Assessmentless

Or rather, what I do when I procrastinate on a bit more of a sophisticated level when the assessments/exams I have aren't impending and looming behind me.

I grow, of course! I showed you my shallots on Monday, and look how much they've already grown in three days. How crazy are they?! I've also tried some dirty English spinach this morning from a terribly gritty breakfast (how traditional peeps had a pica habit for health I'll never know) and I just made a jar of cucumber because a. we have no pickles left b. my intestines... ahem... would like some pickles c. I didn't know how the hell I'd for the cucumbers into my non-cucumbers meals d. I wanted to experiment a little. So nothing's really certified 'sterile' but I'd really hope a knife, a jar and some cuckes will be pretty bacteria-free (for now), and I added white balsamic vinegar because I couldn't find white vinegar and the last batch of just brine was boring.

Now, back to work!

Kale, to start off your Kaley Week

Got the attention of you health fanatics? Fantastic! Let's have a... not a rant per say but just a bit of a blabber about this super leaf.

I'd never head about kale until I joined the health community so I didn't really know anything outside of spinach. It seemed like spinach but a bit curlier, so I kinda wondered why everyone was screaming EAT YOUR KALE! Why was no one eating spinach, that lovely, versatile veggie that pops up sandwiched between pastries and cheese, or hiding among the lettuce in salads?

Down at the markets today, I bought a bunch of kale because it's a bit of a treat for me. I don't normally go to the markets so I don't normally get kale. Anyway, I also got a proper juicer juice from the juicing place with kale in it (plus cucumber, green apples and lime) and it was suuuper amazingly yummy! Last time I got a juice with funny ingredients in it (namely spinach, celery, maybe kale AND rocket) and it tasted like dirt. It actually tasted like they hadn't washed the celery or something. But this juice was soo good! It was super super sweet, probably because it had two apples and like two little leaves of kale but I won't say anything... But this juice was so good that I did a bit of a photoshoot with it. Excuse the bad lighting and the mostly-drunken juice. And the randomness of doing a photoshoot with a green juice, a bunch of kale and the black border around some of the pictures.

Ok, so I like crow.

Mistakes I've Made - Baked Eggs

This morning I had a bit of time so I decided to make myself baked eggs for breakfast. Bad idea. Well, not really. I definitely learnt from it. It was kinda funny how I stuffed up because, in a way, I planned for it to happen this way.

My baked eggs went as followed:

I fried up my sliced mushrooms and greens (some grown up bok choi and a bit of spinach) the night before...

but I only half cooked the greens because I knew that they would get even more cooked in the oven in the morning, so the white bits of the bok choi was still quite crunchy. And I popped it all into a medium sized ramekin.

Pumpkin Lasagna? Challenge Accepted.

This afternoon, I asked my friend what I should make for dinner and the response I got (and wasn't expecting) was 'lasagna'. Outside, I said no. Inside, I proclaimed CHALLENGE ACCEPTED! and started brainstorming ideas for veggie-filled lasagnas without pasta. What could I include? Zucchini? Carrot? Tomato? But when my brain turned to 'pumpkin', I had ideas like crazy and knew that that would be what would be made.

The pumpkin was my second challenge. I got it last week and had neglected it because, well, I'd have to cut it up. But today I got home and carved that pumpkin up. He must've been seeking revenge for not being touched for a week, because he was soo hard to get a knife through! Every slice was like an opportunity to lose a finger, a toe or worse. But thankfully all the anger and frustration was all contained in his thick skin so he was a little looser on the inside.



I'd had a really fancy idea for this lasagna and I wanted to make a white creamy sauce only because I knew we had some cauliflower, but when I explained my idea to mum she just whipped up a batch of flour-butter-milk white sauce. Sigh. I wasn't going to try to explain my cauliflower sauce idea tonight so I just let it be. Mums always know how to cook food best, so I let her do it and decided that I'd make my super paleo idea another day.

This is also a bit of an unrecipe in terms of types of food to include. Yes, put pumpkin, but use whatever type you have that's been neglected in the fridge, and I had butternut. Use whatever sort of mince-y, cut-up meat you can get your hands on (I used half roast chicken breast, half pork mince because that was what was available). And feel free to include any other veggies that tickle your fancy in the mix!

Pumpkin 'Lasagna'

Serves 4

350g pumpkin

500g meat of some form that isn't a solid piece of muscle

clove of garlic, minced or chopped finely

some massive handfuls of spinach

2 tbs whole wheat plain flour

1 tbs butter

milk

oil for spraying

Cut the pumpkin up so that you've got slices of pumpkin and not chunks of it, so it's about 5mm thick and as long and wide as possible (mine is about 10cm-15cm long and 5cm wide).

Steam the pumpkin for 10 minutes or until it's cooked a little and isn't going to fall apart when you pick it up.

Meanwhile, cook the meat if it's not already, with the garlic.

While that is all cooking, fry the flour and butter in a small saucepan and whisk until cooked, and add milk while whisking until the sauce reaches the consistency of a thick custard. Add salt if preferred.

Assemble the lasagna: To do this, cover the bottom of a deep pre-lined (oil or baking paper) baking dish with some pumpkin slices until you can't see 97% of the bottom.

Next, grab some spinach leaves and lay them onto the pumpkin.

Then grab the meat and layer it on top until all the spinach is covered by the meat. You might want to squish the layers down a little for this.

Pour some of the sauce on top and make sure it's all spread out and covering everything.

Repeat the assembly order until everything is used up.

Lightly spray the top of the whole thing with a touch of oil so it doesn't burn (I forgot to do this).

Pop the whole lot in a preheated-at-180-degrees oven on fan forced and bake for 15 - 20 minutes or until the sauce is all cooked inside.

Slice with a sharp spatula-type thing and serve.