I’ve been travelling overseas for the last five days. I really wanted to cook something for dinner, however, just before I took off for a meeting in Geneva, I’d received an e-mail from a friend and she described an experience with tinned steak and kidney pie.
This friend is a dear person who I’ve known for about eight years through social media. We’ve not met in person, but she is a wonderful human who is dedicated to her children, her partner, and her work.
I don’t often have a meat-free meal, but I was prompted by a comment from Canberra blogging friend Sue on my diary blog. Pumpkin soup is a wonderful winter comfort food. Normally I cook it along with some bacon and cream. I wondered how to make a nice flavourful soup without the meat products so when I saw some coconut cream on special I thought I’d use it along with some sesame oil and some other spices like Sichuan seasoning, cumin and coriander seeds as well as some curry powder.
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Hot and spicy cauliflower and sweet potato soup is a thing. I know cauliflower soup isn’t to everyone’s liking, but the addition of some curry powder, chilli flakes and roasted sweet potato can make a big difference.
This is a Yummy Lummy original recipe.
This slow cooker ham hock is prolonging my porcine cravings. I thought about making pea and ham soup but instead pulled pork from the ham hock with some roughly mashed sweet potato and pickled vegetables.
Here’s a comforting slow cooker ham hock with mashed sweet potato and pickled vegetables meal for one with enough leftover for lunches.
Cut the sweet potato into cubes roughly 1 cm3
Disclaimer
I have no culinary training nor qualifications.
This post is not intended to convey any health or medical advice. If you have any health concerns about anything you read, please contact your registered medical practitioner.
The quantities are indicative. Feel free to vary the quantities to suit your taste.
I deliberately do not calculate energy for dishes. I deliberately default to 500 Calories or 500,000 calories because I do not make these calculations.
This is a gallery of photographs. Click on one thumbnail to open the gallery and then scroll through the photos.
It’s like peanut paste; I always go for crunchy rather than smooth. Smooth suggests fancy. I’m not fancy. Rough is also tough. Rough gonococci, unlike smooth gonococci, can evade the complement system and go on to cause disseminated gonococcal infection (DGI) and create havoc in joints, the heart and occasionally the brain.
Do you like eating ham hock?
Do you like it rough?
Did you ever think I’d mention gonococci in a recipe post?
Crispy pork crackling may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you are pregnant but this week it was salty goodness that had me thinking. I need to back up a bit to explain.
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This post does have a recipe I promise you but it is really written to get any readers who may be pregnant or who are thinking about having children to be very aware of the role of iodine in the intellectual development of children. The role of iodine is important from the time of conception when a zygote forms and an embryo implants, through the gestation and then in the early life as a baby and infant.
This post isn’t a physiology lesson but I’d appreciate if you look up the role of iodine and perhaps visit my other blog where I describe a lecture I attended last week on iodine deficiency and the ramifications for the intellectual development of young Australians. The bottom line is that iodine supplementation during pregnancy is something to seriously consider.
Sources of iodine include dairy products (albeit not as much as previously [see my other blog about that]), bread (because most bread in Australia is made with iodised salt), and iodised salt.
Obviously, too much salt is a problem for heart health, but if you need to add salt, use iodised salt and avoid fancy new age crap like seas salt and rock salt that offer no additional health benefits and may, in fact, be noxious to your health. Iodised table and cooking salt are also usually cheaper.
This is not an advertisement for the Saxa brand
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This is a never fail recipe for getting crispy crunchy pork crackling.
Please note I never check the energy values. I use 500 Calories as my default.
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Crispy pork crackling. This would go well with my Rick and Morty Sichuan Dipping Sauce.
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I usually buy iodised table salt. I have also bought sea salt and rock salt. I reckon the only good use for rock salt is when making something like salted caramel when you want a concentrated hit of salt surrounded by sweetness.
After listening to Prof. Eastman the other night I’ll never buy it again. He reckons the murky colour is due to impurities like heavy metals which may be noxious to human health. I’ll probably also avoid Murray River salt too for the same reason. I mean have to see the crap in the Murray River.
Of course, I want bright grandchildren, not idiots.
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I’m thinking of starting a cooking podcast. I’m happy to receive suggestions.
