Kevin's Watch

As I am in hospital since yesterday morning, I haven't had lunch yet, but I made a nice-looking chicken salad on Tuesday evening from some sous vide chicken breasts SD made for dinner the night before, I believe. SD and Brenda had some yesterday, while I was in surgery.

Was told it came out pretty tasty.

Yes, the chicken salad was tasty.

Dam-sel and Menolly see me clearly and knew that my choice would be to sit and stew in the waiting room the entire time Menolly was in surgery. They were determined to make sure I didn't do that and agreed that at some point Dam-sel would at least drag me outside for a walk, if not lunch and further distractions from what I could not control.

Nevertheless, I was prepared and had packed a small cooler with bread, a container of chicken salad, a knife and a small prep board so I could make sandwiches for Dam-sel and me to eat without leaving.

After five hours at the hospital and two hours after Pam had been rolled into the operating room, Dam-sel prevailed upon me to walk the kilometer to the local Trader Joes where we bought some wine and had an impromptu picnic on a convenient bench, then walked back and waited a few more hours for Menolly to complete post-op recovery and be transferred to her room.

I admit the picnic and walk helped. The wine, frankly, was awful.

Hospital food:

Snack was tuna salad on leaf lettuce and a meat and cheese plate. The tuna salad was OK, but I should have known it would be made with chunk light, rather than solid white albacore. Still, I ate it, as I was hungry. The meat and cheese plate were chunks of dry turkey, and a white cheese and a yellow cheese, also cubed, which didn't taste like any cheese I could place. I had a bite out of one cube of each, and decided to only concentrate on the tuna.

Lunch was Halal lamb meatballs, seasoned with coriander, cinnamon, and cumin. I quite liked the flavor, but the meatballs were way overcooked for my taste, and there was no sauce. I only ate half of one of them, and offered the other one and a half to SD and Dam-sel when they arrived.

The side was lemon quinoa with small Lima or similar beans and cubed carrots. That was much more to my liking. Hot tea with half and half, and another chocolate pudding for dessert.

After lunch, discharge began. So, no more meals in hospital.

Fuck me thats high end snacking .. meal sized snacking and ridiculously amazing lunch fair.

Wonders about the possibility of moving to the hospital and living my remaining days in luxury .. well from a foodie perspective.

Here you get Hospital shit, its awful, everyone hates it, no one wants to ever HAVE to go to hospital and endure it

Good for you

Hell yeah. Whenever I was in hospital as a kid, my mother had to bring me food. Can't eat that hospital slop.

--A

I think thats kinda traditional view of hospitals .. generally.

This hospital is obviously more high end

Maybe thats the pay off .. of not paying for health care down under compared to health care costs in the US

mmm .. had fresh baked bread .. peanut butter and home made apricot jam sandwich for lunch .. yum

Today we had homebaked bread too... 100% whole wheat flour, no-knead bread.

with peanut butter & apple butter on it.

and some red lentils flavored with tomato sauce. mmmm.

HAha isnt fresh home baked bread the level best? Love it.

I totally could never go without bread in all its glorious forms.

Im struggling to see the yum in adding red lentils to your peanut butter bread but ... its a winner combo is it?

One of my favorite lunches for Passover is to spread cream cheese on a board of matzah, cover that with strong grated white horseradish, slice up some jarred gefilte fish to put on top, and then finish with some of the jarred gefilte fish gel.

Today's Passover lunch is my standard cream cheese and gefilte fish sandwich, only made on the fresh matzah meal buns I just baked from my grandmother's recipe, instead of on a board of matzah.


Fresh out of the oven.
The recipe claims to make 12 dinner size rolls. I make half that many for a bun size, and add 10 minutes to the bake time.


Sliced in half.
They're basically a round popover, made with matzah meal.


Yum!

Happy Easter! Chag sameach Pesach! A little late, but Blessed Ostara!
I live in a mixed religious household and I wanted to honor my roommates holiday today, so I made a Dutch Baby, using matzah cake meal. While it did puff, it is a bit more dense than a traditional Dutch Baby, and didn't puff on the sides as much as I hoped. However, it is delicious!

If anyone has any ideas on how to adapt such a recipe to using matzah cake meal, I'm all ears. The recipe I used already calls for 6 eggs, but I'm thinking either more eggs or more milk may be needed to thin out the batter. Or, maybe cut back the matzah cake meal from the 1 cup called for for flour to 3/4 cup...



Fresh out of the oven. It did puff, but not as I expected.


Plated with confectioners sugar (fresh granulated sugar ground in my mini coffee mill/spice grinder so it's k4p.)


A single serving.

Each Easter, my extended family make and enjoy ravioli. This year, it was just us at home, so we made a home video of the making.

Menolly asked me to share it here, so hopefully the link works - making the filling, the pasta and the sauce, with cameos from my kids!

Ravioli Making

The video is awesome, and it is so cool to see you and Eve creating together!

And the link worked great for me.

Fascinating. Learned a few new technique enhancements by watching. Also admiring that roller press. That isn't just for pasta, I'll bet. More sweets than savories?

Agree with Menolly that you two really work well together in the kitchen. The daughter has learned a lot and is well on the way to her own kitchen stardom. She likes the camera more than either of you, I see.

Haha, yes she has never been camera shy

Eve uses the roller for her cake icing as you'd expect - their family acquired it 20+ years ago from a bakery. It took a long time to clean up, but it is one of Eve's most useful tools.

Trev made crumpets for our brunch. Not quite as perfect as his usual recipe but still very tasty

Honeydew Melon Compote

As I just adore semolina but have stopped buying milk I tried using a quarter melon instead. It was OK, could've used a little finesse. Melons have a slight salty aftertaste, so, next time I'll be trying some sweet juicy apples.

If I use melon again I wont break it down so much with a masher, leaving some lumpy bits to chew on.

Yum factor: 3/5

Luke, have you tried subbing either oat milk or coconut milk for the dairy? I've heard good things about doing so, especially regarding oat milk.

Menolly wrote:Luke, have you tried subbing either oat milk or coconut milk for the dairy? I've heard good things about doing so, especially regarding oat milk.

I stopped buying hazelnut milk. It only comes in large cartons and as I won't use a refrigerator it mostly goes to waste. I like the ultra whiteness of coconut milk, but that's the same as ...

You'd be shocked shopping here. I live in one of the larger cities in England and we don't even have a bakers. The corner shops will sell sliced bread, but that's just the processed flavourless stuff, made to last longer. Supermarkets sell freshly baked crusty bread, but I find it difficult to visit the supermarket without spending a ten note.

For lunch/ I had some (supermarket) crusty bread with homemade leek soup. I added a little moong chilka daal and plain white flour for thickening.
Yum factor: 5/5

Used the sweet apples instead of melon. It was good.
The taste of pureed apples is tops; the flavour gets right up into the cheekbones. But apples don't have the water content that melons do, adding hot water dilutes some of the sweetness. It was tempting to add sugar but a dash of cinnamon was enough.

I'll have to figure out better ways to puree fruit. Could only buy Tesco's Pink Lady apples, markets were closed, so maybe other varieties will give better results. With apple, the semolina should've been made first instead of mixing direct with the puree. I almost lost the smoothy texture - a blender might be easier than a wooden spoon.

Yum factor: 4/5