Revisiting a few Favourites

Sun and Snow Saturday

Today is a beautiful day for so many reasons. First, you wake up to a white snowy field and a sunny blue sky. It's sooo beautiful, it makes me glad that we have winter here and that sometimes it can be so nice. Then Hub took the kids to ski at Monte Cimone, leaving me alone to enjoy my shower with nobody screaming at me or asking me for something while I'm in it. Finally, a few dishes that I have started preparing yesterday are now ready to be cooked and consumed at my leisure. With no competition, this is no jungle today but a zoo.

Hub, as you know, is on another one of his countless diets. I still remember the first one he went on when we were living in Spain and that was the Cabbage Soup Diet. Cabbage soup for days and weeks - and not a gram lost. And what does cabbage do to one? I leave that to your imagination.

Prawn Noodle Soup (with thin spaghetti and thick rice vermicelli)

This week, I made him different soups every day and last evening he wanted to make his own salad. With tuna, fennel, radicchio, artichoke, cooked prawns and one of his very good dressings. I took the opportunity to collect the prawn heads (he must be wondering why I was so kind as to peel his prawns for him) and make myself a soup base for Prawn Noodle Soup. That I'm right now enjoying as I blog.

Char siu

Then, I also marinated my filet mignon yesterday so that I may make some Barbecue Pork today. I had visions of char siu noodles, fanchoi and char siu fried rice, and coming across filet mignon at Lidl last Monday before we were snowed in was a sign. SIG made a batch recently and the Dutchess left a comment about cooking hers in the pan - which I thought was a good idea so I combined both oven and pan cooking and made mine this way today.

Baked in the oven and then grilled in a pan

I will now take out the wash and hang everything out to dry (on the heaters). And then maybe I'll watch a Korean movie. In fact, I do not need to go away from time to time. I just need them to go away and let me enjoy my own home for a few hours (with nobody to dress up, no chauffering to do...). And then it'll be time to fix the kids a simple dinner and get ready for the "Gran Gala". We may be on Italian TV tonight for all you know. Hope not. I'm not fit to be seen.