Day 285: Playing With Food

Boo! This was Henry having a pre-dinner game of salad peek-a-boo with some cucumber from what was planned to be our side dish. He ended up eating most of the cucumber out of our salad before the rest of dinner was ready... of course this was after covering his eyes with them and then taking little bites out of them until they were too small to cover his eyes. Although our salad was a little depleted by the time dinner was ready, it was an easy (and pretty healthy) way to keep him occupied while it was cooking.

Day 278: Dinner With Friends

Robbie and Damon popped over for dinner tonight. Unfortunately, due to the roughly 4 hour trip between our place and theirs, it's not that often that they can just drop in. I think that because we don't get to catch up all that often it means that when we do, we tend to make the most of it. We always enjoy their company, the conversation and more times than not quite a few drinks, tonight was certainly no exception. It's a shame I have to work tomorrow as everyone else has the day off... I think I'd really prefer and probably appreciate a sleep rather than getting up to go to work.

My photo today was taken post dinner, I'd forgotten to take a photo all day and then with our visitors over it kind of slipped my mind until it was pretty late.

Day 274: Dinner: Better Than Gardening

I spent today out in the garden nursing a little bit of a hangover. It was forced labour that involved a lot of pine chip shoveling and pulling a bunch of things out of the ground including two very large and very heavy posts. I didn't enjoy it, so I didn't use it for today's photo.

What I did enjoy was making and then eating dinner. As we had Belinda's parents coming down for a few days and we'd bought a roast, I was put on dinner duties. I'd also made a trip down to the supermarket for supplies so I could make a Basil, Bocconcini and Tomato salad to have as well as the baked veg. It was worth the effort and was just what the doctor ordered to help me recover from last nights frivolity.

Day 229: More Kitchen Escapades

I've been on a bit of a roll with the cooking over the last few days. Tonight Belinda was off getting her hair done so I was on dinner duties again, Belinda suggested I used the mince we had in the fridge to make a cottage pie with the instructions of 'just make a savoury mince and put in some worcestershire sauce because that always tastes good in cottage pie'. I can't remember exactly what I put in there, or the quantities, so I doubt I'll ever be able to recreate this dish exactly which is a bit of a shame because I thought it tasted pretty good.

I was home sick today and because I slept until after lunch time I didn't really have the opportunity to take a photo, to I had to combine my kitchen escapades with my blog-ography (I just made that up, feel free to use it). I'll try to avoid having 3 entries in a row of antics in the kitchen again, sorry about that.

Day 227: Spaghetti

Tuesday night is usually my night for doing dinner and tonight was no exception. It was an easy one this week though because we had a fair bit of left over Bolognese sauce that only needed stretching out with a tin of tomatoes and some more mushrooms to feed the four of us.

Initially in my photo tonight I wanted to capture the way the pasta had fallen in the pot and made a pretty pattern, but because the water was bubbling away it didn't really look as good as I'd hoped. Instead I took this photo that I then cropped it in close to avoid showing the mess I'd made of the stove top... I think it looks alright anyway.

Day 74: Speed Reading

Henry kept himself very well entertained by sitting up on the couch like a big kid and working his way through a selection of his books, he did this for the whole time it took me to cook the pasta and reheat the bolognese for his dinner tonight.

He very methodical when it comes to reading his books, there's a real process with steps that have to be taken along the way.

It starts with a pile of books to his left, he takes the one on top and flips through the pages points to the pictures he knows and yells out what it is, sometimes he just yells out random noises but I'm sure it means something to him. When he gets to the last page he waves to it yelling out 'Bye!' before he closes the book and moves it to his right.

This process is repeated with each of the books until they've all been moved from his left to his right, then he starts again working his way from right to left. Tonight this process took about 15 minutes, he was really motoring his way through them.

It's great to see his interest in books continue to grow, it's also great when he occupies himself while you're getting his dinner organised instead of getting under foot in the kitchen.

Day 60: Something Fishy

These days I don't cook dinner that often, and rarely is it worthy a photo.

Somehow tonight I fluked the cooking of our salmon fillets to be just right. It was so good that I'd already eaten three quarters of mine before Belinda had taken two bites... it was then that she suggested this could be my blog entry. Of course that meant I had to stop Belinda from eating any more of her dinner so I could attempt a flattering photo of the meal. Good call my love, I was wondering what to blog about tonight.

The preparation was pretty simple: Wrap the fillet portions in baking paper with a few slices of lemon on top and a sprinkle of Dill Tips. I was going to cook them on the BBQ but it was a bit wet outside so I baked them instead. I figured about 5 mins at 200 in the oven would be about right, it ended up being more like 9 minutes in the oven because I got distracted by serving Henry's veggies first (he's not terribly patient yet). Any less time in the oven and the fish would have been far too rare... any more and it would have been a little dry. So I guess I can than Henry for our perfectly cooked fish.

I doubt I'll be able to repeat this feat, in fact I think that this is probably the pinnacle of my cooking career. Perhaps I should retire while I'm at the top of my game.