I was so close to reaching my goal of posting three times a week whilst in Australia.
Alas, the construction workers cut through a cable and I was internet-less for a little while.
I think I may give up coffee before I could ever give up the luxury that is Email.
Instead I got a few days to recover from my food coma so that I could post about it!
I was faced with a foodie challenge. Cooking for three other people with all different food preferences.
I don’t eat meat, one doesn’t like fish or mushrooms and claims they are adamantly against Vego…..ahem, Oscar.
I kind of just bought a bunch of ingredients and created a three course meal on the fly.
Caprese Dip to start
So simple: tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, oven.
Topped with toasted pine nuts.
Is it just me or do pine nuts make everything better?
Language barriers are still kicking. I asked if they had tomato sauce when we were buying ingredients at the grocery store.
Yep realized I shoulda referred to that as “pasta sauce” when I was handed the “ketchup” in their abode.
That’s the beautiful thing about improvising though.
Couscous “on-the-fly”
- Couscous
- Tomato Paste
- Chopped Tomatoes
- Spinach
- Mozzarella
- Garlic
- Basil
- Toasted Pine Nuts
- Cook couscous with a 1:2 ratio of couscous to water
- Once the couscous begins to absorb most of the water add all ingredients except pine nuts and spinach
- Slowly add spinach and mozzarella until it cooks well into the couscous
- Remove from heat and add toasted pine nuts
- CONSUME
Dessert was a new one for my Australian friends. Apparently Bread Pudding is a European or English dessert.
They were a bit skeptical about using stale bread. Though we ended up using fresh crusty bread anyways.
Apple Raisin Bread Pudding
- Half a loaf of bread
- Mixed dried fruit
- 2 apples
- Milk
- 2 eggs
- Sugar
- Heaps of cinnamon
- Combine milk, eggs, sugar and cinnamon over medium heat.
- Meanwhile chop bread and apples into large cubes and put in a baking dish along with dried fruit
- Once the milk/egg mixture starts to thicken, remove from heat on combine with bread/fruit mixture
- Bake at 180 C until bread begins to brown
I topped it with vanilla ice cream.
Aaaand….stuffed.
I thoroughly enjoyed my little food coma that night.
And the vego meal was a complete success. I may have even begun to recruit a few over to the dark side 
Thank you friends for letting me invade your kitchen and cook vego food for avid meat eaters.
Do you eyeball things more depending on if you’re cooking for yourself or for others?
I definitely don’t measure that much when I’m cooking for a group.
Casey
