More Food Adventures

So obviously cooking is my current obsession - last weekend Noodles was out most of the time at sleepovers and birthday parties, so I just pottered around in the kitchen, doing my thing. It was lovely and relaxing. I've also been experimenting with dinners from Pinterest recipes, mostly with success, though I made some zucchini cakes last night (don't have a pic - forgot) that were okay but nothing speccy. I'd probably make them again just because they're super easy and would suit a lazy weekend lunch, but I wouldn't say they're anything amazing.

One thing I will be making again though is crock pot chicken. I was a bit skeptical about this one - I couldn't see how it could possibly brown in a crock pot, and I was convinced that either the pictures had been doctored, or the chicken had been browned under a grill after cooking or something. But all I did with this was rub the spices over it and throw it into my crock pot for the day, and this is how it came out:

It was sooo good. Falling off the bone tender. In fact, it fell apart when I tried to lift it out of the crockpot, which is why that picture is a plate of chicken pieces, and not a pretty, whole chicken.

I also did some muffins for the freezer to use in lunch boxes - these are white chocolate and passionfruit, and though they don't look very exciting, they smelled and tasted ahmaaaaazing. Straight to the pool room.

On Saturday I made slow cooked bolognese, which is essentially normal bolognese in a slow cooker with less liquid. It worked beautifully, and I freezed half of it and used the other half to make lasagne. Mmmmm... lasagne....

For lunches I made these Mac and Cheese Spinach Muffins. They're okay, but I'd put more flavourings in them next time - they were a little bland. Great idea for lunch though. I'd definitely make them again but just fancy them up a bit.

If you like oatmeal, I cannot recommend this baked oatmeal highly enough. It was really easy to make, pretty healthy (maple syrup notwithstanding - lots of fibre, though), and tasted delish. This is going to be a weekly thing, I reckon. We got 6 serves out of it, so that was breakfast for the first 3 days of the week.

And finally, if you are a cake person, or a lemon person, or both, you must try this blueberry and lemon cake. OH. MY. GOD. It's got mega amounts of sugar in it - a cup in the cake, a third of a cup in the syrup, a cup of icing sugar in the glaze - but the lemon cuts through it so it's not particularly sweet. And it's very rich so you only need to eat a little bit of it. Of course, you may not be able to but that's not my responsibility.

I don't make cakes very often because there's only two of us and we can't normally eat it before it goes stale, but because of the syrup this one kept beautifully for days. We ate the last of it last night and it tasted just as good as when I made it on Sunday. It probably would have kept for another couple of days, if we'd been able to stay away from it.

So, fridge and freezer are packed and I don't need to do any food shopping this week. Huzzah! It's looking like a pretty miserable weekend coming up weather-wise, so I might just do more cooking and baking.