Kitchen Sunday

I've instigated, as part of the recovery from 'The Great Slump' at least one 'at home' weekend day in a fortnight.

I think after today's raging success I will also be blocking my calendar once a month for 'Kitchen Sunday'.


Kitchen Sunday is spending a whole day in the kitchen cooking and baking food that will mostly be frozen or put away for use in the following month.

On the Menu for This Kitchen Sunday

Pumpkin Soup 
Made 4 services.  I ate one for lunch (gotta reward yourself for the effort involved in Kitchen Sundays!) and put the other three in the freezer for meals.

3 frozen meals. 













Pumpkin Gnocchi
Oh!  I had forgotten the previous lesson about how fiddly and annoying making gnocchi is!  But nevermind, now I have 4 meals frozen.



4 frozen meals.












Beef Casserole
This is still cooking in the slow cooker.   This casserole is filled with tasty things like, swedes, potatoes, onions, carrots, celery, fresh thyme, diced beef and mixed soup beans.  My bet is this will make probably 6 meals to freeze.



6 frozen meals.









Spiced Pumpkin seeds
This is really a case of waste-not-want-not.  The seeds were saved from the butternut pumpkin used for the soup and gnocchi.   First I washed off all the gunk, boiled them for 5 minutes then tossed them in a mix of spices and baked them while preheating the oven for roasting the gnochi pumpkin.


Snack in the pantry. 








1 Loaf Bread - lunches for the week.
1L yogurt - lunches for the week.
Sweet Spiced Cashew Biscotti - for lunches.

 Tuna, Silverbeet & Chickpea Creamy Pasta
This self created recipe made 3 very generous meals.  I ate one tonight, saved one for tommorrow's dinner and froze one.


1 saved and 1 frozen meal.

• 250g dried pasta
• 10g butter
• 1tsp olive oil
• 5 grape tomatoes, sliced
• 2 stems silverbeet, leaves sliced/shreded thinly, stems sliced thickly
• 1/3 cup of reconstituted dried chickpeas
• 300g canned tuna, drained and flaked.
• 1 rounded tsp of wholeseed mustard
• 100ml cream
• 1/4 cup sour cream
• 1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

Boil the water for pasta while preparing vegetables.   Add pasta to boiling water and cook until al dente.  Drain and add to sauce.

For sauce - melt butter and oil in a frypan.   Add silverbeet stems and tomatoes.  Fry these for a few minutes then add the silverbeet leaves and chickpeas and mustard seeds.   Fry for a further few minutes.  Add tuna, cream and sour cream.  Stir through well and reduce heat.  Once the sauce is almost warmed entirely, add parmesan cheese, stir through.

 (Note the chickpeas were dried and I reconstituted them by soaking them in boiling water twice during the day.  They retained more flavour and texture than chickpeas from a can.  You could use canned chickpeas however I think that the firmness of the chickpeas really add to the meal and would recommend trying reconstituted ones if you can!)



Anyway folks,  I'm still in progress for Kitchen Sunday - I have yet to finish my biscotti!  I'll add photos once they're done too!