Learning to cheat

The older I get, the more I love time-saving, labour-saving ideas for cooking.

I’ve been lured into the world of frozen vegetables and marvelling at how quick it makes meal preparation and how little waste  it produces. No more wilting or soggy vegetables in the drawer of my fridge. I hope our worms in the compost heap won’t get hungry now I’m not feeding them as much.

Mind you, I still can’t resist buying a bunch of fresh buk choi (Chinese cabbage) and as soon as sugar peas drop in price, I have to have a few handsful of those. I ALWAYS have frozen peas as an absolute necessity for a quick wok of fried rice. My husband always has bags of No Name mixed vegetables to make up his dog’s Roo, Rice and Vegie meals. I’ve found I can sneak some of those mixed vegetables into a pot of winter time soup, or to add to a white sauce to go with lamb shanks or some salmon steaks. One of my daughters swears by the frozen green beans which she uses for a Chinese dish comprised of minced pork or beef stir-fried in a hot wok so that the beans actually get a slight char to them.

There are several varieties of Asian stir-fry vegetables but at the moment I’m loving the ones labelled ‘Thai’ because they have water chestnuts,  baby corn and sugar peas in amongst the mix.

I’ve also bought ready-made coleslaw (just the shredded vegetable mix - no dressing on it) and used it the other day to make a quick  Vietnamese-type salad. Because we were eating the salad with pork, I added some grated apple to the mix. (The compost worms would’ve loved the apple cores to munch on).

INGREDIENTS for a Vietnamese-style dressing

2 tbsp lime juice

2 tbsp rice vinegar

¹/₄ cup fish sauce

¹/₄ cup peanut oil 

1 tbsp white sugar

¹/₄ cup hot water

1 large garlic clove,  finely chopped

1 red chilli, deseeded then very finely minced

To top the salad off . . . 

¹/₂ cup peanuts, roasted unsalted chopped

bunch of roughly torn coriander and mint

 Glen