-olds now turn into wild carnivores whenever lamb is served. Vegetables? What’s that? Side dishes? What are those? Cutlery? Forget it. Gimme the flesh.
So as it turns out, leftover from last night’s dinner, there were roasted ruby potatoes, homemade tzatziki, mixed greens, and, no lamb. I sliced the potatoes in half, chopped up some green onion and yellow pepper, and mixed it all up with the tzatziki. Greek-ish potato salad served on mixed greens and topped with green onions and black pepper. And no lamb. Did I say that already?
Rocket, rocket, rocket! Or arugula, if you must, but rocket just sounds like more fun. Years ago, I would accidentally encounter it, buried in mixed greens, but it wasn’t until I spent some time in England and then South Africa, that I discovered it was a green all of its own! And, they call it rocket. How can you beat that?
GF bread as usual, with slices of brie on both pieces, one topped with thinly sliced, very ripe Rocha pear. Add a pile of rocket, close it up, and throw it in the sandwich press. Melted brie, jammy pear and zippy rocket… mmmm.