Creative first week of January Food

I attempted to start 2012 by being more creative in my life. One aspect was to experiment with food. I read in a magazine that if you spruce up your dish, it can change the perspective of an otherwise dull dinner to something interesting and painstakingly home-made with lots of care involved.

  

On January 2^nd, we had yet another oven meal; this time of a broccoli dish with grilled vegetables. I added in more tomatoes and cheese into the grilled vegetables for extra oomph!

Not perfect yet, but every day I am trying to do more with my food for extra taste and good health.

I started out first with a plain lasagne bolognaise. Hubby and I buy oven food on and off as a sort of emergency food meaning that we can always “pop” (to quote hubby) something into the oven without cooking if we are tired or if we arrive home late.

I cut some tomatoes into cubes and sprinkled some herbs on top of the unbaked lasagne. I sprinkled some oregano and red pepper on top of the tomatoes.

Then I put the topped up lasagne into the oven into its regular time. The dish which came out of the oven was no longer a plain Jane. The tomatoes baked nicely on top of the lasagne. What’s more is that we got our vegetables for the day! Mum would be pleased. After all, a little bit is better than none, no?

On another occasion (for yesterday’s dinner actually), I baked two chicken breasts with sliced potatoes at the side. I sprinkled black pepper, oregano and red pepper on the potatoes. The potatoes are then smoothed with herb butter all around. I then put everything in the oven in its normal time for the chicken breasts. I expect that the potatoes would soften and bake nicely at the same temperature. Some potatoes are quite hard, and this is one of the hard kind.

I had exasperating experiences with potatoes. I had tried to stir-fry them only to burn the outer layer black while the inside remained raw. And too bad that we don’t eat raw potatoes. Otherwise it would have gone well as a salad.

When the chicken and potatoes were done at 180’C at 45 minutes, I placed them on two plates; one for hubby and one for me. I added fresh garden salad on the side.

And here is a new dish which we have not tried before. With a little creativity with the potatoes added with the chicken, you do two things at one go, saving time and effort for a chef who only cooks when necessary.

This mid-morning, it was 11 am when I wanted to get something to eat because I got up late. I made bread with ham, cheese and some fresh greens. Tip of the day – always have some raw vegetables, ham and cheese in the fridge if you don’t feel like cooking on Sundays. With the addition of garlic chilli sauce, it gave a spicy flavour to the bread and I enjoyed it a lot. For me who loves spicy food, the garlic chilli perks up an otherwise regular meal. I thought…well, this is my brunch and I won’t eat until dinnertime. It is pretty healthy too.

However as you would see in the previous post, hubby did cook us a foo yong hai meal an hour later. Now; if I had just waited for hubby to do all the cooking instead of making my own meal…