some weird celery rice mushroom medley

Recipe is heavily adapted from Quick-Braised Celery from Delia. I thought it was going to be interesting to eat braised celery for dinner since I have a pack of celery waiting to be eaten in the fridge anyway. The recipe called for carrots and I don't have any, so I omitted it. I also didn't de-string the celery because I believe it'd retain more fibre that way. When I was halfway through simmering I added the mushrooms as an almost-last minute impulse, just to get a bit more vegetables into the meal though I don't think you can see it in the photo. Then I realised that I used way too much water for the stock, so my really last minute impulse was to add the rice - to absorb the excess liquid and plus, I grew up eating rice with pretty much everything anyway. It kinda turned the braised celery into a one-pot meal. Turned out pretty delish, except that I used dried parsley cos I don't have fresh parsley.

red lentil soup with runner beans

This is an excuse for me to use up all the vegetables that's been sitting in my fridge for far too long. This time it's runner beans turn to go, along with the rest of the salsa! I'm pretty sure it's gone off long ago, but not enough to go moldy or toxic ;). Plus, I love lentil soup, green or red - cheap, nutritious and filling! I like it so much, I even took two pictures of it!

and a closer shot

The onions are there because I of course fried up some onions(and garlic and salsa) as a base for this soup. I also put in some 'country vegetable mix' consisting of red and green split peas, red and green lentils, pot barley, pearl barley, some other dried veg and pasta to give it chewier/more interesting texture.

Now, about runner beans. I have to admit that I don't even know that such a thing existed until when I saw this pack on the shelf! I also obviously didn't read the package instruction carefully - I only read about having to cook the beans throughly before eating and boiling for 5-6 minutes before I dived straight in. I chopped off the ends and the rest into rectangular pieces as you see in the soup. I thought that the beans were just OK - not impressive, but when I had my first bite of the seeds inside - oh my god, delicious! Then I looked up the entry in Wikipedia - only the seeds are meant to be eaten. Doh! I'm just that stupid sometimes :/

However, all in all very tasty. I can eat lentil soup all day long and still wanting more.

Israeli-ish salad

ok this is meant to be my take on the Israeli salad which consists of cucumber, tomato, red onion, lemon juice, et cetera.. I have two packs of tomatoes but I want to save them for curries and pasta sauce, and I have quite a few packs of salsas sitting in the fridge for way too long than it should so I used that instead of tomatoes. This is how it looks like - in a plastic container cos I made it last night.


didn't turn out too great, or even good. Obviously the salsa had been in the fridge for way too long. I even put in some sultanas in a hope to make this salad more tolerable, but in the end I just ate the cucumbers and am now planning to make some kind of soup out of the rest of the ingredients. Can't bear to throw this away, that's why :p

pseudo-indiany fried rice

I have some tomatoes rotting in the fridge cos I got them like, almost a month ago because it was so cheap (I worked at M & S - they give us cheap food). To my horror when I opened them most of them are moldy! I took the salvagable ones and stir fried it with some onions, added rice and some tumeric and LOTS of Jamaican spice mix. I also added a lot of raisins because I like raisins in my fried rice - it's a Thai thing I think... I don't know. Anyway, it came out way way spicy, which is great for winter and clearing your nostrils I guess :D

vegetable curry

This is what I ate today (finally!). It's vegetable curry from Marks & Spencer. Surprisingly enough for Marks & Spencer, it is vegan (95% of their vegetarian stuff are chock full of cheese, cream, butter, milk, eggs and sometimes all of the above).
Again I ate it with basmati rice.

I would highly appreciate any tips on photography :/.

tofu stir-fry

I have a pack of Cauldron's marinated tofu that's been sitting in the fridge for ages! From experience, tofu so doesn't keep well, so last night I decided to do something with it for dinner. I stir-fried some vegetables (leek, long bean-thingies and something else I can't remember), poured half a jar of sweet and sour sauce in and ate it hot with basmati rice. Delicious! I was so hungry, I forgot to take a photo of it. Good thing that there was so much of it that I had to refrigerate some. This is from the refrigerated batch. he he.

surprise first food entry!

this just shows how long I've been planning to make a food blog but never got round to it! When I turned on my camera I'm surprised to find it there. This is taken in October last year and apparently I've forgotten about it. It's farfalle pasta with tomato sauce with some red onions and lots of Sheese. If I remember it correctly it's mature cheddar style.


Lots of vegans rave about Sheese, but I'm not too crazy about it. First of all, it doesn't melt (big minus points from me) and the consistency is a bit like wax. Plus, it's not exactly that cheap.