Mostly Food Post

I'm trying to avoid social media at the moment as there's hundreds of posts about Easter chocolate, and I don't have any. Booo. But I have been inventing things to do with various vegetables recently - in the wholesome sense. My weekly shop now costs between £10-13 for veggies, topped up with egg, milk, cheese and flour once a fortnight or so.

After my attempts at improvising an oven, I've been looking for other, inventive, ways to use up food. I try not to waste anything, putting cuttings in the soup pot. Anything I can't eat goes onto my garden. I already have butternut squash sprouting from discarded seeds.

This is that incredible dual steamer I treated myself to, which makes rice and veggies all at the same time. 

I discovered that switching water for coconut milk makes the rice lovely and sweet.

Also been living off smoothies. Tried to think what to do with all my lettuce, until my friend Ella pointed out you can add them to banana smoothies. You can - it's delicious. Also, this fell off one of my trees the other day. I'm not usually a fan of papaya. When it goes over-ripe it tends to taste like baby sick smells (except in Laos, where they always tasted nice). This one was surprisingly like a Laos papaya. Really sweet and not a hint of sick. Made a gorgeous smoothie.

This brown gloop may not look appetising, but it was the best soup I've made so far. I used the water from boiling beetroot, which made it sweet, and followed my friend Fred's advice. Apparently, if you add seven vegetables, of any kind, to a dish, it is guaranteed to taste amazing. I don't know where he got that idea from, but I tried it and it was fabulous: beetroot juice, tinned peas, chard, red onion, sweet potato, green pepper and tomato. Soaked it up with a chapati. 

This one's a bit random. Someone on Twitter was recently asking about vegetables for fussy kids, and I explained that you can purée anything, add flour, and turn it into a burger. 

Below was going to be an entire pot of mistake thrown on the garden. I hate wasting food, so I rethought it. I'd attempted to make sweet potato soup, but it was way too thick, more or a purée, and very bland. So I charged it with chillies and seasoning, and mashed it up with flour into a dough, then fried. This became sweet potato patties, which I ate for breakfast with homemade mango jam from Fresh Basket. The combination of spicy and sweet was very good, and I'd made enough to last over four days. Definitely better than throwing it on the garden.

This is another rescue dish. Again, soup gone wrong. One of the boxes contained fennel. I had a hankering for that thin, buttery soup with a little fennel floating in it. But I put in way too much butter and it wasn't good. So I chopped up loads of basil, rosemary and mint, added rice from my steamer and some cooking cream. Turned it into a really nice paella which I garnished with avocado, salad and brown bread, which is a new craze in Kigali. Finally, you can get really nice bread. It makes a world of difference.

Of course, it is still nice to pop out for lunch now and then. Here's a standard Novotel, which I ate with friends the other week.

And there are occasional issues with extremely fresh food. This little darling has had a very hard time of things. I put her in the fridge for two days! Amazed she survived. I've named her Squidgy, but haven't seen her since she thawed out. Think she's gone in search of somewhere with better room service in which to pupate.

I just hope that when she's older she knows to keep away from the geckos. I have a couple of hungry companions on my porch.