Belated Menu Planning

I've been doing a bit of recipe experimenting this week.  Not because I have time - I don't really, between work and my Uni semester beginning yesterday.  However, the long preparation time recipe happened on Sunday, and the other one was literally a 10 minute go-to-woe effort.

On Sunday it was Maggie Beer's pork and apple pasties.  Rather than the gluten free pastry I went with her sour cream pastry, which is always just perfect.  I ended up making mini pasties and with the leftover meat I made sausage rolls using some pastry I had in the freezer.  These were really zingy and tasty, with ingredients I'd not normally associate with pasties.  Like currants.  I used some fresh granny smith apples we'd be given at church - there's another whole post there so I'll come back to that one another time - and I didn't soak the fruit in verjuice.  I just used water.

The other thing I tried was for lunch today - a spur of the moment thing for a beautiful friend who came for a visit with her gorgeous little boy.  We had a magnificent time together, topped off with me using her as a guinea pig for a new recipe I wanted to try....I do love her.  Really!!  And I wonder, how far wrong can you go when prawns are involved anyway?  The recipe came from a book from The Spirit House.  THE place to go, apparently, if you're on the Sunshine Coast and hanging about near Yandina.  It's a Thai glass noodle, prawn and chicken salald with a lime and fish sauce-based dressing.  VERY yummy.  Although Mr Busy left the noodles.  That's ok...I'll make them into something for my lunch tomorrow.

We're trying my nephew's favourite chicken curry coconut soup tonight.  Oh how adventurous we are.  I'm only trying this because I trust my nephew.  Not because I looked at the recipe and thought "Oh, my life will not be complete if I don't have a go at that one".    As for the week's menu at a glance?  Here it is:

Monday:  Honey lemon chicken, vegies (Maggie's Kitchen p.122)
Tuesday:  Coconut chicken soup
Wednesday:  Pasta bolognaise
Thursday: Pumpkin & sweet potato soup
Friday:  Roast chicken, vegies
Saturday:  Gnocchi with roasted tomato sauce
Sunday:  Lasagna

A note on the gnocchi....I tried the pan fried gnocchi from a recent Masterchef Master Class episode.  My brother also, quite independently tried the same recipe.  We don't like it and we're both going back to our tried and true's.  Mine is from the good old Australian Women's Weekly.  You just can't beat them!