One BBQ chicken over 3 meals (and an awesome lemon sauce!)

If you were anywhere in Australia last week you’ll know that it was hot. Freakin hot! I’m talking country-wide extreme heat.

Heat = lazy.  Cooking is an effort in this weather, so I’ve been sticking to the lazy and quick kind of cooking I mentioned here. Hey, at least I’m cooking at all!

Thursday night we picked up a BBQ chicken from the take-away store, but decided to forgo the chips for salad (I know. It nearly killed me). There’s a fruit shop next to the chicken shop so we had no excuse. We grabbed a couple of ingredients and I made a salad. Dinner, done.

No photo of that one. It was just a BBQ chicken and salad guys.

It’s the next two days that count.

Since I now had a few extra fresh ingredients on hand, I decided an easy way to use up the leftover chicken for dinner on Friday night was to make fried rice.

Let it be known that stripping a chicken is my absolute least favourite food/kitchen related job! Ever.  Manny from the TV show Blackbooks seems to enjoy it though, watch this for a good laugh!

It’s been a while, let’s get foodie… Lazy foodie.

It’s been a few posts since I’ve written about food. To be honest I haven’t really felt like, shock horror, cooking. I started back at work on the 6th, although I can’t really say I worked. It was super dead and I was left at 2pm every day. Instead of work I’ll call it ‘killing time until I could do my own thing’. Thus, I have still felt like I am on holidays.

For some reason, other than Christmas, holidays don’t really sound like cooking dinner every day to me. I know, I should be using my extra time to try some new complicated and time consuming recipes. But it’s too damn hot! I just want food put in front of me lately.

But being lazy or time poor is no excuse not to put something yummy, and reasonably healthy on the table. There’s so much you can do with just a little time – Here’s some of the 5-10 minute meals I’ve made recently while trying to avoid cooking as best I can.

Frozen bananas = banana ice cream. It’s a thing!

You might have heard about it. You might have never heard of it and after reading the headline just thought “I don’t like banana’s that much anyway”. Neither of those things are any reason to stop reading! I have news for you:

Frozen bananas make the most beautiful creamy ice cream you’d think it was from a soft serve machine. No seriously… It’s legit. And funnily enough – its not even that banana-ry. Read on my hungry friends…

RECIPE – Ratatouille

Dear Sydney, Spring can come back now, please and thank you.  We’ve totally been thrown back into the depths of winter over the last few days, and it’s no fun for anyone. Even Smokey was having a whinge that she couldn’t go outside.  In weather like this, there’s nothing do be done but camp out inside and eat cosy food. Last night’s dinner was definitely cosy!

A grilled chicken breast with burnt butter and sage sauce, topped with ratatouille. It was my first time making ratatouille and I can safely say it’s going to be a staple for us next winter. It’s so easy, healthy, delicious and could easily be the basis of many meals. (I know, I know, ratatouille is supposed to have eggplant in it, but that’s not my favourite). 

RECIPE – Summer Surf and Turf

So yesterday around 10:30am, the hubs messages me with something along the lines of there’s an event on tonight (a big dinner and industry awards night) and his work are not going for the first time (Ben had assumed they were going and amped himself up for it). “I’m a little upset about it” he said “so with that in mind, I’d like a super nice dinner :) happy to go and buy any ingredients you need”. Next message “PLEASE! Super nice dinner please :) xx”

RECIPE – Warm chorizo, bacon and spinach salad

Last nights dinner… nailed it!

Doing groceries online this week however – didn’t exactly nail it.  Somehow I ordered 5 bags of spinach and rocket mix. $14 worth. I swore I didn’t and it must have been delivered by mistake… but there it was, in all its legitimate glory on the invoice, 5 x spinach and rocket mix.  So I’ve had a week of salads at work, and last night thought I’d keep the salad thing rolling. Especially considering yesterday was a thousand degrees (and the worst bushfire day in NSW in the last decade!)

RECIPE – Balsamic Carrots and Cous Cous Salad

Balsamic Carrots and Cous Cous Salad … yes please!

Getting home late from work always throws my cooking schedule off. I struggle with creativity and don’t even enjoy cooking on those nights… I just want something quick and easy so I can sit down and rest sooner.  Last night I got home about an hour later than usual and it was no exception.

So, a quick warm cous cous salad it shall be… but a lack of veggies in the fridge made me think outside the box…

Two birds. One stone. My tips for quick cooking.

If there is one thing I can do in this world, it’s get dinner on the table in a short amount of time.

I’m not talking 5 star fancy dinners, but basic Monday-Friday dinners for the hubs and I. I realize I don’t have a small army of children to feed and mothers out there are probably going to read this and scoff and say it’s not that easy. And to them I say – I will happily re-evaluate when I am cooking for a family.  But in the mean time, cooking for two is quite easy and the more you stop and think about what you’re doing the easier and faster it will become.

So, I wanted to share with you my hot tips to cook quickly in the kitchen, and have your clean up done at the same time. I did my research and checked to see what other websites say about cooking quickly.