Tag: recipe

Easter lunch and more puzzling

Jigsaw puzzle update:

Jigsaw progress

I don’t think we’ll get this finished by the end of the long weekend on Monday night!

Today being Easter Sunday, we had a lunch with my wife’s family. Just six of us, since one nephew and girlfriend had gone down the coast for the long weekend, while the other nephew and girlfriend were actually departing Norway today for their move to New Zealand.

Lunch is a traditional roast: lamb, vegetables, with gravy. I’m not a big fan of gravy though, and my wife’s mother has learnt to bring out things like mustard and pickles for me, which I much prefer. Afterwards of course there was plenty of chocolate, plus a delicious cannoli cake that my brother-in-law had made.

Easter dessert

The cake was so good that I asked where the recipe was from, and he said it was from the Smitten Kitchen website. I’m going to try making this some time to share with my friends on a games night. (And I just noticed you can see Scully in the background, top left corner of that photo.)

Now it’s well after dinner time and I haven’t eaten anything because I’m still full from the lunch…

New content today:

Ad-libbing dinner

It’s Monday, and the start of another week in COVID lockdown. My wife is working from home, while I had an online ethics class at 9:00 this morning. The issue was that she is set up on the dining table, which is behind me when I’m doing my Zoom lessons, so the kids would have been able to see her. So I used a background replacement to hide her and the room. This was the last lesson of media bubbles – I start a new topic with the next lesson, which will be on stealing.

Today I mostly worked on Darths & Droids, writing and producing a full 3 strips, a week’s worth. Which is pretty productive – that takes several hours of work.

For dinner tonight I tried ad-libbing a recipe, based in a quick glance of something on a cooking show I saw on TV. I basically just saw sweet potatoes, cut in half, with the inside scooped out, and stuffed with… something, I couldn’t’ tell what. I decided to go for a stuffing of mixed beans (kidney, lima, chick peas, and something else – it was a can of “4 bean mix“), fresh corn cut off the cob, and chopped cashews. I made up the recipe basically from scratch.

Sweet potato stuffed with beans, corn, and cashews

It turned out really good! My wife loved it and asked if we could have it again another day. Here’s my recipe:

Ingredients

  • 1 large sweet potato
  • half a can of “4 bean mix” or similar, kidney beans, pinto beans, etc
  • half a cob of corn kernels
  • about 1/3 cup cashews, coarsely chopped
  • cumin
  • sweet paprika
  • cinnamon
  • a small chilli

Method

  1. Wash the sweet potato and slice in half lengthwise. Bake at 240°C for… I thought it would take maybe 20 minutes, but it was more like 40-45. Until soft enough that you can scoop the middle out, leaving boats.
  2. Meanwhile mix the beans, corn, and chopped cashews. Season with ground cumin, paprika, and a little cinnamon and salt. I also added a small chopped chilli.
  3. Save the scooped out sweet potato for another day. Spoon the bean mix into the boats, drizzle with olive oil. Bake at 180°C for 10 minutes.

I just served it with some steamed broccoli, but you could do it as a side for a meat dish if you wanted, or make it a vegetarian main with something else on the side.

New content today: