Mid Week Fresh Cooking: Broccoli Leaves Pesto Fettucini, Chickpea Garden Salad Sandwich and Lentil Daal.

Our mid week fresh cooking last week was super quick and simple to prepare.

I used the last harvest of broccoli florets and leaves from the front garden and made pesto for a quick vegetarian lunch. 

For the next day, I soaked some dried chickpeas and boiled them before crushing them with a bit of canned chopped tomato, lettuce leaves, parsley and mayo. I paired that with lettuce and kale leaves from the garden for a quick sandwich.

The majority of the canned chopped tomato went into this yummy vegetarian dinner of lentil daal. I used lots of onion and ginger for this to support our immunity during the cold blast in Melbourne during that time.

Early Asahi Tulips and White Californian Poppy.

The first Asahi Tulip had popped up in our garden. Their stems look short this year for some reason. I didn't pull the bulbs out of the garden from last year, so it looks like they grown in a bit of a cluster this year. I'm excited to see how they look, but I think I will pull out the bulbs this year and replant them, spread them around the garden. I absolutely love the colour of this Asahi Tulip. 

My daffodil tete-a-tete had also popped up. They're so tiny and cute this year. I need to to pull up the bulbs as well and spread them around the garden.

Another favourite of mine in the recent years have been these Californian Poppies that I planted under the Olive Tree. I bought them as seeds of mix colour, they're gorgeous but their seed pods spread the seeds all over the garden, haha. So it's really hard to keep them in one spot.

This is the first poppy this year:

There will be more coming up and that section of the front yard is going to burst with colour.

Meet Our New Garden Tenant!!

My wish had come true!!! I finally have a ladybird in the backyard, yay!!! I was having a break from work and wandering around the backyard to check the plants and saw something tiny crawling near the Nasturtium bushes. I'm so excited!!

I hope there's a whole family of them in there somewhere.

They're supposed to be the natural predators of aphids. Come to think of it I don't see any aphids around the garden maybe the ladybirds have been eating them.

Keep Calm and Drink Tea. Lemon and Calendula Tea That Is!

I have been feeling a bit under the weather in the last few days. My tropical genes is struggling with the sudden chilly winter blast this last week. I started to have a bit of sniffle and cough. 

This homemade immunity booster tea is my go to drink to help alleviate the cold symptoms. I made quite a few at the start of winter to prepare for this kind of situation and we have been brewing them as needed. 

I added a few dried Calendula flowers in it. It was very refreshing and I'm glad to report that I am now feeling better.

Indonesian Chicken Congee, Bubur Ayam, with Homemade Spring Onion Pancake.

I can't wait until Winter is over!! It's cold and rainy in Melbourne this weekend, so Bubur Ayam is our go to meal for this kind of weather. Bubur amAyam is Indonesian version of Congee. This particular one is a cut down version (Covid-19 Lockdown version) of the actual thing. 

The original version has lots of yummy condiments that always makes me drool just thinking about it. 

For today though, I decided to defeat my demon and try to work with dough (aarrgghh...). Found this recipe for Spring Onion Pancake and decided to give it a go. 

This is the clear chicken stock and the shredded chicken breast that I prepared yesterday as part of our weekly meal prep.

I use half a cup of white rice and simmer it in rolling boiling water and the added stock until they soften. I didn't put the shredded chicken until the last 5 minutes or so of the cooking process to keep them tender.

The Spring Onion Pancake is a pleasantly surprising success despite my doubt of my skill. It's a great replacement of Chinese Crullers which is our favourite but requires deep frying process.

I'm saving this awesome recipe for next time.

Meal Prep This Week: Chicken Stock for Soup and Indonesian Chicken Congee, Soya Chicken for Indonesian Fried Noodle, Vietnamese Inspired Meatball for Vermicelli Salad and Turkey and Vegetable Potato Bake.

This week we were lucky enough to get a tray of chicken breast after a few weeks of empty poultry section in the store. So for my meal prep this week I'm stretching these 2 pieces of breast to make 3 dishes. The minced meat that we managed to get this week is Turkey mince. I'm going to use this 1 tray of minced meat to cook up 2 dishes.

We also have a birthday coming up. So, I set aside a small portion of the chicken breast to make soy chicken which will go into the traditional staple Indonesian Birthday fried noodles.

This goes into the freezer to be cooked with noodle and lots of vegetable later on this week.

The remaining of the chicken breast was used in clear chicken stock. Half will be the base of chicken and vegetable soup during the week. I diced the chicken breast before freezing them.

The other half of the chicken breast was shredded to make Indonesian Chicken Congee.

I used a third of the Turkey mince to make a bake dish inspired by Indonesian Pastel Tutup and the sausage, meat and rice bake by KidsCookBest.

I parboiled the sliced potato to reduce the oven cooking time of the dish.

We had this for our lunch 🤗.

The remaining turkey minced went into Vietnamese inspired meatball to be served with vermicelli salad mid week. 

Seedlings Prep for Spring 2020

I finally completed the second and last batch of seedlings prep. This pregnancy surely is different from my previous one. I seem to get tired more easily this time around so I had to stop halfway the seedlings prep a few weeks ago. But, everything's finally done now!! Now I just have to give them lots of TLC. 

These are the seedlings from a few weeks ago, they have sprouted and some have shown true leaves.

Cos Lettuce:

Perpetual Spinach:

Cimmaron Lettuce:

Russian Kale:

Kent Pumpkin and Cucumber:

Zucchini:

The day time weather is warming up slightly in Melbourne. Especially near this large window sill. It's a perfect spot for seedlings.

Mid-Week Fresh Cooking: Lentil Bolognese, Vegetable Pancake, Broccoli Carrot Tuna Stir Fry and Spring Rolls.

Our mid-week fresh cooking this week was based on cabbage and broccoli. I usually save the green vegetables for fresh cooking during the week instead of processing and freezing them earlier on the week 

The first meal was Lentil Bolognese that I cooked and froze last week. I paired it with the available pasta that we have at home and sliced cheese to add a bit of creaminess.

The recipe is a simple Bolognese recipe with red lentil replacing the minced meat.

We bought half a cabbage from the store and I used half of it to make a simple vegetable pancake.

Our quick lunch was a simple stir fry of broccoli, carrot and canned tuna. I paired mine with quinoa as I love the combination of tuna and quinoa.

The remaining half of the cabbage was transformed into spring rolls. 

My five year old loves spring roll and I thought to train his fine motor skills and asked him to help out rolling the spring rolls. 

He did pretty well. Only a few spring rolls came undone during the frying process.

For the spring rolls filling, I fine diced a slice of bacon leftover from last week, lots of cabbage and carrots and a bit of black fungus.

Weekly Meal Prep: The Humble Meatball, Rice and Beans, Chickpea Masala and Black Sticky Rice Porridge

The current Melbourne lockdown is limiting the grocery that we can get, so we have to make do with what we have this week. We only got a tray of beef mince for our animal protein this week and I have saved up a few cans of tuna, salmon and sardines for our backup. 

The first and easiest meal to come up with is the humble meatball. 

I used 2/3 of the beef mince for this and added onion and carrot to fill up the meatballs. Parsley and Oregano are fresh from the garden. We have also secured a bag of breadcrumbs, after a few weeks going without, so I'm cherishing this one jar of breadcrumbs so much... 

We also struggled to find onions, so I used 1/4 of the onion for the meat balls and use another 1/4 for the sauce. I'm saving the garlic and only use 1 clove for this.

The onion, garlic and carrot are sauteed to soften them and bring out the sweetness. Combined everything and mix before rolling them.

I'm saving the canned tomatoes that we have. We're not stockpiling so I only have 2-3 cans at home at any one time. I decided to only use 1/2 can for the sauce and simply add water.

In the freezer it goes for mid week meal.

Last night I pre-soaked kidney beans, chickpeas and Black Sticky Rice for the next few dishes. I love this method as it reduces the amount of plastic and cans of the produce.

The process is very simple and doesn't take too much time. I boiled them this morning to soften them before cooking each dishes.

Stacking them to save bench space.

The next dish that I cooked was for lunch today. It's a regular in our household. We all love beans, it's great for digestion and it fills you up.

1/3 of the beef mince went into this dish with 1/2 can of the diced tomatoes and I left a little bit of the tomatoes for the chickpea Masala. (Yes, I use 1 can for 3 dishes... I'm saving my canned tomatoes to the max this week.)

Kale and Parsley are fresh from the garden. A small amount of kale is acceptable for my 5 year old. 

Chickpea Masala is our favourite. We try to eat as much vegetarian meal as we can during the week, sometimes 3-4 days per week. I still have another vegetarian dish in the freezer from last week so I only cook one dish for this week.

The great thing about this dish is I can add a lot of good herbs that will help us increase our immunity during the cold weather. Lots of onion, turmeric and ginger goes into this dish.

Lastly, I made black sticky rice porridge for warm dessert this week. We had a few weeks of mung bean porridge and I thought to change it up a little bit to give variety. 

My five year old decided to give it a try and he declared that he likes it now...