Warm Lamb Salad

In addition to the other night's delicious recipe, I found a recipe in Super Food Ideas magazine that inspired me. This wasn't quite as impressive but nice none the less.
I modified the original recipe slightly because it was quite similar to the chicken salad; with red onion, feta, parsley and beans/chick peas.
This consisted of lamb, green beans, cannelloni beans, capsicum, cucumber, tomato, spring onion and a simple dressing. The salad was nice and fresh.

I made plenty of this, hence there was heaps left over for lunches. I wrapped some of the salad in a pita bread for T and took some to work for myself. I added my left over portion, minus any lamb, to the cous cous salad. After yesterday's disappointment with the cous cous I was hopeful this salad would add a bit more excitement and, it absolutely did! Fantastic lunch!

Sandwich for Dinner

This was my dinner the other night when I was cooking for 1 and very uninspired. It consisted of avocado, cheese, cucumber, tomato, capsicum, lettuce, tuna and cottage cheese as well as some sweet chilli sauce, salt & pepper on fresh bread.

 

Quick BBQ Dinner

Tonight was a quick and easy BBQ dinner; sausages in bread, barbecued corn, beetroot and some salad. However, tonight I decided that I am sick of the salad combination of cucumber, tomato, capsicum and lettuce. I've over done it with these four lately so I'm going to have to be more imaginative in my salad choices.

Dinner on the whole was very nice though!

There were 2 sausages left over so I sliced up one and put it in a sandwich for me, I added the other sausages to some Maggi noodles for T's snack tomorrow.

Cous Cous for Lunch

My lunch for 2 days is this cous cous salad. In addition to the packet of Ainsley Harriott Roasted Vegetable Style cous cous I used tomato, capsicum, lettuce, fetta, sunflower seeds, salt & pepper. Just before eating it I added tuna and some four bean mix.

I found the taste very bland so went frantically searching for some more salt and pepper. I couldn't find any so had to settle for a bit of sweet chilli sauce mixed through. I've had this brand of cous cous before and enjoyed the taste so the reason for it being so bland must be due to the added salad ingredients lacking in flavour.

Supermarket Salads for Lunch

T's lunch yesterday consisted of 2 discounted salads I bought from Coles. I had a little taste of both and they were pretty nice but I checked the nutrition label when transferring the potato salad to the container and did a few quick calculations. If T was to eat all of it in one sitting, he would be eating 75g of fat!! Oops. I would never intentionally serve my poor husband that much fat. At least I warned him prior to him eating it.
The salads were:
Potato & Prosciutto Salad; potatoes & prosciutto in a creamy mustard and basil dressing
and
Vegetable Pilaf; basmati rice, chickpeas, pumpkin, curants and fresh corriander in a mildly spiced dressing.

Middle Eastern Chicken with Chickpea, Herb & Feta Salad Recipe

In the November 2010 issue of delicious magazine I found this recipe and finally I cooked it! I was not looking forward to typing up the whole recipe, so I was very excited to see another blogger had done the hard work for me http://adeliciousyear.blogspot.com. 

I used 2 large chicken breasts and lemon pepper instead of sumac but other than that, I followed the recipe pretty much as it appeared in the magazine.

Middle Eastern Chicken with Chickpea, Herb & Feta Salad

Ingredients:

• 2 tsp lemon pepper (I couldn't find sumac as the recipe suggested)
• 1/3 cup (80 ml) olive oil 
• 1 lemon, sliced, plus juice of 1 lemon
• 4 x 200g chicken breast fillets 
• 40 g unsalted butter
• 1 round Lebanese bread, cut into wedges
• 400g can chickpeas, rinsed & drained
• 2 cups flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped 
• 1 red onion, sliced 
• 75g  Persian feta, drained

Method: 

• Combine sumac, 1 tbsp oil, lemon slices & lemon juice (reserve 1 tbsp  of juice for dressing). Add chicken and turn to coat. Marinate for 20 minutes. 
• Pre-heat oven to 180 C. 
• Heat 1 1/2 tbsp oil in large oven proof fry pan over medium heat. 
• Cook chicken for 3 minutes each side and then place in the oven for 8 minutes or until cooked.
• Loosely cover with foil and let chicken rest for at least 2 minutes. 
• Fry bread (I did this in the oven) OR Melt butter and 2 tsp oil in another fry pan over medium heat. Season bread and cook for 4 - 5 minutes turning regularly until crisp. Remove and keep warm. 
• Add chickpeas to pan and warm through (I also browned the lemon at this stage).
• Slice chicken and toss with lemon, chickpeas, bread, parsley, onion, feta and drizzle with reserved marinade. 

I served it with lettuce, tomato and cucumber on the side.

It was a really nice dinner and there was enough left over for lunch. Woohoo!

Coco Pops Oaty Cookies Recipe

I found two tiny packets of Coco Pops so I went in search of a recipe that wasn't Chocolate Crackles. I found this recipe; Kellogg's Coco Pops Moons and Stars Oaty Cookies. I used regular Coco Pops and roughly converted the weights to cup measurements because my scales are a little tricky to read. Probably due to my rough conversions I needed to add an egg which the original recipe didn't call for. I also used a combination of butter, margarine and oil because I didn't want to use up all my margarine. Here is what I baked:

• 50g (~1/2 cup) rolled oats
• 50g (2 single serve packets) Kellogg’s Coco Pops
• 80g (~1/2 cup) wholemeal self raising flour
• 50g (~1/4 cup) sugar
• 80g butter/margarine/oil combination
• 1 egg

Preheat oven to 180°C.
Crush Coco Pops.
Combine Coco Pop crumbs with oats and flour.
Melt butter/margarine/oil and sugar in a saucepan over a gentle heat stirring until sugar has dissolved.
Take off heat and add to dry ingredients, stir, add egg and thoroughly mixing together.
Press mixture into balls (approx 1 tbsp) and space well apart on baking tray, flattening slightly.
Bake in oven at 180°C for approx 10 minutes or until lightly golden.
Leave on tray to cool for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool.

They are tasty, quick and easy cookies.