foodie.tv

There will be fewer posts to this blog and those that happen will be mainly references to web albums. Food from Spain can be viewed at http://picasaweb.google.com/cscoxk/AndaluciaFood
While we enjoyed our trip and had some interesting meals it was good to be back. Australian food and restaurants, to our biased eye, are excellent and we can travel the culinary world without leaving our shores.

These are not traditional Easter Meals - just meals at Easter.
Justine Cooked a Moroccan style soup and barbecued skewered prawns, lamb and veges. Ah Fong saw an Indian recipe - much like a stew with lamb chump chops, blended onions and tomatoes cooked then then spices thrown in later. No frying, no complicated adding of spices. Very simple and very delicious.

Although we have had some interesting meals they tend to be similar to the ones already on the website. I will return to putting up meals when we go on our forthcoming holiday to Southern Spain.

I have been a bit "lazy" in putting up dishes. Perhaps it is the lack of sugar. It certainly isn't because the dishes are uninteresting - but they are different. Lots of vegies and fruit and virtually no rice and no potatoes and few sauces.

We have started on a low GI regime. The main differences are no refined sugar including stopping eating prepared foods containing sugar, no potatoes, no regular bread or rice. Regular meals are pretty much the same. The objective is to get back to our weight when we were thirty.

Pork mince prepared with soy vermicilli, long beans and garden herbs. This is wrapped in lettuce leaves with a little fresh chilli sauce and eaten like a sandwich. Similar dishes are popular in Vietnamese Restaurants.


Roasted fresh tomatoes with roasted fresh chillis


Mixture of fresh vegetables from the garden with dried prawns and soy vermicilli. Served with a chilli sauce.

Daikon, Pork and red date soup. This is an incredibly sweet soup and quite delicious.

Zuccini chicken long beans and chilli stir fried.

Dry red wine with green salad and rissoles with home made tomato sauce served outside on the balcony.

Ling steamed with ginger

We decided to have a few days where we would cut down on our food intake. These were the meals.


Chicken beets and fresh beans.

Canned tuna, beets, cantelope and cauliflower.

Frankfurters, broccoli and carrots.

When you are faced with the production of half a dozen tomato plants it is not difficult to understand why we have so many ways of preserving food and it is no wonder that grain and animals became popular as foods. You keep your animals alive to preserve your food source and with grain it comes with its own packaging.

A cold tomato soup with cucumber pieces.

Tomatoes accompanied by garden greens and flat rice noodles

The only preserving we have done with our tomatoes is to recycle vegemite jars and fill them with a simple tomato sauce. Most of the rest of the crop have been eaten as fruit or in various salads and sauces.

The dishes for Chinese New Year were Nun's wonton, salads, fried prawns, mussels, spring rolls, white cut chicken, lap chong sausage, steamed snapper and mushrooms.

Several meals over the past few days have featured greens, tomatoes and cucumber from the garden. There is a difference between freshly picked tomatoes ripened on the vine and still warm and thick skinned supermarket tomatoes transported hundreds of miles and ripened in a gas filled room.

Pickled cucumber are a family favourite. This is a simple dish created by peeling and slicing cucumbers into thick sticks. The cucumbers are blanched in a heated mixture of water and vinegar. Blachan, tumeric, garlic, and candle nut are pounded into a paste. The mixture is fried in a small amount of oil. The blanched cucumber is added to the cooked mixture. Fresh chillis both red and green from the garden are added. The mixture is stored in the fridge and may be served as an accompanyment to many dishes. This one was sprinkled with grated fresh peanuts.

Minced pork is marinated with light soy sauce and a small amount of corn starch is mixed with the meat. This is fried with a small amount of oil and garlic. Fresh sprouts from snow peas before they are formed along with chinese chives are added. Finally fresh tofu is added along with soy sauce and it all broken up in large chunks. Quick simple and delicious.

This is another family favourite. Chicken pieces are coated with corn starch and fried in a small amount of oil until the skin is crispy. The tomato sauce is made by heating together fresh tomatoes, chillis, garlic, oil, and salt. The chicken pieces are added to the sauce and cooked some more. Add vinegar if the tomatoes are too sweet.