Kitchen Adventures, and the lessons I have learnt

Joyous Sparks
Aug 17
4 min read

Hello, dear friends. It is the end of the week, the end of the weekend, and it's time for another edition of Kitchen Adventures.

Summer style this time, because for most part of the weekend it was way too hot to even think of standing in the kitchen.

So guess what I made? 😃

That, and other things ~ read below!

So, yes, it was incredibly hot the last week, until about yesterday (Saturday). So the kitchen adventures this week started with dessert, or rather: (n)ice cream!

Shown here in the freezer, and you guys have no idea how utterly delighted I was to discover that I can use my happiness-forms (aka the muffin forms) in the freezer as well! That was happiness doubled!! Wheeeee!!!

So, what do we have here, then?

in the pink form: joghurt-melon icecream (aka 200g of melon thrown into the smoothie maker with 100g of coconut joghurt, some lemon juice and a splash of agava sirup)
in the green(ish) form, it's melon sorbet (aka the same as above, but with lemon juice instead of the joghurt), with lemon zest on top
and in the blue form, it's banana-chocloate (2 ripe bananas, 50g of chocolate powder, some agava sirup, and water as needed)

All made in my lovely smoothie maker, then pooured into the happiness forms and carefully moved to the freezer. Have tried banana chocolate and melon-joghurt so far, and they are both delicious, in entirely different ways.

If the weather decides to hit the 37°C again? I am prepared!

And because a salad is the best thing to eat when it's hot, this is the other thing I made on Thursday, once I had my veggie box delivered:

A loaded carrot salad.

Loaded? Yes, because the dressing is made of protein powder, stirred in tamari, vinegar, ginger juice, and water, and then there are loads of sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, walnuts, and cashew nuts mixed in.

So, yes. It's loaded with protein goodness. 😃

Friday was still too hot to do more than hide indoors, and also eat leftovers from last week.

Saturday was finally a little cooler, and with temperatures going down, the desire for adventures of the culinary type arose.

Now, this week's box was a bit low on veggies. Which I felt a little disappointed about, and also limited what I could creatively do with just three carrots, a zucchini, an aubergine, and some potatoes.

But because this dish is nice both hot and cold, and is alos easy to make, I spent Saturday morning preparing this:

It's oodles of noodles again!

With more carrot, more zucchini, and more sesame seeds than last time. 😃

Still just as nice, tho.

The other thing I prepared:

A gluten-free potatoe bread!

Well, it was an attempt, any anyway. Including 250g potatoes, and the leftover zucchini and carrot from the oodles ~ like, the parts that were left when I'd grated both veggies down to the point that the skin on my fingers would have been next. So I threw the peeler/grater/thingie aside and chopped the remains up with a knife, and mixed them with the potatoes.

Look, the two recipes for gluten-free potatoe bread both called for carrot to be grated in. I thought it could work.

And it did. Kinda?

Well, on Saturday I mixed the dough and then popped it in the fridge to rest over night. This morning, temperatures were still in acceptable range, so I put the bread in the oven.

While that baked happily ~ and started smelling delicious, nomnom ~ I cooked this:

Was supposed to be a yellow-lentil-salad or side dish. But thanks to putting a lot of energy and enthusiasm in ~ it's now lentil sauce. Or a very runny dahl. And yes, that's chili in there ~ chili paste, as well as tamari, a splash of vinegar and another splash of ginger juice.

This will go over yet more noodles:

Glass noodles that I picked up at the supermarket a couple of weeks ago, with the thought: These are gluten free, I'll give this a try.

And, yes, there is also chili in these noodles.

No, I have honestly no clue why I thought it would be a good idea to add chili to both the noodles AND the sauce. Probably didn't think at all. But appearantly, I need hot, spicy food at the moment, soooo ... whatever.

Then I attempted to make crispy aubergine, but I have to face the sad fact: I cannot make things crispy. Tried the oven, instead of the pan, and while the aubergines didn't burn, they also didn't turn crispy. Le sigh.

I will simply have to accept that crispiness is not in me.

... they do taste nice, though, the aubergines from the oven. Maybe without trying to make them crispy ...?

And then, finally ... I also gave up on the bread.

Because while the outside was developing a nice crust, the inside remained very gooey. And when I took the bread out of the form, as the recipe told me, it kind of lost shape.

So I squished it back into the form. And now it looks like this: