Experiments in Cooking

My son is SO stuck in a rut when it comes to food! There are only a few things he'll eat, and if it's the same sort of thing at another person's house he won't eat it. Only mine. (Anti-social behaviour that we're hoping to cure one day...). For our main meals we subsist on pasta (with a tomato sauce, pesto and cheese), potatoes-sossies-salad (with vegetarian "sossies" / hotdogs) and salad burgers most days. Now and then I'll slip some roast potatoes, soup or pies past him, but sometimes he'll flat out refuse to eat those too! He lives on bread, cereal and muffins/pancakes (usually for supper).

All of which I'm hoping to change.

I picked up a few food magazines at the discount shop on Friday - 3-6 months out of date, but who cares. One Australian, one UK, one American ("Donna Hay", "delicious" and Martha Stewart "Living"). Although we're vegetarian, there are some darned good dishes in there, and it's time to experiment!

We're somewhat limited by what's in our cupboards. The price of food is horrendous here in SA, leaving us only wishing for items like cream cheese, phyllo pastry, real butter/cream, bottled sauces and little bits like capers. We have to stick to the cheap basics in most cases. HOWEVER, my veggie garden is bursting with things that will be ready to eat in the next week - zucchini, a came-outta-the-compost-heap gemsquash, Roma tomatoes, strawberries, various herbs, green beans and beetroot. Thank goodness! At a weekend veggie shop stopover I was able to wave at those items in passing, knowing mine are not only fresher, but organic - and taste a whole lot better than the wilted shop variety.

It being summer, now is a good time to go fresh and light and tasty, setting the norm for those winter months when only heavy sticky puddings and lots of potatoes will do.

I did a quick browse through my new mags yesterday (and a couple of old ones). There's a meal in the making: rosemary whole-wheat bread, grapefruit and mint dressing over spinach salad (fresh from the garden for both spinach and mint), Greek bean stew, and for dessert a nice strawberry sponge pudding. We made ginger beer yesterday, so that's on tap, along with fresh lemonade from the under-harvested campus trees.

Now all I have to do is convince the child to eat it....