Fruit of the Month: Pineapple

I figured it was about time to do another fruit of the month, since it's been, well, months! The last one I did was the humble avocado. This month  I shall showcase the pineapple! Who doesn't love pineapple?

I noticed the other day that my little pineapple that I took from work had turned yellow all of a sudden! So I decided to cut it off and eat it that afternoon.

Here is a size comparison: a normal mug next to it, and a gigantic pineapple we had bought the same day we went strawberry picking!

We enjoyed it simply stuck on toothpicks with some of the straberry haul. It was quite sweet, if a bit pale.

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A pineapple is actually a bromeliad, taking around 2-3 years to flower and fruit from planting. To grow a pineapple all you have to do is twist off the top and whack in the ground. Mine grew quite happily in a tiny 200mm pot.

I'm sure I took a picture of the flowers but I can't find it! Oh well, this will have to do.

1 cup of raw pineapple provides 2% RDI of vitamin A and Calcium, 131% of vitamin C and 3% iron (source).

We are still going through the giant pineapple from the strawberry farm, and I've been enjoying it at work in a fruit salad with orange, strawberries and kiwifruit. It's my sister's favourite fruit and she's been known to eat a whole one in a day! It hurts my mouth after a little bit so I haven't quite managed that yet :)

There are heaps of things you can do with pineapples. I prefer them as is, but you can always stick it on pizzas, on a kebab stick, in cakes, ice creams, salads, etc. Any ideas?

A day of cooking

I couldn't go to work again today because my car is yes, still broken. And unfortunately my previous assessment of it not costing too much has changed.

So today I decided to cook up food for the week! Mostly as a way to relax, and also to try and make some food without buying anything. It worked :) I even cleaned my oven, organised the crockery cupboard and did all the dishes!

The above picture is tomorrow nights dinner and Friday's lunch. I was inspired to make it after seeing this recipe for Sweet Potato and Black Bean Salad on Oh She Glows. I changed it up a bit to suit what I had, and I sort of mated it with another salad on her blog.

I roasted together 1 diced small sweet potato, 1 large onion and a whole thing of garlic for about 1/2 an hour. I defrosted two can's worth of black beans that I cooked up last week. Meanwhile I was cooking 1 cup of dry wheat berries in 3 cups of water (this took about 40 mins). When it was all done I put the sweet potato, onion, black beans and wheat in a bowl and squeezed out the garlic cloves and mixed it together well.

It's really delicious just like that without any spices or dressing, but I might go with some lime juice tomorrow, and maybe some fresh herbs. I have all sorts in the garden right now. Wheat berries are awesome, by the way. I've never used them before, but now I may never cook rice again! Nah, kidding since rice doesn't take as long! But they are chewy and sort of pop in your mouth. And taste really really good.

I made up some whole wheat pastry on Monday, intending to make these little pies that afternoon but got distracted, so they had to wait until today. Last week I made a large pie with the same filling (red lentils, mushroom gravy, broad beans, peas, tofu) and I made too much filling so I froze it to use for little ones. I think these ones are better than my original 'family' pie! Maybe it's the pastry/filling ratio. I made 6, had two for lunch and froze the other 4 to have as emergency lunches in case I forget to make enough dinner for leftovers.

At the same time I made dinner for tonight and lunch for tomorrow! It's essentially a chana masala type dish. I threw together in my awesome red frypan rescued from mum's house: 1 sliced onion, 4 cloves garlic, 3cm ginger, 1 can's worth of frozen chickpeas, 1 pkt frozen tofu, 1 small carrot, 2 tbsp tomato paste, 400g can crushed tomatoes, 1 tbsp garam masala, 2 tsp coriander seed ground, 1 tsp chilli powder and black pepper.

And so now I'll be doing the dishes I made by cooking while waiting for the mechanic to tell me my stupid car is ready to be picked up.

On the upside, all I have to do all week now is turn on the microwave.

Picnic food :)

A friend of ours made fairy bread1 She was in the photo but I wasn't sure how she'd feel about being on the net.

The weather turned out lovely for my birthday picnic yesterday. We thought it was going to rain a few times but the clouds passed and the sun came out. We sat under some bamboo.

I made mini quiches on Friday night to eat cold. I used the same recipe as I used last time. My family gave me this thing called a pie maker for my birthday - it's basically a sandwich press, but with a pie shape...it's awesome. As you can see, it makes quiches as well! I plan on making various small pies to freeze and take to work, to heat up like a regular 'four n twenties' type dealy.

They turned out brilliantly. This time I put a few blocks of frozen spinach in instead of zucchini.

We were terrorised by a water dragon...he liked Nadine best.

I made the Energising Protein Power Salad from Oh She Glows. So so good. I used pearl barley and black quinoa as my grains. I also added some baby spinach leaves for a bit of green, and some cherry tomatoes because I felt like it.

A friend brought some fairy bread and some egg mini quiches, which she and other friend ate, and other friend brought some tomato bruschetta with toasted olive bread and a green salad. We were too busy eating for me to take photos! I took these ones in the morning before we went.

It was a lovely lunch :) We walked around a bit of the gardens later, and ate cake once the rest of our meal went down.

Picnic!

It was the perfect day for a picnic. Nice and sunny, no clouds, no wind....:) We went to the botanic gardens which I think is my favourite place. I didn't take many pictures of the food because, well, it didn't look that nice. But it all tasted just perfect :)

We made a bush turkey friend:

I wasn't sure if she would actually attack us or not so I had to keep chasing her away. Pretty sure she just wanted our picnic food haha.

The bean salad was probabaly the best part. Definately a good thing to take to barbeques or whereever. I cooked up about a cup of mixed beans - chickpeas, kidney beans and navy beans were used. I coated it in apple cider vinegar and lots and lots and lots of black pepper. I also put in a grated garlic clove and some dill (because that is the herb we have most of in the cupboard at the moment for some reason) and a little bit of cooked pasta.

Another favourite was the olive oil and bread. I went to the bakery across the road in the morning to get a french stick to have with this bottle of olive oil I bought when we were in Tuscany. Pretty sure it's the most amazing olive oil I've ever tasted. (We did a winery/olive grove tour in Italy and I picked it up there. The winery who made this oil also made a fantastic chianti red wine, too. We drank that while we were there).

For the rest of our picnic we had: homemade chickpea crackers, hummous, guacamole (I forgot tomato!), some kiwifruit and some olives. Nadine brought home the olives from work one day for free because they had no label on them. Unfortunately they were the yucky tasteless plain black olives, but I couldn't just throw them away because they were free! Olives! So I decided to marinate them to see if it would make them edible. It did. I put them in a container with red wine vinegar, garlic, black peppercorns, left over brine from a jar of kalamata olives we hada while back (I always keep it to cook with - can pretend your eating real olives) and mixed herbs. They are just fine :) The texture isn't very good, but I think that's one of the main reasons I don't like the black olives in the first place. We didn't eat many, but they will be good to cook in a tomato sauce or something. :)

So our picnic was a success. We sat for ages waiting for the turtles to come out of the water, but they only stuck their heads up :(

The other day I bought these chips on a whim:

Beetroot chips. Ahhh best thing ever. Expensive, though. So I think I'll be attempting them soon. I think beetroot may be in season now so they shouldn't be too expensive. I love beetroot, I think it has to be my favourite root vegetable. I can't eat the canned stuff anymore!

Today for lunch I made this pasta:

It turned out delicious but way too big! We seem to be eating bigger and bigger meals lately so we are trying to make an effort to eat human sized servings of everything. I blame the cold :)

In it is: mushrooms, onion, garlic, spinach, tofu, chili, a mushed up burger patty I found in the fridge and some basil and hummous on top. It was a good meal, but probabaly better to eat for dinner than lunch. Oh well.

I usually do 20min of yoga everyday along with a fair amount of weights work (usually just while I'm waiting for my computer to load each page - yes it's that slow) and I'm now trying to go for a walk daily too. On our picnic there was an incline and I nearly died trying to get up. Very sad. So walking it is. Today I lasted 10 minutes, it's so damn cold! my throat gets so dry within minutes. I drink water, but then I get a stitch! Lose either way haha. I'm sure it'll work out fine. Tomorrow I'll make a bigger effort. Hopefully it's sunnier.