Waterproof mascara & writing

Last year my younger brother fell down the stairs of his home in Cambodia and died. Just like that he was gone.  Two months later my inspirational and wonderful aunt gracefully gave up her 10 year fight with cancer. Two months after that my grandmother died of being 104.  Two months ago the baby I was carrying died.

Apparently all this death has led me to an existential crisis and in order to recover a sense of equilibrium (and stop crying at inopportune moments) it will help to write about it.  So here I am...writing.  Really only wanting to write about cooking.  Because I like cooking.  I don't like crying. Or my family dying.  Or being afraid of the rest of them dying. All the time.

Any hoo..what have I learnt from all this death?  Wear waterproof mascara.  Really.  And that no matter how good a person you are, absolute bollocky shiite will happen to you.  Really. 

Cheery stuff no?  But, on the plus side I will also post recipes that are easy, usually healthy and delicious.  Except this one which is delicious but not really healthy; just plain old comfort food, because I needed it.

Comfort Pie

• 1 small BBQ chicken - remove skin & bones and chop up meat
• 1 large leek - sliced
• 2 large potatoes - cut into small cubes (1cm cubes0
• 2 tbs olive oil
• 1/4 cup flour
• 1 tin creamed corn
• 1 1/4 cups chicken stock
• 2 sheets frozen puff pastry
• 1 egg - blended
• Salt & Pepper to taste

1. Heat olive oil in large pan and saute leek & potato for about 5 minutes
2. Remove from the heat and stir through the flour to coat all the veggies
3. Gradually stir in the chicken stock and return to heat.  Bring to boil
4. Turn down heat to a simmer and add creamed corn & chicken and simmer for 5 minutes
5. Transfer mixture to a pie dish and top with thawed puff pastry
6. Brush pastry with egg and cook at 180C until pastry is golden

Sometimes you just need pie

My husband has been a super trooper as I force my entire family to eat my healthy eating experiments. He has supported my daughter's vegetarianism, my endless salads and some dubious experiments with quinoa so tonight I made him a chicken, corn & potato pie. Good old fashioned stodgey food. He loved it and it was easy so YAY. Pie of love sounds wrong but that is what it was :-)

And photos too? This is awesome!

Garlicky Zucchini Noodle Vegan Salad - this was fantastic

FW: Testing, testing, read all about it!

 

I love learning new things! Even when I don’t understand them at all…if I can actually post blogs by emailing them to myself that is MAGIC! No other explanation.

 

The thing about healthy eating...

Is that it just gets easier the more you do it.  Really.

I have been cooking and eating 'healthy' for a while now and some might accuse me of being a healthy eating smarty pants (which I might be) but I know for a fact that anyone can learn to eat better.  I know this because my daughter recently became a vegetarian.  And I found this challenging.  Very challenging.

When I first started trying to cook her things for dinner my ideas list would look like this:

• salad
• lentils
• salad with lentils (gross)

But with a bit of perseverance and a lot of help from Pinterest I have got better at vegetarian food and now even the two committed carnivores in the family enjoy Meat Free Monday and the occasional other vegetarian meal.

So see, if an old healthy-eating-smarty-pants like me can learn new eating tricks, then so can anyone!

I am new to blogging so until I figure it out you can follow my adventures in healthy eating here:

https://www.facebook.com/HealthyEating100Awesome

Eat fresh!  Anna