Since ven­tur­ing back to cream soups in the last year, I mixed up this recipe once under pres­sure to come up with some­thing out of the blue. I have not made crou­tons, ever really. My mom used to whip some up in my child­hood, but that is about the extent of my experience.

Until now. Now I am rub­bing shoul­ders with crispy bread bites as though we are best friends.

That ini­tial batch of crou­tons turned up such a hit that I have not changed it since then. I have tried it with all kinds of bread — seeded, whole­meal, whole­grain, rye and really just about every­thing but white and it works every time.

How:

Cut up the bread into cubes, it does not have to be stale at all.

Warm up the olive oil in a pan that will fit your bread and then throw it in with some salt and stir to make sure all the cubes are coated in the oil. If needed add more. You dont want it dry.

Then fry them up until they start to crisp up with some toasted bits here and there. Like this:

Plop them on some paper tow­els to cool a bit and if you have not until now, make the rest of the mixture.

Chop up nicely some pars­ley and gar­lic. Then grate finely some Parmesan and mix the whole lot.

Mix well the crou­tons with the fresh mixture.

And then throw it on your soup for some deli­cious crispiness.

Or eat it as it is, as hap­pens in our house.

I had planned to make these Gyoza, orig­i­nally Chinese,  for the party, but since the kids were mostly run­ning around hav­ing fun and didnt seem very hun­gry, I made them the day after. I have never attempted them before, but love order­ing them.

I fol­lowed this recipe, except I used ready gyoza wrap­pers. I was not going to roll dough in the mid­dle of the party. I do draw the line somewhere.

They were deli­cious and dis­ap­peared in no time. Mr.Blab declared that he could eat 50 of them. So next time instead of 30 I have to make about 150

Do try them.

Do.

Now, I am hungry…

If you have not got­ten sick of my food posts, now will be the time. Cause there is even more!

Food prices have gone wild here over the last year or so. It is out of con­trol. I feel every time I step into the gro­cery store, a tiny lit­tle per­son jumps in my bag and pulls out all the money out of it and uses its tiny lit­tle thin lips to suck the con­tents of my cards too. And that is before I have even reached the check­out. I can be fre­quently seen there with my mouth open when I am pre­sented with what my hand­ful of items total to — no less than an arm and a leg. Ever.

In the end, food is the one thing we dont skimp on. We will serve our­selves crap only when there is no other option left. Still, I love it when I think of a way to save a buck on the food bill. And here is my lat­est. Simple, but so sat­is­fy­ing, both in taste and in the level of glee at being frugal.

I dont usu­ally buy a whole chicken. Once in awhile I may do so for a whole baked chicken in beer. Otherwise I would get what I need — breast, drum­sticks, mince. The other day they had sale on the good chicken we buy and I saw it just as I was reach­ing for the pack of cut up one. The whole chicken was for just under $10, while the big breast I was about to pick was about the same price.

Then I had to think of what to do with it.

And here is how it went:

First I cut out the breasts and put them aside for another day.

Then I put the rest of the chicken in a pot and made up a stock by boil­ing it with onion, gar­lic, bay leaves, pep­per corns, celery.

When done, I pulled out all the left over meat to make a braid, as per this recipe at Mangio da Sola. Although I changed the fill­ing as I am not a fan of bbq sauce. I caramelized some onion and cap­sicum. Then put in the meat and browned a bit. Some gar­lic and salt and lots of pep­per. Took off the heat and mixed in some Dijon mustard:

Braided my rolls:

And the result was deeeelicious.

This is a won­der­ful way to use ingre­di­ents one has in the fridge.

No.1

From half the stock, I made a quick soba noo­dle soup with broc­coli, cab­bage and other greens.

No.2

Remember the two saved breasts? They came in handy for some red Thai curry, served with dhal and pap­padoms. The pieces were a bit small, so I fluffed up the curry with a few pota­toes and my carv­ing skills have a need for sharp­en­ing, but over­all this is more than workable.

No.3

And lastly, the rest of the stock went for another soup. This time it was mush­room soba noo­dles. We usu­ally dont put the spring onions in this one and its prob­a­bly bet­ter that way, but I had some left over and just chuck  them in.

No. 4

I am sure I am not dis­cov­er­ing the wheel here, dont worry.  I do find this very refresh­ing though. It makes me think of ways to use ingre­di­ents and make them work for us. Also, this par­tic­u­lar approach, makes splurg­ing on organic chicken much more palatable.

Now I won­der what else I can do this with…any ideas? What are your food fru­gal secrets?

P.S. Sick of food yet?

The Corona was pour­ing, the cake was weigh­ing down under the melt­ing ice cream = some­one was get­ting older!

But who?

Yes another year has passed on my cal­en­dar and its amaz­ing how lit­tle of the excite­ment that sur­rounded this cel­e­bra­tion has left. I dont hate it, no sir­ree, that would imply that I am afraid of get­ting older or that the alter­na­tive of it is more appeal­ing. And that is not the case. I think its a com­bi­na­tion of not need­ing to be older to be respected or freer, some­thing that used to be so won­der­ful to look for­ward to when I was a child, and the fact that peo­ple around me in gen­eral dont give two cents worth of atten­tion to their own birthdays.

I would love to cel­e­brate the day, there is so much to be happy and excited about. And really, who needs a spe­cial rea­son and long list of excuses to just have fun? Not me for sure.  Sitting here, writ­ing this, I real­ize that prob­a­bly most of us dont acknowl­edge our own spe­cial days, because we expect some­one else to do it for us. Its not the thing to be done to orga­nize your own cel­e­bra­tion, espe­cially if you are older than 20 or so. I am think­ing next year I will make an effort for myself, because I am bloody worth it.

That is not to say that the Snapping Blabber day went unnoticed.

Miss Fab had taken it upon her­self to feed me through­out the day.

From break­fast:

Through, packed lunch of smoked salmon with cream cheese and sprouts,
which was absolutely divine and I enjoyed tremendously:

I got snacks as well of cheese plate and whatnot.

For din­ner she mixed up a fresh juice of oranges and raspberries.

What did Mr.Blab do?

We have long agreed not to buy each other gifts, just for the sake of buy­ing a gift. We are beyond that and the thought of wast­ing money because one has to sends shiv­ers up my spine. He can go either way, I am sure, he is easy going that way, but this works fine for him too.

I know he loves and cares for me. I dont need him to spend money to show me.

Instead he cooked for me.

Not emp­tied pack­ets into microwave bowls and warmed them up cook­ing. None of that. A buy fresh ingre­di­ents, cut them up, mea­sure, sea­son, time it all down type of cook­ing. He knows I love Mexican, so he found a book of recipes and care­fully looked through and chose the menu. I have to give him credit, he didnt go with the eas­i­est one. This one was with quite a few steps.

He dove in.

And after… 4 long hours of kitchen duty,
(four hours, peo­ple! How much more love can one ask for)
he pre­sented his masterpiece:

Chicken Flautas with Mexican rice and Salsa

by Mr.Blab

Served along side some chilled Corona with lime, this meal was delicious.

We had all given him a hard time up until that point, as the one time he tried to bake me a cake from scratch the end result is now known as The Brick Cake — it was so hard and stiff, we stood it up on its side and laughed till we peed our­selves. Its now part of the folk­lore of our fam­ily. We talk about it every year. So the pres­sure was big, but he per­se­vered and we didnt have to jump to plan B of the din­ner menu — order pizza

Since Miss Fab didnt want to risk the cake by leav­ing it in daddy’s hands, she took it upon her­self to make me a birth­day cake — from scratch. And then she dec­o­rated it as well.

I loved it. I loved it so much it replaced The Brick Cake as my most favorite cake ever. By a tiny margin.

And then I turned 1:

My daugh­ter makes a mean choco­late cake.

And my quiet day amongst lov­ing peo­ple was over. I was pam­pered, I was given freshly drawn pic­tures and mes­sages.  I used the day as an excuse to get what I wanted — for exam­ple deliv­ery of a hot drink or to avoid chang­ing a poopy nappy. Who doesnt? You dont? Weeeell, you should.

We only have one day that is about us, we should claim it, grab it and jump around sick with glee because of it. And the oth­ers will fol­low and who knows maybe one day it will be more accept­able to cel­e­brate — liv­ing and ourselves.

Because we are bloody well worth it!

Lots of food top­ics around me are hap­pen­ing. Chats with friends, Miss Fab is all inter­ested in cook­ing and recipes and the cup­board full of cook­ing mag­a­zines and books is call­ing my name to be tided up. Not for any other rea­son (it is nice and hid­den after all), but so I can look through finally and update my men­tal recipe index. I get in a food funk lately. It con­sists of dread­ing think­ing about din­ner. Not the action part that fol­lows it, but the men­tal process of decid­ing what to cook. The fam­ily are no help either. Here is what happens:

Me: So, what would you like for dinner?

Mr.Blab: Tacos!

Miss Fab: Pasta!

Little B: Dhal and rice!

EVERY time. I do com­ply often, but it doesnt help with that part in which I am try­ing to come up with some­thing other than those things. Its safe to say that they are of NO help.

So food is a topic and I thought I will let you fol­low the food trail here in a day.

Breakfast is fruit. Lots of it.

Lunch (pic above) was Japanese inspired noo­dle soup.  So first I made a quick chicken stock with bonito flakes, which is where one Japanese part comes in. Then in that stock I cooked the soba noo­dles. Another ingre­di­ent from Japan. And then I poured that on top of some freshly cut cab­bage and topped it with spring onions and chill­ies for me and Mr.Blab. It turned up lovely. Although ours was so hot by the end of it that my lips were burning.

For din­ner we had fried rice — some­what Japanese ver­sion. Lots of veg­gies, some sugar, sesame oil and soy sauce. And rice of course (thanks, Miss Fab, who is lean­ing on my shoul­der and giv­ing me directions…and laugh­ing now…even louder…may be squeal­ing even…OK stop it…you are shak­ing me, I cant write…go to bed…).

Yumm. We love this one.

Popcorn loves it too.

So does the table, it seems..

What are the chances he is think­ing „Maybe I shouldnt make so much mess next time” ?

Hm? Yeah, I thought so.

Next big sis­ter fed him some tiny pieces of pear she had cut up for some of her projects.

After the big clean up it was time for movie night.

We set­tled on the floor with our big olé bowl of freshly popped pop­corn with but­ter à la Mr.Blab. And „Avatar”. We were prob­a­bly the last peo­ple to watch it.

I was not pre­pared to like it, but I did. Lots of very valu­able lessons and reminders  in there. Some not so easy to explain to the kids who inevitably find it hard to under­stand some of the accepted val­ues in our soci­ety. We have dis­cussed a lot of the things cov­ered in the movie, so it was nice to have a chance to do it again. After the 2h 42min of movie, Little B asked „Why is this movie so short?” — which was the ulti­mate stamp of approval, if you ask me.

In the mean­time, for inter­mis­sion we made up some banana splits — cut up banana, topped with vanilla ice cream, choco­late sauce (melted dark chocolate+cream) and chopped up nuts. This one had a small bit of whipped by Miss Fab cream on top.

Needless to say, it was a good day.

Quinoa is sup­posed to be a lovely grain. Full of nutri­ents and what­nots. Awhile ago I had tried to cook with it and we were not impressed. It got left out­side of our fam­ily recipe book.

Then I thought to try a cold salad with it. In essence tabouli, but instead of bul­ghur I used quinoa. If you dont know what tabouli is, you can­not be helped, sorry.

Here is the short of it:

2 cups of quonoa boiled for 10min and drained

a bunch of toma­toes finely chopped

1–2 cucum­bers finely chopped

lots of parsley

a bit less of mint

a bunch of spring onions chopped

some cumin

salt / pepper

extra vir­gin olive oil

lemon to taste

gar­lic to taste

makes a whole lot of yummy salad:

To go with it I make either humus or bean salad. The sec­ond goes like that — beans, thinly sliced red/spanish onion, olive oil, bal­samic vine­gar. Both go divinely with the salad.

To add some fun we eat it with some sim­ple corn chips, which are handy to just pile food on top, or to crunch on in between fresh goodness.

We have eaten a whole lot of this com­bi­na­tion this sum­mer. A whole lot. As a mat­ter of fact, we have some left overs in the fridge as we speak. We may be addicted.

Quinoa is back in the good books. It is very tasty actu­ally, I dont know what I was think­ing before

________

P.S. Alex Simpson, thank you for the kind com­ment. I am glad you are enjoy­ing your­self around here. And it looks like there wont be much com­pe­ti­tion for the pack, so you never know…