jill dupleix's sesame chicken salad with cucumber and celery

It's an odd sort of day today. We do a lot of little things, but the weather doesn't really play ball until late afternoon, which makes it seem longer than necessary. It doesn't really matter in the morning because we're visiting the Natural History Museum with Kendra, Brian and Finn, so the weather can do what it wants.

It's fairly blowy during our picnic outside the wildlife garden, but starts raining on the way home. And then stops, so I start doing some gardening, and then it starts again - FFS! However, by the end of the day it's lovely, I've hacked out the dead ivy from the back wall which encouraged our resident robins to spend a good 20 minutes hovering about a foot from me, swooping up insects, and Ana has already begun sorting our her holiday wardrobe.

With monkey in bed we have one of our favourite salads, with an exciting bottle of cider we saw in Waitrose yesterday, and justified buying because we didn't buy any muesli. Hmmm, muesli or cider - should we really have bought the booze?

Food of the Milos
Suddenly his gargantuan appetite has withered slightly, which can only be a good thing as we've mainly got salad on the menu.
Breakfast: Nibbles - ham, cheese, apple, and more ham;
Lunch: A roll from the museum and crisps. Luckily for us (although not our waistlines) he wasn't keen on the blueberry muffin;
Dinner: Veggie pasta sauce made with our remaining passata, courgettes, mini broccoli, onions, tomatoes, garlic and spinach all blitzed together and simmered.

sources
sesame chicken salad with cucumber and celery - Jill Dupleix, the Owl Book

fino's chorizo and tomato salad, with bread and goat's cheese

For some reason I've really struggled with what we did today, and it's only just happened.

I know we all had scrambled egg together for breakfast, we pottered around the garden a little bit before going shopping, I burnt Milo's pizzas but I can't remember whether they were for lunch or dinner, and we had Fino's tomato and chorizo salad, with cheese, rosemary sour dough and chilled chilled rose whilst watching Eurovision:

The afternoon though is a complete blank, until I'm putting some of Milo's clothes into the washing and from the ice cream dribbles, my missing hours return. We went to Richmond May Fair! He went on the bouncy castle, the big slide, and a couple of rides, we queued behind Sally Phillips, Milo bumped into one of my least favourite rugby players (it's just jealousy), and we had some more ice creams from Gelateria Danieli. I knew I'd remember...

sources
chorizo & tomato salad - Fino, in Delicious, July 2006, p59

fresh borlotti bean soup alla maruzzara

Friday the 13th - what could possibly go wrong? Nothing, *of course*! If anything it's a demi-great day: It's beautiful, I beat my PB running the 8 miles into the office, I get some amazing eggs from our Head of Marketing's East End chickens, and did I mention it was beautiful? It was beautiful. It's also the beginning of our Canada-countdown. Two weeks to go Harlocks - yay!

We've got more experimental stuff on the agenda tonight; a curious soup from Gennaro Contaldo and Antonio Carluccio's new book, Two Greedy Italians. I'm all for soups generally, and I've been gasping to try something with borlotti beans as they are nothing short of the most beautiful pulses ever, but I was not prepared for the result:

Whilst it *was* tasty, very tasty in fact - like a more delicate version of minestrone, which makes it fairly good for the summer (sorry Sarah) - I was ever-so-slightly disappointed with the colour as the cooking process completely removes the purple whorls and swirls. I might just as well have used tinned cannellini beans...

Food of the Milos
More playdates today, this time with Finn and Kiki in Richmond Park, Nursery of course, and Pheeeeeeebs 1st birthday picnic!

Breakfast: toast and porridge before nursery
Lunch: Party food! Ham sandwiches, crisps, ice lollies and swanky cup cakes from Selfridges. I notice there's not party food for daddies when I get home from work;
Dinner: He had sausages, spaghetti and cherry tomatoes, whilst Finn had the same only with fish fingers rather than sausages.

sources
fresh borlotti bean soup alla maruzzara - Gennaro Contaldo and Antonio Carluccio, Two Greedy Italians, from Delicious, June 2011, p38

donna hay's pasta with cherry tomato sauce

Even colder cold, smokey and oily gravlaks and pasta salad does not a divine lunch make. Double urghs all round! Still, it is another lovely day, and I'm demi-inspired by our burgeoning tomato plants to fire up Donna Hay's classic pasta with cherry tomato sauce. There's not enough for Milo's dinner tomorrow though. Oh dear, how sad.

With dinner rather swiftly out of the way - ahh the delights of eating at the table, the conversazione! The rose! - I spend the rest of the evening soaking borlotti beans. Jazzy!

Food of the Milos
More witchery today AND Little Kickers, but still curiously little appetite. The usual snacks apply.
Breakfast: Porridge and honey, toast;
Lunch: Pasta with veg and tomato sauce, banana and chocolate mousse;
Dinner: Sausages, spaghetti in tomato sauce.

sources
pasta with cherry tomato sauce - Donna Hay, Instant Cook, p58

bill granger's poached salmon and orzo salad

What to do with the remaining whale-like portion of home-made gravlaks Hannae brought over? There's only so much salmon and rye bread snacks and scrambled egg and salmon-based breakfasts one can have over a couple of weeks, so we go for broke and try and use the entirety up in Billy G's poached salmon and orzo salad:

I fear it was only mildly successful. You can only slice the salmon so thinly, and even then it's too smokey and oily for the rest of the salad.

Food of the Milos
A hearty day of being witches and watching Calamity Jane strangely did not begat a raging hunger:
Breakfast: Porridge, honey and toast;
Lunch: Chicken and veg, custard;
Dinner:

sources
poached salmon and orzo salad - Bill Granger, Holiday, p14

peter gordon's yellow courgette, chickpea, red onion, chilli, watercress and feta salad

How pretty is this?

The recipe calls for yellow courgettes, which I've planted and have finally sprouted, but I couldn't wait another month or so until they'd grown, flowered and produced fruit, so we had it with normal green ones instead.

Like the pea, broad bean, fennel and roasted sweet potato salad last week, this was totally not what I expected - but in a completely good way.

First up, it was really easy to make. Seriously, dead quick - I had it all done within about 20 minutes. The courgette, onion, chilli and feta mixture has a moreish curry quality which is quite earthy, and very filling. The courgettes were most surprising thing, particularly as I don't like courgettes. Well I don't hate them, they're just a bit boring, but thinly sliced and blanched in salted water for 30 seconds tops, they become sort of courgette tagliatelle, and are quite delicate. All in all, double yum!

Food of the Milos
Gymnastics, walks in Richmond Park and a visit from Kiki and Finn - it's a busy old day for Ana and Milo today. He also drunk about 10 litres of elderflower and apple juice.
Breakfast: An apple, cheese and toast (which he decided he didn't like as it had "nuts" in, so Ana had to eat it. However he ate the same bread in sandwiches later - ha!), and a boiled egg before gymnastics;
Lunch: A Gingerbread teddy bear post-gymnastics, ham sandwiches and a fruit ice lolly. Snacks and an orange Calipo in Richmond Park;
Dinner: Sausages, broccoli, mini-sweetcorn, and cherry tomatoes for dinner with Finn, who had fish fingers.

sources
yellow courgette, chickpea, red onion, chilli, watercress and feta salad - Peter Gordon, Salads: The New Main Course, p56

pancetta-wrapped salmon with griddled asparagus and lime creme fraiche

Discovering I had a puncture as I was going out the door this morning means tonight's plans have to be put on fast-forward if I've got any chance of a) getting home early to have the promised pre-bed bath with Milo, b) fix the puncture and c) get some blogging done, and all before d) the Glee Gaga special starts at nine.

As it is, I only get b) and c) completed but I've promised to get home early tomorrow for the bath, I can watch Glee tomorrow at work, and the pressures of time mean we get to eat this super fresh and healthy salmon dish Ana cooked back in February, with a glass of rose together. You can just feel the pounds dropping off!

Actually Lucyfer cooked this recently so it was already in the back of mind when Brenda turned up with half-a-hundredweight of asparagus over Easter. Sadly our crops were from the IoW Brenda, although I did use your patented snapping technique on them...

Food of the Milos
He's got nursery *and* a playdate today, so his powernap on the way back from Greg and Amanda's yesterday might just come in handy.
Breakfast: Chocolate porridge;
Lunch: Dried mango and apple on the way back from nursery, then he once again proved his gannet credentials when Sam came over with her two - sausages, broccoli, sweetcorn and Thomas pasta shapes, a fruit juice ice lolly, then pillaging smoked salmon from his mother's plate. Then another lolly, this time a Mini-Milk;
Dinner: Homemade Hawaiian pizza, a yoghurt tube, and more nibbles - dried mango, pineapple, salami and ham.

sources
pancetta-wrapped salmon with griddled asparagus and lime creme fraiche - Delicious, June 2010, p23