Every now and again, I hit upon a dish so lovely and delish that I want to cry when I run out of food on my plate! That happened today.

Because I am #socool, I get both ‘Good Housekeeping’ and ‘Prima’ delivered monthly. Good Housekeeping mostly for recipes and middle aged fashion (poor girls – they look through the fashion pages and delight in low rise block heel shoes on the pages) and Prima because it comes with a free sewing pattern – the size 12 of which fits me perfectly!

So, in October’s Prima, his Holiness JO shared some of his 7 ways recipes which obviously got me very excited! Balancing the ever complex eating needs of the O’D household has killed my cooking mojo somewhat but all I needed was a bit of JOness and since we are about to head back into NEVER GOING OUT AGAIN, getting excited about cooking couldn’t have come at a better time. I’ve been eyeing up a few of his recipes and the salmon po’boy is one I clocked as ‘having potential’.

To add to the cooking inspiration, ‘Eat Well for Less’ is also back on telly and this week’s episode (The MacBeth Family) saw the creation of grab and go breakfast muffins. Cheese and courgette in some and raspberry in the other. I decided to try to cheese and courgette on the small O’Ds in yet another attempt at getting different veg into the ungrateful brats! Blimey – they bloody love them. All three chose a muffin for school snack over crisps (WTF?) and we have flattened the first batch. I told them I would make more and suggested banana and raspberry but got told ‘we want more cheese and courgette’. Seriously…..? Anyway, I’ve made banana and raspberry so kid taste test tomorrow!

So a double recipe treat today! A main and dessert if you will. A breakfast and a lunch perhaps?

Actually three – we tried JO’s sausage and mash pie and while the filling is utterly amazing, potato pastry is crap. I’d just use regular puff or short crust next time! Kids loved the sausage filling but I did use whole grain mustard rather than English.

Right, onto the main recipes!

Cajun salmon po’boy (not po’boy)

• 

Ingredients:

1/2 x 215g jar of sliced green jalapenos

1/2 bunch of coriander (15g)

2 heaped tsp cajun seasoning

4 heaped tbsp Greek yoghurt (I used a non-dairy equivalent)

2 x 130g salmon fillets, skin on, scaled, pin-boned

Olive oil

1 gem lettuce

1 tomato (I used yellow and red ones from the garden)

cucumber

1 x sweet potato

1 x large potato

Method:

1. Mix together 2tbsp yoghurt with the cajun spices. Cut eat fillet in half and then marinade the four pieces of salmon in the yoghurt mix. Set aside until ready to cook
2. Turn oven on to 200 degrees C. Peel sweet and regular potatoes and chop into chunks. Toss in an oven proof dish with olive oil and salt and pop into the oven to roast for 1hr.
3. Put your half jar of jalapenos and half the liquid from the jar into a food processor with the coriander. Blitz to make a salsa. Pop in the fridge until ready to serve.
4. Finely chop the lettuce, tomato and cucumber to make a salad. Dress lightly with olive oil
5. 10 mins before the potatoes are ready to come out, pop a pan on a high heat with some olive oil. Once ready, pan fry the salmon skin down and turn as necessary until cooked through and gnarly (JO word). This takes about 5-6 mins.
6. Plate up! salad, crispy roast potatoes, salmon and then add a dollop of yoghurt to each piece of salmon and a liberal amount of the yummy salsa. Serve with very nice wine

Enjoy – I actually wanted to weep when I finished the salmon with the roast sweet potato and that salsa! OMG good! This is one I will most certainly do again. The marinade will be unbelievable on the braai.

Also, I think the ‘po’boy’ means a sandwich thing. JO does the salmon and salady bits on a baguette but sweet potato is so much nicer.

Grab ‘n Go Breakfast muffins

Ingredients:

1.5 cups of flour

1 cup of oats

2tsp baking powder

1tsp baking soda

1/5tsp salt

1/2 cup castor sugar

1 egg

3/4 cup milk

1/3 cup vegetable oil

2 cups – flavour: cheese & courgette or banana & raspberry or – whatever you want to add. Squeeze the liquid out of courgette or any other very liquidy stuff you put in!

Method:

Preheat oven to 200 degrees C

1. Mix all the wet ingredients in a large bowl
2. Add the dry ingredients and mix well
3. Add your flavour choices and mix well
4. Grease a muffin tray (or use muffin cases) and divide mixture into 12.
5. Pop in the oven for 20 minutes

Try and only eat one at a time! COD failed miserably at this task.

In other news:

• It’s about day 4.36m of Covid-19. The rules continue to change and baffle literally everyone. Christmas has pretty much been cancelled (we have 1 too many kids to be able to have it with my parents), we’ve given up on any kind of away holiday and we all now have our top five friends. To say I am bored with it all would be the understatement of the century. When will this madness end?
• One of the odd rules is that while we cannot have more than the magic 6 people at home, we can meet as a large group of runners and, as long as someone has done a risk assessment and we’ve signed our lives away, we can run together! So, I am doing a lot of running. It’s the new ‘going out’.
• LOD, EEROD and ACOD are all back at school. This is a wonderous thing. They are loving being back and seeing friends and stuff. We are back in the swing of eleventy billion ballet lessons a week too.
• I was back in the office but now probably home again. I continue to love my job and am getting more involved in hosting things live which is a whole level of fun. In case you didn’t catch my recent session, here it is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vH0g6tBKSY&feature=youtu.be
• We are having some pet trouble. Poor Lion-O has been diagnosed with a hyper-active thyroid and I now need to get medicine into a cat twice a day and Simba has had an allergic reaction to flea bites. We also lost Goldy but did gain two snails for the fish tank. All three girls want a dog.