 worth over £70 even with all this cupboard clearing.
Monday I did a nice veggie pasta with sundried tomato paste from the cupboard and vegetables from fridge. Tuesday and Wednesday we had hummus and chickpea burgers which were really nice. Next time I'll add some fresh herbs and chilli for even more taste, but I was surprised that carnivorous husband completely loved Tuesday's meal of leftover veggie pasta and chickpea burgers.
Thursday I did the tinned moose and dry chanterelle tart with my Finnish wild mushroom salad, which we also had on Friday.
Saturday we had a Mexican night with the kids. I made beef with black beans, lime chicken, fried vegetables and we had them with tortillas, tacos, nachos, guacamole, sour cream, salsa and the works. Oh and thin cut mexican spiced oven chips.
Enough food for 4 people?
To my sadness the kids are eating less nowadays. I think they have probably reached their full height which is not a bad thing as they both are about 6'4", but that means their appetites although still good are not as epic as they used to be. Before they would have effortlessly demolished the almost 2kg of meat on the table, but now there were enough leftovers for Sunday and today.
They did eat all the peanut butter biscuits I made - there must have been about 40-50 of them.
I used the leftover chicken and veg for my Sesame chicken noodle recipe on Sunday. At least they scraped that pan clean. And there's enough beef and black beans to make us quesadillas tonight.
I'm going to stop writing pizza on my plan - as long as it's on the plan I never get to make it, it seems.
This week I'm going to continue using things that I have kept way too long in the cupboard, but will also try to make the week quite light. Husband was rubbing his belly the other night and said he'd like to get rid of it. I quite like his belly, secretly I would love to blow raspberries on it, but I don't think he'd find that sexy. It's not a big belly, and a skinny husband is an embarrassment to a wife. Ha! Joking.
We will be having lots of vegetables and fish, less meat and carbs although we'll start the week with meat and carbs.
My biggest regret in my choice of partner is that he doesn't like coriander. Had I known this when we first met I don't know if I'd said yes to the Corona he offered to get me. I fear the lure of those kind brown eyes would have been somewhat dimmed.
Actually probably not. Those days I had no interest in cooking and for all I knew Coriander could have been an artistic movement.
Husband doesn't just not like it, he hates it. It tastes like soap or medicine to him, so I can't sneak it in anything and boy have I tried.
I can deal with our life with no spinach, rocket and sparkling water (spiky water as the little girl masquerading as my husband calls it). But life without coriander is hard, particularly on a Mexican night. It makes you think of the choices you make in life, doesn't it?
I sometimes buy a bunch of coriander, put some on the table in a bowl and add fresh coriander to my food. But so programmed am I to only buy what husband likes that I didn't think to buy any this time.
Mexican food often takes me back to the first time I ever had it. It was 1997 in California. My very good friend used to live in San Francisco and another very good friend and I visited her and her husband who is a born and bred Californian from San Luis Obisbo.
If I was from San Luis Obisbo I would never leave. But I'm not. I'm from motherfucking Toijala, the most depressing little railway junction ever.
My friend and her husband lived in a funky, pretty apartment in the Pacific Heights area. Even the sound of it, Pacific Heights, ooh I can see the sea, hear the waves and taste the strawberry margaritas one of which my friend spilled to my other friends new red suede shoes. But girly friendships are even stronger than a girl's love for shoes, which is saying something.
Anyone who's ever been to San Francisco will know that the Mexican food there is just ridiculously good. It's better than Mexican food in Mexico. Not that I've ever been there, I just know these things. Like that Indian food is better in London than in India. I don't need to go to India either to know this.
The Mexican and Southwestern restaurants where everywhere, I still remember one called Left at Albuquerque, I just remember it because of the name, but I think it wasn't one of the really good ones, more of a chain restaurant, still better than any Mexican here in UK. And there was another one. Not sure if we ate there, it was called Yerba Buena. But I remember for the rest of the 3 weeks we used it as a synonym for "very good".
Coriander or not, our Saturday Mexican fiesta was lovely. Husband's kids were here, so like every Saturday when they come, I cooked us a huge meal. This time is was fajitas and tacos, we all filled our own with what we liked. I made chicken strips with lime, lots of pan-fried veg with lime and a beef and black bean chilli. There was guacamole, salsa, shredded cheese, salad greens, sour cream, jalopenos, nachos and a big oven tray of home-made mexican spiced thin oven fries.
Cut the beef into strips, add the cumin, paprika, garlic, tabasco, chilli, salt and pepper. Mix well and leave for a few hours in the fridge. Take into room temperature and hour before cooking.
Heat oil in the pan and fry the meat in batches, place in a oven proof dish, add tomato pure and water and cover. Place in a 175C oven for a couple of hours until the water has evaporated and the meat is tender. Stir in the black beans, heat through and check the taste.
One of this week's cupboard clearing meals was a tinned moose and dried chanterelle tart. This tinned moose is kind of like Spam I suppose. But maybe a bit nicer. I don't want to knock the war time hero by any means. I've never tried it, so I don't know how fantastic it is.
But this moose thing is 100% moose meat and made a bit juicier with the addition of wild boar fat! How bad can that be? (Asks Ina after a cup of sugar, a cup or butter and a cup or chocolate.) Not very! It's moosey and delish!
At its best it's cold on a butter smeared piece of sourdough rye bread or on a crisp bread. Or just spooned straight to gob from the tin. Holy cardiac arrest!
An observant viewer may detect a spoon mark in the meat.
I remember the cheaper version made of beef and pork, deliciously called "pig-cow", from my childhood. We kids loved it, but usually we only had it during the summer holidays at our little island cabin. It was one of those great reserve foods that would keep in the cupboard for however long. But other than that our parents probably didn't think it particularly healthy. It's kind of seriously processed, salty and fatty. We used to have it on top of crispbreads when we ran out of fresh bread and meat.
That time we didn't have a fridge there as there is no electricity on the island. Nowadays there's a gas fridge, but then the only place to keep stuff cold was a "cellar" under the kitchen floor. There was a hatch on the floor with a large space underneath. A bit like that crazy dude had in the Silence of the Lambs where he kept that chubby girl. But smaller and with shelves on the walls and no kidnapped people inside.
Mum would lie on her stomach on the kitchen floor to reach the stuff on the shelves. She was much more nimble then. If she had to do it now she might never get up again. Like recently when on holiday to Crete the restaurant entertainment crew made her and dad dance Kalamatianos and they were both left traumatised as the dance includes a lot of squatting, which is fine. It's just the getting back up that's a bit tricky when you're pushing 80.
Every once in a while mum forgot to close the kitchen floor hatch and one of us would accidentally fall into the hole while running through the kitchen. So that was exciting. And painful.
Like I said this meat is best cold, but there are a couple of recipes I like to make with it. One is a tart or quiche with mushroom and onion and whatever other veg I'm in the mood of chucking in. The rest of the can originally was supposed to go to my Finnish Pea Soup, but I didn't do that this week, so rest of the meat went to freezer and there may be a Finnish Pea Soup with Moose post appearing at some point.
This tart would be great with rye pastry, but this time as it was cupboard clearing week I used some filo that has been in the freezer for a while. My dried chanterelles had been in the